"Porter! His name is Drew Porter! I've only worked for him a few times. He sent me." The man's accent was difficult to place through his yelling.
Sean's eyes narrowed. "Who does Porter work for?"
The man spat out an obscenity.
"Oh, that isn't nice," Tommy said. "Sean, go ahead, and stir-fry this knucklehead."
Sean pressed down on the back of the guy's head again. The heat from the wok started burning his eyes. He tried to turn his face sideways, but Sean gripped him tight.
"I don't know who he works for! He didn't tell me. I'm just the errand guy. I swear! He called me up and asked if I wanted to make some quick cash."
"Where is Porter?" Sean asked.
"I swear, I don't know. We used a drop point for the money. He called me!"
Sean looked at his friend. "Sounds like he's telling the truth, Schultzie."
"You sure?"
The sounds of police sirens echoed in the distance.
Sean cocked his head to the side and looked down at the man. "No, but I think he's suffered enough for one night. And we should probably leave before the cops get here."
Sean shoved the guy to the ground and hurried around the end of the counter. He scooped up the gunman's weapons on his way to the door.
They burst through the door and out onto the sidewalk. Sirens were rapidly bearing down on their location.
"We should hurry," Sean said.
A short sprint and ninety seconds later they pulled out of their parking spot and zoomed by the restaurant just as police cars whipped around the corner and blocked off the road in front of the historic building.
"That was close," Tommy said, looking out the back window. He turned and faced forward as Sean steered the car to the right and onto the next street.
"Pull up a map with directions to Clinton," Sean said as he accelerated through the next green light. "If you can, find some back roads. Let's try to avoid as much traffic as possible."
Tommy did what Sean said, quickly finding a map. He performed a quick search on his phone to get the exact address for the Surratt farmhouse and entered it into the map's address bar.
"Got it," Tommy said. "We can be there in forty minutes."
Sean tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "We'll be there in thirty."
Chapter 26
"Did your guy find anything?" Adriana held the phone tight against her ear.
She sat in one of the empty offices of Axis headquarters. When her phone started ringing, she'd excused herself from Emily's office and found a quieter place to talk.
"Yeah," Tara said. "Probably more than either of us expected."
"That didn't take long."
"Clyde has around a dozen computers running at all times. He's constantly downloading information. For what, I don't really know, but I know that when he looks for something and puts all his energy behind it, he doesn't take long."
"That's good for us."
"It sure is."
Adriana stared at the clock over the door, watching the second hand creep along its circular route. "What did he find?"
"As expected, reversing the digital footprint to track where the deposits came from took some work."
"I can't imagine."
"Yeah, but our guy is good. I don't understand all the technical mumbo jumbo he was spewing about it, but he got the job done. He said there were a couple of sizable deposits that looked fishy, so those were the ones he went after. They were connected to other dummy accounts. Clyde said that whoever laundered that money was working hard to cover their tracks. They had over thirty different accounts across the globe."
"How was he able to unravel those knots?" Adriana asked.
"Every crumb leads somewhere, Adriana," Tara said. "Leave enough of them lying around, someone is going to come by and pick them up. At the epicenter of this particular trail is a company called Transcorp."
"Transcorp?"
"Yeah. I hadn't heard of it either, so I looked them up online. They're a humongous experimental energy company."
"Experimental?"
"Correct. Apparently, their thing is finding new forms of energy to replace nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels."
Adriana was puzzled. "So, they're a green energy company? Usually, those types aren't taking part in a lot of shady activities."
"You'd think. But this company isn't as granola as they'd like to appear. They have a significant infrastructure that spans most of the United States. I did a little digging around. Turns out they supply most of California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico with power, and no one even realizes it. Some of the bigger energy companies have to buy their power from Transcorp because if they don't, their supply will run too low."
Adriana knew the problems some of those states had experienced with energy deficits over the years. There weren't enough hydroelectric stations in that region to meet the population's demand for power. There were over thirteen thousand wind turbines in California, but customers there still had to deal with power outages and brownouts.
"How many wind turbines and solar farms does Transcorp own?"
"Great question," Tara said. "None."
"None?"
"Yep. A big fat zero. They have pictures of wind turbines and other green energy generators on their website, but when I did some checking, I couldn't find any properties owned by Transcorp that are power producers. It's like they're getting their energy out of thin air."
"That is strange. How long have they been in business?" Adriana asked.
"A little over a decade. But here's the thing. In that short amount of time, they've gone from being a small energy startup to a ten-billion-dollar company."
'Ten billion? With a B?"
"Yep. You heard right. You can thank June for that little tidbit. She's been a big help with the research end of things, by the way. Pass that along to Tommy. Maybe his girlfriend can come to work for us."
Adriana smiled at the thought. "Maybe." She switched back to the subject at hand. "Who's in charge of this company?"
"Ah, now you're opening a different can of worms. Transcorp is a publicly traded company, so there's a board of directors and all that, but one man holds more shares than anyone: the company's founder."
Adriana waited patiently for the name.
"Ever heard of a guy named Kent Foster?" Alex asked.
Adriana jerked the phone away from her ear, surprised to hear his voice all of a sudden.
"Sorry, on speaker phone," Alex said, sensing he'd startled Adriana.
"Hello, Alex. No, should I have heard of him?"
"Probably. He's the president's secretary of state and a trusted adviser."
The information Alex relayed may as well have been strapped to a wrecking ball wrapped in dynamite.
Adriana was floored. "Wait a minute. Are you guys saying that the secretary of state was paying Kendricks?"
"That's not all we're saying," June jumped into the conversation. Now everyone was involved. "Not only did Kendricks receive some rather large deposits from Transcorp, after he died the money vanished."
"What do you mean, it vanished?"
"Someone paid a visit to those two banks and withdrew every penny. Due to the distance between the two banks, we're assuming two separate people made the withdrawals. They must have known that an online transfer would have left a big trail, so they made the withdrawals on site."
"Sounds risky to carry around that kind of cash. How much are we talking about?"
"Millions."
The wheels spun out of control in Adriana's mind. There was one horrifying theory that kept rearing its head. "If Transcorp paid Kendricks, that means they were trying to eliminate Dawkins. And if that's the case, that means…"
"Foster was behind the assassination attempt," Tara finished her thought.