Collision

Ben read and clicked through a long march of analyst reports, news releases, and forum discussions on McKeen. Not a lot. McKeen started off as a construction company, divested into retail and office properties about ten years ago, mostly in the South. They started doing specialized construction for the government, restoring facilities in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

“More contractors,” Pilgrim said.

The expansion continued: McKeen landed a large reconstruction contract in Tikrit, but had to pull out due to the insurgency; bought out a few regional construction companies in Texas and New England; bought Blarney’s Steakhouse.

“Wow. McKeen owns Blarney’s,” Ben said.

“I’m going to go scout out the corporate headquarters behind the restaurant,” Pilgrim said.

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Just sit here and keep getting smart,” Pilgrim said. He got up and left.

Ben read further: McKeen was bought by a private equity group, MLS Limited, two years ago June 15. Two months after Emily died.

My God, how different would life be if she had not died? They might be planning to have a child. They might be sitting on the couch at home, watching this same basketball game. She would be full of the energy and love and life that had so defined her personality, and he wouldn’t be wearing a disguise in a bar, trying to find out who was trying to kill him.

He started tapping again, buying and reading and mining through analyst reports, now hunting for information on MLS Limited. It was in turn owned by another three-initial firm, headquartered in Bermuda. That company, in turn, was a subsidiary of another practically invisible company, one Ben couldn’t find a detail on. He’d hit a roadblock. Ben’s head began to spin. Someone was hiding behind an entire, meaningless maze of names.

He wasn’t going to be able to find the name behind McKeen, not with what was available on the Web. Frustration made him feel sick. He drank the martini, ate the olive. He ate half of the too-chewy quesadilla and nibbled at the clover-green artichoke dip.

He had another idea. There was a discussion board devoted to security contractors. He surfed to it, wanted to see if he could find anyone who had done contracts for the Office of Strategic Initiatives. He started paging through the “threads,” the discussions of topics. There was one called MissingContractor. He clicked on it.

It was about him. A few executives at his smaller clients had ventured to his defense, but a number of others were gutting him. Ben Forsberg was no longer considered a kidnapping victim: According to news reports, he had been identified by the housekeeper and the manager of the motel near the LBJ Freeway, he’d been identified by a sales associate at a department store. He scanned the words:

Two contractors died and this son of a bitch ran-he better hope the cops find him before one of us does… It had to be a crooked deal he was settingup… He probably screwed the dead guy on a contract and had him killed… The venom and the conjecture went on. Each poster used a fake name on the board, so he could not know who was savaging his reputation, but the momentum was on their side. His few defenders were shouted down by the righteous. He had an account on the board and wanted to post, You idiots don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about. It was a business that based much of its appeal on loyalty, but little loyalty was being shown to him. He went to the site’s search bar and entered Office of Strategic Initiatives.

No results. If someone had done a contract with Kidwell’s group, it was not being broadcast or discussed.

The basketball game went into its final minutes and still Pilgrim did not return. He watched the Mavericks win, then the screen switched to a West Coast game. He drank Pilgrim’s martini. His bullet wound began to throb, his head felt fuzzy. Bad idea. They were making scant progress and getting drunk was not an option.

Pilgrim walked into the bar and Ben could see his face was ashen. He sat across from Ben, noticed the two empty martini glasses at Ben’s elbow, gestured to the waitress for another round. He gritted his jaw in cold fury.

“What?” Ben said. “What’s wrong?”

Pilgrim said nothing until the waitress brought two more martinis. He watched her leave, then drank one down and chewed the olives. “I broke into the offices.”

“How?”

“Jesus, Ben, it doesn’t matter. I have my ways. I wanted to access the CEO’s computer, see if there was any data relating to McKeen. But much more interesting was this picture, hanging on the CEO’s wall.” Pilgrim pulled a newspaper clipping from his pocket. It looked like it had been cut from a picture frame, a newspaper article celebrating the original launch of Blarney’s. The caption under the picture listed the people at the ribbon-cutting: the owner, a couple of his investors, the mayor of Frisco.