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Now she had Dax’s attention. “What the hell are you talking about? There is zero chance Gabe was having a fling with that crazy bitch.”
She didn’t know Dax. She’d met him a few days before. She didn’t really know Gabriel all that well, either. On the other hand, she’d known Scott for a long time. He’d stood beside her. He’d been her friend.
“First”—Dax went on—“Valerie wasn’t his type at all. Second, he never once mentioned her to me, even as a piece on the side.”
“You don’t know everyone Gabriel has . . . dated.” She really hated to think of him having sex with another woman.
“No, but if he’d seen her more than a couple of times, the paparazzi would have picked up on it. And third, why does it matter? I’ve never once heard him tell another woman that he loves her. Ever.”
Everly stared Dax down. He didn’t flinch.
She really had only one choice at the end of the day.
“Then we have a problem. I think my friend Scott is involved in this thing. That was him on the phone. Maybe he’s simply mistaken about what he found, but he could also be trying to set Gabriel up. Scott tried to convince me that Gabriel wants to kill me.”
“And you don’t believe your friend?”
In the end, the decision had been simple. She’d done what her father had always told her to. She’d looked in her heart and she’d followed her gut. Gabriel Bond wasn’t a criminal. He was actually a horrible liar. When he’d said he loved her, he’d meant it. It hadn’t been a ploy. It had been his truth. She was betting her life on it.
“I don’t.”
Dax sat up. “Who is he?”
She sank to the couch. Sometimes a girl had to take a leap of faith. “Scott Wilcox works with me at Crawford. I asked him to look into the last couple of years of receipts for the foundation fundraisers. He said he has proof that Gabriel is involved in the embezzlement and that I should come to his place right now to see it.” She took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Clearly, he’s trying to lure me away from here and feed me a plate of bullshit. It would be a good play if someone wanted Gabriel and me separated, for whatever reason.”
Dax stood. “You would be a very good pawn, especially if he wanted to use you as leverage against Gabe. My buddy would pretty much do anything to keep you safe. And we would help him. Maybe Scott’s figured that out.”
And there it was, the confirmation of her gut feeling. Deep Throat might have been spot-on about the lockbox and the investigation into Mad’s murder, but he’d been wrong about Gabriel. He and his friends would stick together. All five of them had one another’s backs, but that included their women, too. And she was Gabriel Bond’s woman.
She was going to be his wife, and it was time to follow her loyalties and take her place.
“We need to think smart. Like you said, I’m a pawn. I think it’s Gabriel they need. He had plenty of motive to want Maddox dead, and Scott, along with whomever he’s working with, is using that to their advantage.”
Everly refused to let Gabriel fall into danger. He wasn’t going down on her watch.
“Or they want to create chaos, keep us so busy watching our backs we’re not catching what’s really happening.” Dax scrubbed a hand through the dark stubble over his scalp. “I don’t like any of this. If Mad really thought Valerie was stealing, why wouldn’t he have fired her ass? Why all the subterfuge?”
“He wanted to gather enough evidence to prosecute her?” She answered in a question because now that she thought about it, that logic didn’t make sense. “Except . . . I happen to know that we haven’t prosecuted an employee in forever. Earlier this year, when an employee was found trying to sell proprietary documents, he was simply fired. Most corporations don’t prosecute because of the bad publicity.”
“The stock can take a dive over something like an embezzlement scandal. The Mad I know would have fired her and cut his losses.”
But the receipts hadn’t been the only things they’d found. Actually, now that she really thought about it, the receipts hadn’t been locked up at all. They’d been sitting on his desk with a bunch of other papers. Mad hadn’t been hiding them.
What he’d kept hidden and safe were the pictures of the girls, as well as her mother’s and the Russian woman’s names.
What had Deep Throat said? Sometimes she couldn’t see the forest because of all those distracting trees.
Calm down. Think. You have pieces to the puzzle. Now see how they fit together.
Her father had adored puzzles. They would often eat on TV trays because the kitchen table had been covered in whatever puzzle he’d been working on at the time. He’d always told her that putting together a puzzle taught a man patience. He would stare at the individual pieces and slowly a pattern would form.
Maddox Crawford had been a man who almost always chose the direct path. She’d seen him fire an executive for getting an investor report wrong. Maddox hadn’t carefully built a case. He’d been judge, jury, and executioner. He’d certainly dismissed more than one woman he’d slept with who proved herself troublesome.
He was a man with a multibillion-dollar fortune at his fingertips. He wouldn’t have truly missed the money. He would have been more worried about the impact to the company and the foundation than he would have been concerned about getting that cash back.
The important things had been in the lockbox, carefully concealed. The pictures of the girls. Her mother’s name. Natalia Kuilikov.
What had Tavia said about the missing girls today? That Maddox had been considering hiring mercenaries. But the morning after she’d slept with Gabe, Tavia had told her Crawford Industries’ own team was searching for the girls. Everly hadn’t really been involved with the case because it wasn’t a cyber threat. Besides, Tavia had known the girls and their families, had the necessary information.
She needed to look something up. “Can I see that computer again for a minute?”
He shrugged and scooted to the side, pushing the laptop in her direction. A few keystrokes later, she was into Mulford’s files regarding this investigation. And she didn’t like what she saw.
“Weeks, sometimes even months, have gone by and my counterpart who handles the physical security, Joe Mulford, hasn’t received any sort of update or request for reimbursement from any member of the Crawford security team overseas.” She frowned as another thought occurred to her. Suddenly, so many things weren’t adding up. “This is going to sound like an odd question, but did Maddox know any mercenaries?”
Dax laughed. “Hell no. Mad knew sommeliers across the globe, but not mercenaries. He would have come to me or Connor if he was looking for someone with that skill set in a farflung part of the world.”
“Would he have gone to Zack? After all, he was flying to DC when . . .”
“No. He definitely wouldn’t have asked the president for a reference on a soldier-for-hire. Besides, as you know, Crawford has divisions across the globe, each with their own security team. Mad would have started there.”
“If Mad had decided that wasn’t working?”
“Wasn’t working?” Dax stared at her as if she’d gone crazy. “You know they’re top-notch. They know the locals. They know their terrain. I dare anyone to do a better job in those territories. But if they weren’t getting the job done, he’d fire them and hire someone better. Not hire someone who could be bought off.”
Dax was right. “So there are girls missing from foundation schools. At least three. There are likely more, but Maddox thought those three were important. I know two of them were from Africa, one from India.”
She pounced on the computer. Dax helped her with passwords. It was a simple thing to look up the names and locations of the schools. Two were within fifty miles of a Crawford subsidiary.
“You’re right. They shouldn’t have needed mercenaries.” She frowned. “After Tavia contacted the overseas teams directly, Mulford should have been asked to approve their expenditures. But I looked at h
is reports. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Not one request for reimbursement filed for on-the-job expenditures. When I told Tavia I’d follow up on his behalf, she told me not to do anything to distract them.” A nasty feeling settled in her gut that Tavia was somehow in on the scam, too. “What if those girls didn’t merely disappear?”
Dax shook his head. “How would we prove it?”
“I think . . . I need to figure out why those damn pictures were sent to me. Maybe I’m thinking too literally. Deep Throat was insistent I should have received his information. I’ve been thinking it would be out there in the open, but what if he was sneakier than that? That camera is the only thing I’ve received that wasn’t about work. If my laptop wasn’t malfunctioning . . . Oh, damn it.” The truth hit her like a ton of brinks. How had she been so stupid? She raced back into the kitchen. “I would have figured this out in a heartbeat if my laptop hadn’t been giving me trouble already. How could I not have seen it?”
Dax was right behind her. “I don’t see it at all, darlin’. How about illuminating me?”
She needed to be sure first. She pulled up the folder containing the photos. The last few days had been so chaotic, she hadn’t thought to question why the photographs were taking up so much space. She had thought the trouble was with her system, but what if it was all about the photos themselves?
The menu popped up along with the file sizes. She pointed at the screen. “Do you see those file sizes? They’re huge.”
