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I planted my hands on the glass surface of the desk. “Three grand? Is that everything or just the one account?”
“The one, but it’s the one they live off. A few of their other accounts appear to be intact, but I couldn’t get access to everything.”
“This information didn’t come from Mr. Carter confiding in you.”
“Have you met our father?” Drew asked. “He’d rather die than ask for help.”
I lowered back into the chair, knowing full well that was true.
“I’ll take care of it. If you get me account numbers for their bills, I’ll pay them from here on out,” Easton said almost robotically.
“Whatever I can gather, I’ll get to you tonight.”
Easton pushed from his chair. “I just don’t understand this.”
“I have more.”
Easton paused. “Do I need to sit down for this?”
He did anyway before Drew spoke again.
“All those figures, you know I don’t have much of an idea of what I’m looking at. How do you do it, man? I never realized how much there is to keep track of.”
I tried not to gape at Drew. Was this his version of ass-kissing?
“Maybe I didn’t have as good of a handle on it as I thought,” Easton returned sullenly.
“One person couldn’t possibly oversee everything coming and going out of Carter Energy,” Drew insisted.
“I’m supposed to.”
Easton had a team around him, yet he felt everything was on his shoulders when it wasn’t.
“I wrote more code to search for discrepancies since all those numbers were blending together. I haven’t had a chance to run it for every facet yet, but so far, every sector of the company has something that doesn’t add up. Some numbers were off by only a few pennies, but others significantly more.”
“What numbers are you comparing?” I asked. “There should only be one set that counts and that’s what’s in our holdings.”
“We have a system that auto-generates a transaction report at midnight that pulls from the bank,” Drew said.
“No bank is going to let another company’s system into theirs. It’s too much of a security risk.” I moved some papers around on Muriella’s desk, noting the Christmas photos lined up along the back of it. There was already one from this year of everybody who was at the ranch. She really was a good fit for Stone. For all of us.
“It’s no different than a person logging into the account, only it’s our system,” Drew corrected.
“Fine, but that sounds like a security risk for us and the bank.” I leaned back in my seat, annoyed that Drew was attempting to school me. We’d been like oil and water for as long as I could remember. I didn’t like him. He didn’t like me. But we tolerated each other because of his family.
“The department with one of the largest differences of what was on the report versus what is actually in the account was yours.” He sniffed. “I guess technically they were all yours since you were CEO, but I meant the exploration division.”
Silence descended after the accusation. Easton adjusted in his seat, jaw hard set. “What are you getting at?”
“Plain and simple? There’s a lot of money that should be in that account that’s not there.”
“Are you trying to say I did something? Every dime I spend I get approval for. Every. Dime.” Thank God this desk separated me from Drew and his smug-ass expression.
He held up his hands. “I’m not saying anything other than your figures don’t add up to the tune of several hundred million.”
“Several hundred million?” I shouted, bolting to my feet. “That’s impossible. You should check that code you wrote for errors.”
“I did,” he returned calmly.
