Chapter Eighteen #3
Nate had his own list. “I will need to speak to each of these individuals. After the introductions, I’ll announce who the first one is. It’s important that no one thinks this external audit is for anything other than good stewardship for your shareholders.”
“This is a lot of names,” Joel said.
“You have a very large company, Mr. Mercier. Several companies. There are many places that numbers can be misaligned,” Luna told him.
Joel laughed. “That’s very politically correct for doctored.”
“Everything is an unintentional mistake until patterns are found and coincidence can’t be explained away,” she told him.
The phone on Joel’s desk rang. He answered on speaker.
“Everyone is waiting, Mr. Mercier.”
He thanked his secretary and they all stood.
“Let’s get this started.”
Mercier’s human resource department delivered Lewis and Gina. Both of whom were in their infancy as accountants and still in their probational period with the company.
When they’d first arrived in the room, wide-eyed and confused as to why they were summoned, Luna put them completely at ease.
After introducing herself, Luna gave them her expectations and a promise.
“Everything we are going to do over the next few days is completely confidential. The only people that should be asking you about our findings are myself, Mr. Warren, and Mr. Mercier. Not your immediate boss, supervisor, HR rep . . . no one. If someone asks you what you were asked to do, the answer is . . . I asked you to double-check my numbers and find the files I need to save me time. Which is what you’ll be doing. ”
Gina, who couldn’t be older than twenty-three, looked at the slightly older Lewis. “Is that all we’ll be doing?” she asked.
“That depends on what I find.”
“You’re a forensic accountant?” Lewis asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s a little beyond our pay grade,” he said.
“Your probationary pay barely covers your rent, car, and groceries, let alone those student loan bills that start coming way too fast. What we potentially find here will prompt Mr. Mercier to assure your success in his company, and I will personally advocate for compensation for your work with me.”
That had both of them smiling.
The door to the conference room opened and several people walked in with their arms filled with boxes. Luna directed the files to be placed in order of business and year. Then waited for the room to empty out.
BOHO was the first box she opened in the year she’d found the first discrepancy. Using the information Nate had given her, she directed her helpers to locate everything in the file pertaining to a certain individual’s involvement.
Within an hour, the files stacked to her side were a foot tall and both Lewis and Gina were locating files, checking numbers she requested, and barely keeping up.
Two hours in, Luna found the first thread to follow.
The satisfaction of digging for gold and knowing you were going to find it was what she lived for.
Set in a direction, she shifted her focus and searched for a pattern.
Five o’clock came around way too fast. Gina and Lewis left for the day, giving Luna the privacy she needed when Nate made his way to her side.
He came into the conference room for the first time and stopped short. “Holy shit.”
Luna looked around at the organized chaos surrounding her. “It always seems so much smaller when it’s on a digital file.”
“Find anything?” he asked.
She let her smile say everything. “You?” she asked.
Nate took a seat opposite her. “Mercier is respected, not loved, not feared.”
“Which makes loyalty limited,” she muttered.
“My thoughts exactly. Most of his executive staff have been with him for a decade or longer.”
Luna handed him her notepad with names and dates. “Anyone here on your list today?”
Nate lifted an eyebrow. “Couple of them.”
She handed him a stack of files. “Let’s compare notes.”
Nate draped his jacket over a chair and scooted it back.
They left the office at seven, got to the hotel at seven thirty, and were eating dinner at the hotel restaurant by eight fifteen.
They’d both taken a quick shower and were changed into more casual clothing.
Luna had put on a sweater; her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
She’d scrubbed her face clean of the makeup she’d had on at the office and had ordered enough food for two people.
She was brilliant, Nate mused. The enormity of work and files she’d gone through in one afternoon was astounding.
“How are the kids you’re working with?” Nate asked.
“Eager. They were a little scared at first, but they came around.”
“Why do I get the feeling they’re not checking your numbers?” he asked as he cut into the steak in front of him.
“Documenting, not checking. Most of it I do in my head, write the sum down, and have them run a tape and tack it on. Saves me time down the line.”
Nate smiled. “By morning they’ll have googled you.”
“They won’t find much,” she insisted.
“You’d be surprised.”
She stopped midbite. “Is there something you need to confess?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Nate?”
He shrugged. “I needed to know who I was working with.” And flirting with . . .
Luna huffed. “Is this before or after you spent the night on my couch?”
The first time? “Before. Your LinkedIn photo doesn’t do you justice.”
“What are you talking about? That was a good picture.” Luna took a bite.
“Yeah, from the college résumé assignment. You have a lot more wisdom behind those eyes now.”
“Are you saying I’m old?” She was teasing.
Nate lowered his eyes. “I’m saying you looked too young for a safe word.”
It was Luna’s turn to look away. “Wow, talk about changing the subject.”
Nate stuck a fork in the broccoli on his plate and looked at it.
Luna shifted her gaze from the vegetable to his eyes and back again. Her face flushed and she wiggled in her seat.
Her silence spoke volumes.
Safe word volumes.
Luna pointed at his food. “That . . . is a bad idea.”
“I’ve had worse ideas.”
“Nate.”
“You’re right,” he said, his tone resigned.
“Of course I am.”
Luna didn’t sound convinced. And the steak she was cutting into would be crying by the way she stabbed at it.
“We work together,” he said for both of their benefits.
“Exactly what I thought. The workplace and broccoli should not hold the same space.”
Nate put the food in his mouth and slowly chewed. Once he swallowed, he cleared his throat. “But to be clear, you have thought about it . . . right?”
Luna looked away. “It crossed my mind.”
He liked that she didn’t try to lie.
Luna looked up.
Nate looked down. “So have I. A couple of times.” A couple dozen times.
He heard her sigh. “It’s good that we discussed this and put it to rest.”
That was where she was wrong.
Admitting there was an attraction only fueled his desire to see what it would take to hear her whisper a safe word in his ear.
“Wouldn’t you agree?” she asked.
No . . . he wouldn’t. Because he was a fucking idiot who didn’t learn from his past mistakes.
Their eyes met and held.
“We have an early morning,” he said. “We should probably wrap this up.”
For the second night in a row, Luna and the sandman did not become acquainted.
When she did manage to fall asleep, she had dreams of Nate handing her a heart shaped box.
When she opened it, instead of chocolate covered cherries or strawberries .
. . it was broccoli. Even in her dreams she knew that wasn’t right.
But Nate stood there in all seriousness as if he were gifting her with a diamond necklace.
Luna didn’t even like diamonds. She thought the whole industry was a scam to make one family incredibly rich and everyone else jonesing to get a tiny chip to make them feel complete.
As those thoughts floated in her dreams, memories of Landon and the ring he’d given her . . . and how little it meant in the end, had her waking up.
The ride to Mercier’s office the next morning gave zero hints of the previous night’s conversation.
Which Luna thought was for the best.
She needed to focus.
They both needed to move through this case with a little fire while they had access to the players and files.
Nate finished with his interviews after noon and joined her and the young accountants.
The flow changed from there.
While Nate wasn’t an accountant, he was highly trained in following the money used in fraudulent ways.
Sitting in the same room, moving information back and forth between them, was as smooth as slicing into butter that had been sitting on the counter in summer.
Alone during a coffee break, Luna turned to Nate and kept her voice low.
“Check this out.” She shoved three ledgers in front of him and pointed to a line item.
He shrugged. “Consultant fees?”
“Right, not a big deal . . .” Luna brought another ledger for the first one. “Look what the consultant fee is for.”
“Office design,” he said slowly.
“Why would you need a consultant when all of your offices look the same?”
Nate’s slow smile matched hers.
“Who was the consultant?” he asked.
“That’s for us to find out.” She shoved the ledgers at him. “But I would bet money that it’s one of the LLCs that were run through the shell company. There are two manufacturing plants in Africa that were part of the merger, one sends their goods here to Houston, the other Vietnam.”
“What do they produce? Coffee?”
“We would have caught coffee or cocoa early on if that were the case.” Anytime fraud or money laundering was suspected, and the company was involved with coffee or cocoa beans, that was the first place she looked.
“No. One produces soap . . . bath bombs, the kind that is marketed as organic and costs ten dollars apiece at a mall store. The other is textiles. Where the shoes are made and then sent back to Africa.”
“I’m guessing Vietnam makes the shoes.”
“Yes.” Luna tapped a finger on one of the ledgers. “I have a hard time believing there’s an office building that looks like this one outside of Hanoi.”
“They sent us files on these companies.”