“It’s looking more and more like those Sovereign contracts might be why Franklin Jackson died. If Jax keeps digging into those contracts, he’s likely to stir the hornets again, if he hasn’t already.” Evie worriedly watched Ariel slip back inside. She was heir to the ranch and the mining company and the patent to those voting machines, just as Jax was.
“Teddy Swenson was too young to have blown up a mine,” Roark reminded her.
“But Gus wasn’t. Like father, like son? It’s hard to imagine a US senator killing anyone, but they’re both here in the East now, not back in California where they belong. If they’re dangerous...”
Roark pocketed his keys, signaled Reuben, and left the cellar.
Rather than follow, the professor took over Roark’s gaming chair and began typing into the computer. The printer began spitting out papers.
By the time Jax got off the phone, Evie was studying the photos and documents emerging from the printer. Jax took the stack. Reuben handed him a roll of duct tape while continuing to type one-handed.
These men didn’tneedto talk. They’d worked together so tightly that they communicated by signals she couldn’t follow.
She had to stand on tip-toes to see what Jax taped to the wall. First was a real estate ad from nearly forty years ago of the now-elderly Mrs. Swenson as she must have looked when she was in her forties—a large, stylish woman concealing her age with the best cosmetic surgery Hollywood could buy. Included in the ad was her eldest son, Augustus, now a senator but still a Realtor at the time. Tall, blond, good-looking in a rough, lumberjack way, he’d probably sell on his looks alone. His son Teddy may not have been born at this point.
Off to one side, Jax taped the old photo they’d found of Aaron Ives and Franklin Jackson from that same period, when they were just starting. He added another of the Sovereign Machine company sign and town council cutting a ribbon—his history taped to a cellar wall.
Next to those, Jax posted a wad of paper. Evie glanced at the top page—the contract between the Franklin-Ives Microchip Company and Sovereign, the one Jax had said reserved the right for Franklin-Ives to end the agreement for just cause—like fixing voting machines. That contract might have ended Franklin’s life and Aaron’s business, while Sovereign kept on chugging for a few more years. Someone—Aaron disguised as Franklin?—had reported the fraud and the feds had run with it. It had taken years to put the nails in Sovereign’s coffin, but Aaron Ives had his revenge before he died.
Next level down apparently represented a slightly later period. Jax taped a newspaper article about Gus Swenson winning a local election, then one about the mine explosion and an obituary for Aaron Ives. Next to it, he taped a small squib from a local newspaper announcing Pendleton’s purchase of the Franklin law office and another local article about Sovereign buying out the Franklin-Ives Microchip Company—from Ives posing as Jackson?
After that came what appeared to be a front-page article about Sovereign increasing production for a huge sale to LA county of the newfangled electronic machines, crowing about hiring more workers. Nice spin job. Most voters would be wary of the machines, but supporting local economy... She hoped to make that work for Ward.
Jax started a third level with a big headline about Augustus Swenson winning the election for state senate—several years after Sovereign had been selling the voting machines all over the state.
And he was only halfway through the stack that Reuben was printing.
This could go on all night. Evie could see where it was heading: the closing of Sovereign twenty years ago after being indicted for vote fraud, the creation of DVM from the ashes, ultimately followed by the death of Jax’s parents. Swenson’s election to the US Senate would fall right in after that.
The connections were coming together.
The evidence was not. Five people died tragically over a period of thirty years without a single shred of evidence to show why or how or who had done it.
Twenty-two
After spendinghalf the night creating a wall of suspects and circumstantial evidence, Jax spent the better part of Sunday making phone calls from his downtown office—with his newly installed locks in place. Burning rage and the need for justice seared his soul. He avoided Loretta for fear she’d say his innards looked like a twisted fiery bubble.
He was avoiding Evie, too. She’d kept him grounded last night when he thought he might explode like the Hindenburg. He’d wanted nothing more than to take comfort in her arms, but he didn’t have the luxury of seeking comfort while his father’s killer still ran amuck.
Now that he was fully convinced voting machine fraud was the motivation, his list of suspects had become clearer, even if ridiculously improbable, if not impossible.
His cell rang. He checked the caller and turned it off. This was his problem. Evie couldn’t solve it. She needed to look after Loretta.
He pulled out a legal pad and began drawing a schematic.
A knock on his door sometime later shattered his concentration. He checked the camera R&R had installed—Evie. He’d give her credit for persistence, but he wasn’t involving her in what might come down to a firefight.
Could he prove Senator Swenson had been in Savannah the night Jax’s parents lost their lives? That would give Gus the opportunity for murdering both partners, a continent and a decade apart.
He circled the senator’s name and began drawing connections. He was too lost in thought to hear the lock click—but it must have. Fresh air and the scent of ylang-ylang yanked his head up.
Wearing an almost somber turquoise short set, probably from the fifties, Evie tucked a set of keys in her back pocket as she swung into his private office. Jax almost swallowed his tongue.
“Don’t do that to me,” he said crossly, tearing his gaze from shapely legs and Angelina Jolie curves. “You’ve shattered my concentration.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to take a frying pan to your thick head.” She curled up in the Morris chair. “Roark’s babysitting Ariel. Reuben is digging an internet hole to China. And you’re figuring out how to set yourself up as a target. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She wasn’t. He just hadn’t worked out how to do it yet. “I can’t set myself up as target with suspects on two coasts.”