Transparency Charles Royce (phonics reader .TXT) 📖

“I swear, Billy. For a hired hitman, you sure have a lot of opinions.”

“What?” He laughs. “You’re so goddamn paranoid.”

“We need to show control of the situation. They like reassurance.”

“Who?”

West points to the camera in the far corner. “Them.”

“Oh, them.” Billy looks at the camera. He waves. “A camera? Down here? That’s new.”

“Their trust is waning.” West takes a seat in a folding chair across from Billy. He interlocks his fingers to keep his hands from shaking and bangs them on the table. “They want answers, they want the money.”

“They’ve made billions off of companies just like us, what’s a couple hundred million?”

“It’s quite a lot to them.” West throws back his wine, then pours another glass. “Lennox’s hard drive. There’s evidence of the account, right?”

“Evidence, yes. From his ledgers, we know a ballpark of how much he skimmed, roughly 230 million. Took some time, but I’ve combed the drive—all the deleted files and messages, Internet history. I don’t see any indication of where he put the money.”

West leans back, folds his arms. “Jenna knows.”

“Jenna’s in police custody. Her old Élan laptop has been secured by the police as well.”

West claps his hands. “There’s our answer.”

“No. No, it’s not. I thought I could break in again, but since the last time, the NYPD seems to have learned their lesson. It’s like Fort Knox over there, and my back-pocket buddies were both fired for incompetence.”

“Why wasn’t it backed up before she left?”

“Because back then, Élan didn’t back up laptops, just desktops. Lennox and Jenna knew what they were doing.”

“So the hard drive you stole from police evidence, the one these pricks have been screaming about, is absolutely worthless?”

“Uh, no. It’s got some pretty damning information about the way we’ve been doing business. Lennox was keeping track of where a chunk of the profits went.” Billy points to the camera, whistles. “And those messages he sent back and forth to you, the goddamn CEO of Élan, talking about who, what, and why. They’re on there too.”

“So the hard drive could implicate me conspiring with a foreign entity about the grand opening plan, and it’ll look like we killed Lennox Holcomb to keep it quiet.”

“Yep.” Billy’s lips smack on final consonant, the sound bouncing off the cement walls.

C h a p t e r   2 3

JOSH CROUCHES DOWN even more, his shoes digging into a pile of concrete remnants.

He had planned to visit the secret room at the still-under-construction Élan International headquarters the first chance he got, but the planning of the grand opening had gotten in the way, not to mention that his anxiety had prompted some hesitation to go alone. A few days passed before he finally lured Jenna’s old roommate Tracy Heissman into joining him by appealing to her innate journalistic curiosity.

After taking the new subway line to the nearly completed building, they had to go around to the Hudson River entrance due to construction restraints.

“Yep, that’s West,” Josh says.

“Oh my God, do you think he saw us?” Tracy asks. She smiles.

“No, we’re standing behind a cement mixer. In a construction parking lot.”

“Exactly. Then why are you hiding?” Tracy walks out into the light a bit, her navy jumper outlined by the harsh floodlights behind them. She sees West drive off his in his car. “Black Mercedes; you were right. Good thing we didn’t go inside, he could’ve spotted us.”

“Is he gone?”

“Yes. Wait, there’s someone else coming out.” Tracy walks backward toward Josh. She squints, then her eyes bulge. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“What?” Josh peeks his head above the hood of the cement mixer, sees a handsome young man with a crew cut looking at his phone, lighting a cigarette. “Who is that?”

“Easy, boy,” she says. “That’s the guy I saw on the stairs the night Walter was killed.”

“Billy Donovan? You sure?”

“Yes! Remember I told you I saw him at the office not long after, got his name from the sign-in sheet. I remember faces, especially that one. Hard to believe he’s a murderer.”

Josh watches the man walk back and forth, looking at his phone.

“From that angle, he kinda looks like that model from the—”

“From the jeans campaign!” Tracy remembers. “Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. God, he was hot, remember?”

“Oh, I remember. I booked you both for that gig. One of our top male models at the agency. You kept trying to get me to test him, figure out if he was gay or not.”

“Remember after the makeup girl went missing from the set, and you volunteered to touch up his chest.”

“I was young, Trace. We both were.”

A car enters the lot, shines its headlights on them.

“Duck!” Josh says.

“Josh, the night crew have so many cars and trucks around here, they’re not going to notice us way over here.”

“You don’t know that,” Josh says. “Take a picture. Shawn says we need more proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“Any of it. West, Billy Donovan, the shady company. Shawn’s not believing any of what Jenna and I have been telling him.”

She pulls out her phone, zooms in on him, sees him flick a cigarette on the ground. “Josh, we’re too far away. It’s too dark. It’ll be too grainy.”

“Oh my God. Just take it.”

“No! This is a company phone. God, I almost took it too. You need to calm down.”

“You need to get a new phone.”

She ignores him, watches the car slow to a stop right in front of Billy.

The man walks to the car’s passenger window.

“What are they doing?” Josh is still crouched, almost on the ground. “What’s happening?”

“Shh, he’s talking to the driver. Oh, I see you found me, Mr. Uber. Yes, yes, I did, handsome man with a crew cut. Why are you looking at me funny, I’m just a white guy alone at a construction site late at night. Oh that’s okay, no problem, get in, you look trustworthy. Don’t mind if I do.”

“Are you seriously Mystery Science Theater-ing them?”

“They’re gone.” Tracy walks back into the light. “You ready for this?”

“Wait.” Josh stands,