Page 59 of Benjamin and the Thief

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t wait too long. I might not feel up to babysitting when I’m older.”

“Nice try, Mom,” Grayson said and kissed his mother on the cheek.

With a smile, Delilah turned to Benjamin. “So, Benjamin, why don’t you introduce me to your friend?”

“Delilah, this is my girlfriend, Catalina.”

Delilah squeezed Catalina’s outstretched hand.

“Delilah is Samson’s wife. She was an auditor before she met him,” Benjamin explained.

“So nice to meet you,” Delilah said with a big smile.

“Likewise. I’m so sorry we’re intruding on you in your home,” Catalina replied. “You must be so busy…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Delilah said. “I’m sure Grayson and Monique will look in on Ross while I’m looking at the documents Benjamin mentioned.” She turned her head to him. “Let’s go to the office.”

She motioned for them to follow her to the end of the corridor.

“And should Ross cry, try and get him back to bed,” she called over her shoulder.

“We’ll be going out in a while,” Grayson said.

“Don’t worry, Delilah,” Monique interrupted. “We’ll let you know before we leave.”

Delilah ushered them into the office: a wood-paneled room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a large, imposing desk with two computer monitors, and a comfortable leather seating area in one corner. It had a definite masculine feel. This was Samson’s office for when he didn’t want to go to headquarters. From here, he had access to all Scanguards systems via a secure connection. With the door closed now, it was quiet, and even with his vampire senses, he could barely hear any sounds from the others in the house.

Benjamin placed his laptop onto the desk. “Thank you so much for doing this, Delilah. I really appreciate it.”

“So, give me some background so I can figure out what I’m looking for,” Delilah said with a nod.

Benjamin cast Catalina a look, and she nodded. They’d discussed earlier that it was okay to let Delilah know who she was and what was at stake.

“Catalina’s brother is Santiago Vargas. He was convicted of stealing a priceless necklace from the Preston family,” he started.

“Oh, I’ve read about the case.”

“Good. Catalina believes that the Prestons framed her brother, and that the necklace was never stolen, but that the Prestons staged it so that they could collect the insurance money. But there’s a problem with that theory…”

He looked at Catalina, who continued, “The problem is why they would do that and not just sell the necklace if they needed cash, but that’s another problem we can figure out later. But first, we need to know whether they needed money so desperately that they would risk committing insurance fraud to get it.”

“That should be relatively easy to figure out,” Delilah said confidently.

“Excellent,” Benjamin said and booted up the laptop. “I downloaded everything IT could hack into: financial records of all their accounts at the various banks and brokerages, deeds to their properties, and anything else we could get our hands on.”

Delilah sat down behind the desk. “Well, let’s see. What’s the password?”

“Use Scanguards’ universal password,” Benjamin replied. “The laptop is a spare. All documents are on the desktop.”

She typed the password, and the computer unlocked. Benjamin stood behind her, watching, when she turned her head.

“You might want to sit down. I said it was easy, not fast.”

“Oh,” Benjamin said apologetically, “got it.”

As he walked around the desk to join Catalina, who stood there expectantly, his phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display.

“It’s Nicholas,” he said and motioned to the door to indicate that he would take it outside.