Chapter 49
I still haven’t figured out exactly where the pain inside of me is. My heart? My stomach? My brain?
Everywhere.
I dash a tear off of my lashes and trudge toward the house we’re sharing.
When I get inside, I slump into the chair. The warm, masculine scent of Lucas hangs in the air. It’s as if my brain is programmed to recognize it now. My antenna is tuned to him.
I mutter and shove the other chair with my foot.
Why did seeing Lucas hugging her hurt so bad?
Silly, girl. Because you’re falling for the man.
“Shut up,”I tell the voice inside my head—the annoying one that points out my faults all night and day.
Because I was foolish and let myself think that maybe I could really be special to Lucas. Just last night, he said I was one of a kind, but that doesn’t mean a damned thing.
As I stare at the window, a butterfly floats by. The bright blue wings catching the sunlight.
Nature is amazing. Too bad us humans have to be so messy and complicated.
I sigh as I cup my head in my hands.
Why did I run? I should have just said, “Hey, look at me, remember, the girl you just slept next to last night…”
Instead, I bolted like a scared rabbit.
Maybe I am spineless. I know I heard it enough from my father.
I stand up and pace back and forth. My feet are heavy as concrete blocks. I need to tell Lucas?—
My pulse speeds.
What am I going to tell him?
If I give him a piece of my mind, he might decide not to help me. This puts me between a rock and a very hard place.
I need his help. If I don’t have it, he could call off the favor from my boss at PCI.
Dammit.
But can I stomach it if there’s a woman hanging on him?
That’s a hard no. Which means I need to figure out what’s going on at FamFind fast.
I drag my laptop out of my pack and sit down at the table. With a few clicks, I open my encrypted file. For the next hour, I go over and over the notes I’ve taken.
The very first time the board thought something was amiss was two years ago.
I scan the case report.
Fifty thousand dollars missing in the first twelve months. Another hundred and fifty thousand lost in the second year.
I’m jotting notes when the door swings open. My pulse leaps. I stiffen up, ready to take flight.
“There you are.”
My hand is clutching my chest. “Lord! You freaking scared ten years off of me.”
“What are you doing?”
I give him a look and motion toward my computer. “Working.”
He’s standing statue-still, stormy-eyed. We stare at each other, then his face softens. “Babe. You were supposed to come find me when you were ready to get to work.”
Oh, I did. I got more than I wanted.
A weird twisting sensation behind my sternum makes me scrunch my nose. “I wanted to go over my files.”
It’s not a lie. I just left out the fact that I got my eyeballs shocked out of me first.
He’s still in the doorway, studying me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m just busy.”
He moves toward me, and the breeze stirs around him. I swear the man must be geysering pheromones because there’s a party in my womb.
Damn him.
I scoot my chair to the other side of the table, away from him.
He lifts a brow. “Did you find anything new?”
I avoid looking at him. “No, but I made a list of the facts.” I push my notepad toward him.
As he looks over the key points of the case, I watch him quickly reading, absorbing the information. It’s hard not to appreciate him as an operative. Even if he just gutted me.
It’s hard to make my voice flat. “That last line, the one that’s circled. I’ll need your help for that. I don’t know what’s in two of the cargo boxes that came in on the truck. None of my team…” I stop and correct myself. “None of the FamFind team knows what’s in the cases. They’re not marked.”
He looks up from the paper. “How large are they?”
“Two feet squared, maybe a little bigger?”
“How much do they weigh?”
“It took two people to unload them, but mostly because of the size.”
“I’ll go tonight and have a look.”
He lays the paper on the table. “Why don’t you start at the beginning? What kind of financial documents were given to PCI?”
I hit the space bar and wake up my laptop. After a few more clicks, I open an encrypted file that contains spreadsheets. “This is the earlier accounting discrepancy the board found.”
He leans close, narrowing his gaze. “Shit, that’s a lot of money.”
I have to stabilize myself by gripping the table. My heart is wobbling inside my chest. Every inhale of his scent makes me more upset. “It is.”
I flip to another file as I try to get a handle on my runaway emotions. “Every time, the money was spent from the discretionary funds accounts.”
“How?”
“No one knows. The money just went out. No receipts.”
Lucas is frowning as he takes over control of the trackpad on my machine. “Not on a credit card?”
“Nope.” My tone is clipped. “The money was taken out in cash. Every time.”
“Who took it out?”
“My boss, Ralph. He would send it on the missions as emergency money.”
“And it never came back.”
“Correct. There are also some missing donations that never even went into the account. We suspect a couple hundred thousand more.”
He leans back in his chair. “That’s a fuckton of money to be carrying around.”
“Unless you use a crate…”
His brow goes up. “So, your boss sends two crates of cash on missions, and they never come back, but there’s no accounting for how the money is spent.”
“That’s what I think.”
He lifts the pen and starts tapping it on the notepad, filling one corner of the paper with dots. “Who was the team leader before you?”
“A guy named William.”
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared.”
Lucas sits up in his chair. “What do you mean?”
“He took a vacation and never came back.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not obvious. Where did he take this vacation to?”
“You get one guess.”
“Vandemora?”
I nod as I open a document that shows all the man’s passport activity from the last five years. “Vandemora is where the trail stops.”
Lucas slides the laptop over so it’s directly in front of him. “Sixteen trips to Vandemora and the surrounding countries in five years.”
“The ones in blue are work-related.”
“Shit. He travels a lot when he’s not working…”
Maybe I did find another puzzle piece. “Oh, my god, I think I might know how he’s traveling.”
Lucas grins. “Smart girl. How?”
“I found out Ralph has a private plane.”
He reaches across the space and wraps his fingers around my wrist. “I just needed to touch you. I love this side of you. Smart and sexy.”
My breath turns cold inside my chest.
I press my lips flat. All I can think about is Lucas somehow being involved with that woman. Confused, I pull my hand back.
“So, do you think you can get a look in those crates?”
“I know I can if they’re still there.”
I’m breaking out in a sweat. Not because of the case. But because I have no idea what to do now about what I saw or what happened between us.
It’s never been easy to trust people, but he somehow made it through that barrier. Except now, I don’t know if I should trust him either.
“Hey.” He nudges my knee with his. “What’s up?”
“I… uh. I’m just in work mode. This whole thing is stressful.”
His expression turns doubtful. He moves to stand next to my chair and his hand smooths over my hair. “Why do you seem so jumpy with me?”
Leave it to Lucas to be so direct.
I turn my face up to look at him. Something like recognition flares in his eyes.
Maybe I don’t need to say anything. Maybe he knows I saw him…