What launched it into the realm of unbelievable was the fact that every individual in the room except for Ryan wore a badge that identified them as agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But not Ryan. Ryan wore a temporary badge labeled VISITOR, which was being polite. His correct title was “whistleblower.” Which was also being polite.
He was a rat, pure and simple. No matter how often he told himself he was doing the right thing, he knew he was a rat. There were laws governing the running of investment houses and banks: federal laws, state laws, local laws. MacCarren hired lawyers, well-paid, well-educated lawyers, to navigate those laws. Then there were the unwritten laws governing the conduct of employees within those corporations. Rule number one: make as much money as you can, as fast as you can. If the SEC catches you doing something wrong, take the fine and deal with moral and ethical questions not at all.
There was no rule number two.
If you did decide you couldn’t stomach the world of hedge funds, derivatives, and investment banks, the right thing to do was to quit and take a job somewhere else. There was the right thing to do, and then there was the rat thing to do. Ryan had chosen the rat thing.
A few weeks ago, when he’d accidentally stumbled upon rarely used accounts and followed the money into offshore accounts and the sure knowledge that Don and Charles, the father and son team leading MacCarren, were running a massive Ponzi scheme behind the scenes, he’d taken an early lunch, hailed a cab, and gone to the federal building in downtown Manhattan where he’d asked to see an agent working on white-collar crime. Daniel Logan, the agent he’d sat down with that day, now sat directly to his right, with another agent Daniel worked with seated to Ryan’s left. Ryan had labeled him the Jock; based on the way the Jock looked at him, he’d classified Ryan as the kind of skinny math geek he used to torment in the hallways. Ryan was pretty sure they were both dead-on.
Technically speaking, Daniel was his handler, checking in with Ryan every twenty-four to thirty-six hours, arranging meetings, and generally making sure that Ryan didn’t bolt for a country with no extradition treaty. Ryan had no intention of bolting, and anyway, he turned over his passport at the beginning of this process. Besides, when he started something, he finished it, even if finishing this would end him.
The agent at the front of the room was droning on about time lines, indictments, subpoenas. Ryan zoned out, thinking about something that he’d started at Irresistible. Not with Jade. That was over before it began, although she didn’t know it. No, he was thinking about Simone.
He wanted her. It was as simple as that, and back before he learned what he didn’t want to know, back before he developed a conscience that was very inconvenient on Wall Street, he would’ve gone after her. He would have had her every way he could.
But now, he refused to drag anyone into the morass of legal and financial battles that would be his life after the FBI, SEC, and God only knew who else raided MacCarren. After years, literally years, of dating with no purpose in mind other than finding a pretty woman who would entertain him for a few days, maybe a few weeks, it was very inconvenient to finally run across a woman whose red hair, blue eyes, and cinnamon-on-cream freckles sparked a chest-deep ache he’d never felt before.
Any idiot could tell that Simone’s purpose in life wasn’t about getting rich quick or being a flash in the pan. The attention to detail in the clothes she made, their beauty and craftsmanship, the way she focused on fitting Jade, told him everything he needed to know about Simone. Unfortunately what it told him was that she wouldn’t truck with notoriety, shame, and scandal. His casual offer to bill him an astronomical amount for the alterations fell on proud, deaf ears, which was why he’d resorted to having a bike messenger both deliver the payment and pick up the lingerie. He’d been more focused on what Simone thought of his tip than on Jade.
She wouldn’t like it, but while his stomach twisted at the thought of her reaction, he didn’t regret it. Maybe the slow flare in his gut was the incipient ulcer. The plan called for him to continue working at MacCarren, while getting confessions from the leaders in the scheme. When it came to trading millions or billions of dollars in a split second, he had nerves of steel, but the collateral damage from this particular trade of integrity for confessions of guilt would lead to bankruptcy and prison sentences, destroyed reputations, and shattered dreams. His nerves were a goddamn mess.
He shook two antacid tablets out of the container he carried with him at all times, and popped them in his mouth.
His eyes on the speaker, Daniel Logan leaned over. “How’s your stomach?”
Ryan liked that about Daniel, his directness, the way that he went to the heart of an issue, and all in a low rumble of a voice that said it wouldn’t matter if he was trapping a daddy longlegs to release into the wild or defusing a nuclear bomb—he had this.
“How do you think my stomach is?” Ryan said under his breath. “How come you’re so calm?”