Late October 2007
The Lakeview
Someone.
He needed someone.
Someone to be on the inside. To get him information.
Paul Ryan sighs, frustrated, as he lifts his newly filled scotch glass to his lips. His plan to take down Craig Montgomery had hit a crucial snag, and he was desperately trying to think of a way around it. But the only one he could come up with was one he was having a hard time figuring out how to use.
He'd been more than a little shocked, when he returned to Oakdale, to find newlyweds Craig and Meg running Montgomery Enterprises. He and Rosanna had tried to find legal loopholes in how Craig acquired the company with her money, but to no avail. Rosanna was still meeting with her attorneys to see what other legal avenue they could pursue, but Paul had a feeling that Craig, as slippery as he is, had made sure his hold on Montgomery Enterprises was airtight.
It had been tickling at his brain for a while now, the thought that they'd have to go a different route. He wanted Craig out of that company. Because Craig Montgomery was a dangerous man on his own, but a Craig Montgomery with power was potentially disastrous for everyone he touches. Meg was still too blind to see it, but Paul had sworn to himself upon his return that he wouldn't let that stop him. If Meg got caught in the crossfire? Well, it wasn't like she hadn't been warned. Repeatedly.
He knew Craig more than likely had some shady activities going on behind the closed doors of ME. It is Craig after all.
The question now? How to get the information on them. And use them to his advantage.
Which lead him here, with his glass of scotch.
He needed someone.
Someone who could get in there, who could be sneaky and get information yet put up the cover of being a legitimate employee. Someone he could trust, at least as far as Craig was concerned.
But who?
He'd seen the employee roster of ME and no names jumped out at him – and frankly he wasn't too keen on the idea of just paying someone off to do this, because if they could be paid off, could he be sure that person wouldn't turn to the other side for more money? It couldn't be him, and Rosanna was most certainly out of the question, for reasons that he wouldn't even disclose to her, but most obviously because of her own corporation that she was running after two years in a coma.
Of course, if he was going to use an outsider to the company, the question then became how to get them in. He had some information on the different divisions of ME, and what was doing well and what was doing…not so well, but he had to admit to himself there was no guarantee that Craig and Meg would hire whoever he sent in.
Not that this was his only iron in the fire as far as Craig was concerned. He had a detective looking for Lucy and Johnny, in hopes that maybe having those two around again would cause Craig to let his guard down. Not to mention, potentially fighting Dusty for Johnny would distract Craig, possibly giving Paul a bigger opening to exact revenge, and in doing so, would also knock out Craig's chances of having his son. While he did feel a twinge of guilt, using his sister's son in all of this, he promised himself he would make sure that Johnny ended up with Dusty when all was said and done. As much as he himself was not Dusty's biggest fan, he knew that's what Jennifer would have wanted.
But the truth was, that iron was cool at best at the moment. Paul had a sneaking suspicion that Sierra had used her connections to hide Lucy and Johnny well, because his detective had come up with nothing in the month he had been searching for them.
Which led him once again back to this. He needed someone.
Someone on the inside he could trust.
Someone smart enough to play Craig.
Someone sneaky enough to get the information he needed.
"Vodka tonic, please."
The voice he hears causes his head to turn quickly towards the bar. Oh, he'd know that voice anywhere. A grin spreads slowly across his face as he watches her sit down and take a sip of her drink.
"Someone like you."
