Page 40 of Nash Falls

“I know I wasn’t always around when you were growing up. That my job took me away a lot. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about you. That… that I didn’t care. Because I do. And I have since the day you were born.”

She stared at him for an intense moment, perhaps seeingsomething in him that she hadn’t before. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll… I’ll get back to you.”

Nash felt awful doing this to her, knowing full well that whatever decision he made with respect to the FBI’s proposal would probably mean his daughter’s dreams of building a business online would never happen.

I doubt she will think me father-of-the-year material after that bomb drops.

Nash sent a few emails and then loaded his briefcase with documents he would need for his meetings on Capitol Hill. He then went upstairs to pack. Judith poked her head into his closet. She already had her PJs on, and a purple sleep mask rested on her forehead.

“I see you smoothed things over with the princess,” she said.

“She’s doing some more homework.” He folded up a tie and put it into his roller bag. “By the way, my father left her three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in trust.”

Judith gaped. “What! Where did he get that sort of money?”

“Agent Orange settlement with the Army. The trust funds are paid out half at age twenty-five and the remainder at twenty-eight. But the trustee can give her money before that if it’s deemed suitable.”

“Who’s the trustee?”

“Me.”

Judith’s expression turned somber. “He left his Agent Orange settlement to Maggie?”

“Part of it. Some went to his best friend, Isaiah York, and the rest to Rosie Parker. My father wanted Parker to have a life interest in the house, and the money will help her keep it up. I’m working with the lawyer to get things in order.”

“Well, no one’s better at that than you.”

“I just told Maggie it was six figures. Don’t tell her the exact amount, okay?”

“Mum’s the word. Are you going to let her have some of it?”

“If she comes up with a decent mousetrap, probably.”

Judith hugged him. “You really are a good father, whether you think you are or not.”

She left him to his packing. After that he texted Agent Morris with his hotel information and a time to meet.

Judith was asleep by the time he climbed into bed. The private flight was wheels up at six fifty a.m. on the trip to the nation’s capital.

And sometime after that Nash would be meeting with the FBI to see how spectacularly he could blow up his life.Andthe lives of the two people he cared most about.

CHAPTER

19

HIS OFFICIAL WORK IN WASHINGTONdone, Nash had dinner and drinks at Café Milano in Georgetown with two of the firm’s lobbyists, cabbed back to his hotel, and sat staring blankly at a wall, waiting.

The politicians he’d met with had been uniform in their enthusiasm for truth, justice, and the American way, and they seemed amenable to Nash’s arguments that the regulations in question would cost jobs and stifle both competition and innovation. These were the standard excuses every time businesses wanted to run wild and the government sought to rein them in, however reasonably. It almost always worked because the business community had all the money and made sure theirs was the only message that resonated with people who would never share in that wealth. Indeed, Nash knew it was often the poorest folks who were injured the most by corporate malfeasance. But regardless, this was America and that was just how it was. Nash didn’t necessarily like it, but his job was to work within that reality.

However, he noted that the politicians’ staffs had hovered over them, waiting to pounce if anything said seemed like it might require their guy to actuallydoanything.

He stopped thinking about all that when he received a text from Agent Morris.

He left his hotel room, rode the elevator three floors up, and knocked on the door to Room 506. He was admitted into a large suite by a burly man with a comm line in his ear and a transponder snapped into his belt. The man patted Nash down for weapons,and Nash glimpsed the holstered pistol when the man turned to let him pass.

From another room Agent Morris appeared with a woman by his side. He said, “This is Special Agent Amy Braxton, Mr. Nash.”

“This way,” said Braxton tersely.