"I don't understand what you're saying," Macy whispers, her gaze now fixated on her lap.
"I'm saying the government is taking your apartment and your bank account," I tell her gently.
"And they can do that?" she asks meekly... so fucking lost.
"Yeah," I say with frustration as I skim my fingers through my hair and scratch at the back of my neck. I immediately put my hand back on the wheel because traffic is heavy this late afternoon as commuters head out of the city for the weekend.
"When do I have to get out?"
"Three days," I tell her and before she can erupt, I continue. "I called Mac while you were packing. She and Matt are taking tomorrow off and are going to get some movers to pack up your entire apartment. She'll keep some of your clothes and other necessities aside for you, but the rest she'll put in temporary storage."
Macy gives a snort... next a strangled laugh... and then she looks at me with near hysteria in my eyes. "Are you sure I'm allowed to keep my clothes? I mean... technically, those were bought with my trust fund... which means they were bought by Quarter Mine."
I keep a calm and rational voice. I can't have her splintering on me. "You're allowed to keep anything in the apartment that is not permanently affixed, as well as ten-thousand dollars from your bank account."
Another bark of insane laughter and she throws her hands up. "Well, then hey... that's awesome. I'm set for life."
My hand snakes out and grabs a wrist flying around. I pull it to me and kiss her fingertips. "I'm not going to let you fall."
"I've already fallen," Macy says bleakly as she snags her hand back.
"Then I'll pick you back up," I tell her.
She doesn't respond. Just rests her forehead against the passenger glass and looks at the scenery passing by. She's slipping away from me, and I don't know how to stop it.
I hang up the phone and toss it down on the couch cushion beside me. That was Mac giving me an update. The movers are set to be at Macy's apartment first thing in the morning and should be cleared out by noontime.
Pursuant to the instructions on the forfeiture order, I had Mac move the allotted money out of Macy's trust fund and into a new bank account that she set up for her before the banks closed for business, thanking the powers that be that Macy had appointed Mac as her power of attorney long ago.
I'd pass this information on to Macy in the morning. Right now, she's up in the guest bedroom my mom showed us to a few hours ago when we arrived, and she's sound asleep. She refused to eat anything, and while she was polite to my parents, she claimed she was really tired and just wanted to rest.
She's been out like a light since then.
"Made you some tea." My mom's voice gently covers me as she walks into the den where I'm sitting.
I nod at the tumbler of bourbon my dad brought me half an hour ago that's sitting on the coffee table. "Dad already brought me a delivery," I tell her with a smile.
My mom smirks, sets the tea down next to the bourbon, and then sits down next to me. "You can drink the tea after the liquor."
Mom curls her feet up onto the sofa, tucking them underneath her. She angles her body toward me, reaches a hand out, and tugs on a few locks of my hair. "You need a haircut."
"Yeah," I grumble my agreement. "I know."
"I'll cut it for you tomorrow," she says as she tilts her head to the side to rest her cheek on the backseat cushion. Her eyes are warm as they study me. "Is Macy sleeping?"
I nod, my fingers absently stroking the denim material covering my thighs. "You know I can't really tell you what's going on, right? Attorney-client privilege and all that."
My mom pats me on the knee. "I know. But whatever it is, you two can stay here as long as you like."
"Thanks, Mom," I say as I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. "I'm thinking just a few days until Macy can get oriented."
Pushing up off the couch, my mom reaches over and grabs the glass of bourbon. She hands it to me with a wink. "Drink that. Doctor's orders... then drink the tea."
"Yes, ma'am," I reply as I take the glass from her.
Mom smiles down at me with wisdom shining in her eyes. "Whatever is going on, Macy's lucky to have you in her corner."
I shrug, because honestly... I've not done much other than let her get attacked by a federal prosecutor and served a forfeiture order. "Just another day at the office," I quip.
"I'm not talking about you being her attorney." Warm affection tinged with a bit of annoyance, a delivery only a mom can do properly. "I'm talking about you being there for her... personally. You're a good man and one day, you'll look back on all of this and realize it was merely a small hurdle you had to jump to get to the happiness."
"Seems like the hurdle's pretty big from where I'm sitting."
"Well, it's a good thing you got long legs," she says with a wink. It makes me laugh and fills me up with determination at the same time.
I hold my glass up in a silent toast to my mother's greatness. She curtsies in response with a slight incline of her head before leaving the room and me to my thoughts.
I take another sip of the amber liquid, swirl it on my tongue, and then swallow it slowly. I let the burn infuse my blood and work its magic on my anxiety.
Now it's time to find out what I can on Emiel Coppens.
Leaning forward, I set the tumbler on the table and reach into my briefcase, which sits on the floor at my feet. I take my laptop out, settle back onto the couch, and fire it up.
Google provides me instant information.
Dr. Emiel Coppens, age forty-three, practicing obstetrician and gynecologist living in Brussels. He's a sole practitioner from what I can see, and apparently not a great marketer of his services because there's very little information about him.
I study a picture of Dr. Coppens. He has dark hair buzzed very short, a tight-cropped beard, and wire-framed glasses. Absolutely nondescript. There are a few published medical articles by him, but I can see nothing else out of the ordinary. Perhaps this was just a personal friend of Travis Carrington's and they went to visit him for a few days.
Setting the laptop aside, I grab my bourbon before settling back into the cushions again. I sip and think. Think and sip.
Macy was utterly fearful and sickened at the mention of this man's name. He's fairly young... eleven years ago, he would have only been thirty-two. The thought comes unbidden into my mind and I immediately want to banish it, but it's plausible this guy raped or molested Macy. It was the first thing I thought of based upon her physical reaction.
But if that's the case, why in the fuck is a federal white-collar prosecutor interested in this? It makes no sense.
Grabbing my phone, I flip through my contacts and pull up Deanna Switzer's number from my history log. I have no clue if this is her cell or office number, and even though it's almost ten PM, I tap the screen and dial her up.
She answers on the second ring in that gravelly voice, "Switzer".
"It's Cal Carson."
"How is Miss Carrington doing?" she asks me, and that is definitely true empathy I hear in her voice. I don't think this woman enjoyed doing that to Macy today.
"Not well," I tell her, because that's the fucking truth. "Tell me about Emiel Coppens and why he's important to this investigation."
"I take it your client hasn't told you about him?" she hedges, sniffing first for information.
"That's none of your business," I chide her. "But let's just assume I don't know anything."
Dee sighs into the phone, and I can envision her rubbing her eyes with tired frustration. "It's not something we should discuss over the phone. I can meet you tomorrow at my office."
"It's a Saturday," I say, not because I'm averse to weekend work, but because government workers tend to clock out after they've hit their forty hours.
She gives a husky laugh into the phone, and I can hear her taking a drag on cigarette. Blowing it out noisily, she says, "I'm not your typical federal prosecutor, Cal. You'll find t
hat out soon enough."
"I can be there by nine," I tell her, wondering if she's warning me or just teasing. "And be ready to discuss that forfeiture order. You said you could make it go away."
"For the right information," she says before hanging up on me.
The bedroom is dark when I finally creep in around midnight. I can tell Macy's been up at some point because when she laid down to rest, she was fully clothed. Now I see her garments draped over a corner chair from the hallway light as I open the door. I mentally plan the best route to make it into the bed without killing myself in the dark, and then shut the door, sealing out all the light.
I quickly strip down to the buff, not because I hope to get any action tonight, but because that's how I always sleep. It's how Macy sleeps too, at least in my limited experience.
Carefully winding my way around the end of the bed, I make it to the other side without a single stubbed toe and carefully ease under the covers so as not to wake her.
Turning on my side to face Macy, I scoot in closer to her warmth. I can't see her in the dark very well, but I know what she sounds like when she's asleep. The shallow breaths coming from her nose rather than deep ones through her mouth that I've grown accustomed to tell me she's awake at this very moment.
"You okay?" I murmur.
She answers by sliding closer to me. I intuitively stretch my arm out, letting her head rest on it while she maneuvers the rest of her warm, naked body up against me. Her breasts softly rest against my chest, her pussy right up against my dick, which starts hardening, and finally her arm goes around my waist to pull me in even closer.
I chastise my cock to stay down, because my heart is seriously content to just hold her right now. I have no clue as to her state of mind, but I don't want to do anything that scares her away from me right now. So I wrap my arms around her and I wait.
I wait for her breathing to slow. Go deep. Calm.
It doesn't happen and after a few moments, her hand slides down to my hip, across my pelvis, and I can't contain the small hiss of pleasure that leaks through my gritted teeth when her fingers circle my dick. She strokes me to life and I immediately give in to it, because there's no way in hell I could ever control my body around Macy.
In the dark, her lips find mine and she kisses me. My own hands roam across her skin, one making its way down in between her legs. We kiss and fondle, the room utterly silent except for our heavy breathing and moans as we get each other worked up.
She's slippery wet and I'm three fingers deep in her when she throws a leg over my hip and guides my cock toward her entrance. I remove my hand and put it to good use by hiking that leg up even higher... opening her a bit wider.
I maneuver my body down a bit, giving myself the upward angle, and I let her grip on my dick lead the way to what I would most definitely classify has pussy heaven.
I sink in deep. It's fluid. A mating of two people who know every nuance of the other's body.
We lay on our sides and I slowly pump my hips, working my shaft in and out of her. Our kissing gets deeper, sometimes interrupted by a particularly deep groan that one of us emits.
Our fucking is slow, but it's not methodical. Our bodies undulate in total synchronicity, and it doesn't take long for either one of us to break apart. In fact, we both jump off the ledge together.
We then both fall asleep in the same position, neither one of us having said another word to the other.
Chapter 10
Dee Switzer has a fairly nice office for a government worker. I expect it's because she's dedicated her entire working life to the federal government. I had asked around about this woman. It's just something attorneys do when they want to check out their opponent.
I got nothing but very good things about her. Ethical, tough on crime but not without empathy, willing to make a fair deal, and a straight shooter. While I didn't like her line of questioning yesterday, I know she was just doing her job. She wasn't trying to harass or humiliate Macy. She was in search of the truth, I get that, but I still wanted to strangle her all the same for doing that to my woman.
Dee met me in the lobby and ushered me up past a weekend security guard. We only went to the fourth floor, a hike I would have generally taken by stair, but I'm sensing Dee is at least a pack-a-day smoker and couldn't handle the climb.
And just as I expected, when she led me into her plush office with cherry furniture and thick carpeting, she pulled an ashtray out of her drawer and lit up a cigarette.
Giving a slight nod toward the stick in her hand, I say "Thought this was a non-smoking building?"
Dee brings the cigarette to mouth, sucks deeply, angles her lips to blow the smoke back up to the left of her head, and laughs. "After twenty-three years, I'm not going anywhere. They know that, I know that. They don't dare try to tell me what to do."
I wonder who "they" are, but this lady has been around a long time... she could be talking about the Attorney General for all I know.
"I'm sorry Macy got upset yesterday," she says gruffly as she flicks her ashes. "I wasn't trying to do that."
"I get it."
"I could tell by the way you looked like you wanted to murder me that you have a personal connection to her," she says... a flat-out statement and not looking to me to verify that.
I shrug. "It's not a secret."
"I think you two make a beautiful couple," she says before sucking in another lungful of smoke.
Okay, getting weird.
I sit up in my seat a bit straighter, needing to get the informalities out of the way so I can expose the heart of this matter. "Who is Emiel Coppens?"
"You Googled him, right?" she asks as she stubs out her cigarette.
"Yeah. Practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. Forty-three, unmarried, no kids."
"How much do you know about white-collar crime?" she asks me in a quick change of subjects.
"Very little. I don't do criminal defense."
"Well, during the course of our investigation, our government employed dozens of accountants to comb through roomfuls of documents we subpoenaed from the defendants as well as Quarter Mine. We're talking thousands upon thousands of documents."
"Sounds like a nightmare," I say with a grimace.
"It is," she says with a fond smile for her work. "It's why this investigation has taken over five years to put together these indictments."
My jaw drops low in astonishment. "Five years?"
She nods. "In combing through all the expenditures made by the Carringtons, our analysts came upon this trip to Brussels eleven years ago. It stood out because it was very different from the other trips the family made. Their vacations were for a few weeks at a time. They flew commercially--first class, of course. Always stayed in five-star hotels. The trip to Brussels was different. They flew on a private jet, were there only three days, and stayed with one Dr. Emiel Coppens."
I know the government must be on to something, or else they wouldn't be bothering with this route, but I still shrug. "Still could be explained away as a short vacation. Maybe Coppens is a family friend."
"Nope. No phone calls between him and the Carringtons. No emails. Nothing except two phone calls right before the trip lasting less than fifteen minutes each. Those were placed from Travis Carrington's office to Dr. Coppens' home. Followed by a bank wire transfer from Travis Carrington to Emiel Coppens for one hundred thousand US dollars."
"So you suspect Dr. Coppens is involved somehow with investment fraud or something?"
"Not at all," she says, pinning me with a direct stare. "In fact, we sort of just glossed over that. That little tidbit of information sat there for five years... all lonely and neglected. I only became interested in it fairly recently once the arrests were being made."
"And why is it important now?" I ask, completely lost.
She diverts again on another tangent. "Did you know if this case goes all the way to trial, which will last for months, that the government will have probably upward of five million d
ollars in costs expended to see it through to conclusion?"
Sheesh. And some people thought personal injury attorneys made a lot of money.
Dee reaches for her pack of cigarettes, shuffles one out, and taps it against her desk. "My job right now is to try to convince the indictees to make a quick deal. Get them to plea down to some lesser charges... they'll still get prison time but we're talking thirty years versus one hundred and thirty years. And with a plea arrangement comes restitution."
I feel like the fog is lifting slightly, so I nod in understanding of what she's saying.
"The forfeiture orders served on Travis and his brother, Luke, resulted in fifty-billion dollars in seized money and assets."
"Holy fuck," I exclaim. I mean, I knew the Carringtons were rich. I knew their net worth was in the billions. But to hear that the government just decided to wake up one day and seize fifty-billion dollars from someone is mind-boggling.
"Holy fuck is right," she cackles. "If we can get them to cut a deal, they'll go to prison, those seized assets will be distributed to those that were defrauded, and the government will save millions of dollars in prosecution costs."
And BOOM... it clicks.
"You think Macy knows something about this Emiel Coppens that will cause them to accept a plea deal?"
"Not something that will get all of them to roll. But something that will get her father to roll, and once he does, they'll all take pleas."
I stare at Dee for a moment, analyzing this new information. I chew on it... form it into a thought, and ask her for clarification. "You want Macy to give you evidence that will send her father to prison? Evidence that is obviously traumatizing to her?"
Dee at least has the grace to look ashamed when she says, "I know it's not ideal, but yes. She could put this whole thing to rest, and everyone could move on. Think of it this way... she won't be putting her father away... she'll help to get him the best possible deal. And she'll be helping thousands of people who have been defrauded out of their life savings. We have an airtight case, Cal. Travis and Luke Carrington are going away for a very long time."
Frustrated air blows out through my teeth. I scrub my hand through my hair, trailing down to the back of my neck where I rub the tension from my muscles. Cocking one eyebrow at Dee, I ask, "You said you could make Macy's forfeiture order go away."