Chapter 20
P hilly arrived at HICC the next morning bearing Bun Times doughnuts only to find Callie and Leo already set up in the conference room. He glanced at his watch, confirming he was, in fact, ten minutes early.
“I dropped a box in the kitchen, too,” he said, setting half a dozen treats on the table.
“They’ll be gone by now,” Leo said, opening the box and snagging an apple fritter.
“We haven’t started yet. Not on the Nolan files,” Callie said to him as he took a seat. He nudged the doughnuts in her direction, but she shook her head.
He narrowed his eyes. She’d barely eaten her dinner the night before either, taking four of the six chicken strips and most of her fries home in a to-go box.
As she’d methodically packed the container, he realized that he’d never seen her eat a full meal.
She picked and nibbled but never finished her plate.
He didn’t think she was starving herself—she looked healthy and said she ran most days—but she had an unusual relationship with food he didn’t understand.
“What have you gotten started on?” he asked, reaching for a doughnut.
“Leo was giving me the lay of the land. Who’s who at HICC and all that,” she replied, eyeing his maple bar. They used to be her favorite, and he’d made sure that three of the half dozen in the box were maple bars.
“Okay, so where do we start?” he asked, running his finger along the edge of the icing and licking it.
Her eyes tracked his movements, then met his. She jerked them away and looked to Leo.
“I ran a program last night that confirmed the transactions were manually initiated from Rian’s computer in the business’s headquarters in New York. But we’re not taking that at face value,” Leo said.
“You already confirmed they came from his computer, but he works with family and probably some employees who are like family. People who would have access to his office and his devices,” Philly said.
“Exactly,” Leo said, sliding a computer in front of him. “We’re going to compare the transactions against Rian’s travel.”
Callie narrowed her eyes. “Why his travel? Couldn’t he take his laptop with him and arrange the transactions from the road?”
“Yes, but he can’t mimic the IP address, which is consistent across all transactions, indicating it’s a desktop,” Leo replied, then paused. “Well, technically, it’s possible, but he doesn’t have the skills to do that.”
“So, we start by confirming he was in New York when the transactions occurred?” Callie clarified.
Leo nodded. “That’s step one. Assuming we find he was in town and able to initiate the transactions, then we need to find out if he actually did.”
“How do we do that? How do we do any of that?” Philly asked. “And how far back are we looking?”
Leo flashed him an unholy grin. “The bombing was four years ago, but once I started looking more deeply, it became clear that the bombing wasn’t the Nolans’ first rodeo.”
“How many years of skimming money and funding terrorists are we talking about?” Philly asked.
“I stopped looking at fifteen years.”
Philly blinked. “Was Rian even working for the company fifteen years ago?”
Leo nodded. “He’s thirty-nine. He started right after his MBA at twenty-four.”
Exactly fifteen years.
Callie’s gaze flickered to him, but she remained silent.
“I assume you have his travel records?” Callie asked.
“I do. I could have designed a program to compare the data, but figured with the three of us, it would be faster to divide it up and go through it.”
“And if he was in New York at the time of each transaction?” Philly asked. He in no way thought Rian was involved, but Aiden, and even Joseph, were smart. If they were involved in transferring funds from Rian’s computer, they wouldn’t do it when Rian could easily prove that it hadn’t been him.
“Then we move on to reviewing his credit card receipts and calendar. Just because he was in town doesn’t mean he was at his computer,” Leo said. As if digging up such information was as commonplace as finding a restaurant menu online.
Philly decided not to ask any more questions. “I’ll take the most recent five years.”
“I’ll take the middle five,” Callie said.
“Leaving me the first,” Leo said. “Files are on all your computers. Have fun, kids.”
Fun was not what they were having, Philly decided four hours later when his eyes were crossing and the start of a headache drummed against his skull. Of course, the three cups of coffee and two doughnuts he had—all he’d eaten that morning—didn’t help.
“You need food,” Callie said.
He glanced up to find her studying him. Christ, she was pretty. Always had been. Always would be, he imagined.
“What?”
“You’re getting twitchy. You always get antsy when you’re hungry,” she replied. “Or you used to.”
He flickered a look at Leo, who had his eyes fixed on his computer. Philly didn’t doubt Leo was filing away every word they said into his prodigious brain.
“I could eat,” he said, his attention drifting back to his computer. He only had one more year to check. Damn, Rian traveled a lot.
“Pizza?” Leo asked, keeping his head down. “I could have someone pick up Teodoro’s.”
His stomach growled. Loudly. Callie’s eyebrows went up, and a grin tugged at her lips. “That good?”
He tipped his head. “Better than many I ate in Italy.”
“Sounds good to me,” she agreed.
By the time their meat lover’s pizza arrived, courtesy of Teague, one of the HICC operatives, they’d all finished their reviews. Philly had found one transfer that couldn’t have been initiated by Rian, and he hoped it would be enough to encourage Callie and Leo to consider other options.
“I’ll go first,” Leo said, projecting a tidy table listing the dates of transfers and Rian’s whereabouts while juggling a large piece of pizza. Philly glanced down at his hodgepodge of notes and grimaced.
“As you can see, Rian Nolan was in New York City during the time of all these transfers. All 1,327 of them,” Leo said before taking a bite.
“Totaling?” Callie asked, picking a slice of pepperoni off her pizza and popping it into her mouth.
“A hair under twelve million,” Leo responded, scrolling over to a third column that listed the amounts of each transfer. From the few Philly could see on the screen, they ranged in size from as small as $2,000 to the largest being just under $10,000.
“That’s an average of one transfer per working day,” Callie said, selecting a piece of sausage this time.
Leo nodded. “But they came from several different cost centers and sometimes there were several in a day and none in others.” He scrolled over to show yet another column with what Philly assumed were cost center numbers.
How the man handled his computer and pizza, Philly didn’t know.
“There are forty-two unique cost centers,” Leo added, scrolling down.
“Hold up,” Philly said around a bite of pizza, his eyes catching on one of the dates from eleven years ago. He swallowed, then said, “Line 1,062.”
Leo paused his scrolling with the line centered on the screen. “An expense, then transfer of $8,989 to an account in the Caymans.”
“He didn’t do that,” Philly said, wiping some of the grease from his fingers. “Or the four that came after it.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leo and Callie share a look as Callie set her slice of pizza down. “And just how do you know that?” she asked, curiosity—and doubt—tinting her tone.
He grimaced, then flashed her a rueful grin. “Um, it’s classified.”