Chapter Ten
“A man is dead.” Heat built behind Isla’s eyes. She put a fist to them to cool them and calm herself. “Please tell me it wasn’t murder.” That would be too much to handle.
“I got into the LAPD’s system. The autopsy is still being done, and that will take a while, but it is definitely suicide. They said he rigged the shotgun in the car to go off using his—”
“Spare us the details.” Nat looked green and tried to center herself. “I don’t think whoever did this expected him to do that. I think they assumed he would go away quietly. They may have even offered him money.”
“Then he should have taken it and gone off into the sunset to be forgotten tomorrow when the next scandal hits. This is LA. Where embezzlers and cheats are aplenty,” Rey wisecracked.
Isla didn’t buy it. “Not to some small-time accountant from the Midwest whose job was his identity and his pride, especially working for the Corrigan Group. He was humiliated. Probably thought he could never look his wife in her face again.”
Nat slouched back against the pillows of the couch, her usually animated, glowing face pale and drawn. “So we set up an innocent man?”
“Looks that way,” Rey said grimly.
Isla wasn’t going to claim that. “No. No, we didn’t set up anyone. We were duped just like he was.”
Rey clicked back to the photo of Leonard, smiling, fresh faced, excited.
No more. Isla went to the fridge and got herself a water.
Then one for Nat when she indicated she needed one too.
Rey opted for the bottle of tequila he pulled from under his desk.
He sank back into his tailor-made ergonomic swivel chair built for endless hours of sitting.
His frustration was clear. He looked defeated, perplexed, and a little bit angry.
The same as Isla felt, only hers was more.
Isla said, “He was an innocent.”
Her words hung heavily in the air. She looked at Matthew Leonard on the big screen, his face looming so that it seemed to fill the whole room.
He was smiling in this picture, yes, but she began to imagine his eyes staring at her accusingly.
She’d delivered the information they had used to destroy him.
She was the sword someone had used to cut him down to hide themselves.
Nat rubbed her temples. “What do we do now? Go back to Crabtree and Elliott and demand an explanation? Cut ties with them?”
“Demand an explanation about the information that we provided to them?” Rey scoffed. Nat shifted so her back was half to him, clearly embarrassed by her suggestion. Isla shot him a warning glance. Now was not the time to get weird with one another.
“My bad, Nat,” he apologized. “We can’t go to the firm because it was our intel, even if it was a rush job. I’m nearly positive that they didn’t know a frame-up was happening. They were used like we were, and we don’t want the Corrigans coming after us.”
“But someone out there is definitely behind this,” Nat said. “Someone inside that corporation.”
“They’re in the wind now. No one’s going to look any further now that the main ‘culprit’ is dead,” Rey admitted, finally turning the screen off.
Leonard’s photo was gone, but his image was seared into Isla’s mind. She hated being used. She hated making mistakes. What ate at her the most was that Leonard was dead and her team had been an unknowing accomplice to the act that they couldn’t speak out against.
“But they’ll want their money,” Isla said, venom filling her.
“No way they’re leaving millions sitting in the account of a dead guy.
They knew how to get it in; they’ll want to get it out.
You said the IP address originated from Virginia?
The East Coast is headquarters for the Corrigan Group.
Matter of fact, the family has their main estate in Charlottesville. ”
Nat asked, “You know that how?”
“Research,” Isla said quickly. For now, she kept to herself that the Corrigan name was deeply ingrained in her mind and that she had some history with them, sort of.
Rey said, “So someone, maybe someone in the family, set Leonard up using the PR firm and us, and even brought in the top guy to give the theft more clout?”
That’s right, Isla thought. Victor Corrigan was here in the flesh.
And his sons. Nearly ten years. The ten-year anniversary of the day Eden vanished was approaching near the end of the year.
Now the Corrigans had reappeared. It was like the heavens were telling Isla it was time for her to finally do something.
Something she could possibly do now that Leonard was dead too.
Nat asked, “What now? We just leave it alone? Go on with our lives and pretend we didn’t have a hand in this? Even if we didn’t know? We let ourselves get pressured, and Rey always says pressure leads to fuckups.”
“I love when you remember what I tell you.”
“Shut up.”
Isla wasn’t listening to their banter. Two people gone. The Corrigans. “We go to the source.” Her voice steeled as resolve took over.
Rey said, “Say what now?” Like he hadn’t heard clearly.
“I may not know a lot about how their businesses are run, but I know they are more impenetrable than the Pentagon,” Nat added, sharing a concerned look with Rey.
Isla’s mind rewound ten years, twelve. Back to when she was fourteen and her father was suddenly not there.
Her mind fast-forwarded two years to the morning she awoke and realized Eden had never made it back to the motel room.
She looked at her partners with a cold clarity that made them visibly shiver.
“We owe it to Leonard. And I owe it to someone else.”
Again they shared a look. Nat rose and asked if Isla was okay.
They knew nothing about Eden. It was a part of her life she had been too ashamed to tell them about.
How she had run away scared when Eden never returned.
How Isla had taken the money in Eden’s backpack even when she wasn’t 100 percent sure where Eden was, only had the feeling that Eden was gone for good.
How Isla had saved money from every check, every payout she’d received ever since, intending to pay back what she had used, as if it could ever be recompensed.
It couldn’t. Recompense was going back and handling business.
Determination infused her. “It’s time I did something I should have done long ago.” She took in a centering breath, preparing herself for whatever reaction Rey and Nat would have once she told them. She wouldn’t fault them. “You should pour more tequila, and some for me and Nat too.”
She took a seat at the table. Rey joined her with the tequila and three shot glasses.
Nat pulled herself from the couch, following suit.
They sat around the table in tense silence, waiting for Isla to speak, while Rey’s central command whirred softly in the background against the hum from the air conditioner kicking on to combat the heat from the electronics.
The sounds from the bustling pier below faded into the background as Isla began the story of her and Eden and her plan for what came next.
When she finished, neither of them said anything, too shocked by what Isla now wanted to do.
Isla’s resolve was unwavering. They’d never seen this side of the usually easygoing, unbothered Isla Thorne. The weight of what Isla was about to do was oppressive. She was forging into uncharted territory, stepping into shark-infested waters.
Going up against Goliath.
With no telling who—or what—would be waiting for her when she went back to where it had started.