The Lion's Den(104)

Irritation prickled my spine. He was asking a lot of me and had given me almost nothing, promising to tell me everything once we were on the road. I yanked the wheel and gassed it into a faster-moving lane. “So, what then?”

“Do you remember last year, a shopping center in Colombia collapsed while it was being built, killing four people and injuring dozens?”

I accelerated through a yellow light. “No.”

“It was pretty big news, but it wasn’t in the States, so it didn’t stay in the cycle for long. Anyway, it was my dad’s company that was building the mall. There were a million corners he cut that resulted in the collapse—the concrete they were using was substandard and not suited to hold that amount of weight; there weren’t enough steel-reinforcement bars; the plans were changed once the permits had been obtained—common practices for him. He, of course, denied any wrongdoing. There was an investigation afterward, but he managed to bribe his way out of it, and eventually the blame was placed on the contractor.”

“Jesus, that’s…beyond horrifying.” I stole a glance at him just as the car in front of me suddenly stopped. I jammed on the brakes, coming to rest inches from its bumper. I took a deep breath and looked over at Eric, who was wincing in pain from the seat belt. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He took a deep breath. “I learned the truth only because the families of the men who died wanted some kind of reparation and had hired lawyers who were working their way through the different names and companies associated with Lionshare, which is how they found their way to me. They showed me the amount of evidence they had amassed—it was staggering. I went to my father and asked him to make it right with them, but he refused. He said that admitting any involvement in the collapse would be catastrophic for Lionshare and tried to convince me of how much I had to lose if the company went under. When he saw that line of reasoning wasn’t going to work with me, he warned me to let it go—for their sake and for my own.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t let it go. I went to Dylan to try to get him to help me investigate—he used to be a journalist, and he had access to records because of his position at Lionshare—but he stonewalled me. He thought I was out of my mind for risking my life for these people I’d never met, when there was no way I was going to win.”

“So that’s why you guys had been fighting.”

“The latest reason anyway—and the worst. But I didn’t give up. I found a guy with a conscience who worked for the committee tasked with investigating the collapse. He felt so guilty about the whole thing that, against his better judgment, he was willing to go on record and provide proof of the crimes and bribes my father and his men had ordered.” He pointed. “Turn here.”

I made a right onto a one-way street that stretched past city hall into the heart of downtown.

“I flew down there two weeks ago to collect the evidence and interview the guy myself before finding a journalist to write the story; then I stored everything in my place here and went to my show in San Francisco. When I got home, my loft had been ransacked, and all my evidence and the interview tapes were gone.” He pointed at an alley up ahead. “Left there.”

He took the jeans he’d been wearing last night out of the backpack I’d loaned him and rifled through the pockets as I gunned it through a break in the traffic across three lanes, into the neatly swept alley. Tall buildings towered above us, casting deep shadows that kept the narrow passage cool. “Stop here,” Eric indicated.

I brought the Prius to a halt in front of an unmarked steel door, and he handed me a folded picture. “They left this.”

I unfolded it and gasped. It was a photo of a dead man, his white button-down stained red by the blood from bullet holes in his chest. “Oh my God,” I said. “Who is this?”

“My informant.”

“Jesus,” I breathed. So this was the trouble Eric had gotten himself caught up in, and it was far worse than anything I could have imagined. I returned the photo to him, and he carefully placed it in the pocket of his jeans. “This was John’s doing?”

“Has to be. But I’m not letting it go. It’s only a matter of time before something like that collapse happens again. Summer actually did me a favor pushing me off that cliff. She gave me a chance to disappear until I can figure out a better plan to bring him down.”

“But how did he know you were talking to this informant?”

“I don’t know. Initially I assumed Dylan had told him of my intention, but he didn’t know the specifics. John could have been in my email or tapped my phone—he has the capability I’m sure—though I was careful. Or it could be as simple as someone on my informant’s end who learned he was working with me and ratted him out.”

I tried to recall whether Eric and I had ever emailed or talked on the phone—I didn’t think we had. We’d used apps mostly, which even with my limited knowledge of such things I knew were harder to hack than email. Not, I reminded myself, that anyone besides Summer had reason to be suspicious of our interaction. “Does Summer have your phone?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Which means if anyone becomes suspicious there was foul play involved in your disappearance, she’ll find a way to turn it in, implicating me.” The realization hit me like a bus. “Fuck. You’re gonna have to figure this shit out before I get thrown in jail for your murder.”