Chapter Seven #2
By nine the next morning, the Crownport Maritime Museum believed Isolde Dacre had taken emergency leave because of a private family situation involving her brother.
Making the explanation durable without making it interesting required several calls, an attorney, and one museum board member who owed Orsino a favor he probably preferred not to examine too closely.
Her position would remain protected. Her benefits would continue.
Her projects would be reassigned temporarily rather than permanently.
Thirty days gave them enough time without making the leave look indefinite.
Taddeo disliked the number for reasons he chose not to examine.
The harder part was Linnea.
He carried a clean phone upstairs and knocked on Isolde's door.
No answer.
He waited and knocked again.
The door opened.
She wore jeans and a dark sweater from the clothes provided for her, which meant practicality had apparently defeated principle sometime after the storm.
Her hair was still damp and pulled into a loose knot, and exhaustion remained visible beneath her eyes despite the fact that her expression was composed.
She looked at the phone in his hand.
“What did you do?”
“Good morning.”
“That usually means you did something.”
“Your museum has been told you're taking emergency leave for a family situation.”
Isolde went very still.
Then color rose beneath her skin.
“You contacted my job.”
“Yes.”
“Without asking me.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her forehead. “Jesus Christ, Taddeo.”
“Your position is protected.”
Her hand dropped. “That isn't the point.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him, anger gathering behind the fatigue. “Because you keep doing things that affect my life and then explaining afterward that the result is practical.”
“I didn't say you had to be grateful.”
“No. You've gotten very good at that defense.”
Taddeo let the criticism stand. “They were told Corwin is involved in a private family emergency. No one knows where you are, and the leave is thirty days with an extension available if necessary.”
Her mouth tightened at thirty days.
He noticed.
He didn't explain it.
“And Linnea?”
Taddeo held out the phone.
Her attention dropped to it.
“You can send her a message.”
The anger didn't vanish, but something moved beneath it.
“What kind of message?”
“You write it. I review it before it sends.”
“Meaning you censor it.”
“If you tell her you've been kidnapped by the Bellandis, yes.”
“What if I say I'm safe but can't explain where I am?”
“I'll allow it.”
She looked up quickly, apparently surprised by the answer.
“Can I tell her not to come looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“Can I tell her Corwin is missing?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't know who else is watching his contacts or what they know about you. The fewer changes around him, the better.”
Isolde looked at the phone again.
“Can I tell her I love her?”
Something tightened unexpectedly in Taddeo's chest.
“Yes.”
She took the device from him.
Their fingers brushed briefly.
The contact lasted less than a second and should have been meaningless. Instead, after the woods and the argument and the moment his hand had opened the instant she told him to let go, he noticed precisely what was absent from this exchange.
Force.
Isolde walked toward the desk beneath the window and sat. “Do you have to stand there?”
“I need to review it.”
“After I write it.”
Taddeo understood.
He stepped into the hallway and pulled the door mostly closed.
Several minutes later, she opened it again.
She held the phone but didn't immediately give it to him.
“If you make me rewrite this, I'm going to be difficult about it.”
“You've been difficult about almost everything.”
“I can get worse.”
“I believe you.”
That nearly changed her expression, but she stopped it.
Taddeo took the phone.
The message was short.
Lin, I'm safe. I can't explain everything right now, and I know that's going to worry you, but please don't come looking for me or start calling everyone we know.
There's a private family situation I need to deal with, and I'm going to be away from the museum for a while.
I have people around me and I'm physically okay.
Please tell Marcus I didn't finally destroy something valuable. I love you. I'm sorry.
Taddeo read it once.
The sentence about Marcus was smart. Ordinary enough to sound unmistakably like her without requiring the rest of the message to sound ordinary at all.
He handed the phone back.
“Send it.”
Isolde looked at him. “You're not changing anything?”
“No.”
Her thumb hovered over the screen before she pressed send.
The message went.
Taddeo watched the tension leave her shoulders slowly, not enough to become relief in any generous sense of the word, but enough that he realized how tightly she'd been holding herself since Mercer Street.
“Thank you,” she said.
The words were reluctant and quiet.
He would almost have preferred another argument.
“You're welcome.”
She glanced at him. “Don't make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where accepting thanks looks physically uncomfortable.”
“I don't have that face.”
“You do.”
Taddeo held out his hand for the phone.
She gave it back.
His own rang before he reached the stairs.
Orsino.
Taddeo answered as he walked toward his office. “What happened?”
“Good morning to you too.”
“If you're calling socially, reconsider.”
“I found something.”
Taddeo entered the office and closed the door. “Go ahead.”
Paper shifted faintly on the other end.
“One of the accountants went farther back through the Bellandi accounts. We have smaller irregularities beginning months before the eight point four.”
Taddeo stopped beside the desk.
“How much?”
“Forty thousand here. Seventy there. A hundred and twenty. Some reversed. Some buried inside development expenses.”
“Corwin's access?”
“Connected to some.”
Taddeo lowered himself into the chair.
“Some,” he repeated.
“Not all.”
The distinction changed the shape of the problem immediately.
“How far back?”
“Several months before Corwin disappeared.”
Taddeo opened his laptop while encrypted files began arriving. Rows of dates and amounts filled the screen.
Thirty-seven thousand.
Ninety-two.
Sixty-eight.
One hundred and fourteen.
Small enough to vanish inside normal Bellandi business if no one knew to look for them.
“Who knows?” he asked.
“Cesare. Me. The accountant. You.”
“Keep it there.”
“I assumed.”
Taddeo opened the first transaction history.
Corwin could still have stolen the $8.4 million. The evidence hadn't changed simply because something older existed beneath it.
But the theft no longer looked like the beginning.
It might have been the moment something already happening became impossible to hide.
Orsino was quiet for a second. “How is Isolde?”
Taddeo's gaze shifted toward the office door.
“She tried to escape last night.”
A pause.
“How far?”
“Far enough.”
Orsino made a small sound that was unmistakably amusement.
“Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was only thinking that putting an observant woman whose profession involves finding inconsistencies inside a heavily structured security environment was always likely to produce an interesting result.”
Taddeo leaned back. “Are you finished?”
“For now.”
“Good.”
“Taddeo.”
He waited.
“The earlier transactions matter.”
“I know.”
“If Corwin appears in some and not others, then whatever happened may have begun before he was involved.”
Taddeo stared at the numbers on the screen.
Outside his office, somewhere down the corridor, he heard Isolde speaking with Elettra. The words were too distant to make out. A moment later, Elettra laughed.
Taddeo found himself listening anyway.
He disliked how easily he recognized Isolde's voice now.
More than that, he disliked the fact that she sounded a little less miserable than she had yesterday.
Because of something he'd done.
That should have been operationally irrelevant.
It wasn't.
“Send the accountant to Northglass,” he said. “I want the complete access history from six months before Corwin entered the account through the night he disappeared.”
“You think there's another thief.”
“I think we don't know what we're looking at yet.”
“And Isolde?”
Taddeo glanced toward the door again.
“She stays here.”
Orsino was silent just long enough for Taddeo to know he'd heard something in the answer that Taddeo hadn't intended to put there.
Then he said, “I'll see you this afternoon.”
The line went dead.
Taddeo looked back at the earlier transactions.
The $8.4 million had seemed like the beginning because it was large enough to demand attention.
Now he was beginning to wonder whether it had been the opposite.
Maybe it was the moment Corwin Dacre finally realized what someone else had been doing.