“I understand, Senator. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now,” I tell him. “But it’s important that you let us do our jobs. We’re going to do everything we can to bring Ashley back to you. You just need to trust us.”
He looks lost. His face is painted with grief, and he looks like he’s already resigned himself to losing his daughter. I’d love to be able to tell him everything is going to be fine—that he has nothing to worry about. I’d love to be able to ease his mind and bring him comfort in some way. But there are no guarantees, and given the facts before us right now, I can’t promise there is going to be a happy ending here. And I refuse to give him false hope.
“I don’t know what to do with myself, Chief,” he says.
“The best thing you can do right now is go about your day as normally as you can. I know it sounds impossible, but if you want to keep people from asking questions, you have to do your best to act like nothing is amiss,” I tell him. “You need to let us do our thing, and you really, really need to stay away from this location. We can’t have you seen coming in here.”
He nods numbly. “I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m going out of my mind.”
“I understand. But I swear that we are doing our very best.”
“I know you are.”
He gets to his feet, his shoulders slumped, looking as scared and defeated as he sounds. Barlow puts the ball cap back on his head and pulls the bill down low, trying to obscure his face the best he can, which isn’t very well.
“I’ll keep you in the loop, Senator,” I say. “I promise.”
He studies me for a long moment, and when he speaks, his voice is soft, barely more than a whisper. “You don’t think you’re going to find her, do you?”
“We’re not going to stop trying.”
Barlow pauses as a grief-stricken expression crosses his face. “Thank you, Chief. Thank you all for working as hard as I know you are to bring my baby home.”
We watch him shuffle out of the house, and when the door closes, I turn to the others and blow out a long, frustrated breath. I don’t think he meant to do it, but one of the byproducts of Barlow’s unexpected visit was to put a heavier burden on our shoulders than we were already lugging around. Though it was unlikely intended, Barlow’s presence only adds to the pressure we’re already feeling, and I can’t help but feel like there is a lot riding on this case.
In terms of my career, maybe everything.
“Okay, let’s get back to work. Paige, Nina, keep digging into Bauer and get with Rick to see if you can identify anybody else Ashley was talking to through the website,” I say. “Astra, let’s go have a chat with Mr. Richter.”
Hempstead Petroleum, K Street District; Washington, DC
Nestled among the busy thoroughfares in our nation’s capital is K Street, which is more or less, the center of the lobbying world. K Street is also replete with law offices, think tanks, and policy advisement groups, but it has become synonymous with the lobbying firms that fill the area. Astra and I find our way to a tall office building that houses a host of different special interest groups that do business up on Capitol Hill.
We walk into the ground floor of the building and thread our way through the crowd of well-heeled, self-important people who are bustling by on whatever business has them scurrying about. Astra leads me over to an electronic directory mounted to the marble wall on our right. We scan the names of the businesses located in the building.
“Fourth floor,” Astra says.
“Got it.”
We head for the elevators and have to wait a moment before forcing our way into the crowded car. Astra and I are forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with people in designer suits, all of them looking at us in our decidedly not-designer suits like we just wandered in out of a homeless shelter. Image is everything in this town. Some try to deny it, but it’s just as important in the Beltway as it is in Hollywood. The car stops on the fourth floor, and it chimes as the doors slide open. Astra and I quickly extricate ourselves from the mass of humanity and step into the lobby of the Stallworth Group, which serves as the lobbying and legislative arm of Hempstead Petroleum.
The offices are sleek and modern with lots of smoked glass and chrome all around. The tile flooring beneath our feet is black and white, and the white walls are covered with artistic photos depicting oil rigs taken from what I assume are Heampstead’s drilling sites around the world. A smartly dressed, professional-looking blonde woman sitting at a long desk set across from the elevators looks up as we cross the floor and offers us a well-practiced smile that doesn’t come close to reaching her eyes.
“Good afternoon,” she says. “How may I help you?”
“We need to speak with Archibald Richter, please,” I say as we badge her.
Her blue eyes widen slightly, and an expression of concern flits across her face, but she quickly reins it in and eyes us with curiosity instead.
“I’m sorry, what’s this about?” the receptionist asks.
“We just need to speak with him,” I say. “Where can we find him?”
“I’m afraid he’s tied up at the moment.”
“Uh-huh. So, this is the way it’s going to work… you can either tell us where to find him so we can go ask our questions quietly and discreetly,” Astra says as she steps closer to the receptionist’s desk. “Or we can go through the office making as big a scene as possible right before we put him in cuffs and dog walk him out of the office. Which do you think he’d prefer?”
The woman recoils, looking like she’s never been spoken to that way before. Her perfectly glossed lips turn down, and she clears her throat as a sour look crosses her face. She stabs the air to her right with a well-manicured nail.
“Go down that hall. You’ll take the first right, then left,” she huffs. “Mr. Richter’s door is the third on the left.”
“Thank you,” Astra says.
Doing my best to suppress my amusement, I turn and follow Astra down the hall. We take the first right then left and find ourselves at the open doorway of Archibald Richter’s large, plush, extremely comfortable-looking corner office. Just across from his door is a bullpen filled with assistants and staffers who glance up at us, then look away with disinterest. Like the rest of the Stallworth Group’s offices that we’ve seen, Richter’s suite is modern in design. It’s streamlined and furnished with a sitting area to our right and a large table-style desk in front of three large, plate-glass windows that overlook the bustling street outside.
Richter’s diplomas and pictures of him with various political dignitaries of all ideological stripes cover his walls. Judging by the who’s who of politicians in his photos, he seems well-connected and apparently doesn’t let political party color his business one way or the other. Richter himself is at a standing desk tucked into the corner on our left, and when we come through the door, his face tightens, but he looks like he’s been expecting us. The receptionist obviously called ahead to announce us. That was thoughtful of her.
“Mr. Richter,” I say as we flash him our badges. “Unit Chief Wilder and SSA Russo.”
“I really don’t have a lot of time, Agents. This is going to have to wait since we all know you don’t have anything you can use to—what was that charming phrase again?—oh, that’s right, dog walk me out of the building,” he says.
Richter is about my height and has a stocky frame. His chestnut brown hair is neatly styled and parted on the right, his eyes are a similar color, and his round face is almost boyish. He doesn’t look like a fifty-five-year-old man. In a charcoal gray, three-piece Armani suit with a violet paisley tie and matching pocket square, Richter is dressed impeccably. He looks the part of a DC power broker. The moment I lay eyes on the man, though, I know he’s not our guy. His body type is all wrong. He looks nothing like the smiley-face man in the surveillance video of the abduction. But we have to play this out anyway.
“Actually, we can dog walk you out of here right now if we want to,” Astra says.
