AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Brad Pratt, part of Lucifer Lost. We’d really like to nail down who the other members of the group are. Also, Travis Hartley, who runs The Velvet Volcano.” Jo filled her in on what had happened the day before.
“Sounds good. I’ll see what I can dig up for you. In exchange I want to know every word that waitress says to you the minute you’re done.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Naomie slipped into Beautiful Bouncing Babies at eight Monday morning, an hour and a half before the staff normally arrived. Usually she loved the peaceful calm of the early morning; it reminded her of going to church when nobody else was there, alone to allow her mind to focus and refresh. But today the silence lent a menacing quality to the surroundings, and a shiver ran along her neck as she locked the door behind her.
She’d barely slept the night before, and amid the tears and shock of Madison’s passing the mysterious double grant application loomed as she tossed and turned.
Fraud. Embezzlement. She’d tried to tell herself that those words were too strong. But she couldn’t talk herself out of them, or out ofbetrayal. Triple-B washerbrainchild andherpassion—Rhea had come on board only because Naomie didn’t have all the needed skills herself—and she’d convinced herself that she’d created a family. A place where everyone cared deeply about each other and the shared mission. The realization that she’d been naive made her physically ill.
Only a handful of people had easy access to Madison’s file and could have removed the original grant application: Sandra, Rhea, or Janelle, Rhea’s administrative assistant. Madison might have been left alone with the approved file while an admin helped someone with something else. Any of the four possibilities broke Naomie’s heart, but only one was finite. If Madison was responsible, there would be no more theft. But if one of the others was, the situation could recur. She had to find out the truth.
After a quick walk-through to make sure she was alone, she beelined for the janitor’s closet. Bracing against the sting of cleaning compounds, she pulled the mop and bucket away from the safe tucked in the back. After tapping in the code and extracting the suite’s passkey, she hurried to Rhea’s office.
What she was about to do was an enormous breach of trust. While she technically had the right to see any of Rhea’s files, the respectful thing would have been to go to Rhea directly. But if Rhea was involved, telling her wasn’t smart; she had the ability to cover any tracks before Naomie even figured out how to investigate. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for; she figured the best approach was to work her way backward from what she knew. In addition to Madison, nine other young women received grants during the past fiscal quarter; if Madison’s double application was part of a larger scam, their files seemed like the best place to start.
With a final glance over her shoulder, she unlocked the office. She left the door open so she could hear any noise outside, then hurried over to Rhea’s gray filing cabinet. The metal shrieked as she pulled the top drawer open—she winced and checked the quiet again before proceeding. Then, with shaking fingers, she flipped through the drawer and extracted the ten files. She snapped a picture of the name tab on the first folder, then photographed every page inside as quickly as she could. Rhea often came in half an hour early, and Naomie couldn’t risk getting caught.
As she closed the first file, she checked the time. Seven minutes to photograph that file, and some of the others were thicker—she had to move faster. Her shaking hands blurred the next two photos, and she had to reshoot them—she took a deep breath and forced herself to focus, striving for a balance between speed and accuracy.
The second file took six minutes.
The third took five.
The fourth took ten.
As she reached for the fifth, something rumbled down the hall. She whipped around and bolted to the hall, then into the shared space a few doors down.
A printer was ejecting printed pages. Someone had sent a print job remotely. She laughed, hand on her chest, and returned to the office.
She finished the remaining files with ten minutes to spare. After returning them to the cabinet in their proper order, she hurried to Rhea’s desk, where she tugged open the side drawer and extracted the funds-received log. Ten pages of signatures related to the current quarter; she aimed her phone and began to snap pics.
Something thudded softly outside the office door.
Adrenaline shot through her, and she flew into the hall again. She looked left, then right, but found nobody. She ran down the hall toward the reception area, straight to the door. She pushed it open and scanned the parking lot.
Nobody.
She was sure she hadn’t imagined the noise. But maybe it had been a rodent in the walls? A raccoon on the roof?
She hurried to finish the pictures, then shoved the log back into the drawer. After locking the door and returning the passkey to the safe in the janitor’s closet, she forced herself to walk at a normal pace to her own office. Once the door behind her was closed she sank into her chair, trying to steady her breathing and her pounding heart.
With Rhea and the others due any minute, she didn’t want to be caught studying the pictures she’d just taken. So, when she regained her composure, she began her routine work for the day. First up, her filing. She hated filing, so when she finished with a given folder, she added it to the top of a pile that grew throughout the week. Then, each Monday morning she’d take the files she’d worked on over the weekend, add them to the pile, then put them all away so she could start the week fresh. She organized the stack alphabetically, then scooted her chair over and opened her filing cabinet.
She instantly froze. The row of files was uneven. Some sat slightly higher than others as if someone had carelessly pulled out and replaced a slew of folders. But that wasn’t possible—she had several organizational quirks, and one was the need to have her files lined up exactly, with the tabs in line and at the same height. Opening a perfectly aligned drawer of files gave her the same feeling as a newly vacuumed rug, or a perfectly mowed lawn, and she always patted them into precise place every time she removed or replaced files—it was one of the reasons she saved her filing to do at the same time. And while it was possible she might have displacedoneif she’d been in a particular hurry, to haveallof them misaligned? Absolutely not.
Someone had been in her office.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Chelsea paced the floor of her bedroom, hand bracing her lower back, frustrated and angry and scared.
David wasn’t taking this seriously enough. This wasn’t a game, this washis son.
Yes, he’d fixed the window. Yes, he’d spent the night—on the couch, he wouldn’t even use her guest bedroom—so she could get a decent night’s sleep. But then he’d bolted out of the door first thing in the morning, shoving a list of alarm companies at her. That was his idea of taking care of her?
