Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
MAKENZIE
T he last week had seen like something out of a dream. Makenzie knew Irish thought she was a Little, but she wasn’t ready to explore that side of her again… She might never be. She loved the way he was taking care of her, earning her trust, but so had the man she’d last called Daddy. He’d done all the right things until he didn’t. Besides working at the office with him, she’d spent time at The Watchmen Clubhouse getting to know Kylie more. The other woman had become a friend, almost like having an older sister. She invited Kylie to meet some of the other women in town and Kylie was looking forward to it. For now, she reached for her Diet Dr Pepper and took a long drink. She was alone at the shop on Main Street, while Irish ran an errand out to the storage unit. He and a few of the men were inventorying supplies for their next adventure camp.
Makenzie's fingers hesitated over the keyboard, her eyes darting back and forth across the glowing screen. Numbers should line up, but these didn't. They sums were mismatched, refusing to make sense. She scrolled through the financial records of Irish's nonprofit adventure camp, and with each click, a pulse of suspicion shot through her veins. Something was off. The profits from their charity ride last summer, the bake sale earnings, the anonymous donations—they all seemed to blur into a messy trail of inconsistencies. She’d added and subtracted all morning and kept coming up with the same number.
Twenty thousand dollars.
There was twenty thousand dollars missing from his account. Exactly. Not a penny more or a penny less. Someone had moved the money around, taking hundreds from here, hundreds from there. She wasn’t expecting Irish’s camp to have millions of dollars, but with some incredibly generous donations, they’d managed to raise seven figures. It wasn’t like the money didn’t go back directly into serving the community. The donations were going where they were supposed to, but the account was short what it should be. Talking with Irish, she’d discovered he hadn’t ever truly known how much money he had. His teenage son had stayed with him over Christmas break, and he had allowed him to do some of the accounting. He was in an Advanced Placement finance class and Irish encouraged him to get involved with his company. Realizing the money disappeared in December, Makenzie’s heart dropped into her stomach.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, frustration knotting her brow. Her phone lay beside the computer, and she snatched it up, thumb hovering over the contact list. She should call Irish and tell him, but she wanted a second set of eyes on it first. If she was going to lodge suspicion at his son, she needed to be sure. Scrolling through the phone, she found Arrow’s number. Just yesterday, Irish had programmed it into her phone.
In case of an emergency, if you can’t get a hold of me, call Lucky. If Lucky isn’t available, I’ve programmed all the other officers in. Savage, Rampage, Arrow, Slash, and Mad Dog. You already have Kylie’s number. One of them will answer.
She’d met them all at the clubhouse. Each had a unique personality, but they were all trustworthy and kind to her. She’d hit it off with Arrow right away. A fellow accountant, she understood his mathematical mind and logistical way of looking at things.
“Hey, Arrow, it's Kenzie,” she spoke into the phone when the line connected. “I've got a situation here.”
“Talk to me,” came the calm reply, as if he could sense the urgency in her voice.
“It's about the camp's finances. There are discrepancies...gaps where there shouldn't be any.”
“Discrepancies?” Arrow's tone sharpened. “How bad?”
“I’d rather not give you an amount, until you look it over. I want to make sure we see the same thing. There's definitely something wrong. I could use a second set of eyes on it.”
“Send me the files,” he instructed, the command clear in his voice. “We'll figure this out.”
“Sending now,” Makenzie confirmed, her fingers already flying across the keys.
“Got them,” Arrow said after a brief pause. “Give me some time to look these over. I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks,” she breathed out, a mix of relief and trepidation swirling within her. She’d never gotten it wrong before, but there was a first time for anything. She hoped that’s what this was, an error on her end, although, her gut told her otherwise. “I owe you one.”
“Nah. It wouldn’t be right for Irish’s girl to owe me anything,” Arrow replied, a hint of a smile in his voice. “It’s what we do.”
The call ended before Makenzie could correct him. She wasn’t Irish’s girl. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, gaze fixed on the maze of numbers that mocked her from the screen.
An hour later, Makenzie's fingers curled around the ceramic mug, the heat bleeding through to her palms, a stark contrast to the chill of apprehension that had settled in her bones. The earthy scent of ground coffee mingled with the buttery allure of pastries from behind the counter at Day & Night, but she barely noticed. Her focus was on Arrow, who sat across from her in the bustling coffee shop.
“Looks like you were right,” Arrow said, his voice low, eyes locked onto the laptop screen between them. “The numbers don't add up.”
She nodded, her gaze flitting over the spreadsheet of numbers lined up like soldiers in columns and rows. “How much did you find missing?”
“Twenty grand.” Arrow said. “Not small change.”
Makenzie sighed. “Exactly what I found.”
“We need to dig deeper, find out where the money went,” Arrow said.
“I have an idea, but I don’t like it. Irish told me his son, Wyatt, was here over Christmas break from high school and he let him do some of the accountings.”
“Wyatt is a good kid,” Arrow said with a frown. “If you are going to make accusations pointing to him, you need to be damn sure.”
“That’s why I came to you and not Irish. The money went missing when Wyatt was here, doing the books. Is it possible someone else manipulated Wyatt into taking it? Or maybe Wyatt left the computer unsecure somewhere and someone hacked the account? There’s a lot of possibilities.”
“Agreed. There are a lot of possibilities.” Arrow closed the laptop a little too hard, drawing curious glances from the people at the next table. “Irish's office will have the full records and receipts. We'll go through everything, line by line.”
“Tomorrow?” Makenzie suggested, wanting to get this over with.
“First thing. I’ll clear my schedule.” Arrow nodded.
“Thank you,” she murmured, feeling the weight of the impending confrontation tighten around her chest. She couldn't shake the image of Irish, being betrayed and possibly by his own son.
“Hey,” Arrow's tone softened, as if sensing her distress. “We're gonna sort this out, Kenzie. Trust me.”
Makenzie met his gaze. She drew a deep breath, allowing herself a small nod. “Yeah. Okay.”
Makenzie's eyes flickered open to the predawn dimness, her mind already racing with the day's goal. Slipping out of bed, she suppressed the shiver that crept up her spine as the morning chill brushed against her skin. She dressed quickly, in a pair of snug jeans and a top that hugged her curves modestly. She left Irish a quickly scribbled note next to the coffee pot, afraid a text would wake him. After grabbing the office keys from the hook by the door, she headed to the small car she’d been loaned, grateful when it came to life quietly and she headed to meet Arrow.
She arrived at Irish’s office while the world was still hushed. The door creaked gently as she pushed it open, the sound slicing through the silence like an unwelcome guest. The room smelled faintly of leather and pine, the remnants of Irish’s presence. Makenzie got to work making a fresh pot of coffee as she waited.
She heard Arrow’s bike roaring outside before he strode in, his stride purposeful, a man accustomed to command. His nod was all the greeting she needed. “Coffee smells good,” he said.
“Already on it.” She handed him a mug while sipping her own.
“Ready?” Arrow asked.
“Let's do this,” Makenzie responded, more steel in her voice than she felt. Please don’t let it be Wyatt’s fault. She didn’t want to be the one to break it to Irish.
They settled into their chairs, side by side. Before them lay stacks of financial records and receipts. Arrow's fingers flew across the calculator, punching numbers with a precision that bordered on aggressive. Makenzie flipped through receipts, her eyes scanning for anomalies, her intuition guiding her.
“Okay, so here, on this receipt, it says they spent two thousand in lumber, but on the bank account it shows twenty-two hundred,” Arrow said, pointing to the screen.
Makenzie scowled down at the receipt. “It shows cashback at the bottom of the receipt.”
“Go through the receipts and find any others that have cash back.”
Within a few minutes, Makenzie had a stack of receipts that showed cash back amounting to several thousand dollars. It was something but didn’t equal twenty thousand.
Time lost meaning as they worked, the sun climbing stealthily into the sky outside.
“Look at this pattern,” Arrow pointed to a series of entries, his brow furrowed in concentration. “It doesn't add up.” She peered into the sheet and saw it to. A transfer to a Venmo account for a nonprofit.
“Again,” he muttered, his voice low and steady, “the same amount, to the same place.”
“Have you ever heard of this person or company before?” Makenzie asked. “Maybe we were wrong, maybe Irish has been donating to another nonprofit and just forgot to tell us.”
“I don’t think so,” Arrow said. “See, he has all of his donations listed here. It wouldn’t make financial sense, and not for this amount.
“If he didn’t make them, then all of these are unauthorized withdrawals,” Makenzie said, her voice sharper than she intended.
“Damnit. I didn’t want to believe it but look who authorized this one. He didn’t remember to switch usernames before authorizing it.” Arrow's hand hovered over a name, a shadow crossing his features.
Her throat tightened as she read the name of the user. It was Wyatt and there was a signature on the account it went to. A signature—a name scrawled with a familiarity that twisted her insides. Irish's ex-wife. The dates, the amounts—they aligned with their son's stay in December.
“Using their kid?” Her words splintered, anger seeping through the cracks. How could a mother involve her child in such duplicity?
“Seems so.” Arrow's jaw clenched. “I was hoping you were wrong.”
Makenzie's emotions churned. She thought of Irish and how this would crush him. Her hands balled into fists, the paper beneath them crumpling.
“Can't believe she'd stoop this low,” she spat out, betrayal souring her tone. “I know she was deceitful, but to use your child to steal money from a nonprofit that helps children?”
“Deep breaths, Makenzie,” Arrow instructed. She drew in air, slowly releasing it, and repeated the motion.
Makenzie's heart hammered against her chest, as she paced the length of Irish's office. She paused by the window, watching the world move obliviously outside. Her reflection stared back at her. Could she tell Irish of the betrayal? The thought clawed at her.
She pictured Irish's face, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, the way his hands, large and capable, had rubbed the stress out of her shoulders the night before. The roaring of his bike announced his presence. As he stepped off, Clover jumped down from the specially formatted dog sidecar. She could read his irritation on his face before he walked through the door.
“Makenzie Beatrice Sullivan, you better have a damn good reason for sneaking out of the house before I woke up this morning and leaving me a scrawled note on a napkin does not count.”
“I needed to get in early, I had a meeting.”
“You had a meeting? Young lady, you are going to have to be more specific than that. Who exactly did you have a meeting with at my business without me knowing? Last I checked, you were going over my books, not meeting with clients.”
“Um, it wasn’t a client.”
Irish put his helmet on the desk and took another menacing step toward Makenzie. His eyes were flashing and a tik appeared in his jaw. “Little girl, you have about two seconds to tell me what is going on.”
Little girl.
He definitely thought of her as a Little. Did he want her to be his Little? She didn’t have the time to think about that right now. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she turned away from him and picked up the folder on the desk next to her, the weight of the incrimination was heavier than the physical papers in her arm. A chill of dread coiled in her stomach as she turned to face the scowling man.
“My meeting was with Arrow. I asked him to double check my numbers when I found some inconsistencies.”
Irish stood quietly, waiting for more of an explanation, an undercurrent of anticipation hung in the air that even Clover, lounging at his feet, seemed to pick up on.
“What inconsistencies?” Irish's voice was a low rumble, the sound of distant thunder before a storm. His green eyes, sharp as emeralds, fixed on Makenzie, searching for answers before she'd even begun to speak.
“Yeah, it’s something you're not going to like,” Makenzie confessed, her throat tight. She handed him the folder.
Irish's gaze flicked to it and then back to Makenzie. “Let's hear it.”
Arrow, who quietly walked in just a second before, stepped forward, and cleared his throat, and began to unravel the story. As Arrow spoke, Makenzie watched Irish closely, her own emotions a tangled mess. She saw the flicker of confusion on his face, the way his jaw clenched when the pattern of unauthorized transactions came to light, how his fingers curled into fists at the mention of suspicious withdrawals.
“Your ex-wife,” Arrow said, his tone steady but laced with a barely contained fury, “used your kid to steal twenty thousand dollars from the camp.”
The words landed like a gut punch. Disbelief etched deep lines across Irish's forehead, his brows knitting together as he processed the information.
“Damn it,” Irish muttered. He raked a hand through his red hair, the strands catching the light as if set aflame by his rising temper. “Are you sure about this?” There was a plea hidden in his question, a hope for some mistake, some error they could laugh off later over beers. Makenzie only nodded, her heart aching for him.
“I checked several times before I asked Arrow to look it over,” she said softly, hating that she was the bearer of bad news. “We wouldn't be here if we weren't certain.”
Irish strolled purposely through the office to his desk. His chair scraped against the floor as he sat down heavily. For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the sound of Clover's tail thumping against the ground—an oblivious drumbeat to the unfolding drama.
“All right,” Irish finally spoke, his voice rough with suppressed anger. “I'll handle this,” he said, the words clipped, decisive. The muscles in his jaw twitched.
Makenzie watched him, her chest tight with conflict. The office felt smaller somehow, the walls closing in as Clover's tail ceased its thumping.
“I need to be alone for a while,” Irish said breaking the silence. “Can you go grab breakfast at The Rusty Crab or?—”
Makenzie nodded, “I’m sure I can think of something.”
“Thank you,” Irish said, his voice softer now.
As Makenzie stepped out of the office, her heart heavy, she cast one last glance at Irish. She felt conflicted, leaving while he was angry, but also wanting to honor his wishes.