Chapter 12 - The Man Behind Marcus
Marcus Reed was not difficult to locate once we stopped looking for an ex-boyfriend and started looking for a corporate intermediary.
His financial records showed consulting payments routed through Northlight in the months before Renee became ill.
Renee stared at his visitor photograph. "He told me he sold waterfront property."
"He might have," Marisol said. "But he also had paid access to your company."
"Did he ever love me?"
Nobody answered.
Love couldn't be established from invoices or disproved by one act of cowardice.
Yet every payment made the past harder for her to bear.
Investigators contacted Marcus through counsel.
He agreed to speak after learning that Victor had named him as the source of several compromised credentials.
His meeting was held in a conference room under official supervision.
Marcus arrived pale and agitated. "I didn't know they were going after her health."
Renee sat upright. "You knew they were going after something."
He looked at his hands. "Victor wanted access to investor information. Claudia said it was about stabilizing the company."
"And you took their money," she said.
"I thought I could get out."
"You got out by text."
That sentence hurt him more than shouting would have.
Marcus admitted giving Claudia his phone credentials and old photographs so she could impersonate him in electronic communications if necessary.
He insisted he had not changed Renee's contact list, and investigators had no reason yet to believe he knew Daniel's private number.
"Why put my number under Marcus?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Who arranged the meeting with Claudia?"
"Victor's security chief. Owen."
Owen had refused to answer questions after the kidnapping operation.
The circle was tightening but still missing the person at its center.
Marcus then told us something more useful.
Six months earlier, he had overheard Victor arguing with Adrian Bell about a deceased consultant.
Bell said the consultant's husband was being placed near a target and should be allowed to follow the trail just far enough to discredit himself.
"Did they use a name?" I asked.
Marcus swallowed. "Carter."
Rusk had assigned me to Sterling Global.
Bell appeared to know why.
The implication was that my assignment had been engineered to give the conspirators a believable scapegoat if the scheme surfaced.
Torres received the interview summary. Her face was grim. "We need to establish whether Rusk was deceived or involved."
I wanted to believe one possibility more than the other.
That was precisely why I shouldn't be the one deciding.
Renee excused herself and sat alone for a while. When I joined her, she said, "I used to think being rich meant I could always buy another chance."
"Money buys options," I said. "Not time. Not truth."
"And not somebody who shows up at two in the morning."
She looked at me with an openness that frightened me.
I cared about her.
I also knew that my lies, however professionally necessary, were still lies.
At sunset we received the laboratory's first confirmed result.
The suspicious tablets were not the medication specified on Renee's current prescription.
Further testing was required to determine their contents and possible effects.
Renee read the report in silence.
Then the hospital called: an anonymous visitor had asked when her next stem cell transplant evaluation would occur.
May you like
The visitor had identified himself as her husband.
