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A couple of office personnel walk past their altercation, their eyes bugging out.
Candy smiles at the staff, cocking her head at Cynthia. “Good workers are hard to find these days, don’t you agree? Must have been hired to be another pretty face for the good ole boys to ogle at.”
Before Cynthia can open her mouth to protest, Candy cuts her off. “Forget your barista skills. Go to the Starbucks across the street and order me a grande, double-shot, three pumps sugar-free peppermint, nonfat, extra hot, no foam, light whip, stirred white mocha.”
Cynthia balks. “A what?”
Candy rolls her eyes, repeating the outrageous order slowly, using small words.
Outrage coats Cynthia’s skin in a red hue. “I’m not an assistant who has time to run errands.”
In classic Candy fashion, she belittles Cynthia with her eyes, looking her up and down. “Could have fooled me with your knock-off Louboutins.”
“Excuse me?!”
“I bought mine off the back of a truck in Denver.” She points at her heeled feet. “Mine look a hundred times more legit than yours. Not all black market dealers are alike. You should come shopping with me if you want to find the good stuff. Lord knows your wardrobe could use a facelift. Where are you buying your suits? Prudes-R-Us?”
“I’ll find someone to fetch your order,” Cynthia hisses through her teeth, trying to turn away.
“You’re not dumping your work on someone else. I asked YOU to fetch it.” Candy pats Cynthia on the cheek. “Now be a good girl and do as you’re told, or else I’ll put a collar around your neck and show you who’s in charge.”
My mouth falls open. Punk shoulders shake with silent laughter.
Candy gives Cynthia one of her signature cruel smiles. “I would hate to inform your superiors how uncooperative you’re being in this investigation.”
“Coffee has nothing to do with assisting this inquiry,” Cynthia blusters.
With a mischievous smile, Candy waves a hand at her enticing figure, sheathed in body-hugging material. “How much are you willing to bet I couldn’t persuade them?”
Muttering, Cynthia turns toward the elevators. If she doesn’t return with Candy’s coffee order, I’ll be surprised.
“Don’t forget the cup koozie. I don’t want my hands to burn,” Candy hollers at Cynthia’s retreating figure. She turns her head to me and Punk, giving us a thumbs-up.
Punk shakes his head, smiling. “Good call, Jo.”
“Holy crap. Candy was born for this role,” I whisper into my cell.
“You’re welcome,” Jo sing-songs before disconnecting.
CHAPTERFORTY-SIX
CHASE
Anew day brings new light to the case. Ziggy and Candy surprising the team yesterday was a hail Mary. Ziggy is a master at installing firewalls and antivirus software, something that needs reinforcement after current events. With Ziggy’s handling the firewalls, Butch returns to tracking the money through the dark web. And I finally have time to check how my software is faring with cracking our perp’s method for extorting money from the clients of P.L. Moore Financial.
Luck is finally on our side. My software can decipher how our thief was choosing accounts to target. The accounts have to hold above five million dollars to be picked and not exceed over fifty million. Accounts falling in this range were hefty enough to obtain a decent cash flow from, but not large enough to be on high alert, routine monitoring.
The amount from the accounts varies depending on how much the account holds. If it’s a smaller account, they extract less. The opposite is true for the larger accounts—greater accounts mean they take more. The stolen funds are random numbers meant to look like legit transactions or investments in bogus stocks and fake real estate.
All the accounts Simone discovered followed this method except for one. And the oddball account belongs to one deceased Luca Oldani Amato.
Why Bianchi’s henchman’s account is the exception is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was targeted by mistake. Maybe it was a gamble to see what the thief could get away with. Or maybe with it being one of the largest accounts in the firm, the cash amount was too tempting to ignore.
The reason doesn’t matter. What matters is narrowing our search by focusing on the clients’ accounts most likely to fall victim based on their size.
It’s Tuesday, and Simone is adjusting her approach, examining the most likely poached accounts first, while I examine the surveillance footage from the night before the computer virus wreaked havoc.
Seated in my stiff, aesthetically pleasing chair not proper enough for computer work, I scan the footage from the previous week. The virus created several holes in the recordings, with some camera feeds scattered out of order and others missing entirely. Software can be patched, clients’ files restored from our backup hard drive, but deleted video footage is nearly impossible to retrieve when it gets buried under layers of corrupted material.
