Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

of determination. I stopped often to stretch, to stand and walk around, to get more coffee and more donuts. But every time I looked at her, with her dark, intense eyes and her black hair knotted behind her head, the expression on her face was one of total concentration. I am certain that in the hours that she spent there, she hardly moved a muscle. Yet her body seemed perfectly relaxed and at ease.

At one thirty I looked into my empty coffee cup, checked my watch, and said, “I’m going to get some lunch. You want to take a break?”

She stared at me for a moment, as though only her eyes were seeing me, but her brain was still looking at her computer screen.

“What?”

“Lunch. One thirty. Rest. You. Take.”

She frowned, then her face cleared. “Oh, right. No. Get me two beef and salad, will you?”

“Drink?”

“Water.”

I stepped into the bright, icy afternoon, thrust my hands into my pockets and made my way toward the deli on the corner. Everything I had read over the last two and a half hours tended to consolidate the reputation the Hennessys had acquired for being corrupt and believing themselves above the law. But it also consolidated my personal view that they were as clever and skilled as they were corrupt. It’s a thing you get used to when you’re a cop. There are certain people you just know are guilty. You know it, they know you know it—everybody knows it. But there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it because they consistently cover their tracks just enough so that there is no actual proof.

From the Clearwater real estate scandal back in the early ’80s to the establishment of the Hennessy Foundation and its links to Islamic fundamentalist groups and the arms trade, every step along the way where their associates had been indicted, tried, and even jailed, the Hennessys had managed to walk away unscathed. One journalist dubbed them the Teflon Two, because nothing would stick to them.

I had made a pretty comprehensive chart of the major deals they had done since 1979 to the present. Now it seemed all their business interests were concentrated under the umbrella of the Hennessy Foundation, shielded behind their status as an NGO, which enabled them to receive very handsome donations tax free from very questionable international figures.

I had then focused on the last eleven years and started to list all the enterprises, initiatives and companies that were owned or partially owned by the Hennessy Foundation, or in which the Foundation had invested substantial sums of money. It had proved to be a massive undertaking. There were more than two thousand enterprises and initiatives that had received some kind of investment from them over the last eleven years. By the same token, the Hennessys themselves had not personally invested a dime in anything over that same period.

And to complicate matters more, there was the associated Hennessy Investment Fund, whose job it was to take all the capital held by the Foundation and invest it so as to maximize the Foundation’s resources in order to fund their work ‘helping others to live the best life they can’.

Along the way they had also provided a number of Islamic terrorist groups with the best arsenals they could, and placed themselves among the one hundred richest and most powerful people in the country. Carol Hennessy came in around number sixty in the Forbes 100.

I climbed the steps and made my way back into the detectives’ room. There I stopped for a moment and observed Dehan. She had not moved. She was still sitting, reading from the screen of her laptop. Suddenly I knew, beyond any possibility of a doubt, that this unrelenting, unflinching, totally focused hunter would find her prey. She would not move until she had found that link between Lee and Hennessy. I also knew beyond a doubt that the link existed. It was there. It was skillfully hidden. But Dehan would find it.

And I knew one more thing: somehow I had to look Hennessy in the eye and let her know that we were after her, and we were going to get her. When I did that, when she saw that in my eyes, she would falter and she would make her mistake. And then we would get her and her trigger-man.

I put Dehan’s sandwich down in front of her along with her bottle of water. Then I dropped into my chair and picked up my phone.

It rang twice and Shelly answered.

“Hey, tough guy. Realized the error of your ways? Can’t stay away?”

“Something like that. I need you to introduce me to Carol Hennessy.”

“No can do. I don’t have that kind of access.”

“I don’t believe you, but let’s pretend. What can you do?”

“The next best thing. There is a fundraiser tonight at the Rockford Center, Schools for Tropical Guinea, something like that. You want to come as my plus one?”

“Yes. When?”

“Tonight. Seven thirty. I’ll pick you up.”

“Is it black tie?” I saw Dehan look up, stare at me for a moment, and then continue reading.

“Yup.”

I sighed. “Okay, but you’ll have to pick me up from my house.”

“You have a deal. I hope this gets me brownie points.”

“It will. See you at seven.”

“My pleasure!”

“Yeah, and thanks.”

I hung up.

Dehan swiveled her eyes at me as though she would want to slap me if she didn’t feel such an overpowering sense of contempt. She said, “Shelly Pearce?”

“Mm-hm. Don’t be jealous, darling. I have to see Hennessy, and I mean to see her tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow and turned back to the screen.

I threw her my keys across the desk. “Pick me up tomorrow morning.”

She eyed the keys, then my face, and I swear green venom dropped from her lips when she said, “Are you