Chapter 9
9
LINDSAY
I ’d fallen in love with spreadsheets the first time a teacher showed us how to use them in the computer lab in high school. I knew they could be addictive, but I didn’t realize how much fun I could have until I started plugging the numbers from Paul’s notebook into one.
At first, it all just looked like a chaotic mess of numbers, scribbles, and shorthand, but the longer I stared at the data and fiddled with the spreadsheet, the more it started to take shape. Some of the numbers matched his bank withdrawals. Some didn’t. That part made me second-guess myself each time a theory popped into my head.
Beck was behind his desk, digging into the bookies and gambling rings the Iron Rogues knew about within a hundred-mile radius of Old Bridge. His presence was steady and grounding, even if I could still feel where he’d been inside me in the middle of the night. It was distracting in the very best way.
“You’re humming,” he muttered.
“Sorry, I do that sometimes when I’m super focused.” I flashed him a quick smile as I tapped my pen against the side of the table where I was working. “You should see me during finals week.”
“You always this dangerous with a pen?”
I winked at him and deadpanned, “You should see me with a highlighter.”
My quip earned me a low chuckle that made my stomach flutter. Now wasn’t the time to straddle his lap and see what kind of reaction I’d get. Or the place since his club brothers had come and gone from the office many times since we’d set up in here. After the way he’d handled me in the middle of the night, I had a pretty good idea of what he’d do, and I didn’t want to run the risk of someone walking in on us because there was zero chance I’d notice with how wild he got me.
I forced my attention back to Paul’s notebook, frowning as I traced a column of numbers. “There’s a second pattern in here. I just haven’t figured out what it means yet.”
“You will.” His voice was steady and certain as though there was no question in his mind that I’d crack Paul’s code.
Before I could reply, the door swung open, and Deviant stepped into the office with his laptop tucked under his arm.
“Got somethin’,” he announced, not bothering with pleasantries as he stalked over to the table where I sat.
Beck rounded the desk and dropped into the chair beside me, his arm slinging casually around my shoulders.
Deviant flipped the laptop open and turned the screen toward us. “Security footage. We’ve been watching the banks for camera hits tied to the account withdrawals. Check this out.”
Deviant tapped a few keys, and the footage on the screen jumped to life—grainy black-and-white video from an ATM security cam. Paul stepped into the frame, hunched into his windbreaker with the hood pulled low, as though he didn’t want to be recognized. He withdrew cash and glanced over his shoulder three times in the span of ten seconds.
“Now watch this,” Deviant instructed before pulling up a video with a different angle from only a few minutes later. “This one’s from a nearby gas station.”
Paul’s car pulled into view, and he got out without pumping gas, parking and walking two buildings over to a run-down mechanic’s shop that looked like it hadn’t been open in years.
“He didn’t go inside,” Beck murmured, leaning closer. “Just walked around back.”
“Yeah, he pulled this same shit after every withdrawal.” Deviant clicked through several more video clips—different days, different banks, always followed by a stop at somewhere odd. A boarded-up bar, an abandoned storefront, a nail salon with blacked-out windows and no signage.
“He’s not running errands,” I muttered, frowning at the screen.
Beck’s arm tightened around me slightly. “Looks like he was being careful. Too aware of his surroundings not to be up to some kinda shit.”
“Maybe he was waiting for someone to meet him,” I suggested.
Deviant shrugged. “Or was worried about being tailed.”
I grabbed my spreadsheet and highlighted two columns of numbers. One of the dates in the first set of numbers matched the videos Deviant showed us. “We already know these are when he’s making withdrawals and how much he’s taking out.”
Beck tapped the screen, right over the column before them. “And you already figured out these are betting odds of some kind.”
I clicked on the column to the right of the dates. “But what the hell do these numbers stand for?” Then I moved to the last column. “Or these?”
“Fuck if I know.” Deviant shook his head. “The weirdest part is that none of the places repeat. Different spots every time. Only thing they have in common is that all of them are within ten miles of Old Bridge.”
As I considered what he pointed out, an idea popped into my head. “What if that’s how they’re hiding it? They only take cash and move the location around all the time.”
Beck nodded. “A moving setup.”
“Make sense if they want to stay off our radar,” Deviant agreed.
“Different spots, different days, no digital record. Cash withdrawals only. No paper trail, no alerts,” Beck listed, rubbing his palm down his stubbly cheek. “It’s a solid plan. Nobody would even know they were on Iron Rogues’ turf unless you were following a guy like Paul and watching where he went.”
“And they were smart enough to keep the locations on the outskirts of town for the closest ones,” Deviant pointed out.
Beck let out a low whistle. “Sneaky sons of bitches.”
“And organized,” I added. “With how much money Paul’s burned through, this has to be bigger than some backroom poker game, right?”
Deviant nodded. “Agreed.”
“We gotta take them down,” Beck muttered, still watching the footage like he wanted to reach through the screen and drag Paul out of it by the throat.
I flipped back through the notebook, fingers brushing over worn paper as an idea niggled in the back of my brain. “We’ve got odds, dates, dollar amounts. But how does Paul know where to show up? What if the two columns I couldn’t figure out are some sort of code for that information?”
Beck quirked a brow. “You think so?”
“Maybe.” I flipped through the notebook pages full of dollar signs and numbers until I reached one that had jumped out at me when I was putting them into my spreadsheet. Tapping my finger against the paper, I muttered, “See this? I couldn’t figure out what the little dot was doing here when none of the others had one. I thought it was just a mistake. That Paul had dropped his pen or something when he was making this entry,”
Deviant leaned in so he could see too. “And now?”
“What if he skipped the dot on all the rest because it wasn’t necessary—he already knew what these numbers meant? But this time, he started to include it because he wasn’t paying attention.” I grabbed a blank piece of paper and wrote out the odd series of numbers, this time including a round dot and the letter “N” after the first one, adding a minus sign to the start of the second, and then putting another round dot and the letter “W” after it.
Deviant shook his head. “How the fuck didn’t I see that?”
“What’s the set of numbers for the date on the video we just watched?” Beck punched the digits into the map app on his phone as I rattled them off to him, formatting them like coordinates. After he hit the search button, the address for the gas station popped up on the screen. “You figured it out, baby.”
“Which means the column next to the dates are the military times without the colon,” Deviant added. “They match up, too.”
We checked a few more videos to test our theory, confirming that the times and locations where he went after withdrawing money from the ATM matched up with the numbers listed in his journal when converted to military time and longitude and latitude.
“This is it,” I whispered. “The notebook isn’t just a record of his bets—it’s how they pass along the info to show up at the right place at the right time. Who to talk to. Where to go.”
“The bastard is in a coma but left us a damn playbook,” Deviant muttered.
“One that screams organized crime,” Beck added.
Deviant shut his laptop. “Which means there’s someone at the top calling all the shots.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, adrenaline humming through my veins. “And now we have a way to trace it back to them.”
I sat back in the chair, the notebook resting in my lap like it had suddenly doubled in weight. We had locations. Times. A way into something that wasn’t supposed to be traceable.
“So now what?” I asked, glancing between Beck and Deviant. “You guys stake out the last entry and hope someone shows since it’s dated for tomorrow night?”
Beck flashed me an approving smile. “That’s a great idea.”
“If we want to know who’s running this and find the guys who beat Paul and came after me…” Beck’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t say anything. “Then someone needs to go inside.”