Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“ H oly shit, my eyes are crossing,” Gavin grumbled, scrubbing his hands over his face. After a relaxing evening with Bean getting slaughtered at Fortnight , they’d spent the rest of the night in her bed, relaxing in a completely different, more satiating way. Like clockwork, they were both up early and back at the office by seven. He had to be honest though, the rinse-and-repeat was a lot more enjoyable with her by his side.
“No kidding,” Xander said, leaning back in his chair.
They’d been going over the McClintock Family Foundation’s bank transactions since they’d arrived at work, and it was now a quarter past noon. He and Xander were currently seated at Team Two’s workstation. With the team out of the office, he and Xander had figured they’d mix up their scenery from the large conference room to the main room. The view out the floor-to-ceiling windows was nice—gray and overcast with an occasional miraculous sunbreak—but it was still fucking tedious work.
Abbot cleared her throat as she walked by. “Imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would have been if I’d just printed all that shit out for you guys like you’d wanted so you could do your old-school investigating.”
“Point to you, Abbot,” Gavin said, giving her a salute. “Thank you.”
The cyber team’s lead had balked when she’d received their request to print out two years’ worth of banking transactions for the McClintock Foundation. Bean had quickly thrown them under the bus, telling Abbot they wanted to go through the documents line by line with pens and highlighters, like an old-school investigation. Which, to be fair, was exactly what they’d wanted to do.
Abbot had flat-out refused. In under five minutes, she’d emailed Excel spreadsheets of all the foundation’s transactions to him, Alvarez, and Xander. She’d even included separate tabs with the transactions sorted by date, vendors, and transaction amounts, because she’d figured they would ask her how to do that shit anyway.
She hadn’t been wrong.
Paper pushing with contracts and agreements was one thing. Spreadsheets of mind-numbing data? Not his favorite.
They’d hooked up their laptops to Team Two’s oversized monitors, and Gavin had been looking into a few of the companies that the foundation had made large and multiple payments to—those that weren’t retail stores.
A throat clearing had him looking up. “Is Bean around?” Alvarez asked, approaching the station where he and Xander were working.
Gavin shook his head, a grin blooming on his face. “She went for a hike.”
Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. “ Bean ?”
He chuckled. “I know, right? Some program of hers was doing something. I don’t know exactly what, but it pissed her off. She needed a break. ”
“Why aren’t you with her, seeing as the two of you are joined at the hip?”
He flipped off his friend.
“Oh, please, tough guy,” Xander muttered. “He was getting ready to go with B, but McClintock called. So the poor baby here had to let his lady go by herself.”
“Christ,” Gavin muttered, slouching down in his chair.
“Please, dude,” Xander scoffed. “You were full-on pouting when you took McClintock’s call.”
“Whatever.” Weak comeback? Absolutely. But nothing his friend had said was wrong. He’d much rather be out hiking with Bean than staring at a spreadsheet with these two. He glanced at Alvarez. “Anyway, why are you looking for Bean? What’s up?”
“Maybe nothing, but I was looking at some of the foundation’s charges for the charity gala, particularly for the catering and event planning. The charges totaled just over a hundred grand and seemed excessive, so I tried to find out more about the companies. But I couldn’t find anything. No websites, no Yelp reviews, no socials. Which is odd for companies that charge that much, right? I was hoping Bean could do her magic and see where these companies are based.”
That was odd. “Let me see if Tiny’s available.” Gavin grabbed his phone, and after the second ring, the other man picked up.
“Hey, Frazier. What’s up?”
“Bean’s out of the office for the next hour or so. Are you free to look up some stuff for us?”
“Of course. I can patch in to one of the Smartboards. What conference room are you guys working in?”
Gavin glanced at his and Xander’s monitors. “Uh...” Shit . “How about I get Abbot to set us up on this end and have her let you know where to connect. ”
Tiny chuckled. “Sounds good. I’ll be on standby.”
“Thanks, man.” Gavin disconnected and called out, “Abbot. Can you set us up in the large conference room and get Tiny up on the Smartboard?”
She gave a brisk nod. “You got it, Frazier. Bring your laptops to the conference room and I’ll handle everything.”
They followed Abbot into the conference room. Gavin had learned a long time ago when anyone in cyber told him to do something, it was best to just comply. It took Abbot less than three minutes to get everything set up. Another minute later, Tiny joined them on the Smartboard via video call.
“While you were getting set up,” Tiny said, “Alvarez shot me the names of the two companies he was looking at. Five Stars Catering and Sunset Event Planning. A quick search shows both companies are registered in the state of Idaho with no registered agent on file. However, what’s interesting is that they both have the same mailing address. A PO box in Federal Way, Washington. Would you, uh, like me to check to see who opened the PO box?”
Gavin narrowed his gaze. “Are you as good a hacker as Bean says you are?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Gavin grinned. The man hadn’t hesitated one bit. “Then by all means, do your thing.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see this earlier,” Alvarez said, shaking his head. “I assumed the catering charges over the last month and a half were just for the gala. But then I remembered it was at the Four Seasons, and they do their own in-house catering. So why pay a separate catering company fifty grand? And the event planning charges are another fifty grand.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, man. An outside catering company could still be hired to do a specialty cake or desserts or some shit. Something that the Four Seasons doesn’t provide,” Gavin said. “However, for a company to charge fifty grand for that and not have a website or social media of any kind? That doesn’t add up.”
“Well, holy shit, gents, we got a hit,” Tiny said. “The person who opened the PO box was the one and only Elena Nabers.”
A chill crawled up Gavin’s neck.
Nabers was the same person who created Performance Exports, the company that paid Otton to shoot him, and she was now linked to the McClintock Family Foundation, whose president was Constance fucking Whitcomb.
He frowned. “Can you check in Idaho’s system to see if Nabers also created the catering and event planning companies? Better yet, can you search both the Washington and Idaho records for any other companies she’s opened?”
“On it. This may take a little bit of time, though.”
“Thanks, Tiny.” Gavin turned to Xander and Alvarez. “So we finally have a connection.”
Alvarez nodded as he ran a finger over his laptop screen. “According to the transaction list, last Wednesday, a fifty-thousand-dollar check was deposited by Five Stars Catering. That’s the exact amount that hit Otton’s account the next day from Performance Exports LLC.”
Anger simmered in his gut. Letting out a breath, he turned to Alvarez. “Can we get the feds or SPD to bring Constance Whitcomb in?”
“If we can get confirmation that Nabers also opened the catering and event planning companies—which are obviously bogus—I think the feds would be more than happy to ask Constance a few questions. They’d still need more info to link Whitcomb to the shootings, but the embezzling from the foundation is pretty clear-cut. I’m guessing they’d be interested in picking Nabers up as well. That deposit into Otton’s account—if Bean and Tiny can package what we have so it’s admissible—is pretty damning.”
Gavin ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t want to spook Constance though. We need time to get all our ducks in a row. Right now, she’s still at the resort, but once she’s on the move...”
“What if Quinn happened to pull her over for... expired tabs or something?” Xander shrugged with a devious glint in his eyes and gestured to Tiny. “I mean, what if there’s no record in the Department of Licensing that she renewed her vehicle registration and that little renewal sticker on her license plate wasn’t there?”
Gavin glanced at his friend and nodded, a smile playing on his lips. “That would be unfortunate for her.”
Sheriff Quinn O’Conner was a solid law enforcement officer who they all had great respect for. He was a Hudson Island local son and friend to many of them. He was also a former fed, and as sheriff, he was by the book and fair. If they were discussing their intel-gathering tactics, they were extra careful around him. They didn’t want to put him in an awkward position, and they made damn sure any intel they turned over to him was fully admissible in the court of law. Gavin knew it couldn’t be easy having a private security company operating on the island, so they tried not to rock the Hudson Island Sheriff Department’s boat and provided them with assistance if they needed it.
Xander grinned. “I’ll check with cyber on where Whitcomb and her bodyguard are at and I’ll...figure something out.”
“I’ll give Quinn a call and see if he can meet us here. It’s probably time to give him a heads-up on all this shit anyway.” Gavin turned to the Smartboard. “Tiny, I’m heading back to my office, but let me know when you’ve got something on Nabers and those companies. ”
“Copy. Talk to you gents later.”
Tiny disconnected the call and Gavin gestured to the now-blank Smartboard. “I like him.” He pinned his two friends with a glare. “But if you ever tell Bean that, I’ll deny it and find a way to make your lives hell.”