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IT WAS AFTER nine as Tony walked to the head of the conference room table and sat down. His men had experienced days of difficulty and hardship. Their numbers had been shaved from four to two. They wore the horror of the experience on their faces. Both Jeff and Lance were pale and drawn. Neither gave Tony eye contact.
He suspected they wanted to go home and forget everything that had happened. He couldn’t exactly blame them. He wanted to erase the past few days from his memory, too.
On his orders, both had been checked out at the hospital at length. Despite the ordeal, they were healthy physically. But he wanted to assess the emotional part. He also needed to know what they knew.
Everyone wanted to interview them, from the police to the park rangers to Connor to the press. Tony wanted to secure them and lock them away, but he knew that wasn’t practical. As it was, he had managed to buy a little time, citing their raw state. But the clock was ticking.
He knew he’d lose the battle when it came to Connor. The man appeared to take the lead on the entire investigation, and no one in the police department or any federal agency objected or tried to push the man aside. He walked in and they stepped back.
As suspected, Connor and his team were trouble. Hope and this guy Joel were the worst. Their names kept coming up, so Tony placed the blame for his pounding headache and the twisting in his gut solely on them.
But he had to deal with that later. Right now he had more bad news to deliver. The kind of news that broke men, or at least started them on a vigilante crusade. Tony didn’t want any part of either of those things. He needed these two healthy and indebted to him. Supporting him.
“After they got you out, search and rescue found a body in the woods.” The news, though expected, still had stunned Tony when Connor called to tell him.
With everything that had gone wrong, this part had gone as planned.
Jeff slumped forward, balancing his elbows on the table. “What?”
“Mark.”
Lance shook his head. “Did Perry do it?”
“We think so.” Or that was the story that worked best for this new scenario Tony had concocted.
Mark was supposed to have an accident. Walk off into the woods and fall off a mountainside or fall and hit his head. The fact that he was buried under a pile of leaves made that tough to sell.
“Perry wouldn’t hurt Mark.” Jeff looked to Lance. “Right?”
Last thing Tony needed was these two teaming up and exchanging stories. “You need to know the rest. After you left camp, I discovered some financial irregularities.”
Jeff dipped even lower in his chair. “What does that mean?”
“It looks like Mark was inflating his numbers to make the new division look like it was performing better than it was.” The evidence now supported the claims. Notes and files, all backdated and slipped into computer backups using earlier dates. It paid to have a staff of tech experts who passed on their expertise. Tony had learned a thing or two over the years.
“That explains the information I collected,” Jeff said.
Tony forced his expression to stay neutral. “What are you talking about?”
“Inconsistent performance in one of our divisions, the newest. I thought it might be an aberration but wanted to get at the issue in case the dip in productivity and revenue was a signal of things to come.”
“You didn’t come to me with this?” Tony couldn’t keep the menace out of his voice. He knew that when Lance glanced up and his eyes narrowed.
“I talked with Mark about marketing strategies we could use to stabilize the numbers.” Jeff frowned. “I thought he had talked about that with you.”
That answered that question. Tony worried Mark had shared the information he compiled with other members of the staff. Looked like Jeff was the source and went to Mark, who listened to the concerns but didn’t play his own hand or express his suspicions about what was going on. Mark ran to Tony, never mentioning Jeff, and everything rolled downhill from there.
The poor decision-making by Mark to take credit for Jeff’s findings and keep the matter quiet made it easier for Tony to lay the trail. He placed a few more tracks now. “The real problem is the reason behind the instability.”
Lance stopped tapping his hand against the table long enough to stare. “What do you mean?”
“It looks as if Mark had created a pretty elaborate scheme. He set up false client accounts and funneled money into them. The initial moving of money showed up as a down quarter in performance when, really, he was pocketing portions of money we received. He tried to cover everything up with inflated numbers after the fact, making it look as if he’d saved the division, but it was too late.” When Tony realized he was swiveling his chair back and forth, he stopped. He needed calm and reassurance right now. The nerves rattling inside him couldn’t show.
