“Wait, what did you say?”
Quinn’s breath hitched in a teary hiccup. “I… I told Marissa not to m-marry Trey. That she should marry for love. So she and Levi left for Vegas on her friend’s private plane. They already took off.”
I felt my team’s stares from behind me, and my shock was probably much the same as theirs, even though I should have seen it coming. “You told your client to marry someone else? The day before her wedding?”
He held up his hands. “I know. I know. But I couldn’t let her marry that guy. Not when she and Levi are meant to be together. It wasn’t right to let them make such a big mistake.”
“So the wedding is off?” Riggs asked, going into work mode. “If so, we need to move now. Otherwise, we’ll lose access to the house. Quinn, do you know if Tommy and Carlotta have arrived in town yet? Who’s at the farmhouse right now?”
Quinn didn’t take his eyes off me. “They’re already there, but they don’t know the wedding is off yet. No one does except Trey.” He reached for my hand. “Champ, I have an idea about how to get the Horn.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he was sure as shit not getting more involved in the Horn op, but then I remembered what Riggs had said the night after the SnoBall.
You and Quinn are stronger as a team, ever think of that?
“Tell me your idea,” I said, pulling him out of the cold and into the warmth of the huge house.
Once we were settled around the table with laptops and Elvo’s favorite brainstorming whiteboard propped up on a deep windowsill, Quinn started laying it out.
“Listen, I know I’ve suggested this before and you’ve shut it down, but Tommy Drakes loves his daughter. Adores her. Dotes on her. You should have heard him the night of the SnoBall. He paraded her around to everyone and introduced her as his brilliant business partner, his strategic marketing expert, the heart of their family. He talked about how smart and funny she was, and he made sure Levi was always close enough to keep an eye on her for protection.”
“Levi was doing more than protecting her,” Elvo muttered as he wrote Tommy proud of Marissa on the whiteboard in red ink.
Quinn continued. “My point is, Tommy would do anything to protect her… including giving up something that is currently putting her in danger with a notorious drug cartel. I am positive this is so. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“You’re suggesting that we ask Tommy directly,” I said. “But baby, we’ve talked about this option. What happens if we’re wrong? He could move the Horn to another location or sell that information back to the cartel himself.”
“Besides,” Riggs added, “Marissa’s not in danger anymore if she’s back in Nashville and the Horn remains here at the farm, or if Tommy moves it to someplace completely separate from where his daughter is…”
Quinn shook his head. “She would still be in danger because the cartel and the DEA won’t know he moved it. The way this works is not only by asking him to help us, but by convincing him that giving the Horn to us will get both the cartel and DEA off his back completely.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“We convince Tommy to give the Horn to the DEA. To Vince. Which would neutralize the cartel and the threat of an investigation.”
I stared at him. “Quinn. You know we can’t. That would leave our client completely exposed and connected to this. It would be a PR disaster if the information stored on that Horn is even half as incriminating as we think it is.”
Carter set a tray of sandwiches in the center of the table. “You could always take the information off the Horn before you give it to Vince.”
Hux shook his head. “It’s tricky to make info like that disappear completely unless we reset the Horn, which would be really obvious.”
Quinn’s eyes flared wide and excited. “Okay, what if we gave Vince a decoy Horn? Can HOG Corporate give us one that looks exactly like the missing one? Can we fool them?”
Hux laughed. “A sparkly peach first-gen? Are you kidding? No. Only three were created before the mold was broken, and no one’s ever created a successful forgery. One belongs to a sultan in the Middle East, who shows it off at his lavish parties. The second was sold to an entity in South America we now know to be Gustavo Santiago, head of the Cartel de la Luna, and was subsequently stolen and sold at a flea market in Tennessee to Tommy Drakes, the Speedo guy.” Hux’s voice sounded pained at the indignity that this Horn had endured.
“And the third Horn?” Quinn asked.