“Okay.” Jackson dropped the finger and the bluster. He straightened his tie, struggling to conceal a considerable sense of irritation and relief. “Why are you here?”

“This is your last chance at this deal. As I said, others are offering twenty percent. I’ll be a billionaire inside three years, and I can live with that.” Jack paused before he added, “It won’t hurt to speed it up, though. Considering the circumstances, I thought you might see your way to up the ante another five percent.” Jack pointed at the picture and offered them a cool smile. “Call it the cost of getting caught. I think it’s a fair price, don’t you?”

“Are you threatening us?” Jackson asked, pinching his eyes together.

“Threatening is such an ugly world. Just say I’m adding a little more to the pot than I offered the others.”

“If you don’t mind, we have to talk,” Walters quickly intervened, avoiding the eyes of his three directors.

“Good idea.” Jack stood and adjusted his coat. “Five minutes, then I’m gone.” He picked up his horrible little suitcase filled with terrible things and looked perfectly ready to bolt. “I won’t be back after this, gentlemen. Remember, five minutes.”

The moment the door closed, Jackson snapped at Bellweather and Walters, “I can’t believe you were stupid enough to walk into such a simple trap.”

“It worked before,” Walters insisted weakly, knowing full well how dumb that sounded.

“Yeah, and it worked great this time, too-for him, you fool.”

“Think he was expecting this?” Haggar asked, pointing at the picture. Good question, and everyone stopped to consider it. Was it possible? Was Jack Wiley really that clever? Or were they just that clumsy and dumb?

“No, no way,” Bellweather eventually responded with his typical sense of certainty. “He’s zealous about security. A lot of people are. He has some nice things in his house and added a few extra layers of protection. He got lucky, and our boys made some sloppy mistakes. Why, what do you think?”

“Maybe you’re right. Either way, you underestimated him.”

Walters preferred not to dwell on that inarguable sentence and switched instead to the prominent question that was occupying all their minds. Facing Jackson, he asked, “Could he make a convincing legal case out of this?”

“No, not a chance. Not on the evidence he just described. He could embarrass us, not convict us.”

“Are you sure?”

As only a lawyer can do, Jackson began speaking out the other side of his mouth. “One, we have no idea how much more evidence he might’ve kept from us. I think we all agree he’s very smart.” A quick glance around the table-yes, Jack was definitely smart. Maybe too smart.

“Two, he could subpoena our records and TFAC’s. Look for pay transactions, any hint of a relationship. If it’s there and he finds it, we’ve got big problems.” He examined Walters’s face and got the answer to that question-it was definitely there.

“Three,” he continued, “for sure, he has the burglars on film. In court, in front of a jury, that would be very damaging. Imagine nearly three hours of videotapes, probably showing the burglars searching every nook and cranny in his home. Not stealing. Just searching, then planting the drugs. It would be very difficult to explain.”

Jackson fell quiet and allowed them all to consider how ugly this could become. It was a real mess. They were all creatures of Washington; dodging scandals was the major industry and, to a greater or lesser degree, they all had experience with it. A federal investigation was a possibility-actually, for a firm loaded with so many power hitters, more in the realm of a likelihood. The press would pile on and have a ball, delighted to throw fuel on the barbecue.

Oh yes, the Fibbies would have a field day, crawling around the headquarters, grilling possible witnesses, pitting CG against TFAC, sweating the three burglars and promising a sweet deal to the first one who ratted out everybody in sight.

What were the odds the burglars would take the fall for a bunch of rich old men?

Plus there were three burglars: one was all it took to bring down the house; one blabbermouth and they were all cooked. This could get very, very ugly.

Mitch Walters, particularly, could feel a trickle of sweat running down his back. Wiley had left that horrible photo lying in the middle of the table, a terrifying reminder. Walters tried his best to ignore it, but couldn’t wrench his eyes off it. It was him in that damned photo, him grinning and looking smug and self-important as he left the TFAC premises.

Any jury would stare at that photo and make the inevitable jump to the same conclusion: guilty as hell.

From the corner of his eye he caught Jackson’s mean, skinny little eyes staring at him. It was so obvious what the coldhearted legal thug was thinking. If worst came to worst, in order to protect CG and themselves, they would throw Walters to the sharks. The CEO was wild, on his own and out of control, a rogue agent who had done something spectacularly stupid and embarrassing.

“I think we go twenty-five percent,” Walters blurted out, before anybody else could say anything, suddenly eager for a deal, any deal. Hell, give Wiley fifty percent if that’s what it took to shut his yap. When nobody made a reply, he pushed on. “That still leaves us the lion’s share of what promises to be an incredibly lucrative deal. If he walks out now, we get nothing. Nada.” When nobody bit at that reasoning, he added, now sounding desperate, “He already has two offers for twenty percent.”

“No, he says he does,” Jackson noted, his voice dripping with skepticism, enjoying the sight of Walters’s misery.

Bellweather stood and said, “Mitch is right.” Thinking of the call TFAC had intercepted of Jack talking with Tom from the mysterious company, he added, “Wiley has at least two twenty percent offers. We know this for a fact.”

“How do you know this?” Jackson snapped.

“Damn it, Phil, don’t ask. We just do.”

“You need to get this under control,” Jackson warned, now eyeing both Bellweather and Walters with fresh malice. “You’re getting sloppy.”

Walters quickly insisted, “It wasn’t us, okay? The TFAC guys did this on their own initiative. I asked them to dig a little into Wiley’s background. That’s all. A little research, a little background, all perfectly legal. The dirty stuff was their idea.”

He was lying and it couldn’t have been more obvious. “Try saying that in court and see where it gets you,” Jackson warned, stabbing a finger at the photo.

“Relax. It’s not going to court,” Bellweather announced quite firmly as he bent across the table and seized the moment. “One minute left. Is it a deal or no?”

Having most recently left public service, Haggar, the newest, least secure, and poorest of the partners, said, “I say yes.”

Without hesitation, Walters loudly seconded him.

Jackson straightened his tie again, cleared his throat, then said, “Bring him back in.”