Sean leaned forward. “Let’s talk you letting us the hell out of here.”
“But I haven’t asked my questions,” McKinney said pleasantly.
“You can direct them to my lawyer. I’m going to call him right now.”
“You don’t need a lawyer. You haven’t been arrested.”
“We have been detained against our will. Same thing in my book. But if we haven’t been arrested, then you have no power to hold us.” He started to rise.
“National security trumps a lot of what’s in the Constitution, Mr. King. So please sit back down. I don’t want to resort to restraints, but I will if I have to.”
“You’re only digging your hole deeper.”
“I think we both want the same thing. What’s good for Tyler Wingo.”
Sean sat back down while Michelle warily watched both men.
“Well, if you’re working with the Army I seriously doubt that.”
“What do you have against the Army? They’re good people.”
Sean leaned back in his chair and seemed to make up his mind. “Okay,
ask your questions.”
“What’s your connection with Tyler Wingo?”
“Confidential. Unless he’s waived it.”
“He’s not old enough to be your client.”
“While it’s true we couldn’t enforce a contract against Tyler because he has not yet reached the age of majority, we accord all clients, regardless of age, the same professional courtesy of maintaining confidentialities.”
“Then this conversation will be very short.”
“What I was hoping for, actually,” said Sean.
McKinney opened the file, pulled a piece of paper from it, and slid it across to Sean. He looked down at it while Michelle read over his shoulder.
“As you can see, Tyler Wingo has waived any confidentiality rights he might have. So you can answer my question. What is your relationship with him?”
Sean pushed the paper away. “How much did you have to threaten to get him to sign that?”
“We don’t threaten kids, Mr. King. He signed it because he wanted to. Now, what is your relationship?”
“He retained us to investigate his father’s death.”
“His father was KIA in Afghanistan. He and his stepmother were duly informed of this. There is nothing you can add to that. It’s not like you can fly into Afghanistan and start poking around. It’s a war zone and a military zone and you would have no jurisdiction whatsoever as your PI license does not extend to international domains. I checked.”
Sean said nothing to this.
“So were you trying to take advantage of the boy? Did he pay you money? Did you ask for a retainer?”
“We haven’t gotten a cent from Tyler.”
“You mean not yet? But you would have billed him, right?”
“Have you really checked us out?” asked Michelle. “I’m assuming you have. So you have to know that we’re legit. We don’t run around like ambulance chasers trying to get money out of grieving teenagers. We found Tyler running down the street in the middle of a storm. He was upset. We took him back home. He contacted me and said he wanted us to look into his father’s death. We told him there wasn’t much we could do.”