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Theo had a half dozen nicknames for me. Some of them got old real quick.
“If he leaves before I get there, tail him and call me.”
“Roger that, boss.”
“You can certainly call me boss.”
Three
The Thief
For the last year—fourteen months to be exact—the thief had implemented a brilliant plan.
He’d created a billing fee under a hidden code that charged customers between forty-nine and ninety-nine cents per transaction. No one paid attention to cents, but he didn’t want a consistent number that might be easily seen in audits. When there were over a hundred thousand transactions a month, the money added up.
It was diverted into a blind account, and he had already transferred the first million into a secure off-shore account that only he could access. He wanted another million, which he would have by the end of the summer, except for one problem.
Jennifer.
The nerdy IT bitch had downloaded logs she should never have known existed, and he had to get her computer or he would be screwed. She was the only person who might be able to tie the billing fee to him. Ironic, he thought—he’d implemented his scheme right after she started working in the IT department just in case he needed a fall guy. And now his fall “gal” was his problem.
He had a new plan he’d already put into motion, and as long as Jennifer kept acting like her awkward, weird, jumpy self, it would work.
If he could destroy her laptop.
A laptop she never left unattended, as if it were a suitcase full of cash. A laptop that had the best virus protection software on it so the virus he emailed her didn’t do its job. Hence, he was here, sitting in an empty house, waiting for Jennifer to show up.
He didn’t know why she had rented the house for a few days. He’d cloned her work emails and the message had come in yesterday, confirming the short-term rental, from Sunday through Thursday. Helpfully, the garage entry code had been included. His goal was simple: wait for Jennifer, release the nitrogen gas, and wipe her computer. He’d already cleaned the server at the office, so it was only Jennifer’s computer that had evidence of his embezzlement. By the time she woke up, she wouldn’t know what happened. Any suspicions would be just that—suspicions, unprovable.
He’d already set her up to take the fall. She was acting weirder than usual, so it wasn’t difficult to drop whispers in the right ears that she was up to something.
Jennifer White was smart, but so was he—better, he was ruthless.
He looked at his watch. Four in the afternoon. He’d only been waiting for an hour, but already he was antsy.
Still, he waited. There was too much at stake for him to fail now.
Four
Tess Angelhart
Tess Angelhart’s favorite cases involved brain work over field work, so corporate espionage was right up her alley—most of the time.
Corporate espionage.
She loved the way the words rolled off her tongue. There was something fun and diabolical about corporate espionage. She loved the legal aspect, the analysis, the brains behind a good white-collar scheme. Her second favorite were heists—not violent robberies, but a good old-fashioned heist where the bad guys took weeks to set up the perfect theft, often without anyone knowing until long after the goods were gone. Solving those made her feel like an old-time detective, Pinkerton or even Sherlock Holmes.
She much preferred cerebral cases, where she could spend most of her time researching and putting together information, thinking about the hows more than the whys. She’d rather interview an expert or scour a library or courthouse archive for days, than sit here...in a car...with her brother...for hours.
She read through her notes—reviewing how she tracked Jennifer White to this short-term rental, mulling over who she would be meeting with, what exactly she was selling, how the plan was structured. Though she had far less patience than Jack, she thought she was holding her own, at least until Jack spoke.
“Stop,” he said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re fidgeting.”
“Am not.”
