At Fault (Southern Fraud Thriller) Read online

  A WHITELEY PRESS, LLC, BOOK

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Becton

  http://www.jwbecton.com

  13 2 3 4 5 6 7

  ISBN-10: 0983782385

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9837823-8-4

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real people, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Other Works by J. W. Becton

  The Southern Fraud Thriller Series

  Absolute Liability

  Death Benefits

  At Fault

  Moral Hazard

  The Personages of Pride & Prejudice Collection

  Writing as Jennifer Becton

  Charlotte Collins

  “Maria Lucas”: A Short Story

  Caroline Bingley

  The Personages of Pride & Prejudice Collection

  Mary Bennet—Coming Soon!

  In Memory of

  Amelia G. Whiteley

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Moral Hazard (Southern Fraud Thriller 4)

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Excerpt of Attempting Elizabeth by Jessica Grey

  One

  I crashed into the car in front of me because I simply couldn’t stop myself in time.

  That was precisely the way the accident had been designed.

  It was late Saturday morning, and unlike most normal people, I wasn’t enjoying a leisurely brunch over the newspaper or sipping coffee on the veranda while savoring the moments of my life.

  Nope. I was behind the wheel of a decades-old sedan cruising Leonidas K. Polk Highway, one of many Middle Georgia thoroughfares bearing the name of a long-dead and even longer-forgotten Civil War general. With its smattering of gas stations, convenience stores, and crumbling family-owned businesses, the road had just the right balance of traffic and space to serve as the perfect location for a staged automobile accident.

  And I seemed to be an ideal accident victim—a woman traveling alone and apparently vulnerable.

  This was a bad assumption, however. What criminal onlookers could not possibly know was that underneath my wool coat, I carried a .40 caliber handgun and a badge bearing the name of a state law enforcement agency that most people had never heard of.

  I’m Special Agent Julia Jackson with the Georgia Department of Insurance. My job is to investigate insurance fraud and apprehend the criminals involved. Sounds like it ought to be dull, right? I should spend most of my time pouring over spreadsheets and following trails of dollars and cents like an ordinary accountant, and often, that’s what I end up doing. But over the past few months, my seemingly innocuous insurance fraud investigations have led me out of the doldrums of decimal places and straight into the realm of violence and death.

  But one thing has remained constant: I am the investigator of the crimes, not the victim of them.

  Until today, that is.

  Today, I’d left my Explorer at the office and commandeered an unmarked DOI sedan, which was registered and insured under my current alias, Janet Aliff.

  And voila: I was the bait, sent to navigate this dull section of two-lane highway southeast of Mercer, Georgia.

  Driving precisely at the speed limit, I passed a dilapidated, yet still functioning corner gas station, where an older model gray BMW pulled out of the parking lot and into the lane behind me. I felt my adrenaline spike as I watched its progress, and my hands clenched the wheel reflexively as my breath came fast and shallow in my chest.

  This is it, I thought, trying to force myself to ease my grip and relax. An injury was less likely if I kept my body as loose as possible.

  I almost laughed aloud. Relaxation was asking quite a bit; I was about to rear end someone.

  I sucked in a deep, bracing breath as I reached a straight stretch of highway and glanced in the mirror to see the BMW begin to accelerate, a gray missile bearing down on me.

  Yes, this was exactly how it worked, a textbook setup. I’d studied this type of staged accident many times in the course of my DOI training, and even witnessed a few in person. Only now, it was going to happen to me.

  My fingers tightened and relaxed on the wheel again, and I resisted the urge to speed up as the Beemer closed the distance between itself and my sedan.

  To any casual—or not so casual—observer, this kind of fool-headed driving was nothing out of the ordinary. People liked to haul ass despite impediments such as other vehicles or pedestrians.

  After letting the BMW ride my bumper for a tense quarter mile, unswerving in my purpose or speed, I watched as the driver hit his turn signal, indicating that he wanted to pass me, and swung into the vacant left lane, pulling alongside me.

  I briefly eyed the driver, who did not so much as nod before accelerating past and making his way back into the right-hand lane.

  But he didn’t continue to accelerate. Instead, his car slowed.

  This was also a shockingly normal occurrence in Mercer, Georgia. In larger cities, drivers turn cutting off another vehicle into a viable passing maneuver. They can pass you with mere millimeters to spare, and yet you don’t have to apply the brakes because they zip ahead without a care in the world. But in Mercer, where life ambles along at a slower pace, sometimes people cut you off and then proceed to slow down.

  It makes no sense, but it happens every day.

  Pretending to be annoyed that I’d come into contact with one such driver, I threw my left hand up in a gesture of impatience and slowed my vehicle too. And the two of us chugged along as a sort of sluggish unit through the bright, crisp morning.

  That’s when it happened.

  We came to a yellow light, and instead of buzzing through it with time to spare, the other driver slammed on the brakes.

  Even though the goal of the entire exercise was for me to become the victim of this very accident—I was supposed to hit the vehicle in front of me—when I saw those brake lights glowing, my adrenaline kicked into second gear, causing me to jam my foot onto my own brake. Suddenly, I found myself practically standing on the pedal in an effort to stop quickly enough to avoid the collision.

  Forget staying loose and calm. I was in survival mode as my sedan pitched and dove forward, and I jerked the steering wheel to the right. Later, I would claim that this was a tactic to make it appear that I was attempting to maneuver my car safely onto the shoulder and avoid a collision, but in reality, my subconscious truly was attempting to save me from an accident.

  But no one had to know that.

  I felt my sedan skid awkwardly to the right, and the shrill squeal of tires on asphalt transformed into the rumble of loose gravel striking the wheel wells. As dust and the reek of burning rubber filled the air, m
y eyes closed of their own accord, and I heard the ominous crunching sound of my front left fender impacting the rear right of the BMW.

  The force of the impact was minimal, laughable really, and other than a slight jarring sensation, I didn’t feel any pain as the car’s momentum ground to a halt.

  At the moment my eyes opened to survey the scene, I heard a loud pop—an explosion of whiteness and dust in my field of vision—and suddenly, I couldn’t see the car ahead of me at all. Or even my own dash. All I could see was the air bag as it smacked into my face and chest with an impact that felt—and sounded—like I’d just been run over by a rampaging elephant.

  “Ow,” I said, deadpan into the air bag, though there was no one to hear me.

  I sat for a moment with my face pressing into the air bag, shocked at its pointless deployment. At such a low speed, it shouldn’t have gone off at all.

  I sat back to reassess my condition. Now I was in pain, soreness burgeoning in my chest and face, thanks to the air bag. Carefully, my hands slid along my ribs. No one spot seemed more painful than the next, so maybe they weren’t broken. Or I’d broken all of them equally, but that seemed unlikely.

  Next, I checked my face in the rearview mirror and cursed. Based on the swelling that had already started, my right eye was going to turn black and blue before the day was out. Maybe before the hour was out. I touched the flesh around my eye gingerly and winced. I had come through the wreck uninjured; it was the air bag that hurt me.

  Damn safety measures.

  Groaning, I angled the mirror away. It was useless to sit here gaping at my needless injury; I had a job to do.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt, letting it slide slowly back into its slot, and began punching the air bag out of my way. As in a real, unstaged accident, after deciding that I was relatively uninjured, the safety of the driver and potential passengers in the other car became my next priority, so I leapt rather shakily from my vehicle and dashed to the one ahead of me. The BMW was now sprawled crookedly in the right lane.

  Well, mostly in the right lane.

  I managed a quick peek at the damage to both vehicles—not too bad—as I ran to the driver’s already open door.

  Halting in the doorway, I knelt to assess the other driver’s condition, and I didn’t have to feign concern.

  From my kneeling position, I looked up at the BMW’s driver: my partner Mark Vincent. I was more concerned about him than about myself, even though I’d been the one who was just knocked in the head by an exploding air bag. Only two months ago, Vincent had been shot, resulting in a collapsed lung, chest tube, and surgery. He’d been back on the job for only two full weeks, and already we were testing him physically.

  He had assured me he was healed enough for a low-speed accident, but I hadn’t been so sure.

  Fortunately, Vincent’s air bag had not deployed, and under my cursory look, he appeared uninjured, but his usual stoic expression wavered slightly as he took stock of me.

  I could tell by his reaction that my eye wasn’t even going to last ten minutes before bruising visibly.

  Great.

  Hazards of the job, I supposed, but now was not the time to deal with them. I had a role to play.

  “Oh my God!” I said loudly enough for potential onlookers to hear. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said, just as we’d planned, only he added in a low, gruff voice meant for my ears alone, “Are you okay? Your eye.”

  Under his steady blue gaze, I nodded my head quickly.

  “It was just the air bag. It’s fine,” I managed to say before I heard footsteps approaching from behind.

  The runners had arrived.

  Two

  The DOI had this stretch of Polk Highway under surveillance for a month, first by me alone, slouching in various vehicles in various locations at various times, and later with Vincent when he returned from his medical leave. We’d sat together, watching the events on this road as the fall died into the cool, gray months of a Southern winter.

  Turns out the DOI’s source—Dr. Steven Keller—had provided accurate information: this stretch of highway was a hot spot for staged crashes, not to mention the assorted other types of auto insurance fraud we’d witnessed along the way.

  In the course of our surveillance, Vincent and I had observed two main types of scams: the fraudsters either staged a crash similar to the production we had just mounted and then collected money from the victim driver’s insurance company, or they employed runners to direct real crash victims to select medical clinics in exchange for kickbacks.

  But we suspected there was more to the scam. Well-developed and organized fraud rings might consist of hundreds of participants who could bilk millions of dollars from insurance companies, which in turn jacked up rates for customers, and we could very well be on to one such group.

  At least, that’s what Ted Insley, my boss at the DOI, was banking on.

  It seemed that Ted cherished a desire to make his career off this case and to elevate the Mercer branch of the DOI from bizarre case magnet to serious state agency. Thanks to our tipster’s input, Ted was convinced that we had discovered just the thing that could accomplish both. On a more practical level, Vincent and I were equally convinced that Ted had stumbled on a scheme that went far beyond the paid crash dummies, witnesses, and runners we’d uncovered so far.

  Today, the DOI’s mission was to discover the ring’s size and scope with certitude, and the best way to do that was to get on the inside.

  It appeared that our staged crash had indeed gotten Vincent and me an all-access pass to the inside of the fraud ring, because two known runners—one male and one female—had arrived at the accident site. And quickly.

  The man was tall, lanky, and dressed in jeans and a blue workman’s shirt with a patch that read “Eddie,” and the woman had strikingly red hair for someone in her late forties. Vincent and I had already identified them as Edward Wohl, a local mechanic, and Tammy Wynn, an unemployed single mother. Both wore concerned expressions, and gauging by their rapid breathing, they were equally eager to be the first on the scene. Likely, they would be splitting a hefty sum for playing their appointed roles in the scam.

  They skidded to a stop beside the BMW.

  “We were across the street,” Eddie said, gesturing over his shoulder in the general direction of a twenty-four-hour diner, “when we saw the accident.”

  “Is everyone okay?” Tammy asked, as if running dialogue from a play.

  Wide-eyed and overtly curious, she looked between Vincent and me.

  Vincent pretended to assess his condition.

  “I’m fine,” he said, standing and walking a few steps to show that he was roadworthy. Then he took a few deep breaths, which I guessed was meant to reassure me that his chest wound had not suffered in the collision.

  Tammy turned to me, appraising my unfortunately obvious injury.

  “You’re all swelled up and starting to bruise, bless your poor heart,” she said, gesturing at my face. “With an injury like that, you might also have a concussion. I think we should call an ambulance.”

  Great, I thought, not only had my outward appearance merited a “bless your poor heart,” but apparently it warranted calling emergency services, which hadn’t been part of our plan. We’d intended to keep this simple: just one emergency vehicle called to the site. But no! I almost laughed aloud. That’s not how it would work, not given the way my life had been going the past few months. Complications would ensue.

  So naturally, even though Vincent and I were both trained drivers and had arranged the crash at a safe speed, we couldn’t have foreseen a faulty air bag, and I was the one outwardly suffering for it. A black eye was a foregone conclusion; concussion, however, was a bit of a stretch. I’d had a concussion, and this almost certainly wasn’t one.

  Still playing the victim however, I nodded at Tammy, raising my hand carefully to the offending area.

  “The air bag hit me right in the face, but I think I�
��m fine. My head doesn’t hurt or anything.”

  All hope of persuading her that I did not require paramedic attention disappeared when she pulled her phone from her purse.

  “You could have internal injuries,” she said, already dialing. “I’m calling 911.”

  The hopefulness in her tone was hardly concealed as she relayed the accident details to the operator in a concise, practiced manner. I shot a look at Eddie, who nodded in agreement with every word she said into the phone.

  Vincent had wandered away from our little group, which remained gathered around the BMW’s door, and was now squatting to study the damage to the back of his vehicle. He rested a palm lightly on the “Go Navy!” bumper sticker we had added to help with his cover identity. Vincent had a cop face, plain and simple. So today, we’d made sure to play up his military connections with the sticker and clothing that would expose the “Hold Fast” tattoo on his left forearm.

  If the fraudsters had noticed a certain police aura about him, they could easily blame it on his overt love of the military.

  At least that’s what we’d hoped.

  But me? I was almost never pegged as a cop, and that was usually okay by me.

  Vincent pulled at a piece of loose taillight glass, letting it fall to the ground among the other debris, and then looked in my direction. Unconsciously, I touched my eye, and the resulting bolt of pain caused me to suck in a jagged breath. The adrenaline was wearing off, dammit. Best to keep role-playing so that I could get back to the office as quickly as possible and try to minimize the damage.

  Not that there was much hope of that.

  With my role as Janet Aliff in mind, I returned to the sedan to remove her insurance information from the glove box. I pretended to study the “what to do if you are in an accident” checklist printed on the back of the paper, and then I approached Vincent, list in hand.

  “I’m sorry about this,” I said, channeling Janet as I gestured vaguely toward our vehicles.

  Vincent looked over his shoulder at me and then stood, dusting off his trousers in the process. I watched his tall, broad form rise between our cars and reminded myself that I wasn’t supposed to know him.