54. CHANCE

“Ta da!” I say as I pull the cloche off the china dish. “Lunch is served.”

Sara’s grin lights me up inside. It’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

“You did not,” she says. “Seriously? Is this the real thing?”

“I can show you the blue box in the recycling, if you want.”

I pull a wooden spoon from behind my back and hand it to her, prompting a giggle.

“You thought of everything,” she says, pretending to swoon. “Be still my heart.”

I take my own spoon and dig into my mac and cheese. The taste hasn’t changed one iota since the last time I had it as a kid.

“I should buy stock in Kraft,” I say, savoring the sharp taste of it.

“Mmmm,” Sara moans though a mouthful of macaroni. “So good.”

“So,” I say. “Any luck convincing Grace we don’t need a party?”

“I at least got her to scale it back. Just us, Tre and the Sullivans. Kelsey, I guess.”

“Don’t forget Tre’s mom.”

She snaps her fingers. “Right! I’ll have to get her number from you.”

I pull out my phone to look it up just in time for it to ring in my hand. The caller ID shows Agnes’s contact info.

“Speak of the devil,” I say by way of greeting. “We were just talking about inviting you and the family to a party.”

“Chance, we need to talk,” she says gravely.

What’s this about? I’ve never known Agnes to skip the pleasantries – she’s too much of a lady for that.

“Of course,” I say. “What’s up?”

She recounts her meeting with Quentin Pearce earlier in the day. My blood temperature goes up one degree for every word, until I’m boiling over by the end of it. Sara’s eyebrows go up as she looks over at the expression on my face.

“You don’t believe it, do you?” I ask.

“I don’t know what to believe, Chance. I mean, your sudden wedding, the questions I’ve always had about the expansion capital…”

“Agnes, I don’t want to go into this on the phone, but believe this much right now: Patrick was the greatest man I’ve ever known. I consider him my father. He wasn’t a criminal and I would never have betrayed him.”

“I just… I just don’t know. Pearce started talking about the Department of Defense. Would he really call them in?”

The DoD. Jesus, just like I feared.

“Can you give me a day?” I ask. “Two at most. I need to get some things taken care of, and then we can meet.”

“I don’t know…”

“Agnes, I can explain it all. But not right now, not on the phone.”

She sighs. “All right, Chance. Two days, no longer. That only leaves a handful of days until the sale. One way or the other, the board will have an answer for Pearce on that day.”

“That’s all I ask,” I say.

“Good luck, Chance,” she says.

“Thanks, Agnes. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Sara’s bursting to talk as I click off the phone.

“What’s going on?” she asks, eyes wide. “Why were you talking about Sully being a criminal? And you betraying him?

I bring her up to speed on Pearce’s twisted narrative.

“Shit,” she breathes. “He really will resort to anything to push this deal through.”

“And I still don’t know why!” I say, exasperated.

“You said you think he’s going to flip Atlas to someone who wants to buy influence. I think I can confirm that theory – when I listened in on his call that day, he was talking to someone about getting dirt on you.”

“You think it was the buyer?”

“Not the buyer,” she says. “At least, not by the way he was talking to the guy, like he was a piece of shit on his shoe. He mentioned the guy’s uncle being involved.”

I nod. That would explain quite a bit. But what Sara hasn’t asked yet is how someone could have come up with that story that Pearce is spinning. It’s just close enough to the truth to cast doubt on everything. Where did it come from?

“All right,” I say. “Can you give me any more detail? Did Pearce use a name?”

“No, they just used the term ‘partner.’ But I’ll never forget the guy’s voice: he had a New Jersey accent so thick, he could have been Snooki’s boyfriend.”

New Jersey? Why does that spark an itch in the back of my mind?

Sara sighs. “This is a nightmare. I was already jumpy enough as it was. When I was walking home before lunch, I thought a guy walking his dog was actually following me.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

"He kept ending up behind me somehow, even after he’d passed me. Happened twice.”

“Stay here,” I say. It sounds like an order – I should probably work on that if I’m going to be a married man.

“What are you doing?” she asks as I stalk toward the front of the house. The blinds are closed in the huge living room window, so I drop to the floor and open them a crack at the bottom corner.

Sure enough, there’s a black car across the street with two guys in dark suits.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“What?”

“There’s a car across the street. Department of Defense is watching the house. That crazy bastard actually looped them into this.”

Sara blinks for a few moments. “Are you sure there’s not another explanation? Maybe they’re just regular people.”

“In a government issue Chev and black suits with sunglasses?”

“Oh. Shit.”

“We have to get out of here. I can’t do anything to figure this out if I’m in a holding cell.”

She bites her lip. “Do you really think it’ll come to that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “And I really don’t want to find out.”