A Brother's Honor (Grangers) - By Brenda Jackson Page 0,123
board to find the guilty persons. Unfortunately, he died before doing so.”
“Why would you encourage me to hire Shana knowing her reputation for success?” Jace asked. “Weren’t you afraid she would find out what you were doing?”
Vidal chuckled. “No. I had covered my tracks too well. Besides, I wasn’t into trade secrets. I was growing money.”
“Embezzling,” Jace said with disgust.
“Yes,” Vidal said smiling. “So I decided to throw you a bone. Let your girl go after Freeman here and his group and not give any thought to what I was up to. Remember, I was the trusted company attorney. I was considered part of the family.”
Jace didn’t say anything as everything Vidal said sank in. He hated to admit it, but the man was right. Vidal had worked for the Grangers for years. He was like part of the family. They’d never given a thought to his being involved in anything shady.
“I’m going to let you absorb that bit into your mind while I take a few more sips of my drink here.”
* * *
The lab verified that the syringe had been used recently to inject a drug known for rendering a person unconscious. Everyone was in Caden’s office listening to the update Marcel was providing when suddenly Dalton said, “Holy shit! I’d almost forgotten.”
Everyone glanced over at him. “Forgotten what, Dalton?” Caden asked.
“The tracker. I had Security place a tracker on Jace’s phone.”
“But he said he wouldn’t let you track him after hours,” Caden said, running a tired hand across the back of his neck. “He probably turned it off.”
“But what if he forgot or didn’t have time to do so?” Dalton asked, moving to the door. “The guys in Security are still here. I’m going to see if there’s a chance they can pinpoint Jace’s location.”
* * *
“Imagine my joy when the FBI focused their investigation on Freeman and his group,” Vidal was saying. “That just made my day, and things were working in my favor...until you began getting chummy with Ms. Bradford. I happened to be there one night when the two of you walked out together. And then I deliberately drove by her condo another night, and your car was parked outside.”
He shifted in his chair and continued. “I figured she had done what I needed her to do, and I wanted her to move on. A relationship with you wasn’t in my plan, because she could start snooping again later. That’s when I called Eve. I paid her a lot of money to fly to Charlottesville and break things up. She was certain once you saw her again you’d forget all about Ms. Bradford. But you didn’t bite. And then all hell broke loose when Eve overheard that conversation Ms. Bradford had with her sister the other day at Long Meadows. Ms. Bradford told her sister that she thought she was pregnant with your child.”
The lashes that shadowed Jace’s eyes flew up at the same time he was hit full force in the gut. Shana thought she was pregnant? Was that what she had to tell him tonight? The thought that she was pregnant with his child sent shivers of happiness through him even when these could possibly be his last breaths.
“That’s when I knew I had to come up with plan B,” Vidal continued. “So, this is how it will work. Everyone is looking for Freeman. When they find you with a bullet in your gut and that same gun used by Freeman to put a hole in his own head, everyone will assume that Freeman, in despair over how things went down with you finding out what he’d done and the authorities tracking him down like some kind of animal, killed you and then himself. Caden and Dalton will be totally heartbroken and distraught. It’s bad enough to have a father in jail, but now to have a brother dead? That will be too much for them. They will be overwrought with grief, and being the close family friend that I am, I will advise them to live the lives they’ve always wanted to live. I’ll encourage Dalton to return to Europe and Caden to his music. I’ll recommend that they agree to a merger with Barnes Aerospace. Of course they will take my advice, since they will feel you were killed because of Granger Aeronautics and would want to wash their hands of the company.”
Jace couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You think you have everything figured out, don’t you?”