“I don’t understand.” Something tumultuous quavered in her voice. “What’s happening?”
No one answered or acknowledged her in any way.
“Call my lawyer,” Paul barked as they ushered him away.
“Your lawyer? Who’s your lawyer?”
“Scott Truseau. His card is on my desk.”
Gillian stood stunned for a long moment watching them walk away. She got behind the wheel and saw Paul’s phone sitting in the center console. She picked it up and tried to access it but didn’t know his passcode. How could she not know his passcode?
All the way home she wondered what could be happening. Once in his office, she found the card for Scott Truseau and made the call. Then she waited for someone to call and explain what was going on so she could figure out what she needed to do.
No one ever called.
There must be some kind of mistake.Gillian told herself that all through the night and the next day as she waited for someone to tell her what was happening. Around noon the doorbell rang. She opened the door to two men in suits, Agents Morris and Jacobs from the FBI. In a blur of activity, they went through her husband’s office, bagging, tagging, and confiscating.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” she asked from the doorway.
The two men looked at each other, then the younger one, Morris, if she remembered right, walked toward her. “Do you have any coffee?”
“Sure.” She felt a moment of panic that she should have offered it instantly, then shook it off. They weren’t guests in her home. She hadn’t invited them. She poured them both a cup, handed him his, then took hers and sat on one of the barstools at the long quartz counter and waited for an explanation.
“Your husband has been arrested on charges of money laundering.”
“What?” Her eyes widened. “What is that?”
“That is where someone invests large quantities of illegal cash into high-volume cash businesses and then pulls the cash back out that it receives from its customers.”
She was confused. “My husband is an investment broker. He goes to work in a tall office building every day. No cash involved.”
“While that is true, your husband also owns several cash businesses.”
“He does?” That was a surprise. “I don’t know anything about any businesses.”
He stared at her for half a beat, his gaze steady. Did he not believe her? “I think I’d know if he owned anything like that.” Would she? Paul didn’t share much about his work, and since the loss of their baby, they didn’t talk about hardly anything.
“We’ve been monitoring his activities for two years and are very aware of what he does, and who he does it with. For instance, when you picked your husband up at the airport last night, he was returning from meeting with high-level officials from a Mexican Cartel.”
She laughed. “No, he wasn’t. That’s ridiculous. He was meeting with someone for a potential job opportunity in San Francisco.”
“So you’re planning another move?”
“Yes, the meeting went well.”
“What is it you do, Mrs. Barnes?” He was staring at her, his dark eyes probing, trying to determine if she was involved, lying, or just stupid. She wished she knew.
“I do online marketing. I’m a graphic designer.” That she mostly did for friends, her church, and her cooking blog. A hobby, Paul would call it, but she’d always hoped it would turn into more. She enjoyed it.
“You work from home?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s easier that way.”
“Because your husband moves so much?”
He was making it sound so obvious, but there was nothing obvious about it. Paul never wanted her priorities to interfere with his. “Yes.”
“As an investment broker?”