Page 89 of After All The Wreckage
“Argento Skies is one of the largest sponsors of Representative Dunn’s campaigns,” I said. “He’s making a senate run next year. They wouldn’t want to be tied to a scandal like this. Murdered CEOs and a sick town aren’t exactly the stuff political dreams are made from.”
“Plus, West is a silent partner in Walden’s company,” Casada said.
I shook my head. “He isn’t listed on any of the legal documents.”
Casada shrugged. “That’s what your mom told me before…”
My back went rigid. It never got easier to hear people talk about the wreck. I’d wondered if the person she’d met with had planted a device to hack into her car’s computer. I watched Casada, waiting for his reaction as I said, “It wasn’t an accident. Mom didn’t crash. She was driven off the road.”
His face fell. It could have been an act. He still could have been involved, but it seemed highly unlikely given that she was working with him. Casada’s voice was full of regret as he said, “I’d hoped that wasn’t the case. The last day I met with her, she said she was followed and that she’d found a bug in her office.”
I tugged at my sleeves as pain welled through me all over again. Why hadn’t she told me?
“Do you have any leads? Does it tie back to Argento Skies?” he asked.
“I didn’t even know about it until this week. The detective involved hid it from me.” I barely kept the bitterness from my voice. “It’s going to take me a while to trace the hacker who wormed into her car’s computers. They’ve had almost a year to cover their tracks.”
As I said the words aloud and pictured Dad’s new little friend and her computer skills, my stomach fell. With his connection to Dunn and West, my father was in the perfect position to cover it all up. But even with all his failings, I couldn’t imagine him hurting Mom. I couldn’t imagine him running on the wrong side of the law like this.
“With your mom gone, I’ve been trying to follow Walden on my own. I keep hoping I’ll catch him doing something, anything, that I can use to go to the authorities. But he’s rarely in Colorado anymore, and I’m not always able to follow him to his house in the Hamptons or his place in Aruba.”
The money Argento Skies brought in wasn’t lucrative enough for Walden to be able to afford homes in those high-end locations, and his family hadn’t come from money. They were essentially crop dusters who’d stumbled into cloud seeding.
When I said as much, Casada nodded. “Your mom was following the money trail. Argento Skies has become the number one cloud seeding company in the United States, but Hallie said there was no way the dollars added up.”
Following the money wasn’t just a television show ploy. It was almost always the way to find out who was in bed with whom and what was really happening behind the scenes. I instantly thought about the shell corporation that had paid the lease on Argento’s D.C. office. I’d been running checks on the people involved with both Gage’s case and my mom’s, but I hadn’t had the time to fully dig into their financials. I’d been spread too thin all week, but my focus tonight had to be on the warehouses and the money.
“Do you know where Walden is now?”
“In a suite at the Willard Hotel,” Casada responded.
“He’s in D.C.” It wasn’t a question because it wasn’t really a surprise. Casada was here, and there’d been someone in the downtown office. The printout on the warehouses proved it if nothing else. I just hadn’t been sure whether it had been Walden himself or an employee.
“Dunn and his sidekick had just come from a meeting with Walden when I saw you at the restaurant today. I haven’t wanted to bring anyone else into this after what happened to Hallie, but if I don’t leave for Colorado Springs tonight, I’ll be AWOL. I’m pushing it now if I drive straight through, and I’ve already extended my leave as much as possible,” Casada said. He scrubbed his face and then glanced at Gage and back. “I know it’s a lot to ask you when you’re only?—”
“The best at what she does,” Gage cut him off. “Rory will get to the bottom of this.”
Casada shifted in his seat, taking me in, and I knew what he saw. It was what everyone saw. A girl who looked like she was barely eighteen. Some teen wannabe trying to play girl detective. For some reason, his doubts didn’t ruffle my feathers as much as they normally did. Maybe because Gage’s confidence in me was filling the holes that people’s disbelief had caused.
“Your mom was proud of you,” Casada said, tugging at the brim of his hat.
“What?” I asked over the lump that formed in my throat.
“She told me if she let you loose on this, you’d find answers quicker than she could. Said you’d never stop digging until every bone was unburied, but she was also worried. She didn’t want to drag you in… But after I saw you at the Argento Skies office and then again with West, it didn’t feel right tonotcontact you.”
My chest felt tight and my eyes burned, but I couldn’t afford to really think about what he’d said. Maybe later. Maybe when I was alone in the dark I could relive his words and hold on to them and let them sink in.
“Do you know what room he’s in at the hotel?”
Casada rattled off the number and reached for the door handle. “I liked Hallie.” I cringed at his use of the past tense. “She was smart and savvy, and she gave a damn. There aren’t many people out there who would’ve put themselves at risk for the truth. Especially for a woman who was already dead and buried in a town thousands of miles away. But my family—my town—they deserve answers, and they deserve to have the cloud seeding stopped if it’s killing us.”
After he stepped out of the Pathfinder, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. He handed it to me through the open door.
“I’d appreciate it if you kept in touch. Your mom wouldn’t take my money. But I’ve been setting aside some anyway. It’s yours if you can pick up where she left off.”
He got out and drove away leaving behind him almost as many questions as answers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
