Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The sky had darkened considerably, along with Kyle’s mood. He still couldn’t wrap his brain around the sickening truth he’d learned less than two hours ago.
Victoria is the accountant.
The critical, missing piece of his decade-long investigation. He should have seen it. Why hadn’t he seen it?
Because he’d been absurdly blinded by the fact he was falling for her. Now that fall had come to a screeching halt while his heart and mind went to war.
There was no turning a blind eye to the serious federal offenses Victoria had committed, but the man in him wanted to find justification for those crimes.
She’d been under the constant threat of physical violence, if she didn’t do all Yuri ordered her to do.
Yet the FBI agent in him had a difficult time separating that from the fact her actions had hidden the proceeds of kidnapping and homicide, and the location of seven bodies. If it had been anyone else but her…
Damn. He shoved a hand through his hair, the same as he’d done a dozen times in the last hour.
Automatic lights blinked on as they walked up the path to the church.
Deke followed a few feet behind, and Jack waited on the street, guarding their SUVs.
Since Victoria would be staying with him for the foreseeable future and would, most likely, qualify for official FBI protection, Kyle had released the security guy he’d hired to keep watch on her apartment.
Without knocking, she pulled a key from her pocket and inserted it into the lock.
“Father Sergei gave me keys after I started working in the office and helping with the children’s program.
He left for a few days right after service this morning, so the church should be empty.
” The lock clicked, and she pulled open the door.
“Wait out here,” Kyle said to Deke and followed her inside.
Beeping came from a backlit keypad. Victoria punched in a code, silencing the system.
She flipped on the vestibule light. The main portion of the church was still dark, but enough light spilled from the vestibule, casting the elaborate murals in flickering shadows that made the biblical figures seem alive.
“It’s in the office.” She led him in the direction of the room where he’d watched her read to the children.
No wonder she’d been so nervous when Father Sergei had escorted him through the church to find her. This was where the ledger had been hidden the entire time.
As he followed, the flowery scent of her shampoo wafted to his nose. It was the same scent he’d smelled when her hair had been fanned out on his pillow. He’d buried his face in the silky strands as he’d thrust deeply into her soft body and—
Shit.
This was exactly the kind of thinking that had to stop, the kind that completely obliterated his ability to do his job with a clear head.
They continued down the dimly lit hallway until she stopped to unlock another door and flip on the lights.
The administrative office was small in comparison to the grandeur of the rest of the church.
A large wood desk with inlaid green leather took up most of the room, with a chair behind the desk and two additional chairs opposite.
Four metal filing cabinets lined one of the walls.
“What kind of office work do you do for the church?” he asked. “Bookkeeping?”
“Among other things.” She settled in behind the desk and opened a drawer, pulling out another set of keys.
“I help out with filing records of baptisms, marriages, funerals, and financial records.” She came around the desk to unlock one of the filing cabinets, then crouched and tugged open the bottom drawer.
Reaching into the back of the drawer behind hanging files, she pulled out a laptop and a power cord. A moment later, she handed it to him.
For several seconds, he stared at it. He never thought he’d see this laptop again. “Is this the same one that was on the table in your house when I picked you up for the New Year’s Eve party?”
“Yes.” She looked away. “I never dreamed what’s on here had anything to do with murder. You believe me, don’t you?”
About that, yes, but she’d known the ledger had something to do with illegally obtained money.
By not giving it to him sooner, it was the equivalent of a lie by omission.
He nodded, setting the laptop on the desk and plugging it into a nearby wall outlet.
“I do.” He opened the laptop, waiting silently while it powered up.
“Password?” he asked when the login box popped up on the screen.
After she’d typed it in, he reached for a pen and pad sitting on the desk. “Write it down.”
After she did, he stared for a full five seconds, absorbing the emotional implications of what she’d written.
Tarankov. His undercover name.
Of all the password choices she could have chosen…
His insides nearly melted into a puddle of goo.
As he’d experienced many times lately, part of him wanted to yank her into his arms and never let go.
The wisest thing he could do was use the evidence she provided to throw Yuri’s ass in jail for the rest of his life, then walk away.
Shake it off, dammit.
“There are only two files.” She pointed to the unnamed documents in the lefthand column under Favorites.
As she leaned in, her forearm brushed against his biceps, sending a painful jolt of awareness quaking through his body.
Shaking her off would never be easy nor would walking away from her again. “Open the top one first.”
He double-clicked on the file, waiting for it to open.
Regret never ceased to stop boiling in his blood for not ending Yuri’s life that night at Sasha’s.
He was still ruining Victoria’s life. Her future rested on the numbers populating the spreadsheet on the screen.
He was also angry at himself. Was it her being the accountant that bothered him so much, or that he’d poured out his heart and soul to her?
Stupidly, he’d begun to forgive himself for his past decisions and realized he wanted a life with her.
Even if he could reconcile all that Victoria had done—all she’d concealed from him—she could go to prison.
Over the keyboard, he fisted his hands, wishing he had the guts to heave the laptop against the wall and watch it shatter into pieces. Like his heart. No matter how this ended, he was about to lose her again, and that’s what pissed him off the most.
He flexed his fingers and scrolled through the entries.
There were four column headings: Date, In, Out, and Remaining.
A fifth column had no header but each entry in that column contained two initials.
Seven line items total. Seven victims. He guessed the Out dollar amounts were either given directly to Nikolai Lebedev as his cut or transferred to an obshchak, the Bratva’s collective pool of cash used to fund their criminal ventures.
The total amount of money taken in was over ten million.
The grand total beneath the seventh remaining entry—Yuri’s cut—was over five million. Blood money.
Kyle pulled out his phone and cued up a report he’d made years ago, containing the names of the seven kidnapping victims and the dates their families had paid the ransom money.
Not surprisingly, the initials in the spreadsheet coincided with the initials of each victim, as did the ransom amounts.
The dates in the In column were all within two days of the ransom payments.
The normally smooth skin above Victoria’s nose creased, her eyes filled with more worry and anxiety than any one person should have to bear.
He wanted to tell her everything would be all right.
Not only couldn’t he do that, but it wouldn’t be all right.
Severing his emotions from what he had to do was the only way he’d get through this without losing his shit and doing something stupid.
Like running away with her to some part of the world without extradition.
Needing to formally record the facts, he pointed to the screen. “Is this the spreadsheet Yuri told you to make for him?”
She nodded jerkily. “Yes.”
“Was that before or after he told you to rent safe deposit boxes in your maiden name?”
“About a week before.”
“Did he tell you why he wanted you to make the spreadsheet for him?”
She shook her head.
No small amount of relief swept through him. As much as he wanted more evidence to put Yuri away, it was better for Victoria that he’d kept her in the dark on the details.
“Did you ever print out any copies of this spreadsheet?”
“No. Yuri specifically told me never to do that, or…” She shrugged and looked away.
There was no need for her to finish the sentence. He had a damn good idea of what Yuri had threatened her with if she disobeyed him.
“Did Yuri ever tell you to email it to anyone?” Where email accounts were concerned, Yuri was smart. They’d never discovered a single account in his name.
Her brows scrunched. “Yes. Nikki.”
“Is the account you sent it from still active?”
Again, she shook her head. “No, I shut it down after I left the hospital. Marissa told me to cut all ties with anything Yuri could use to find me.”
That was ten years ago, meaning those records were lost forever in the email void.
Long ago, they’d searched Nikolai Lebedev’s email accounts.
No such file had ever been found. Bratva protocol dictated Lebedev would have forwarded the file to a man named Maxim Sharapova, the high-ranking Bratva who’d managed the obshchak at that time, then deleted the file.
Ironically, Sharapova had died in a plane crash in the Caucasus Mountains only days before the FBI had served warrants on Novikov’s entire network.
Unfortunately, Sharapova’s laptop had died with him, and he’d had the foresight to set up his email account to delete all sent or received emails within minutes of being opened.
“What instructions did Yuri give you for making this document?”