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“Janice, I can’t read the phone number.”

“Do I have to do everything?” The woman squawked.

She got up from her seat and stalked the four steps over to Lainey’s desk.

“This is the country code. I don’t know what the country is. And these are the numbers.” She jammed her fingers against the mayonnaise-stained napkin.

“Read the numbers to me.” Lainey took out her pen and a sticky note.

Janice started to rattle off numbers, then stopped. “I’m pretty sure this is a five, and then next one is a one or a seven. I can’t read this next one, but if you just try all nine numbers, you’ll eventually get the right number, right?”

“Crap on a cracker, Janice. Are you kidding me? This is important.”

“Well, look in the crypto file. There has to be a phone number with this country code in there.”

“I’ve handled five cryptocurrency transfers this week alone. Each one of them contains at least ten phone numbers. Not only can’t I read the number, but you also didn’t write the name of the person.”

“Sure, I did.” Janice peered down at the napkin. “Ah shit. It’s covered with mustard.” She looked over at Lainey and winced. “I’m sorry. Okay, let me think a minute.”

This should be interesting.

“Okay, the guy didn’t sound Middle Eastern or Chinese or anything. More like those funny European countries. You know?”

Lainey could feel her muscles tightening and the pulse in her temples pounding. It was the precursor to a headache. She needed to breathe deeply then roll her shoulders and neck, then drink an enormous glass of water, then she might stop the headache from coming.

Might.

“Okay. I’ll go look at the last five transfers I did and see if there are any with a telephone number with this country code attached to it.”

“I knew you could figure it out. You’re really good at this. Arnie was right about you.”

Yeesh, she didn’t need to lay it on so thick.

“Okay, how did the date go?” Kostya asked.

Mateo was at the Little Creek base in his lieutenant’s office. They were supposed to be talking about when he was coming back to work. Instead, they were talking about his off-the-books mission.

“I blew it,” Mateo bit out the words.

Kostya said nothing. He just raised one eyebrow.

What the hell? Can everybody but me do that?

“I talked to Jada. Lainey called her for a reference before allowing me to come over to her house to pick her up.”

“That was smart,” Kostya smiled.

“That’s what I told her. Hell, Lieutenant, she found a recipe for one of Argentina’s most popular cookies and she made a homemade batch for me. They were just like, or maybe even better, than the ones my mom used to make.”

Kostya scratched the bristles under his chin. “Doesn’t sound like a terrorist, but there is a shit ton of evidence pointing against her.”

“It gets worse. She told me why she took the job with Lionel Security and Trust Bank. She wants to understand the ins and outs of the banking industry, especially what they require for providing small business loans. She intends to go back to school and get her master’s in Non-Profit Management so that she can help the people who really need help getting loans. And she uses phrases like fudge-bonnet and frack-cracker instead of really swearing because she doesn’t want to swear around her nieces and nephews.”

Mateo sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. He knew his posture basically told Kostya that he would not listen to anything negative about Lainey Simpson. Or was he? Shit, he didn’t know, she had him confused as hell.

Dammit, get your head in the game, Aranda!

“Mateo, I understand where you’re coming from. But if she is innocent, you’re not doing her any favors by basing her innocence on your gut. We currently have facts that point to her. And we’ll need actual facts to clear her, and when you do clear her, we need to get her on our side so we can trace those transfers.”