A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)(42)

Notice the priority in that sentence?

“So did her disgusting, traitorous mother,” Monica adds.

Harry looks like someone just kicked him in the balls.

Lindsay’s taken aback by her mother’s ferocity. “Jane didn’t have a choice, Mom. They basically kidnapped her.”

“She fed them information about you. Anya handed you off to those pigs.” Monica’s eyes crawl over Lindsay’s face and upper body, inventorying in a very obvious way, punctuating the severity of her remarks.

“Because she was protecting Jane!” Lindsay protests.

“Don’t you dare defend that bitch!” Monica hisses, red-faced and livid, jumping to her feet and leaning in. She and Lindsay are inches from each other, their chests heaving, the scent of Monica’s custom-blended perfume rising off her like distorted heat waves on Southern California asphalt in July.

“That ‘bitch’ was my assistant for most of my political career!” Harry roars, recovering from Monica’s vengeful dominance. All eyes turn to him, though Monica is slower. “Anya was not a traitor. She did what she did because Corning’s men threatened Jane’s life. She came to me as soon as she could.”

“Not good enough, Harry,” Monica replies. It occurs to me that there is something much deeper going on regarding Monica’s feelings for Anya. This isn’t just about Lindsay.

This is a grudge match.

“It’s good enough for me. Anya’s never working for me again. Her career in political administration is destroyed. Her daughter may face federal hacking charges and their lives are ruined. That doesn’t erase the good work she did for me for years, and not one damn iota of this conversation has anything to do with moving on and finding a way to come out of this mess on top,” Harry announces.

Marshall clears his throat. “Moving on, then...”

Monica makes a sound deep in her throat that makes it clear she has not moved on.

Lindsay bites back a smile and squeezes my hand.

“Here are the facts as we know them,” Marshall says, looking across the table at Mark Paulson. “Four years ago, Nolan Corning created an exploratory committee to look into running for president. By the time the committee was done, they honed in on their biggest obstacle: Senator Harwell Bosworth.”

Lindsay’s smile fades.

“Corning and Harry clashed – hard – over the years within the party, but Harry had no reason to believe Corning was capable of what he eventually ordered.” Marshall appears to fumble for words.

“You mean no one would have guessed he was evil enough to hire three of my friends to rape and torture Lindsay for political gain,” I clarify.

Monica’s eyes dart to me. Harry sighs.

Silas and Mark remain stone faced.

“You could put it that way,” Marshall says in a terse voice.

“I just did.”

Lindsay squeezes my hand. “But how did he do it? How did he get those three guys in particular? They went to school with Drew, he knew them much of his life,” Lindsay asks.

The ten-million-dollar question.

Why Lindsay? Why the gang rape on streaming video? Why such an outrageous act?

“Corning is sealed tight. However, some extraneous information -- ”

A euphemism for hacking.

“ -- reveals that the initial contact was with Blaine Maisri. We’ve found significant sums of money that were channeled through subsidiary accounts connected to Corning supporters and funneled into businesses owned by the Maisri family, but the forensic research on this will take a very long time to unravel.”

“Could you translate that into English?” Lindsay asks.

“Corning paid Maisri off,” Marshall says sourly, not looking at her.

“So those assholes got paid to rape me,” she replies.

Marshall, Harry and Monica flinch.

“Among other things,” I add. “The meteoric rise of Blaine, Stellan and John in their respective careers must have been part of the deal, too.”

Mark finally opens his mouth and says something, brow down with concentration. “How do you use connections to grab a major-league pitching slot? Doesn’t make sense.”

“I can answer that,” Marshall says, shaking his head with a look of admiration and disbelief. “John Gainsborough had natural aptitude, but he also had a good knuckleball. Other teams were already becoming suspicious. Looks like someone was tampering with the balls and Corning helped to get umpires to make calls in Gainsborough’s favor.”

“All we need to do is analyze the balls’ trajectories across enough game footage,” Silas interrupts. “You can pattern match pretty quickly and see how he did it.”

Marshall gives him a hard stare.

“I played in college,” Silas says with a shrug.

“The corruption goes that far?” Mark asks, a sick look on his face. “Tampering with major league baseball? All for a leg up in politics?”

Harry snorts. “Corning isn’t exactly known for his morality. But I never thought...”

“If the goal was to humiliate Daddy by using me, then...” Lindsay falters. “I don’t know.” She shakes her head.

“Say it,” Monica whispers. “Go ahead. Today is the day to just get all this shit out so we can move on.”