Love Irresistibly (FBI/U.S. Attorney) Read online

  Hey, dickheads, have you seen the one where the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI plant a bug in a restaurant and catch a state senator accepting a large bribe from a hospital CEO? It’s a good one. So let’s say we cut through the chitchat and get down to it.

  Seventy minutes into the conversation, after Cade had begun to wonder if this whole sting operation was going to be a bust, Torino and Sanderson ordered dessert and two glasses of port and finally turned to the subject of the hospital’s possible closing.

  Senator Sanderson sounded wholly at ease as he began.

  “I poked around after we talked, and it seems like a few of my colleagues feel as though Parkpoint should be the hospital to go.”

  Torino, not surprisingly, sounded worried. “Do you think you could convince them otherwise?”

  “I’m a pretty convincing guy. But you understand how these things work, Charles. If I ask some of the other senators for a favor, then I owe all of them a favor in return. And for something like this. . . well, that’s a lot of favors. I need to be sure this is a cause that’s worthy of my support.”

  “I assure you, Senator. This would be a very worthy cause.”

  “How worthy?”

  Cade exchanged a silent look with Vaughn, who sat across from him in the back of the van. Come on, Senator, Cade thought as the adrenaline began pumping. Don’t be coy.

  There was a pause, and then a soft thud, possibly the senator setting down his port glass. “Two hundred thousand.”

  The words were met with a long silence before Torino spoke again.

  “Two hundred thousand, and you can guarantee that Parkpoint stays open?”

  “I know you’ve got the money, Charles. I’ve seen photos of that four-million-dollar house of yours in Lincoln Park. So just think of this as a onetime state tax to keep you in that cushy CEO job of yours.”

  A short pause, and then Torino answered. “All right. Let’s do it.”

  There was a rustle of clothing—as the video would later show, when the two men shook hands. A picture was indeed worth a thousand words.

  The senator sounded pleased with himself. “You just bought yourself a hospital.”

  Hearing those magic words, Cade nodded at Vaughn. “We got it.”

  * * *

  A SHORT WHILE later, Cade stepped into the empty offices of Sterling Restaurants. The space was quiet, and only one panel of lights was on in the reception area, likely to conserve energy since there was only one Sterling employee working right then.

  Cade cut through the hallway that would lead him to Brooke’s office. He’d texted her earlier from the van, asking if they could meet.

  They had some unfinished business to attend to.

  When he got to her doorway, he found her sitting at her desk, reviewing documents. Nine thirty on a Sunday evening and still going, he thought. This woman bested him in terms of hours spent on the job, and that said a lot.

  The desk lamp gave her just enough light to work, casting the rest of her office in soft, dim shadows. She’d changed her hair since this morning; now it tumbled long and loose over her shoulders in dark golden waves. Cade knocked softly on the door with the back of his knuckles.

  “I hear you have a soft spot,” he said when she peered up from her papers.

  It took her a second, then she blushed. “I assume you’re referring to the champagne I sent over to the couple celebrating their anniversary.” She stood up from her desk and packed the documents she’d been reviewing into her briefcase. “Just business. You needed me to get Torino and Senator Sanderson to their table without some big scene. I was simply upholding my end of the agreement.”

  Cade took a few steps into her office, not buying the “just business” routine. Huxley had reported in after he and Agent Simms left the restaurant, and explained how Brooke had handled the situation while simultaneously making the day for some couple celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary. Which, naturally, had brought about another round of effusive praises from Huxley and Vaughn—Oh, that was so sweet of her and Oh, Brooke’s been so great to work with, and, frankly . . . Cade was beginning to think there wasn’t much he could say to disagree with that. “My office would be happy to reimburse you for the champagne.”

  She waved this off. “It’s fine.” She rested her hip against the edge of her desk. “So? Did you get your man, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Now, Ms. Parker. You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “I suppose I’ll find out when I hear about Senator Sanderson being arrested in the news.”

  Cade leaned against the bookshelves across from her desk. “Hmm,” he said noncommittally.

  She threw him a look. “After everything I’ve done, you’re really not going to give me anything else?”

  Funny, how Cade was going to miss frustrating her like this. He’d rather enjoyed going a few rounds with Brooke these past couple of days. “Nope. But I am going to take something from you.”

  Her eyes flashed—with curiosity, perhaps. “That would be . . . ?”

  “The video of Sanderson and Torino.”

  She blinked. “Right. I’d forgotten about that.”

  “I’ve arranged for an FBI forensic specialist to come by your office tomorrow,” Cade said. “He’ll need access to the computer where the security footage from Sogna is stored. He’ll make a copy of the video, and then we will be officially out of your hair.”

  With that said, he held out his hand in farewell. And gratitude. All teasing aside, she’d been a tremendous help to him this weekend. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As her hand slid softly against his, their eyes met and held.

  “About that favor I allegedly owe you . . .” Cade paused deliberately, his gaze still locked with hers. “Call me sometime. We’ll talk.”

  Brooke’s lips parted in surprise—likely trying to discern whether there was any hidden meaning in his words—before she answered. “I’ll do that. To talk about the favor you do owe me. Not alleged.”

  Cade leaned in, the two of them standing close in the intimate setting of her dimly lit office. Behind them, the windows showcased a view of a vibrant city at night. His voice was suddenly husky.

  “I look forward to it, Ms. Parker.”

  Eight

  BROOKE HAD JUST finished reviewing the most recent bill they’d received from Gray & Dallas, the law firm they used to handle their employment and labor matters, when her secretary buzzed her.

  “Keith is here to see you.”

  “Thanks, Lindsey. Send him in.”

  She set the bill on her desk, the businesswoman in her wincing at the amount. Unfortunately, it was a necessary expense, at least with the current setup of Sterling’s in-house legal department—a “department” that consisted of herself, one paralegal, and her assistant. Because they were all so swamped, Brooke and Ian had made the decision that most employment and litigation matters would be farmed out to outside counsel.

  Her door opened and Keith, Sterling’s vice president of security, walked into her office carrying a file. He’d called her earlier this morning, saying that he wanted to discuss a confidential matter. Typically, that meant somebody at one of the restaurants was up to no good.

  Hopefully not another employee stealing credit cards, Brooke mused. Or any sort of headache-inducing “oops moment,” like the time one of the restaurant managers called to ask if he could fire a line cook after discovering that the man was a convicted murderer.

  “Jeez. How’d you learn that?” Brooke had asked.

  “He made a joke to one of the waiters about honing his cooking skills in prison. The waiter asked what he’d been serving time for, and he said, ‘Murder.’”

  “I bet that put an end to the conversation real fast. And yes, you can fire him,” Brooke had said. “Obviously, he lied on his employment application.” All of Sterling’s employees, regardless of job position, were required to answer whether they’d ever been convicted of a cri
me involving “violence, deceit, or theft.” Pretty safe to say that murder qualified.

  Ten minutes later, the manager had called her back.

  “Um . . . what if he didn’t exactly lie? I just double-checked his application, and as it turns out, he did check the box for having been convicted of a crime.”

  Brooke had paused at that. “And then the next question, where we ask what crime he’d been convicted for, what did he write?”

  “Uh . . . ‘second-degree murder.’”

  “I see. Just a crazy suggestion here, Cory, but you might want to start reading these applications a little more closely before making employment offers.”

  “Please don’t fire me.”

  Brooke had thunked her head against the desk, silently going all Jerry Maguire—Help me, help you—on the manager.

  But she’d handled it, just like she would handle whatever it was that brought Keith from security into her office today.

  “You sounded serious on the phone,” she said as he took a seat in one of the empty chairs in front of her desk. “Should I be nervous?”

  “No. But I do think you’re going to be pissed. I sure am.”

  Brooke didn’t like the sound of that intro. “Tell me.”

  Keith crossed his legs, settling in. “The other day, I got a call from our account representative at Citibank, letting me know that there had been a breach in our employee purchasing card online database.”

  Definitely off to a good start toward pissing her off. All corporate employees at Sterling, as well as the managers, assistant managers, chefs, sous-chefs, and wine sommeliers who worked at the various restaurants and sports arenas, were given a Citibank company purchasing card for business-related expenses. “Is someone charging extra expenses to that account?”

  Keith shook his head. “It’s not a theft issue. It seems as though somebody has an ax to grind with Ian. Someone hacked into his account and altered the descriptions of some of his expenses.”

  Brooke cocked her head, not following. “Just the descriptions? Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Keith pulled a document out of his file folder and slid it across her desk. “Perhaps this will answer that.”

  She picked up the pages, a spreadsheet she was familiar with. Whenever a Sterling employee charged something to his or her purchasing card, they were required to enter into the Citibank database a brief explanation of the business expense, such as “Dinner with the L.A. Arena lawyers.” Brooke skimmed through Ian’s May expenses, not seeing anything out of the ordinary until she got to the entries for a business trip he’d taken to Los Angeles to look at some potential restaurant space, a possible expansion for Sterling now that the company had a presence in L.A. via the sports and entertainment division.

  Then there was no missing the changes.

  Dinner in L.A. with some of my faggot friends.

  Picked up a queer dude in tight pants and bought him drinks before bringing him back to my pansy-ass hotel suite.

  Cab fare to “Sperm-Burpers Anonymous” meeting.

  And so on.

  It was safe to say that Brooke had moved beyond pissed at that point. “Pissed” was how she felt the time someone let their dog poop on the sidewalk in front of her building and she stepped in it while climbing into a cab wearing three-inch heels. But breaking into company records and writing homophobic slurs against her boss? That was whole different ball game.

  She set the spreadsheet off to the side. “Do we know who did this?”

  “No, although we at least know how he did it,” Keith said. “As soon as I saw this, I talked to the managers about all recent terminations, anyone who might have expressed anger at Ian or Sterling in general. There was nothing in particular that jumped out at anyone. But what occurred to us is that only Ian or his secretary should have had access to his online expense files.”

  “I can’t believe Liz would’ve had anything to do with this,” Brooke said. Ian’s assistant had been with him for years.

  “Not intentionally, no. But as it turns out, she never changed her password from the default one we’d assigned to all employees back when we updated everyone’s computers to the new software. She’s still been using ‘Sterling 1-2-3’ all this time.”

  Brooke sighed. Note to self: send out memo telling all employees to change their passwords immediately. “Then this could’ve been anyone.”

  “Essentially, yes,” Keith said. “I’ve been working with the folks at Citibank, and they provided me with a list of the date and times that Ian’s entries were altered, as well as the IP address for the computer from which the changes had been made. Based on a Google IP search, I’ve been able to determine that the asshole in question did this from a computer in the Chicago area.”

  “That covers about eighty percent of all Sterling employees and ex-employees.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. And since that’s the extent of what I can do, I contacted the FBI.” Keith rolled his eyes in frustration. “The agent I spoke to said that because there was no actual loss of funds, and because this guy didn’t technically hack into the bank’s system—he used the default password and someone else’s username—the matter would be viewed as ‘low priority.’ When I pressed him on how low of a priority, he said he’d have to get back to me. Frankly, I’d be surprised if I ever hear from him again.”

  And if that were the case, the jerk who’d done this would get away scot-free, still employed by Sterling. Luckily, however, Brooke knew someone who had the means to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Someone who just so happened to owe her a favor.

  “Thank you, Keith,” she said. “I can take things from here.”

  * * *

  A FEW MINUTES later, she knocked on the door to Ian’s office.

  “Got a second?” she asked when he looked up from his desk.

  Ian waved her inside. “Sure. Come on in.” When Brooke shut the door behind her, he studied her serious expression. “Oh, shit. Don’t tell me we’ve got another murderer.”

  Brooke smiled slightly at the joke. At least now they could laugh about that. But this new situation . . . not so much. She took a seat in front of his desk and came right out with it. “Someone broke into the Citibank purchasing card database and altered a few of your entries. Specifically, they changed the descriptions for the expenses you incurred during your last trip to L.A.”

  Ian looked at her in confusion. “The descriptions? Why would anyone do that?”

  “To be malicious. We don’t know yet if it’s a current or former employee. We have determined, however, that this person took advantage of the fact that Liz was still using the default password.” She slid the spreadsheet Keith had given her across Ian’s desk. “I thought you should see this.”

  Ian took the document from her, clearly still not following, and began to skim. After a few moments, his mouth pulled tight. He finished reading, and then set the spreadsheet down. “‘Sperm-burper.’ I haven’t heard that one since high school.”

  “We have the IP address of the person who did this, but Keith was only able to narrow the person’s location to Chicago. The FBI is calling this a ‘low-priority’ matter, but I have a contact who might be able to help us out.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve been called a few bad words, Brooke. Do what you can, but I’m not asking you to make a federal case out of this. Yes, pun intended.”

  “It’s possibly a current employee who did this, Ian. I’m not comfortable having some person working for Sterling who’s malicious enough to hack into the CEO’s personal account just to write these kinds of things. Regardless of whether the FBI makes an arrest, I want whoever did this out of here.” Brooke paused, following his lead and making her tone lighter. “Besides, this is what you pay me the big bucks for, remember?”

  Ian rubbed his jaw. “If I recall correctly, I pay you the big bucks because the last time you were up for a raise you gave me a sixteen-page report with charts and graphs of all the salari
es for comparable GC positions.”

  Well, yes. Although in her defense, Ian had cheekily asked her to “prove” what she was worth. So she’d done just that—charts and graphs included. “So you’re okay with my moving ahead with this?”

  “You have my blessing to track this prick down, if you can, and give him the full Brooke Parker treatment.”

  That settled, she got up and headed for the door. Just as she was walking out of the office, Ian spoke.

  “One last thing, Brooke.” He held her gaze and nodded in appreciation. “Thank you.”

  Nine

  AT THE DIRKSEN Federal Building, inside one of the courtrooms, Judge Reinhardt read through the charges in the nine-count indictment the grand jury had returned last week in the case of United States v. Alec Sanderson, et al. To the right of the center podium, in front of the lawyers’ table, were five high-powered criminal defense attorneys with sober expressions. Behind them, the five accused sat stoically as the judge laid out the charges against them. Cameras flashed repeatedly from the gallery, which was filled to capacity with reporters, spectators, and a few family members.

  Cade stood to the left of the podium, unfazed by the spectacle. Having been down this road before, he knew exactly the kind of defensive game these crooked politicians played. They hired the city’s most expensive lawyers and PR firms, who would cry foul and righteously protest their client’s innocence—Justice will prevail! We will have our day in court!—and then they would wake up one morning, have a nice dose of reality for breakfast, and start trying to flip on each other in exchange for a reduced sentence.

  Along with Senator Sanderson, Cade had filed corruption charges against Charles Torino, the hospital CEO who’d offered Sanderson a bribe at Sogna; as well as a real estate developer who’d paid Sanderson multiple bribes in exchange for his assistance in moving forward several major real estate projects; a lobbyist who had paid off Sanderson in exchange for allocating state funds to certain projects; and the financial consultant who’d set up the shell company though which Sanderson’s bribes were funneled. Not unexpectedly, the indictment of the senator and four successful businessmen had been the top story in the Chicago media for the last week, and Cade’s office had been flooded with calls from the press. Everyone wanted to know what kind of evidence the U.S. Attorney’s Office had up its sleeves.