Both Ends Burning (Whistleblower Trilogy Book 3) Page 7

  Shoulder pulsed with ache. My jacket had been torn and rubbed raw, and I could see through the fabric to my shoulder, which was covered with red streaks, bleeding.

  I stood up, carefully, and noticed I’d stopped a few feet from a pond with a fountain in the middle of it. A lighted gazebo twenty feet to my right. A park of some kind.

  I shed my latex gloves, jacket, and shirt, then leaned over the pond and took a handful of water. Splashed it on my shoulder, gritting my teeth to keep the scream inside. I rotated my arm, and it didn’t feel broken. Just some burns, and those I could treat with Neosporin. The woman in the BMW must have only been going a few miles per hour. Thank God for that, or she might have killed me.

  I stumbled to the gazebo and slumped onto a picnic table. It was plastic, made to look like wood. I ran my hands along the table, feeling the grooves and the circles that were supposed to simulate knotholes.

  The manila envelopes in the back of my pants crinkled, and I reached behind me. Set them and the journal out on the table. I was either about to solve this damn mystery or find another dead end inside these materials. I couldn’t tolerate any more dead ends.

  I checked around one more time, but no one was watching me. Maybe I was breaking some kind of park curfew, but I didn’t see any cops. A shadow next to the water danced, and I squinted to bring it into focus. A squirrel had hopped up onto the park bench.

  I started with the journal. I opened it to find a series of markings scrawled inside.

  10.14 - Dumb row: 10x45, 10x45, 9x45

  10.14 - Chin: 5x,4x,3x

  And more like this, for two dozen pages of the journal. The rest was blank. I studied these cryptic writings, page after page of the same shorthand scrawls filling up each one.

  Then it hit me. Dumb. Dumbbell. It was a workout log.

  I tossed the journal aside and moved on to the envelopes. The first one was closed with a wax seal, and an indentation pressed into the wax was in some foreign language. Swirly and angular.

  I broke the seal and pulled out a set of documents. Clean, crisp paper. They looked official, with stamps and seals all over. Half in English, half in some language I didn’t recognize. The same lettering as on the seal.

  I scanned and noticed a name typed below a scribbling signature at the bottom. Major General Muhammad Ali Jahari, IRGC.

  IRGC? I didn’t recognize the acronym.

  I flipped a page and came to what looked like an invoice. There were several items listed in one column, and prices listed opposite each one. Millions of dollars for each of these items, many of them with strange and cryptic names like SN14-SomNav and QRTA74 SmartCard System. Jahari had inked his signature in tiny lettering next to each item.

  I flipped through pages of this invoice, finding more of the same on each page. Edgar Hartford’s signature was in places, as well as Frank Thomason. What these little signatures meant, I had no idea.

  I went back and studied each of these products or services. My head throbbed from skidding along the pavement and connecting with the curb. I couldn’t concentrate.

  On the next to the last page, I found the full name of the IRGC acronym. Apparently, it stood for the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. That name, I had heard, on the news.

  Then I flipped to the last page, which was a summary of the entire document, and everything clicked into place. It was a bill of sale for a suite of software and hardware.

  My brain cleared. Everything made sense.

  IntelliCraft had been selling weapons navigation systems to Iran.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next morning, I caught a 10:15 flight back to Denver. Before I did, I stopped off at a FedEx in Southlake and—with my fake ID—had them same-day-air ship the documents back to Denver, using my next door neighbor Alan’s address.

  Watching the woman at FedEx take that package and set it on the counter behind her had been a difficult thing to do. I was entrusting my family’s future to these people.

  I didn’t want to take them on the plane with me and risk having the TSA confiscate them. Had no idea what I would have said to the authorities, because I didn’t myself know what to think about all this yet.

  A couple drinks on the plane were supposed to ease my mind, but they only served to blur my reasoning. My temple throbbed. My shoulder ached. My whole body seemed an inch away from giving up.

  I texted Grace that everything was okay, I was fine, not to worry. I’d promised myself and her that I wasn’t going to lie and paint a rosy picture, but I was too stunned to think straight. And now I felt doubly paranoid about every communication sent because the gravity of the situation was slowly settling on me.

  IntelliCraft, the company that my dad and Kareem had founded, sold weapons guidance systems to foreign countries. Not just Iran. I found documents in the second envelope mentioning Pakistan, Sudan, and Syria.

  So many of the events of the last month now made sense. This was what everyone was so willing to kill for because I had to assume that the government didn’t know about it. What they’d done was grounds for treason. I couldn’t tell from the documents who was and wasn’t involved. Hartford’s and Thomason’s signatures were on a few things, but mainly, there were other names, ones I hadn’t recognized.

  But I still had many questions. What part had Kareem and Omar played in all of it? Why had Dad faked his own death? Why had the IntelliCraft board of directors forced Kareem and my dad out of the company, and why were they warring with each other?

  And why was I at the center of it all, for some reason not killed by these people, who had every reason to do so?

  When I touched down in Denver, I got another rental car from the airport and drove back into my neighborhood, in a haze as my mind raced through endless computations of what all the various puzzles could mean. I parked near the cul de sac with eyes on Alan’s house, awaiting FedEx delivery of the documents.

  I called Susan. She didn’t pick up. “I know everything,” I whispered into her voicemail. “I know what they’ve really been making and selling. You tell him to call me, right away, at this number. He better call me and start talking, or I’m going public this second. I have the proof I need to blow this whole thing open.”

  Not that I actually could go public yet. I didn’t know if I had the complete picture, or even how to go about getting it. I needed more answers. I had some documents, but I didn’t know if they proved anything.

  She didn’t return the call, so I settled back into waiting mode as the sun passed across the sky. A couple hours later, the FedEx truck drove along my street, and I perked up when it turned into the cul de sac. I had, of course, not required a signature for the package. Would be kind of impossible for Alan to sign for it since he was in jail awaiting trial at that moment. The bail—if the judge had even set bail—would have been astronomical.

  I took the package to my house and checked it, to make sure nothing had been compromised. Couldn’t find any signs of entry. This was part of the evidence that would end everything, and protecting it had to be priority number one. But I couldn’t keep it in my house, at least for now. It needed to be somewhere safe, but close by.

  I found a waterproof backpack in my closet and removed anything that could be tied to me. Found a stale granola bar in the top pocket, from the last time Grace and I had gone hiking together, up near Lyons. It was the weekend before she’d told me she was pregnant. We’d been fighting that day, arguing over some little stupid thing as we huffed and puffed along the trail.

  How long had she known she was pregnant before she told me? Days? Weeks?

  I stashed the documents inside. After closing every zipper and securing the pack, I walked to the end of the street where the hill began, the same place where I’d first met Dog when he’d had that scuffle with the coyote. All of that seemed so distant, so far away as if it had happened to someone else and I remembered it like a story I’d heard.

  A top layer of crunchy snow broke under my shoes as I stepped
past the houses and out into the open space. Took a deep sniff as I looked behind me and out into the open space for joggers, or watchers, or anyone with eyes.

  I descended the hill to a sizable collection of rocks off to the side, just above the gravel jogging trail. I lifted a rock, having to throw my entire aching body into it. My poor shoulder burned. Then I stuffed the backpack into the crevice and moved the rock back in place. Backed up a few steps, checked out the rocks from every angle. Couldn’t see the backpack.

  I surveyed the area again for anyone snooping, checked the sky for… I don’t know, drones or something.

  As my head spun around, I saw a lone light brown coyote perched near the top of the hill, watching me. The glare from the afternoon sun blurred the creature, but I could see those beady eyes locked onto me.

  My hand shot into my pocket and took out the rental car keys, which I inserted between my fingers like mini blades. I gripped them, ready for it to charge me.

  I’d never been too afraid of these little beasts, but that was before I’d seen what their jaws could do. The coyote’s ears twitched, then it turned and trotted off down the hill in another direction.

  ***

  Back at the house, my phone rang. Blocked number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” said my dad’s hushed voice.

  “Okay, first—”

  “No,” he said. “Do not say anything on a line that could be compromised. If you want to talk to me, go to the payphone at the Shell station near your house. Be there in ten minutes and I’ll call it.”

  He hung up, and I felt emasculated. He’d taken the power to control the conversation. But I didn’t see that I had much choice. I hopped in the car, sped down the street, and parked at the Shell station. Almost as soon as I got there, the pay phone started ringing.

  I raced out of the car and to the phone, getting a few looks from people filling up at the gas pumps. Cold biting wind picked up, ruffling the bottom of my jacket.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Susan played your voicemail for me.”

  “And?”

  “What do you know?” my dad said.

  “I learned that IntelliCraft has been selling weapons guidance systems to countries not friendly to the US. And I’m guessing that our government doesn’t know about it, and probably wouldn’t be cool with it if they did?”

  He sighed on the other end of the line. “I wanted to spare you from finding this out. Knowing this information isn’t going to do you any good, and will only serve to put you deeper in danger.”

  “It’s too late for that. But this doesn’t explain your war with Kareem.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “Tell me. I want the whole story, no riddles, no half-truths, no bullshit. Everything.”

  “It never should have turned out the way it did. We were supposed to be a contractor for the US, but things fell through. The whole deal was done in secret, with only a handshake agreement. So, it was easy for them to back out and claim they’d never made any binding arrangements, after we’d invested everything we had into developing our products.

  “We were bitter. We were impulsive. We had the technology, and we found buyers. But Kareem had a change of heart soon after, and so did I. So the company forced us out.”

  “But only after you’d already been selling it,” I said.

  “That’s true. By that point, the company had swelled, and it wasn’t like turning off a switch. Kareem made most of the introductions via his contacts over there. They would only deal with him at first, but the board got rid of us once they didn’t need him anymore.”

  Suddenly, that piece of the puzzle locked into place. Of course, Kareem was the negotiator. I’d never even asked what country he and Omar had come from. Omar had told me those stories about growing up and their mother, but where? Iran? Pakistan?

  “Why were you two warring?” I said.

  “With what we knew, we both had to go into hiding. More so for him, because he wanted to go public. We weren’t like fugitives, always on the run like in some movie, but we both had to keep a low profile.”

  “Is that why you left mom?”

  Dad sighed. “Your mother and I split for a lot of reasons, Tucker. But yes, that’s one of the reasons I left. I spent many years erasing my past, but things changed recently. People were asking questions.”

  My lip quivered. “You didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.”

  “I know, and I know how much that hurt you. I didn’t feel like I had a right to, with the way we left things. I’m sorry that you were in the middle of that.”

  I blinked away a tear. “So why did all this come to a head recently? What changed?”

  “Wyatt Green happened. He saw an opportunity for personal gain, and everything escalated so fast. There wasn’t time to resolve it properly.”

  “Wyatt told me he was trying to keep you quiet. That’s why he kidnapped Grace and put me through that labyrinth.”

  “I’d been trying to damage the company without revealing what they were doing. Shorting the stock, planting corporate rumors, that sort of thing. They didn’t like that so much.”

  That would explain why he’d gone off-grid. “You haven’t told me why you and Kareem were at odds.”

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “I wanted to stop them too, but not publicly. If all that information got out, we’d be tried for treason. So I had to prevent him from doing anything so damaging.”

  My anger started to rise. “By trying to kill a man you once called your friend?”

  “It’s not so black and white, son. They would have put us to death. Me, Kareem, and lots of other people who were innocent.”

  “Innocent? You don’t get to claim that. You sold weapons to terrorist countries.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. I told you we realized the error of our ways, but it was too late at that point. It was out of our hands and no amount of pleading was going to change that. Not with that kind of money involved.”

  “I won’t need to plead. I have evidence. I have documents that prove what’s been going on.”

  He paused. “What do you have?”

  I almost told him, but caught myself. “I’m not going to say.”

  “Son, you have to listen to me. Please do not do anything rash. Susan and I have a new plan to take care of all this. To make it go away. The first phase is already in motion and if you let that information go out to the general public, you’ll be ruining dozens, or maybe hundreds of lives. I want you to be smart about this.”

  I breathed into the phone for a few seconds. Now that I knew the truth, it didn’t make me trust him more. Maybe he was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, but I didn’t care. My family was still in danger.

  “Are you saying you’ll kill me too?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I don’t know what I have to do to convince you that I’m on your side. Just be patient, and this is all going to get sorted out. You have to believe me that justice is coming.”

  “But I don’t believe you, Dad. I don’t.”

  I hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I decided to spend the rest of the day at the library with my tablet since both my regular phone and my laptop were gone.

  I called Grace on the way and told her everything. All about the trip to Texas, the documents, and the call with Dad. She was relieved that I’d found something that could end this. And also terrified of the truth, because now she knew the full stakes.

  “You can’t trust anyone,” she said. “Not if what these monsters are doing is true.”

  “I know. You’re the only person in the world I trust. Maybe Rodrick, too. But this is real, and this is happening. I hadn’t realized how big this whole thing is, you know?”

  “I do,” she said. “But I have to be honest with you: it’s getting hard for me to keep playing the supporting wife. I can’t sleep at night thinking about what’s going to happen to yo
u.”

  This conversation was long overdue. “I know. And it’s not fair for me to keep asking you to do it.”

  “When are you coming back up here?”

  “Soon. Very soon. Maybe tomorrow, if I can. There are still some things I need to do.”

  We said our goodbyes, and as always, I wondered if it would be the last time. I missed her so much, my judgment felt clouded. I considered abandoning everything and dropping the envelopes at a police station. I’d grab Grace at Keystone, and then drive up to Canada. Would we be free of all this up north?

  No. We would never be free unless I ended it. If I went public with only what I had, IntelliCraft would find a way to weasel out of it. We wouldn’t be safe, and there would be no justice for those who’d died.

  At the library, I settled into a chair and tried to find evidence corroborating the documents. Those could be forged, so there had to be something else; some other kind of circumstantial evidence against IntelliCraft that would legitimize what I already had.

  Then I’d march right to the police.

  No, not the police. I’d go to the press. I’d walk right up to the channel 9 news building and offer them the story of the year.

  I plugged in headphones and streamed some music through my tablet. At first, some Shakey Graves, then some John Fullbright. It almost settled my nerves. Almost.

  I tried for hours to dig up dirt on Edgar Hartford, Wyatt Green, Frank Thomason, and anyone else associated. Came up with nothing. IntelliCraft seemed to be the most squeaky clean company in American history. Not even a tax audit in the last twenty-five years.

  And if the Wyatt Green’s kidnapping of my wife had resulted in an FBI investigation, as Edgar had told me in that motel room in Kirby, there wasn’t any information about it in the media. How could they have kept that quiet?