“You were right. This is a beautiful place for a sunset.”
Iris jumped up and spun around to face the very woman who hadn’t left her mind for one second of the last two weeks. “Bec!”
“Hi,” she said, walking into her outstretched arms. “I’ve missed you, Iris.” Iris wanted to speak, but the torrent of tears kept her words at bay. Knowing she needed to sit, Bec helped her to the bench and lowered her down before she knelt before her. “You’re okay, sweetheart,” she promised, producing a tissue from her coat pocket and wiping the tears until Iris could speak.
“You’re here. How?”
“They released me this morning. I had a message to deliver to you, so I contacted Mina, who sent Zac to pick me up in Fargo.”
“A message?”
“A very important one,” she promised, lifting her glasses off her face to dry her eyes. Bec cleaned the lenses before she slipped them back on her face.
“You’re free? Like, for good?”
“Yes,” Bec promised, kissing her lips despite the salty tears covering them. “It took a while, but eventually, they cleared me.”
“You don’t know how hard I tried to find evidence that you didn’t know what Walter was doing,” Iris said, taking Bec’s hands.
“Maybe I do since I know you, Iris. Also, the FBI agents told me that if it weren’t for the information you found and turned over to them, innocent people would have died. You led them to the terrorists who bought the first virus from Walter. From there, Homeland Security found the boss of the four guys who kidnapped me and took him into custody.”
“But there was a third,” Iris said, leaning forward and squeezing Bec’s hands. “There were three contracts.”
Bec nodded as she stood and sat down beside her. “That’s correct. Mr. A was none other than Allen McCarthy.”
Iris gasped. “The board president?”
“The one and only,” Bec agreed.
“No wonder he was so anxious to get to the research center once he returned to the States and learned about what was happening. I never met him since Cal didn’t want us in the building when he arrived.”
“That was to protect Secure Inc., but in hindsight, it probably saved all your lives. They caught up with Allen this morning trying to make a run for it but were able to apprehend him on a plane headed to a country without extradition treaties with us.”
“I honestly didn’t see that coming. It should have been the first thing I thought of. There was no way that Walter didn’t have someone on the board helping him slip all of this past the rest of the members.”
Bec shrugged. “I didn’t think of it, either, until after I had time to sit in jail for a few days,” she admitted. “Suddenly, it made sense that there was no way for Walter to convince every person on that board to stay hands-off unless someone else was working behind the scenes on his behalf. To be clear, Allen wasn’t buying viruses from Walter. The contract was for services rendered, which included manipulating the rest of the board and finding the clients who wanted to buy the viruses.”
“Which is just as bad as buying them, in my opinion,” Iris whispered, wiping her face again. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
Bec kissed her again as though she somehow understood it would help her believe this wasn’t a dream. She buried her hands in her hair and let the soft locks run through her fingers. Her whimpers of happiness were only overpowered by Bec’s moans of happiness. Toosoon, they had to come up for air but couldn’t find the strength to untangle themselves from each other.
“I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart,” Bec said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I wanted to call you, but they refused to let me talk to anyone but my lawyer.”
“I know,” she said, smiling now that reality was setting in. “We talked to your lawyer, and he promised that you were okay and hanging in there. That kept me going as I searched for the answers we needed to free you. I still can’t figure out who Zafar was and why they sent the ransomware to the center computers?”
Bec laughed as though that was the funniest question anyone had ever asked. “It turns out that Zafar’s real name was Zafar Bolat, and he was Walter’s illegitimate son. When he worked in Turkey, Walter had a fling with Zafar’s mother, who never told him she was pregnant. Zafar tracked Walter down using one of those familial DNA websites. It wasn’t long before Walter pulled his son into the family business of extorting money.”
“Was the ransomware their escape route, or were they just greedy?”
“No way to know that for sure. My opinion is it was both. It made Walter’s kidnapping appear legitimate to the board, and they’d be less likely to ask too many questions while under stress. The FBI found communication between Walter and Allen indicating they knew things were getting hot and it was time to ‘get out.’ That was according to the message Allen sent, which was uncovered on his phone. He was also leaving the country and would get a cut, so it behooved him to convince the board and their insurance company to pay the ransom demand. As soon as the FBI realized Allen had been in the Emirates right before he’d returned at the urgent request of Secure Watch, they started looking more closely at him as a player.”
“That makes sense, but who killed Walter and Zafar? They were dead when we got there, but Cal said it hadn’t been for long.”
“That’s a mystery I thought would never get solved until Cal told the FBI about the markings he saw on the C-4. They traced it to none other than Allen McCarthy.”
“Wait. It was like a double double-cross?” Iris asked, her mouth falling open.
“It appears so, though Allen isn’t talking, of course. His original flight to North Dakota was delayed, or should I say the flight he told Mina he’d be on. However, the FBI knows he flew in on a private jet, drove to Walter’s cabin, and then headed to Grand Forks to make it look like he landed there from his flight. They can’t prove he killed Walter and Zafar, but they don’t need to. He’s going to prison for a very long time, with or without the murder charges.”
