Page 37 of Nash Falls

“I’m fine,” said Rhett distractedly. “And I’ve got meetings this afternoon.”

“So what’s up?”

“You’re out tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, DC. Those regulations in the hopper we want to push back on. Our lobbying folks thought if the key legislators heard my take, it might change some minds.”

“Right, right, good,” said Rhett absently. “Look, I got a call right when I landed. You know Peter Lombard?”

“He’s the comptroller of Nano-BioLogics, a company we purchased two years ago.”

“What’s your take on him?”

“He’s a good guy. And Nano’s been an outstanding performer for us.” Nash then picked up on Rhett’s obvious distress. “But what about Lombard? Is he leaving the company? I should have heard if that was the case.”

“No, it’s a lot worse. They just found Lombard’s car abandoned in a mountainous area near his home.”

“What?” said Nash sharply.

“And there was a suicide note found inside the car.”

“Oh my God! Did they… did they find his body?”

“They’re searching, but from what I heard, it’s pretty treacherous terrain.”

“Why would he kill himself?”

“I was just wondering if you had some idea. You obviously led the acquisition.”

“I met him a half dozen times. And there’s been lots of emails and Zooms as he’s reported in with his team. He seemed a normal, stand-up kind of guy. He was a good resource during the deal and afterwards from an operational sense. I recall that he was happily married with grown kids. I never saw anything that would point to a suicide.”

Rhett nodded thoughtfully. “It just doesn’t add up at all.”

“Could you keep me in the loop if you hear anything?”

“Sure.”

Nash regarded him and said, “You really should look after yourself better.”

Rhett glanced up at him with a weary expression. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

After he left, Nash sat at his desk and recalled two other tragic deaths connected to Sybaritic: Alexandra Singer and Danielle Cho.

Singer had been an accountant at Wheelhouse, Inc., a company that had been purchased by Sybaritic four years before. Wheelhouse was a niche business that helped other businesses get their operations going full bore in as short a period of time as possible. While on vacation with her boyfriend nearly two years ago, she had fallen off a cliff at the Grand Canyon and died.

Danielle Cho had been a midlevel contracts person at PLA Corp., a company that looked for undervalued industrial assets in the Pacific Rim region. Cho had been shot and killed in a home invasion in San Francisco that was still unsolved a year later.

And now Peter Lombard, the comptroller at Nano-BioLogics, had abandoned his car and left a suicide note.

Each case was starkly different: supposed accident, perhaps a burglary gone wrong, and now an alleged suicide. But three peopleconnected to three different acquisitions by Sybaritic were now dead in just under two years.

A possibility hit him like a freight train.

The FBI had recruited a mole connected to Sybaritic three times before, but they’ve been discovered and killed.

And now I’m number four.

CHAPTER