“Find anything interesting on my desk?” The question was sharp. Whatever had made him unfocused and irritable had been cured by his nap. Caroline silently cursed herself for not being quicker at her task.
“Yes.” She might as well admit to the lesser of her sins. It would distract him from the issue of the computer. The check carbon had been on top of the desk, if not on top of the boutique bills, but it was fair game. Not private, not in the way password-protected files were. Reminding herself that it wasn't as if she'd done anything wrong. Caroline searched for the carbon under everything else. “Fifteen thousand in advance for a painting by Miss Nobody? Are you crazy?”
“Erin Randall is a talented young woman and I got a bargain.”
“You lied to me!”
“So I did. To keep the peace. But you aren't entitled to question any expenditure I choose to make.”
“That much money would buyâ”
“Oh, here we go again.” Montgomery looked mad enough to break something big. “Shut up. Just shut up.”
“I want a ring!” she burst out. “That's not too much to ask for! Not after all this time!”
“You sound like a little girl,” he said contemptuously. “Go on back home to daddy. If he hasn't rented out your room.”
“What?” she shrieked. “Are you trying to insult me or my father? He's worth ten of you!”
She sank her red nails into the upholstered back of one of the gigantic armchairs, clutching it so as not to fling herself at him. Monty thrust his hands into his pockets and stood his ground.
“Is he? Maybe not,” he said calmly. “But I take back the remark about him renting out your room. That wasn't nice.”
She took a heaving breath. “Don't do me any favors.”
“He can't, Caro. The Loudon house and the land it stands on are in foreclosure. The sign went up on the front lawn this morning. It's hard to see across two acres of grass, but it's there.”
“What?”
Montgomery took a step toward her. “You don't have anywhere to go at the moment. But I won't bother you.”
She stared at him in shock.
“I think it's fair to say that what we had is over, don't you? And by the way, I don't want to hurt you.”
“Montyâ” She said his name in a cracking whisper.
“I'm sure you have a lot of things to think about, Caroline. I certainly do. In the meantime, leave me alone.”
He took a step forward in the direction of the partner's desk, and for the second time that day, she fled from him.
Montgomery listened until the sound of her running footsteps diminished. A door slammed far away. He went to his desk and bent down a little to run a hand over the concealed latch. It hadn't been tripped. His laptop was safe and so were the hidden papers in the recess.
Then he sat and turned to the computer she'd gotten into. It was a top-of-the-line model, fully functioning, but essentially a decoy, loaded with dummy files set up to fool someone who was financially unsophisticated and didn't know much about computers.
Caroline was both. He had to keep her away from the real secrets.
The phone on the desk rang and Montgomery answered, rubbing his temple. His headache was back and somewhat worse.
“Hello.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Montgomery.”
“Hello, Sidney.”
He knew exactly why his accountant was calling and fiddled with a pencil while he listened.
“We got an alert five minutes ago. Miss Loudon took the bait. And we got her doing it on the PC's webcam if she says she didn't.”
His reply was weary. “She was cornered. What else would she say?”
Sidney was too tactful to ask what was going on. He stuck to the facts. “And just so you know, the records of the file downloads she made are in our encrypted files and copied to a backup hard drive.”
“Overkill,” Montgomery said. “There isn't anything on them she can use, right?”
“No, nothing at all,” Sidney assured him. “Paul created a fun little fake company for you. For a college kid, he gets an amazing amount done. Stays late, works cheapâmy kind of assistant.”
“Congratulations.” Montgomery wanted to get off the phone and lie down. “At least Caroline has something to do now. Besides shopping. And screaming at me.”
“Ha ha.” Sidney chuckled dutifully. “Is there anything else you need me or Paul to do for you at this point, sir?”
“No.”
Â
It was after midnight when Montgomery reviewed the cover layout for the hedge fund's quarterly report. His investors expected something classy, and they would get it. The understated but strong design featured a small, stylized image of a racehorse above the company name. He took out a fountain pen and signed the layout in an unsteady scrawl. It would be picked up by a courier tomorrow.
Last year, he'd had two assistants to take care of all that. His short, glowing letter to investors was his sole contribution, followed by pages of carefully phrased double-talk written by a business marketer, backed up with graphs and charts. The whole thing had been close to fiction. The numbers had begun their downward trend even then. And now it was nothing more than lies. There was a limit to how well he could do that when cold, hard numbers contradicted every word.
He booted up the laptop from the partner's desk and pulled up a private feed from the day's stock markets. From it, he entered figures rapidly in his fund file, doing calculations in his head that seemed right at firstâhe was good at mental mathâbut were wrong when he checked them. He entered the corrections, cursing under his breath. No matter how he juggled the sums, the fund was in free fall, and the rate of loss was accelerating.
Without saving his work, Monty clicked out of the fund file. He felt too numb to care.
He struggled to think for a minute, his head in his hands. Then he lifted it and opened another file, moving fifteen thousand dollars to cover the withdrawal for the painting. Transaction completed, he rose, bracing himself on his chair before he nearly lost his balance.
Keep moving. Always moving . . .
Had he said the words aloud or was he hearing them? Monty had no way of knowing. He forced himself to focus as he returned the laptop to the hidden recess. Then he walked unsteadily to the couch and lay down, staring at the ceiling.
Fifty miles away, the file he'd worked on was still open.
Colorless eyes looked over the latest entries. Paul hummed to himself.
“Stop that,” Hoebel said irritably. He was slouched in a chair, looking tired. Cutt hadn't showed. “You're making me sleepy.”
The hacker glanced his way. “This is a waiting game. Go home,” Paul said. “Get some sleep. Digest your pizza.” The air in the windowless room smelled of the fast food they'd both eaten, the box tossed on the floor.
“Just tell me if the big bucks got moved.”
Paul's fingers clicked on the keyboard. “Okay, I'm looking through everything this time.”
“Don't work too hard.”
The younger man ignored the sarcasm. “And it looks like . . . hey, fifteen thousand bucks played hopscotch this evening. Want the details?”
“Yes.”
Paul nodded. “I'm going into NotesâMontgomery likes to make notes, doesn't he? Looks like the deposit was made to cover a payment via cashier's checkâ”
“Who was that for?”
Paul poked around in the distant hard drive. “You know, considering he's ancient, Montgomery is pretty good with computers. But he's got more nasty holes in his encryption than I do in my socks.”
Hoebel glanced down at the hacker's unlaced, graffiti-print high tops. “Don't show me.”
“I wasn't going to.” Paul stopped and peered into the screen. “Got it. He listed the payee as Erin Randall. WhoopsâI tagged that name.” He waited for a beat. “And there she is.” He tapped on the screen. “I showed you this. It was downloaded from a security vidcam onto Montgomery's laptop. Who's the guy?”
Hoebel frowned. “A detective. RJ Bannon. He's one of my officers, actually. Benched for months, nothing to do but stir up trouble with an old case. You know, the unsolved Montgomery kidnapping.”
“Never heard of it.”
Hoebel winced. “I have a feeling your mother wasn't even born when it happened. Let alone you.”
“So what's the big deal?” Paul asked without much interest.
“I guess you missed the newscast.”
“Dude, please. I don't even own a TV.”
“It was on the station website. Guess you missed that too.”
“I'm busy.” Paul rolled his eyes to emphasize that point. “College classes plus thisâI mean, I love getting paid, don't get me wrong. And it's kind of a hoot to hack the accounts of a crooked rich guy, but that doesn't mean I want to know everything about him, outside of that he owes you some money.”
“He owes me a lot of money,” Hoebel growled.
“You know, I never asked. What do you do for him, collect debts?” Paul asked in a breezy tone. “Break heads?”
Hoebel glared at him. “Rewind that.”
“Huh?”
The kid was young enough never to have seen an actual, rewindable videotape in a black plastic box. Hoebel felt like a dinosaur. “Go back to the part where you never asked,” he snapped. “And remember it.”
Something menacing in the older man's tone got a little respect from Paul. “Okay.” He put up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Whatever you say.”
“And let me see that security tape again.”
Paul opened it in a media program and Hoebel watched in silence. Something about Bannon's watchfulness made him uneasy. The guy was a pain in the ass, but he was a good detective and no fool. However, Bannon hadn't been able to spot the hidden vidcams. The chief knew Bannon would've avoided them or covered them if at all possible.
“Are we done with this?” Paul asked, faking politeness.
“Yeah, but can you copy it from his computer?”
A few clicks and the video file was invisibly stolen and transferred to a file on the hacker's laptop.
“I don't think I need it, but you never know. She had a legit reason to be there, and she had the key,” he said. “Erin Randall is an artistâshe did a painting of the old mansion. So that's what the fifteen thousand was for, I guess. He commissioned something new.”
“His note has it as an advance on a painting of a horse.”
“Take All?”
Paul peered into the screen. “That's the name. Why would anyone pay that much money for a painting of a horse?”
The chief shrugged. “People do. Montgomery can afford it.”
“Not really.”
Hoebel blew out an exasperated breath. “Fifteen thousand is still small change to him. Just do what I pay you for and keep looking.”
“You bet,” Paul said. “I'm on it. Let's start with the reward money in trust and check again. Looks likeâhmm. Nope. It's all still there. Two million and change.” He snooped through an activity log in a hidden directory. “Montgomery's been into the trust files, though, every day. But all he does is change the name of the beneficiary.”
Hoebel suddenly looked a lot more alert. “Who is the beneficiary now?”
“Not anybody,” the hacker amended his statement. “He just deletes Ann Montgomery. Then the space is blank for, like, an hour, then he types her name back in again. According to the activity log, he's been doing it over and over for a couple of days, off and on. Like he can't make up his mind.”
“If he's in the reward files that often, we can't make a grab. He'll know right away.”
“Well, we could, if I write fake code that would make it look like the dough was still there when it's really in your account,” Paul offered. “But you'd have major explaining to do to the IRS and your bank.” He laughed under his breath. “They'll think you're a freakin' drug lord or something with a money transfer that big.”
“Count on it. But I plan to be in a country with no extradition treaty when we do the deed.”
“When I do the deed, you mean.” The hacker smirked at him. “You tired of fighting crime?”
“Yeah,” Hoebel said. “It doesn't pay too well. No matter what they say.”
Paul began to hum tunelessly again. “So long as you don't get caught.”
Hoebel's eyes narrowed. It had occurred to him that the kid might be setting him up for a sting. Paul seemed awfully casual about everything he was doing. “Don't you worry about that?”