Mason couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the implications of Paul’s knowledge of Fairacre. If he only recognized the name, why wouldn’t he just say so? Of course, having heard of it didn’t necessarily mean that he had any idea of the horrors that had potentially transpired inside the auction house. But why else would he feel the need to lie? To get the answers Mason needed, he had to find out who had purchased the Fairacre shelf corporation. Until then, he was just going to have to trust his instincts, and right now they were telling him to follow the dirt road to the west of Building Seed toward where all of the action was.
He drove into a makeshift lot where a construction trailer had been set on a dusty skirt and surrounded with heavy machinery. There were earthmovers and cement mixers and trucks of all shapes and sizes—pickups, flatbeds, Caterpillars. Industrial Dumpsters overflowed with waste, and construction scraps were heaped in seemingly arbitrary piles. The road was deeply rutted from the enormous tires of the earthmovers. He parked in the flattened weeds, amid a random assortment of cars he assumed belonged to the workmen. One car stood apart from the others: a sleek black Cadillac SUV that didn’t have a single speck of dust on it.
Mason’s phone rang. He surveyed the scene in front of him, looking for the man he knew was out there somewhere, and answered without taking his eyes off of the building.
“It’s about time, Gunnar. Tell me you have something for me.”
There was no immediate reply. He was just about to see if he’d dropped the call, when the person on the other end spoke and made him wish he’d checked the caller ID.
“James … What on God’s green earth are you doing?”
It was his father.
“Right now? Just sitting in my car, watching the world pass by.”
“Can you imagine my surprise when I received a phone call informing me that my son had been suspended?”
“Kind of caught me off guard, too. Look, Dad, I—”
“Do you know the lengths to which I had to go to convince the director of the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation to even consider overriding your special agent in charge’s disciplinary action?”
“This has nothing to do with you, Dad. Believe it or not, I can handle this on my own.”
Mason spotted a tall man in a dark suit standing in the middle of a circle of men wearing flannel shirts, jeans, and dirty work boots and gesturing toward the structure towering over them.
“Nothing to do with me? My son’s decided to flush his career down the toilet and it has nothing to do with me? I refuse to stand by and watch you self-destruct. Regardless of what you might think, you are my son and it’s my duty as your father to intercede when I see you making the kind of decisions that will have lasting consequences.”
“I appreciate your concern, but everything’s under control. Really.”
The man in the suit broke away from the others. Mason wanted to catch him before he found out he was here. He needed the man’s first reaction to be unguarded.
“I loved her, too, you know. Angie was like a daughter to me. And don’t think for a second that I don’t know exactly what you’re dealing with. I lived it. I survived it. I triumphed over it. You need to focus on something else. Find a project. A goal. Something at which you can direct all of your energies.”
“Way ahead of you, Dad.”
He ended the call and climbed out of the car. The door was barely closed when the phone started ringing again. His father wasn’t the kind to give up easily, but he was also a patient man who recognized that the key to winning any battle was in the timing. That was one of the few lessons he had taught Mason that actually stuck.
He intercepted Victor when he reached for the handle of his car door.
“Sorry I didn’t see you at the funeral,” Mason said.
Victor stiffened at the sound of his voice. He saw his brother-in-law’s eyes widen in the reflection on his window. He was composed when he turned to face Mason. He and Angie had never been especially close. She was five years younger and the product of Paul’s second marriage. Mason had never met Victor’s mother, but it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that he didn’t actually have one and that Paul had instead figured out a way to clone himself. Victor was simply a younger version, with the same mannerisms and expressions and laugh. Only he was about three inches taller. He was being groomed to one day take the reins of AgrAmerica. That was, if he could pry them from Paul’s cold, dead grasp.
Victor proffered his hand and Mason shook it.
“Jim, I didn’t expect to see you. Always a pleasant surprise, of course. What brings you all the way out here into cattle country?”
“I was up this way, so I figured I’d swing by and talk to your old man. I didn’t know you were in town.”
“I haven’t been back for very long. I was in Switzerland, getting the Bern branch off the ground.”
“Why Bern?”
“It’s a beautiful city, for one. For another, we’re looking to establish an Eastern European presence, but aren’t quite ready to jump in with both feet. The area isn’t as politically stable as we would like. At least not yet. Besides, the Swiss are a little more forward-thinking when it comes to the direction our company has chosen.”
“You mean their regulations are more relaxed.”
“I prefer the term progressive, but there is something to be said for a government that understands its relationship to industry. That’s not why you drove all the way out here, though. Where are my manners?” He draped his arm over Mason’s shoulders, guided him away from his car, and made a grand sweeping gesture toward the construction. “Allow me to present the future world headquarters of Global Allied Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals.”
“No more AgrAmerica?”
“The name itself implies a limited reach. If we want to compete in the international market, we need to begin thinking and acting with a much broader set of parameters.”
“So I take it you won’t be calling it Building E?”
“Please. A and B are old and outdated. They look like they were built by Neanderthals. And my father can have his little glass lab. What we need is a building that says we are a leader in the market, a leader in the business world as a whole. It needs to be a building that people will recognize, no matter where they live. A grand structure that fits the vision of the corporate brand. It needs to scream confidence and power.”
“It’s going to have to scream pretty loud if you actually want people to know it’s here. You can barely see it from the other buildings, let alone from the road.”
Victor’s laugh was the kind they taught in classes for the rich and condescending.
“You kill me, Jim. Tell you what, come back when she’s finished and I’ll give you the personal tour. Then you’ll see what I’m talking about.” He casually turned Mason once more and ushered him toward his car. “I’d love to catch up, but I’m already running late for a meeting I’m not at liberty to discuss, with people who aren’t accustomed to being made to wait. I only budgeted enough time to make my presence known. For what we’re paying these guys, it’s important they understand that they have to keep this project on schedule. Starting after eight or knocking off a minute before five won’t be tolerated.”
“Have you tried giving the foreman a whip?”
Victor laughed.
“It’s too bad we never really got a chance to get to know each other, but I hope you realize that you’ll always be part of the Thornton clan, Jim.” He cupped his hand over the side of his mouth as though to impart a secret. “Lord only knows we could use someone on the right side of the law in this family.”
Again, the laugh, the handshake, the clap on the shoulder. And then he was in his car, preparing to back up. Mason stepped closer and signaled for him to roll down his window.
“I almost forgot. I was just talking to your dad about a property east of here that came up in an investigation I’m working. He thought you might know about it. Fairacre Ranch Surplus and Auction? You know anything about it?”
“What on earth would make you think that I know anything about ranching?”
Victor laughed at the old family joke they all told, then rolled up his window and drove away in a cloud of dust that made the snowflakes that had settled on the ground rise once more. Mason had seen it, though. The brief whitening of his brother-in-law’s knuckles as he squeezed the wheel just a little tighter. The slight bulge of his jaw muscles. The prominence of the vein in his temple. The way his eyes darted quickly to his right before he spoke.
Like his father, he knew something about the Fairacre property.
And lied about it.