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She nodded and rubbed the back of her neck. “Fine.”
He didn’t take her word for it and came around to lay his warm hand on her shoulders. “Tight. Have a seat and I’ll see if I can get rid of those knots in your shoulder.” He moved her to a crate.
Now that he’d mentioned it, she realized the tightness in her shoulders had brought the beginning twinges of a bad headache. Though she should finish her task, she didn’t protest as his strong fingers probed the sore spots in her shoulders and neck. In moments the muscles began to release the pain pulsing at her temples.
“Better?” he asked.
“So much better.”
But for an instant she wished Hez were here with her and not Beckett. She was still skittish and reluctant to have another man touch her, even in such a platonic way. What did that say about feelings she wasn’t ready to admit even to herself?
Chapter 17
Hez glanced at his phone as soon as class was over. He’d texted Savannah two hours ago. She still hadn’t responded, and the texts showed as delivered but not read. A ripple of unease rolled over him. Maybe she was just busy, but what if the explanation was more sinister?
He’d go find her. Ed would be stopping by in half an hour to go through the latest dump of Spanish-language evidence from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but Hez wouldn’t be able to focus if he was worried about Savannah.
His first stop was the history department. Savannah’s secretary said she’d left hours ago and taken the old security guard with her. That didn’t reassure Hez—it meant she’d gone somewhere unsafe enough that she wanted protection, but she hadn’t brought it. The guard was more likely to be napping or staring at his phone than protecting Savannah.
So where did she go? The guard’s jurisdiction was limited to TGU, so Savannah presumably was somewhere on campus. The warehouse. That must be it. She was at the warehouse—and she wasn’t responding to texts. Had she been attacked again?
He hurried to the warehouse, dodging students on the way. He passed the guard—sure enough, the man was staring at his phone and tapping on the screen. He didn’t even glance up as Hez half jogged by him. The warehouse door was open, and the inner door leading to the climate-controlled room holding the Willard Treasure was also ajar. Concern tightened his chest.
He pushed open the inner door—and froze. She sat on a box with Beckett leaning over her with his hands on her shoulders. Her eyes were closed and her perfect lips curved in a half smile.
Her eyes opened wide. “Hez! What are you doing here?”
His concern congealed into a lump of ice that sank into his gut. “You weren’t responding to texts, and I was worried.”
“Oh, sorry. The reception is terrible in here.” She stood and pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket. “I’ve been going through boxes for the past few hours.” She looked down, apparently remembering that wasn’t what she’d been doing when Hez walked in. “Um, Beckett just stopped by to bring me some coffee.”
Beckett smiled broadly but said nothing.
Hez kept his eyes on Savannah. “I see.”
She stared down at her phone. “Your messages still haven’t shown up. Did you have news?”
“Yes. I got the security camera video.” He described what he’d seen. Both Beckett and Savannah grew visibly concerned when he told them about Erik Andersen’s covert trysts.
Beckett responded first. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. My office will have to investigate, of course.” He glanced at the table and sofa in the corner and grimaced. “If he’s having an affair with a student, that would be highly inappropriate. We have very strict rules about faculty-student relationships.”
Savannah bit her lip and seemed lost in thought. Was she wondering how to break the news to her sister?
“That reminds me—I have some news of my own,” Beckett continued. “Now that I have access to the full CFO database, I’ve been able to track down a series of suspicious transactions. The amounts coming in vary from around fifty thousand to over a million, but the amounts going out are all just under ten thousand. All anonymized, of course.”
Hez wasn’t surprised. “Someone is smurfing.”
Beckett nodded. “I thought the same thing, Hez.”
“Smurfing?” Savannah frowned. “Sorry, you lost me.”
“Banks have to report any cash transaction of ten thousand or over,” Hez replied. “Criminals don’t want their money tracked, of course, so when they’re moving a lot of cash, they often break it up into a series of transactions that are just under the reporting limit. That’s called smurfing. Don’t ask me why.”
Savannah got to her feet and walked over to a crate that had papers spread across the top. “How many inbound transactions?”
Beckett cocked his head. “Inbound transactions?”
Savannah’s head moved from side to side as she scanned the papers. “Transactions where money is coming into the university. We’re assuming those are payments for stolen artifacts, right? So the number of inbound transactions gives us at least a clue as to the number of artifacts that should be missing from the warehouse.”
