25. Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Brennon
Jack held me back after our staff meeting two days ago only to give me the most mindless fucking task.
He wanted me to go back through the camp’s payment records from the last five years.
He claimed Agonde was being audited, and I needed to make sure there weren’t any outstanding accounts.
There definitely were. The thing about rich folks–and I would fucking know, having seen Blue do it a thousand times–is that they stayed rich by avoiding paying for shit whenever possible.
Not that I wanted to spend the next however long scrolling through accounts.
Especially not in favour of participating in the theme day. I would look sick in a toga.
But when I told Jack to just hire an accountant, he fired back that I was on thin ice.
With him, and everyone else in my life, it seemed.
Hence why I was at my desk when Birdie hurtled out of Jack’s office yesterday.
Her hand was covering her mouth like she was about to puke.
My feet beat against the floor, my whole body screaming at me to go after her, even though my brain offered up the helpful reminder that I was the last person she wanted comforting her. She had Xav for that.
Nor was I needed for the theme day today, either. After breakfast, Cole and Abbi had gathered the whole staff and outlined everyone’s roles for the day’s activities. Except mine. When they dismissed the crowd, I’d approached them to ask about it. Abbi started, “Oh shit, Bren, sorry. You’re-”
“Not needed,” Cole ground out.
Abbs look surprised by his interruption, “But wasn’t he going to-”
He cut across her a second time, brown eyes hard, “Just go back to the office. Like I said, we don’t need you.”
He dismissed me without even a second look, shouting for Abbi to follow him.
She shot me a grim smile and a quick “Sorry” before running to catch up with him.
Cole might not be giving me, or what happened in the paddle shed a second thought, but for me, it was more than just some seedy rendezvous, albeit a hot one.
It was more like coming home to find someone I missed waiting for me.
Him walking out on me afterwards, well, that was like having the metaphorical door slammed in my face.
My father only wishes he could hurt me like that.
It’s easy to explain how you meet someone new, share stories or interests, and maybe, eventually, you become friends.
But how do you explain the reverse? How someone, or three someone’s, who knew everything about you just drifted or faded away until you were barely more than strangers passing each other by. Fuck, barely even making eye contact.
All summer, it felt like just maybe Cole and I were clawing our way back to who we used to be.
Then I went and fucked it all the way up.
I couldn’t help myself. When I followed Cole into that shed, it was like seeing my own desires mirrored back at me.
His tortured, lonely expression, one I’d worn many times since last summer.
Stupidly, I’d thought maybe we could be a little less lonely.
Then again, maybe it was karma. Cole running away from me after what went down between us sure felt like karma for abandoning Xav last summer.
For refusing to listen to him and Toni all this time.
Xav was stealing his way into the office whenever he could.
I would know. My cameras caught him every time.
He staggered around, not knowing where to look, or more accurately, how to look.
But I did. As I sat behind my computer screen, going through years’ worth of records, I also berated myself for not doing this sooner.
His sister’s shocking disappearance changed Xavi.
He was always the quietest amongst the four of us, more so after that.
At least with everyone else. For us, for the rest of that summer, we were rarely apart unless we were forced to be, like at night when Toni was forced to return to her cabin without us.
Xavi, in particular, hated that, and more than once, we tried to sneak our way over there after lights out.
But we were ten, and about as stealthy as elephants on an open plain, so Nathan stopped us every time.
If we were friends before, after that, we were something else. Until we weren’t, of course. And by the time I had the kind of access that might actually get Xav his answers, I was too caught up in resenting him to even remember to try.
But I was trying now. Since I was already going through payment records, it was easy to add camper records into the mix.
Everything from the last five years was pretty much digitized, thanks to little old me, but the records from before that were the ones he’d been stealing that were currently locked up in Jack’s office.
Unfortunately for Xav, Jack had taken to locking it again.
I scrolled through record after record. Even with the digital files it was a labour-intensive process, since our payment records were managed via a separate software from the one I’d built to manage camper records.
So, for every single camper, I had to open their file, track down some kind of identifier, like the name of parents or a guardian, and then manually scroll through the accounts and receipts.
Jack didn’t do me any damn favours, either, because instead of switching to online transactions like the rest of goddamned world, he was still accepting cheques, cash, credit cards, and more.
So, all in all, things were moving at a snail’s pace.
By the time lunch rolled around, I’d only gone back three years.
Even worse, those were the newer transactions, more records, more digital payments, or in other words, easier to sort out.
The further back I went, the slower my pace.
Since I didn’t want to spend tomorrow doing this, too, I opted to work through dinner.
I was nearly five years into Agonde’s financial records, and there were a handful of records that didn’t make sense.
Some from this summer, where families had paid more than the standard set fees, and others, where there was no trace of a payment at all, yet their camper files showed as being “paid in full.”
Then, there was nothing, every transaction matching up perfectly to a camper file or family record for the last four years, until I got to one record from five years ago.
Carpenter, Stephanie. The girl was a bitch and strutted around here like she was some kind of princess.
She certainly turned up her nose at people like someone who’d been spoiled her whole life.
On more than one occasion, I heard her refer to her father as ‘daddy’ which was just gross coming from an eighteen-year-old.
Yet, according to the accounts from that summer, there were no payments from any credit card or bank account held in the name Carpenter.
There wasn't a single hint of a payment history. It was like the girl, or more likely, her ‘daddy’, had never paid a dime in camper fees. The inside of my skull felt like a detective’s cork board, with red strings running in a million directions, connecting camper names to account numbers or vice versa.
But the Carpenter name was a loose string I couldn’t quite place.
There were others, not on the camper end but in Agonde’s account statements.
Two transactions I couldn’t identify. One incoming and one outgoing.
I sighed heavily. This was going to require digging.
Outgoing transactions weren’t clearly labelled.
The only identifier was an account number.
Thankfully, that gave me enough information to figure out which bank held the account.
On the bank’s website there was a generic email for inquiries, so I quickly outlined what I was looking for, gave the account number, and asked if they could track down the account holder’s name.
Honestly, I doubted they’d give it to me, but maybe I’d get lucky.
With that sent, I moved on to the incoming transactions.
Those were labelled. That’s how I’d been able to match up all the payments to camper records.
But this one wasn’t a surname or family name.
Just a nine-digit numerical code. It wasn’t a phone number; I tried dialling it and the line went dead.
Then, I tried typing it into a search browser.
The internet connection, even though it was a wired one, was slow as hell, so it took ages for the page to load.
When it did, the first listing was for the Canada Revenue Agency.
It was a tax code, or more specifically, a business identification number.
From there, it was like peeling an onion.
Really fucking slowly. The revenue agency’s online search function turned up a business name, BHW International.
That, and another regular internet search produced a website for BHW International, an international logistics company specializing in shipping.
One thing about knowing how the back end of websites work, is that I was well aware that most websites, especially large company websites weren’t created like someone’s personal blog or the cheesy website of Sally’s home candle business.
They were more like an arm, or, if the company was big enough, like the finger belonging to the hand of a larger organization, that in turn belonged to an arm, until eventually everything connected back to the real owner, or parent company.
You just needed to know how to find the connections.
Backtracking through BHW took me through a series of other companies until I got to the dead end, the parent, and the name on my screen sent sirens going off inside my brain.
My heart raced and, goddamn, my stomach bottomed out as I read the words again.
BHW International was the shipping and wholesale arm of Barrett Holdings Limited.
I checked the date on the transaction again. May. Nearly six months after the trial, and after Toni disappeared. So why was Franklin Barrett’s company making payments to Agonde when the daughter he’d sent here was long gone?
I couldn’t exactly pick up the phone and call Franklin Barrett.
As if he’d answer. Nor was I going to approach Toni’s psychotic twin brother, which left me with only two options.
Ask Jack, who–I now agreed with Toni–was up to some seriously shady shit.
Or I could try to talk to Birdie. It hadn’t gone well at all last time.
Seeing her with Xav had sent me spiraling down a reckless path with Cole that both of us were still reeling from. But it was my best, and only option.
I exited the office just as Abbi and Riley were walking up the steps.
“Where are you going?”
Riley looked taken aback by my question. Abs just batted back, “What’s it to you?”
I shook my head. Hunting down conspiracies all day had turned me paranoid. “Sorry, sorry, never mind. Just, uh, don’t touch my desk, ‘kay?”
“Obviously not, man. Abbs has to do her course registration, so we were going to use my computer. Plus, we need to kill some time.”
She knuckled him on the shoulders, with a mumble, “Shut it.”
“Why do you need to kill time?” I dug in.
Riley, naive as he was, didn’t catch the horrified look on Abbi’s face as he spilled the details with a laugh, “Because Abbs here let Toni and Xavier use her cabin as a secret little love nest.”
Abbi hit him way harder this time, “Riles, SHUT. UP.”
“Toni’s in your cabin?” I yelped the question.
“Yes,” she quit clobbering Riley so she could point her finger at me, “But don’t go causing more trouble. She doesn’t need you shitting all over her again.”
“You don’t…you don’t…ahh, fuck it!” I shouted as I gave up trying to explain.
Leaving those two looking very confused behind me, I made a run for it.
There was too much going on, too many unanswered questions for this to wait until I just casually ran into Birdie.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t just a bit off. It stank of something rancid.
All this chasing after people, Mitchell, Toni, Xav, and my cardio was getting better.
That, and I hadn’t smoked anything in more than six weeks.
But I was still a bit out of breath when I got to the Village.
Abbi’s cabin was down a small slope between mine and Toni’s, and across the path, I could see the light on inside.
I didn’t want to scare her, or worse, walk in while she and Xav were fucking.
That was the last thing I needed in this situation.
Pretty hard to have a serious conversation about financial fraud when you’re sporting a raging hard-on.
So instead of knocking or busting through the door, I approached the small window on the side.
I tried to be stealthy as I peered through the window.
What greeted me wasn’t another round of my two favourite toys fucking.
It wasn’t Toni’s face or even Xav’s. Before my eyes, was a terrifying tableau.
One that in an instant told me every promise, every sentence, every sworn solemn word of Birdie’s I’d ever thought was a lie, was one hundred percent true. And I was a fucking moron.