Free A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) by Ellie Ashe Page A

three-percent return. It's more like a loan from EFB, where the city delays paying back the bonds."  
    "But the city has to pay back the bonds eventually," Lindsey said.  
    "Yes, but this would push the repayment out for years. Maybe fifteen or more."  
    Lindsey nodded. "Enough for the current city council to be able to leave office without having to raise taxes to repay the bonds."  
    "Exactly," Ben said. "This also appears to have a built-in mechanism for unlimited rate-swap deals."
    "So it could go on indefinitely?"
    "No. The bill has to be paid," Ben said. "But EFB will make millions, probably tens of millions, every time the city opts for a rate swap."  
    Lindsey rested her head against the couch, her mind racing. This was not what she was expecting, but it made sense that her anonymous source was someone who understood the financial jujitsu going on in these contracts would want the public to understand what it was getting into.  
    "So EFB gets paid at every turn?" Lindsey asked. "When the bonds get issued, and again every time there's a rate swap?"
    "Yes," Ben said. "EFB gets a percentage of the bond package, so it's a pretty penny. Plus fees for just about everything you can imagine."  
    Lindsey took a long drink of beer. The percentage could be even higher considering ValCorp's record of cost overruns. Her instincts had been right—she was on to a good story here.  
    "So, why don't you tell me about how you ended up with these contracts," Ben said.  
    She explained her involvement with the arena story to Ben. Her troubles had started when she was assigned to cover the stadium issue. The city wanted a major league sports team—any sport, any team, and at any cost. The staggering sum to build the downtown sports complex would be paid off over many years through bonds.  
    Lindsey had joined a handful of the other local media outlets—a couple radio stations, four or five television reporters, and one other print reporter for the local alternative weekly—at the press conference announcing the arena plan. The story was huge. A multi-year construction project would put a lot of people to work downtown, and at the end, the council members promised the stadium would elevate Twin Rivers to a first-class city.  
    Lindsey couldn't find a critic of the project for her first article. Business owners who would be affected by the construction griped a little about traffic and inconvenience, but in the end, they'd rather have a pro sports team nearby than an empty rail yard and some abandoned warehouses.  
    But shortly after her first story, she received an anonymous letter advising her to check out certain contracts and internal reports. The letter gave her specific instructions on what to request from the city, and she followed the directions. What she got in return was pages and pages full of fine print, incomprehensible legal jargon in 8-point font.  
    "When was that?" Ben asked.  
    "About seven or eight months ago," Lindsey said. "I told Sam that I didn't have a clue what any of this meant and I needed help on the story. I needed someone with finance experience, maybe someone from the business desk."
    "Did you get that?"
    Lindsey grimaced at the memory. "No, not exactly."
    Sam had assigned Jeff Edwards, a sports writer who was not quite as intelligent as her dog, to help her on the stadium story.  
    "Nice enough guy, and he does have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things sports-related. But he didn't know the first thing about how the city planned to pay for the stadium and he really wasn't interested in learning."  
    She had returned to Sam and told him she needed legal expertise to understand the documents. Sam raged a little, then gave up and told Lindsey to take it to Lara Petrie for help understanding the legal jargon.  
    "How much help was she?" Ben asked.  
    Lindsey rolled her eyes. "She wasn't interested in sifting through paperwork unrelated to her job."  
    Lindsey had gone back to Sam, who at