Silence envelops the room, and we all sit in it, letting our minds wander. After a full minute passes by, Monique clasps her fingers and lifts her arms, resting them on top of her head.
“So, they worked together to kill Sanders to protect some big secret, but just a few months later, they’re so far out of alignment Cordelia has Sutton killed to bring Aubrey back in line?”
Her question brings me back to the original point I was trying to make when I brought up serial killer teams. Duos are already unstable, but the dynamics that deteriorate the quickest are triads. When a third person is added into an already chaotic mix, what was once a relationship based on symbiosis and shared, but imbalanced, power becomes a dysfunctional hierarchy where alliances between two of the members leaves the other floundering to find their place in the organization.
I’ve seen Cordelia bide her time, waiting Aubrey out until he eventually comes around. She did it a few months ago when they were at odds about the AI-enhanced video cameras in schools. Cal witnessed their disagreement, but I was the one in his office when he finally folded. If she knew giving him some time to see things her way was a successful approach, why would Cordelia go to such extreme lengths where the military base is concerned?
The simple answer is, she wouldn’t.
“I don’t think Cordelia had Sutton killed.”
Everyone looks at me like I’ve lost it, but by the time I finish explaining that impatience and strong arming isn’t Cordelia’s M.O., we’re all in agreement.
“There’s someone else involved,” Selene says, sinking back into the spot she abandoned on the couch. Monique takes a seat too, laying her head in Selene’s lap. They both look exhausted, and I can’t say that I feel any different. It’s taken a lot of mental space to connect these dots, and we’re still not certain of anything. It’s all just conjecture, nothing concrete enough to take Aubrey down but more than enough to keep the target on our backs.
Cal and I remain standing. He’s at the board, taking a closer look at the timeline Selene and Monique put together, while I look at things from afar. Despite the stakes being high and the problem hitting so close to home, there’s the familiar thrum of excited energy running between us. It’s been present in every investigation we’ve ever run together, guiding us through obstacle after obstacle until we found the answers we needed.
This investigation will be no different.
I step to the board, shoulder brushing his as I begin reading off the dates.
“February 3rd, an article is published detailing Aubrey’s January 29th meeting at the Embassy of the State of Qatar. He speaks with Ambassador Moustafa, and it’s rumored that Emir Karim attends via video. Jordan confirms the military base was the topic of discussion in a press conference later that day.”
Racking my brain for any further details and coming up empty, I move on to the next date which is all the way in May.
“May 26th, morning news reports that Aubrey has officially dropped out of talks with Qatar about the military base, returning to his original stance about foreign forces on U.S soil.”
Cal picks up a marker, drawing a small line between the February and May dates. “May 12th, Aubrey notifies his Cabinet of the decision. Cordelia urges him to reconsider.”
“Somewhere around that time, maybe a few days later, Langham arrives in Kentucky and begins following Sutton,”Selene calls from the couch. “She takes a photo of him on the street on the 20th.”
He adds that date too, and then another, explaining his reasoning as he does. “May 23rd, Cordelia shows up at Dahlia’s with a group of unidentified men. Aubrey is clearly afraid of them.”
“Which makes sense if they were there to shake him down. A final warning to fall in line before they had Langham pull the proverbial trigger on Sutton.”
“Does that mean he was there?” Cal asks me, tilting his head to the side. “I mean he had to have been right? Cordelia wouldn’t have needed muscle to threaten Aubrey. She could have done that on her own.”
“It’s possible. If he was there, his presence wasn’t enough to sway Aubrey.”
Cal shakes his head. “Dumb motherfucker. He gets in bed with these people and then thinks he can just say no whenever he wants? What did he think was going to happen?”
Aubrey Taylor is not the kind of man I’ll ever relate to. He is selfish and needlessly cruel. He takes pleasure in inflicting pain and will do anything for power. I don’t know what it’s like to be any of those things, to do any of those things, so I can’t even begin to make sense of his mindset. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to save Selene and Cal, nothing I wouldn’t give to see them happy and healthy.
I would rip a hole in the sky, dig a tunnel to hell with my bare hands,end my own fucking life, before I let someone lay a finger on either of their heads, so it makes no sense to me that he would allow Sutton to be a pawn in a power struggle he went on to lose.
“I don’t know,” I say finally. “But it looks like he learned his lesson because a month after Sutton’s death, he’s back at the table with Qatar and the military base is all but guaranteed to happen.”
Cal folds his arms, stepping back to observe the altered timeline. “The only question now is who stands to gain the most from that? If we figure that out, then we’ve got our third man.”
A week passeswith us exploring and eliminating possibilities in our hunt for the point at the top of the power triangle Cordelia and Aubrey are a part of. We turn our focus to the forces outside of the U.S. first, knowing that owning an American President would be worth a lot to many international players. That line of thought gets pushed aside quickly when we factor in the military base angle because we can’t figure out what another country would stand to gain from it.
Qatari leaders, of course, remain on the list simply because of the circumstances, but there’s no real motive there since we’re already their allies and it’ll be their country paying for the building of the base, not ours. When Cal makes that point, the conversation changes, shifting from international considerations to domestic speculation that centers around the one percent because the richest people are always willing to do the foulest things to get richer.
From there, we turn our attention to the list of billionaires Selene compiled when the most important question to us was who could afford to buy not one, but two, spots within the Secret Service and have those fraudulent agents put in charge of the President’s detail. That’s where we find him. The third man. The mastermind. Cordelia’s benefactor and Aubrey’s boogey man.
Phineas Gambit.
Cal stares at his picture displayed on Selene’s computer screen and sighs incredulously.
