Chapter 25
Benjamin stepped out of the elevator and almost collided with Nicholas.
“I was just on my way to see you,” Nicholas said. “What do you need me to do?”
He motioned for Nicholas to walk with him, and they continued toward his office.
“I need a deep background on a public defender. I suspect that she might have been bribed not to put much effort into defending a young Latino who went down for burglary.”
“That’s easy,” Nicholas claimed.
“I’ve already looked at her financials, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. But she has a brand-new Mercedes, and there’s no way she could afford that car on her salary.”
“I can totally look into that. Give me her details, and I’ll start right away.”
“Great,” Benjamin said and stopped in front of his office. “I’ve also got the name of the dealership that transferred the title. Why don’t you start there?”
He opened the door and entered his office, Nicholas on his heels. One look, and he realized that Catalina wasn’t inside. Panic instantly rose inside him.
“Fuck! Where’s Catalina?”
“You brought your girlfriend to the office?” Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “At night? When the building is swarming with vampires?”
“I had no choice.”
Though on second thought, he could have driven her to his flat and left her there. It would have been safer, but he also didn’t want to exclude her from the investigation. After all, this was personal for her.
“Hopefully she just went to the bathroom,” Nicholas said. “So, where are the details about that public defender?”
Benjamin placed the tablet he’d picked up from Eddie’s office on his desk and snatched a piece of paper. “Here, that’s the info on the car and the dealership where she got it. Her name is Gloria Evans.”
He scribbled her name and the dealership’s address on the paper, then handed it to Nicholas.
“Anything else you can tell me about the case you think she tanked?”
Benjamin nodded. “It was the Preston burglary case. The kid, Santiago Vargas, was convicted of stealing a priceless necklace, which was never recovered.”
“Rings a bell. I might have read something about that in the papers.”
“Catalina is his sister.”
Nicholas whistled.
Suddenly the door opened without anybody knocking, and Benjamin whirled his head to it. To his relief, Catalina entered the room, Sebastian right behind her.
“Thank God, I was worried about you,” he said, looking at Catalina.
“You may thank Zane for that,” Sebastian said before addressing Nicholas. “Your father is a total stickler for rules. He insisted on Catalina getting a visitor pass. If I hadn’t taken her to the reception myself, he would have dragged her there by her hair.”
“He can be such an ass sometimes,” Nicholas said.
“Zane is your father?” Catalina asked, looking surprised.
Nicholas shrugged. “Can’t choose family.” Then he tipped his chin in Benjamin’s direction. “I’ll get right on this. I’m assuming you need this urgently.”
Benjamin nodded. “I’m under time pressure on this case. The sooner, the better.”
“Say no more.” Nicholas left the office and closed the door behind him.
“I’m sorry about Zane. Did you leave the office and run into him?” he asked, looking at Catalina.
“No, he came in, looking for you.” She cleared her throat. “He was very… uhm…”
“Rude?” Benjamin finished her sentence.
“He was harassing her with his usual manners,” Sebastian interrupted. “Or lack thereof.”
Benjamin put his hand on Catalina’s forearm and squeezed it. “I’m sorry, baby. I’ll have a word with him later.”
“Don’t,” she replied. “I don’t want you to argue with him because of me.”
He hesitated. But she was right. Besides, he had no time to argue with Zane. He had more important things to do.
“Alright,” he finally said. “Sebastian, thanks for taking care of Catalina. I guess I should have gotten her a visitor pass when we entered the building. My fault.”
“So, where’s the video you want me to analyze?” Sebastian asked.
Benjamin grabbed the tablet and navigated to the video he’d downloaded from the link Anita had emailed him. “This is it.”
Sebastian tapped on the screen, and the video played. When the video finished, he looked up.
“It’s pretty good. It would help if I had something to compare it to,” Sebastian mused.
“What do you mean by compare?”
“Any other footage from the same camera. It would give me more data points to analyze,” he said.
“There is another video from the same camera,” Benjamin said. “My dad has a copy of it. Let me ask him to email it to me.”
He picked up the phone and dialed his father’s office, knowing that he would have returned there by now.
He could see Catalina’s anxious expression.
It was clear that her encounter with Amaury made her worry he wouldn’t support what they were doing.
She couldn’t be more wrong. Nobody in his extended Scanguards family would undermine one of them when it came to family.
And since Catalina would soon be part of the family, her brother, Santiago, would be too.
“Yeah?”
“Dad, the video the Prestons sent you, can you please email it to me?”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks.”
He ended the call. A few seconds later, a ping sounded, and he opened the email directly on the tablet, then saved the attachment his father had sent. He tapped on it to play, and Sebastian watched. When it stopped, Sebastian’s gaze ping-ponged from him to Catalina.
“Do I need to know what this is about?”
Catalina cleared her throat. “The video with me and Benjamin is real. It happened. I tried to break into the Prestons’ safe to prove that my brother never stole that necklace.”
Sebastian pointed to the screen. “So, this guy is your brother? And I’m assuming you want to know if the video with him in it is fake?”
“Exactly,” she replied.
He nodded, then looked at Benjamin. “I guess you want the results sooner rather than later?”
“You’ve got it,” Benjamin confirmed.
“Okay, talk later,” Sebastian said and left the office.
Alone with Catalina again, Benjamin pulled her into his arms. She molded her body to his, and it felt good to have her close.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with Zane. He’s an acquired taste.”
“Is he really Nicholas’s father? How old is Nicholas?”
He knew where she was going with her questions.
Zane looked far too young to have a son in his thirties.
Not that Nicholas looked like he was in his early thirties, because he too had stopped aging at the age of twenty-one.
How much longer would he have to lie to her about who he and his friends and family really were?
But right now wasn’t the right time to make such a confession.
He had to sit her down for it and take his time explaining what it all meant. It had to wait.
“Yes, Zane is his father.”
“That’s impossible. He’s too young.” She shook her head, her forehead furrowed.
He shrugged. “What can I tell you?”
“Let me guess: good genes?”
“Maybe his work is keeping him young,” Benjamin lied. “Which reminds me: we need to look into the Prestons.”
“And look for what?”
He was glad that his change of subject had directed Catalina’s thoughts away from why he wasn’t the only one who had a young-looking father.
“Anything that gives them a reason why they would have framed your brother for the theft of the necklace,” he said.
For a moment, he thought that Catalina hadn’t heard him, because she simply stared at him as if she was looking through him. Then suddenly, her eyes focused again.
“The necklace was insured. But you can’t just call the insurance and say it was stolen or lost. You need a police report… and, even better, a guilty party.” She blinked. “Maybe the Prestons needed money.”
“Then why not sell the necklace?” Benjamin asked. “At an auction, they might have gotten more than what the insurance paid out. And there would have been less scrutiny too, less publicity. Why would they willingly put themselves in the public eye if this was about money?”
“I don’t know. But it has to be. They had no personal beef with my brother or his employer. They weren’t taking revenge on him for something. They just needed a fall guy. Can we find out about their financial situation?”
“We can try.”
However, simply hacking into their financials wouldn’t be enough. That was the easy part. They needed somebody who could interpret the records. Somebody who could audit them. And he knew exactly who could help him with that.