Page 70 of Hard Count
The other version, the version Caleb was now staring at on two monitors at three in the morning, was that Jayson had been there for the kind of young man he wanted to acquire.
Caleb reached for his phone and the call connected on the second ring.
“I found the beneficiaries.”
A silence.
“All four?” she said.
“All four.”
“Then you understand.”
“I understand the money.”
“The money is how they stay,” she said, her hands still trembling.
Caleb went quiet.
“Mr. Ward,” she said. “I told you I would tell you where the money went. I didn’t tell you what’s in the rooms. I’m not going to tell you what’s in the rooms. But the money and fear of…well…there are layers to why they stay in the rooms. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know what you’re looking at.”
“I know what it looks like.”
“It looks like what it is.”
A long pause.
“How many others,” Caleb said, “outside the four?”
“I don’t know all the names. I know there are more than four.”
“Are any of them…”
“Mr. Ward. I am going to get off the phone. You know how to check into what you are asking.”
“One more question.”
“One.”
“The quarterback,” Caleb said. “Ashton. Does he know what he is?”
A very long pause. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think he has been careful not to know or does not want to know.”
The line went dead.
The screen was still open to the beneficiary list. The name on the third row hadn’t moved. He pulled a legal pad from the drawer. He wrote $90,000,000 at the top.
He looked at the wall for a long time. Then he started a new list, this one of every public appearance Piper Ashton had made at a Days Holdings property, a Days Holdings charity, or a Days Holdings private event, working backward from last month.
By five a.m., he had counted hundreds.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Denver
Piper woke before his alarm. The elevation in Denver always messed with his sleep.
