His large, manicured hands, flat on the granite table, began to tremble with that spastic, involuntary tremor of an embezzler whose vault door has just been blown off its hinges by an artillery shell:
*tick-tick-tick-tick.*
“The… the Mercer Charter…?”
Arthur gasped, his voice cracking into that thin, pathetic squeak:
“Evelyn…
Evelyn swore to me that the daughter was completely discredited!
That you were an ordinary, un-ambitious military wife who would weep over a crushed third-grade report!”
“Lauren was the Director of Special Infrastructure Interdiction and the master fiduciary auditor who uncovered your entire Pacific factoring network twelve years ago, Arthur,” Vice Admiral David Mercer spoke from behind our shoulders.
His voice was sixty decibels of mountain quarry explosive:
“She audited your enterprise while Ben was training MARSOC dogs.”
“She protected this nation’s bedrock while your family was plotting to use a third-grade teacher to steal the access shaft of Conduit Ten.”
