Chapter twenty-seven
Spencer held his finger to his lips, signaling her to stay quiet as he gently closed the door to Zoe’s room. They’d moved her into her own room, the one between Clara’s and Amber’s, that morning as part of the process of getting her used to her new home.
Spencer’s hands landed on her hips, pulling her close as he leaned in.
“She finally fell asleep. She wasn’t upset, just chatty,” he whispered in her ear before trailing his lips along her cheek and stealing a kiss.
In moments like this, she almost couldn’t comprehend how much her life had changed from even a few months ago, let alone a year and a half ago.
And despite all the unknowns, something she typically wasn’t good at dealing with, she was happy.
A soul-deep kind of happiness grounded not just in the people in her life, but in the woman she was becoming.
She’d read somewhere once that resilience wasn’t about outrunning a storm, but about the foundation on which one stood when it came. Her foundation now was strong and growing stronger every day.
“Sabina and the others are downstairs. I think Dottie even made coffee cake,” she said, nuzzling Spencer’s neck.
His hands tightened on her hips. When she escaped Anthony, she never thought she’d want a man to touch her ever again. Now, though, Spencer’s hold on her made her feel cherished, worthy of love, strong. Strong enough that this remarkable man wanted her and only her.
He sighed, his lips brushing her temple. “I suppose we need to head downstairs then,” he said, stepping away, his grumbly tone making her smile. “Who else is here?” he asked, taking her hand and leading her toward the stairs.
“Mantis, of course. Dulcie, Scipio, Philly, Callie, and Leo. I heard Viper and Lina may stop by, but not sure. They were headed out on a ride this morning, and we all know how distracted they get when they do that.” She didn’t get the whole motorcycle thing, but thought it was sweet how the couple shared that love.
More than once, they’d gone for a ride that ended up lasting two or three days.
“Good,” he said. “Fewer people means more cake for me. Want any coffee or tea?” he asked as they hit the bottom step.
“Coffee would be good,” she replied.
He waved to the others in the room and made the same offer. Philly rose to help him bring all the requests from the kitchen.
“How’d it go with the lawyer this morning?” Sabina asked, dragging her attention from her keyboard.
Amber grinned. “I want this all to be settled, but I have to admit, I’m kind of looking forward to watching it unfold.”
Sabina grinned back. “What’s his plan?”
“He’s packaging up the statements from Clara, Adrian, and the nurse who helped me, along with the DNA test, and the doctor’s records Clara and Adrian have of her visits to the clinic for Zoe’s well-checks and vaccines, and filing to have a birth certificate issued.”
“Will he list Anthony as the biological father?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t so sure about that, but he convinced me. Said it’s better not to look like we’re hiding anything.”
Sabina inclined her head. “Makes sense. Still kind of gross, but at least she’s in good company when it comes to knowing that bio parents don’t necessarily make someone a parent, if you know what I mean.”
She did. Every one of the Falcons had at least one biological parent who didn’t deserve the name. She thought Sabina might as well, but she didn’t know the woman’s story well enough to say for certain.
“Juan will be the dad she knows, and you couldn’t ask for better for her,” Sabina said before turning her attention back to her computer. As if she hadn’t just dropped a bit of a bomb in the room. Sure, she and Spencer had talked about it, but they hadn’t shared anything with anyone else.
“Is he going to adopt her once custody is settled?” Mantis asked.
“I think you have to petition for a termination of parental rights first,” Leo countered.
“When Anthony goes to jail for all this, I’m sure there’s a court procedure that can take any rights he has away,” Callie added.
“Juan will want to adopt her, of course,” Mantis said. “No way is he going to let his daughter be raised without giving her the assurances that he’ll always be there for her.”
Amber sank into a chair as the conversation swirled around her.
She didn’t disagree with anything being said, and she should have known better than to think the Falcons weren’t already considering all this.
Still, it was one thing for her and Spencer to whisper about it in the cocoon of her room and another for it to be talked about in the broad light of day.
She didn’t know why. It wasn’t particularly rational, but it was what it was.
“What are you all talking about?” Spencer asked, entering the room with a tray of mugs, Philly following with a coffee urn.
“Whether you’re going to adopt Zoe,” Dulcie said with a grin.
Spencer’s eyes dropped to her as he set the tray down. She knew the look she cast him was a bit wild. His gaze softened. “I will be her father, and I’d like it to be legal, but Amber and I haven’t discussed that part yet. We have enough to get through before that’s even an option.”
She exhaled. “When you all jump in, you really jump in,” she said.
Both Mantis and Stone had fallen for their partners at first sight.
Philly and Callie had gone to Utah for a short undercover job for a few days and come back married.
Viper and Lina teamed up to find her father’s killer and ended up living together.
Lovell and Daphne were a little slower, taking them two whole months to shack up together.
And Monk, well, he’d fallen for Helia as a teenager and stayed in love with her for years.
Never let it be said that the Falcons hesitated when they wanted something. Or someone.
Spencer grinned. “Life taught us to hold on to things, and people, who matter,” he said. “Now, how about we get started? The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner we can all move on to the fun stuff.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Sabina said. “I spoke to the lab just before coming here,” she continued.
“They’ve tested the samples they collected and all of them had high levels of scopolamine.
They are running additional tests to see if they can determine if they can identify if the drug originated from the same facility. ”
“They can track that?” Amber asked.
Sabina wagged her head from side to side. “It’s easier with illicit or controlled drugs, but they think it’s worth a shot.”
“If they can track it to the lab Johanna works at, then that’s one piece of the puzzle tied up, right?” Spencer asked.
“It is,” Sabina said. “But proving that an overdose of scopolamine had a hand in their deaths, and maybe even that the drug came from Johanna’s lab, doesn’t prove Anthony was involved.”
Amber leaned back and huffed. “Proof, shmoof. We all know he did it.”
Spencer took a seat on the arm of her chair and set a hand on her shoulder. “Yes, but justice is rarely served on the wealthy, and I’m only partly joking when I say that.”
“I want to find the drug on Anthony. In his possession,” she grumbled.
“And if we can couple that with a money chain leading from the victims’ family members to him, even better,” Callie said. “And good news there, we’re one step closer on that front.”
“Not to be picky, but how many steps are left?” Mantis asked.
“Hard to say,” Callie answered. “We’re still working on the consolidator algorithm, but I have, as of forty-five minutes ago, managed to track outgoing payments from family members of the victims. Together, the eleven people Clara and Adrian identified paid out five million dollars.”
Spencer choked on his coffee, then cleared his throat. “Okay, that’s a lot of money paid to Anthony in a year. But if you can track the money out of the family’s accounts, and we know the consolidator paid it into one of Anthony’s shell companies, what’s the holdup in tying that thread off?”
“We know the money left their accounts, and we know where it went, but we don’t know where it went after,” Callie responded.
Amber blinked. “Is anyone else losing the thread here? How many layers are there between Anthony and the people paying him?”
Callie wrinkled her nose. “Remember me saying I wasn’t sure how many more steps there were?
Well, yeah, that. The money was paid into a holding company, and the amounts match what we know the consolidator paid into Anthony’s shell companies, but we don’t know how it made it from the holding company to the consolidator.
That’s the piece of the puzzle I’m still working on. ”
“We’re looking into a few things, though,” Sabina said.
“Such as?” Spencer prompted.
“The holding company buys and sells—and imports and exports—several goods such as art and antiques—”
“Items frequently used to launder money,” Philly said.
Sabina nodded. “But it doesn’t sound as if they are laundering money,” he continued.
“The cash is exiting legitimate accounts and eventually making its way back into a legitimate account. For nefarious purposes and through questionable means, but is there any doubt about the origin of the money?”
“And that’s the hang-up,” Callie said. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re on the right track, but what we’ll find, I don’t know. I suspect we’ll discover that some tangible good is fraudulently being sold as something it’s not and that ‘sale’ is triggering both the incoming and outgoing payments.”
“Like, I tell you a car is worth sixty grand, you pay that, but really it’s only worth thirty?” Spencer asked.
“And the person who sold it gets the benefit of the extra thirty,” Amber said, turning the idea over in her head.
“It’s a way to transfer money for illegal purposes that I imagine is very hard to prove.
After all, if someone is willing to pay sixty grand for a car that’s worth only thirty, then clearly, for whatever reason, it’s worth sixty to the buyer.
Or at least that would be the argument.”
“And that’s the crux of the issue. Or one of the issues,” Callie said. “But we’re getting ahead of our skis here. That scenario is a possibility. A strong one. But we have more digging to do.”
“At the risk of sounding ungrateful, any updates on the timeline?” Spencer asked. “And is there anything we can do to help?”
“We’ll know more from the lab tomorrow,” Sabina replied.
“As for the money trail, the thing about unwinding a ball of deceit is that the more threads you pull loose, the fewer there are holding the whole thing together,” Callie said.
“It was slower going when we started, and while I can’t put a hard timeline on it—and I know this is mixing my metaphors—I expect the rest of the puzzle pieces to fall into place pretty quickly. ”
“And you’re doing what you can be doing. This is kind of our thing, not yours,” Sabina said. “Stay out of our way and focus on what you can impact,” she added, shooting Amber a look.
“The lawyer,” she said.
Sabina nodded. “And building a relationship with your daughter.” She paused, a glint flashing into her eyes. “And maybe figuring out that whole adoption thing.”
“Pushing it, boss,” Leo said, sending both Spencer and her an apologetic look. “She means well but doesn’t always know where the boundaries are. Or she does but decides to ignore them.”
“It’s the latter,” Sabina said. “Mostly. Although admittedly, people sometimes get touchier about things than I expect.”
“On that note,” Philly said, rising. “Why don’t we all work on the things we can impact.
Monk, Kendall, and Helia invited us over to their new place for dinner tonight.
They still have a few more things to do before moving in full-time, but there’s a park down the street Kendall thought Zoe would like, and Helia wanted Amber’s opinion about something in the kitchen.
I think the rest of us are just pity invites, but since they live four blocks from my favorite ice cream place, I told him we’d be there. ”