A Lot like Love (FBI/US Attorney #2)(66)
His first thought had been to shred every account statement, financial record, and tax document connected to Bordeaux and his other clubs and restaurants. Then he realized this would be a worthless endeavor—his accountants, the banks, and the IRS all had their own copies and records of everything he’d ever filed. Not to mention, he kept most of that information in his office at Bordeaux, and he certainly didn’t want the FBI hearing him cleaning out his files. The one and only advantage he had right then was that no one except for Mercks knew he was onto them.
His second thought had been to turn himself over to the Feds and try to work out some kind of deal to testify against Martino. There was one problem with this: there was a hundred percent chance that Martino would try to have him killed before he ever got to testify, and about a ninety-five percent chance that he would succeed even if the Feds placed him under protective custody.
Not good odds.
Simply put, Xander didn’t want to die.
It seemed strange to be thinking in those terms. Of course he didn’t want to die; no one wanted to die. But in the last twenty-four hours, it had occurred to him that this was a very real, imminent possibility. And if Roberto Martino ever discovered that he had practically handed over the evidence of their money laundering to the FBI—for f**k’s sake, he’d given Nick McCall a tour of the lower level—that death was not only going to be imminent, but extremely painful.
Just days ago, he thought he’d been on his way to being king of the world. His biggest concern had been a woman. What he wouldn’t give to go back and freeze his life right there.
Xander stood in the kitchen, staring inside the massive subzero refrigerator that was stocked twice a week by his housekeeper—who he’d given the weekend off, using the flu excuse. At this point, he didn’t trust anyone. He needed to force himself to eat, despite the constant gnawing, queasy feeling in his stomach. He had to keep his energy up so he could think.
His cell phone rang. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled it out, and saw it was Mercks. “What did you find out?”
“You mean other than what they’re saying on TV?” Mercks asked.
Xander’s mouth went dry. “They’re talking about me on TV? Did the FBI make an announcement?”
“No, not you. I meant about Kyle Rhodes. It’s everywhere—in the papers, on TV, on the Internet. How have you missed this?”
Xander headed for his library. How had he missed some irrelevant story about Kyle Rhodes? Because television sucked nowadays, that’s how—all reality shows and hour-long dramas that introduced some mysterious event that was dragged out for seven seasons before coming to a wholly anticlimactic finale that explained jack shit. And while he normally read the paper, he’d been a little bit preoccupied with other matters over the last eighteen hours—primarily, how to keep himself alive and out of jail.
“Hold on—I’ve got the Tribune here somewhere.” Sure enough, he found it on the desk in his library where he’d tossed it with his mail earlier that morning, tucked under the new Wine Spectator. He pulled the newspaper out and read the headline: “Twitter Terrorist Released After Stabbing.”
“Rhodes is free?” he asked Mercks.
“Apparently, he was attacked in prison. The U.S. attorney released a statement saying that she agreed to permit him to serve the remainder of his sentence in home detention out of concern for his safety.”
“And this interests me because . . . ?”
“I can’t help but wonder if Kyle Rhodes was released because someone else paid his debt to society.”
Xander felt the sickening betrayal in his stomach. “You think Jordan made a deal? Me for her brother’s release?”
“I think that’s certainly a possibility.”
Xander fell silent for a moment. “Where is she now?”
“She drove to the airport this morning with McCall. Tennyson followed them inside the terminal and overheard them checking in. They caught a flight to San Francisco.”
Xander knew Jordan—she and McCall weren’t staying in San Francisco. He’d bet half a billion dollars they were in the Napa Valley instead. “I think you’ve told me everything I need to know.” His mouth pulled tight. “I see no reason to follow her and McCall any longer.”
“I know this wasn’t the information you were looking for.”
“You did your job, Mercks. Don’t worry, you’ll still get paid.”
After Xander hung up, he paced through his penthouse like a caged tiger. He felt trapped, so trapped he could barely breathe. He ran his hand through his hair—for the first time since Mercks had laid the news on him about the FBI, he felt wild, out of control.
Goddamn Jordan Rhodes had sold him out.
“Fucking bitch!” He whipped around and threw his phone at a silver-framed decorative mirror hanging on the wall in the foyer. The glass shattered and fell in large shards to the travertine floor.
He stared at the broken glass and walked over. For the past eighteen hours, he’d had no one to focus his anger on other than himself. He had been the greedy bastard. He, like many people, had naively assumed that Martino and his organization were untouchable and beyond the reach of the law. Apparently the new U.S. attorney, with her so-called war on crime, had not received the memo: this was Chicago—corruption was expected.