“Of course.I’ll be on standby, ready to introduce you to our contact when you’re prepared.”
Josie stands, snapping her tablet up and smiling brightly.“Let’s get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later so Tessa can get back to her normal life.I’ll begin with the shell corporations.By tonight, I’ll have a preliminary map of RainVest’s holdings, and I’ll pull satellite imagery of the Oregon fire zones for Cole to look at.Maybe catch something Erik noticed.”
“Thanks, Josie,” Cole says with a fondness that makes me wonder if they’re more than colleagues.
I push that thought away.None of my business.
Malik rises from the table.“Cole, you’re on protective detail and this will be the only case you work.”
I look at him, heart thudding.Protective detail.
Cole stiffens slightly but nods.“Understood.”
Malik follows Josie to the door but turns back to look at me.“Tessa… we won’t let RainVest get away with Erik’s murder.”
A huge flood of relief hits me, causing my eyes to sting.Because no matter how important it is to stop what RainVest is doing, I want the people that killed that man to pay for what they did.“Thank you.”
CHAPTER 5
Cole
Whilethisapartmentisalmost twice as big as the one I moved out of, it still feels way too small sitting next to Tessa.Both of us are hunched over my dining table like grad students cramming for finals instead of two professionals dissecting a corporate arson scheme.Because we’re sharing documents, we chose adjacent chairs where we could easily pass information back and forth or lean the other’s way if needed.
It’s admittedly difficult to concentrate sitting this close to her.She’s as beautiful and sexy as ever, and a mere five minutes into our conversation last night at her house dredged up all kinds of feelings.
We broke up on the singular issue of her job and the dangers it posed.She was reckless back then, charging into gang-related territories to try to get a lead or poking at crooked politicians who could have ruined her.Outside of her job and my inability to handle the stress of worrying over her, everything else was perfect.
We were perfect.Our sex life was explosive and when I say there’s never been another like her, it’s not even close.We aligned on values, shared the same sense of humor, and my family loved her.It was five years ago and when boiling it down to the one line in the sand I would not give up on, it seems a little surreal that I’d let someone like her go because we couldn’t compromise.
White cartons are scattered between us—lo mein half-finished, General Tso’s wiped clean, two unopened fortune cookies pushed to the side.After our meeting with Malik, I gave Tessa a VIP tour of the entire building.Then we set up here for the day to start sifting through the items on the flash drive while the security team worked on her house.We’ve been at this pretty much all day and the sun set a long time ago.
She has her laptop open, the glow reflecting in her eyes as she scrolls through the structured summary Josie compiled from the flash drive.I have three printed wildfire reports spread out in front of me, annotated in pen, burn patterns circled and wind direction notes scrawled in the margins.Investigations were done and arson was never on the radar.It’s going to fall to me to see if I can pinpoint how RainVest was pulling this off to look innocuous.
“Josie’s good,” Tessa murmurs, scrolling.“She’s managed to take what would have been weeks’ worth of reading this information and has compiled it into spreadsheets with charts and graphs.It’s still going to take me a few days to get through it all, though.”
I flip through wind data charts regarding a wildfire in Southern Oregon last year.“That’s her job as an intelligence specialist, but I’m sure she used BOB to help congregate the data.”
“I haven’t met him yet,” Tessa says.
I can’t help but laugh.“BOB’s not a person.It’s an artificial intelligence system Jameson developed to provide predictive analysis.”
Tessa levels a sheepish smile.“Oh.At any rate, this puts the situation in better perspective for me.”She again looks at her screen, but then her eyes pop right back to me as she frowns.“What’s BOB stand for?”
I lift a shoulder.“It doesn’t stand for anything as far as I know.They just call it Bob.He’s like one of the team.”
Tessa snorts and I push the papers aside, leaning in my chair until it tips on its back legs.“Lay it out for me.I’m still not quite sure I understand how this all fits together.”
Tessa pushes her laptop aside and leans forward on the table, crossing her arms.It does lovely things to her breasts, but I keep my eyes fixed on hers.“Okay… so Gavin DelRey is the CEO of a real estate development group based in Seattle called RainVest.Erik reached out to me as a whistleblower with evidence that RainVest was starting wildfires in order to devalue land and then snapping it up at bargain prices.”
“How does one go about doing that?Where does the proof lead?”
“It’s convoluted for sure.Basically, RainVest identifies high-value land that’s for sale in areas that are at risk for destruction.Think on the East Coast for hurricanes, or here in the Pacific Northwest, wildfires.When the property is destroyed, and the value shrinks, they go in with lowball offers.Perfectly legitimate practice, except Erik said that RainVest was starting wildfires to effectuate cheap land grabs.”Tessa pauses, her mouth turning downward.“Erik said two campers died in one of those wildfires and that’s what prompted him to reach out to me.”
I nod at her computer.“And what did you figure out based on the flash drive?”
“There’s an obvious correlation between the timing of the disaster and the purchase of the land, but there are two things that tie it all together.RainVest contracted with environmental impact study groups to locate particularly at-risk properties, then based on those studies, they set up shell holding companies to receive the property once purchased at a discount.”
I frown at her.“I don’t know, Tessa.That’s pretty circumstantial.”
