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“Wouldn’t they be affected?” I asked.
“Not if they had oxygen with them,” Jack said. “As the intended victim, you should be able to get more info than me.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Logan said.
It was just starting to make some sense to me, but I still had too many missing pieces.
“You told me yesterday that you and Jennifer hadn’t discussed why she wanted to meet you, but that’s not correct,” Jack prompted.
Logan turned to me. “I told your brother that I didn’t share information because I didn’t know him, but I made some calls and you both come highly recommended. Even my lawyer gave the thumbs-up, and Carmen doesn’t like many people.”
“Carmen Delarosa?” I said.
“You know her?”
“She’s hired me a couple of times.” Carmen was a bulldog. She fought hard for her clients every step of the way, to the point that people who went up against her called her a bitch, often to her face. She took it as a badge of honor. And Logan was right—Carmen didn’t like people. But she disliked some people more than others.
“When I arrived at the house on Sunday, Jennifer had her laptop open. She got right to the point. She had downloaded raw code that she said shows that every transaction that went through Desert West diverted between forty-nine and ninety-nine cents into an account not controlled by the company. She’s not an accountant, but has enough computer and math skills that she saw the unusual pattern.”
“Why didn’t she tell the CFO?” Jack asked.
“She didn’t know who had set up the transfer. It had to be done internally, and she felt that Tucker should have realized it, so couldn’t discount that he might have been the one to have stolen the money. If the money was stolen. The line item was a processing fee, and it didn’t stand out on its face. When you have a hundred-thousand-dollar transaction, a ninety-nine-cent processing fee is nothing. That alone should have raised red flags, but again when people think of pennies, they don’t think they’re losing anything.”
“But all those pennies in the same pot adds up,” I said.
“Exactly,” Logan said. “Jennifer believes that over a million dollars was taken, but she doesn’t know how long this had been going on. When I sold my half of the company to Gavin eighteen months ago, there had been a full audit, and I checked the paperwork—this processing fee wasn’t there. Which means it was added after I sold.”
“What was her theory?” Jack asked.
“We didn’t get that far,” Logan said. “She explained about the fee, then brought up the files and wanted me to look at the code—thought maybe I would see something because I had more experience than she did. That’s when she fainted.”
Jack and I exchanged a glance. We were thinking the same thing. Whoever used the nitrogen to knock out Logan and Jennifer wanted her laptop because she had evidence of corporate theft. They waited in the house until Jennifer was unconscious and intended to either destroy or steal the laptop. But then I showed up and foiled their plan.
“The data she downloaded must have been what alerted the CFO that someone on staff had taken proprietary information from the office,” Jack said. “Then he hired me.”
Logan said, “Jennifer told me she’d contact me yesterday, which is why I met with Rachel at the bar last night. I can’t believe that she lied about knowing Jennifer. Maybe she drugged me to find out where Jennifer is.”
“She doesn’t know anything about Jennifer,” I said, “nor is she a threat to her.”
His brows knit together. “How do you know?”
“I talked to Rachel today. She won’t bother you again.”
He looked confused. “Why did she do it?”
I wanted to tell him that his wife was trying to catch him with another woman, but I refrained. The NDA was null and void at this point, but until I knew exactly what was going on with Brittney, I wanted to keep it to myself.
I didn’t answer Logan’s question, hopefully he’d think I assumed it was hypothetical.
“I wanted to hire Jack to find Jennifer, but he said he had a conflict,” Logan continued.
“I was hired by Desert West. I can’t take money from you to, essentially, do the same thing.”
“But they hired you to find out who downloaded information—oh.” Logan realized the conflict. “I just told you that Jennifer downloaded the data.”
“If what she told you is accurate, she didn’t do anything to harm the company, but I still need to talk to her and verify the information she has, and she’ll have to explain to her employer,” Jack said. “Having you vouch for me would help, which is a long way of saying I will be looking for her.”
Logan turned to me. “But I can hire you to find Jennifer, correct?”
