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“Not tonight, baby girl. You need rest.”
I shifted, tugging out of his arms, and shook my head, clenching my hands into fists so they wouldn’t see me shaking. “No. I’ve missed something. I need to keep looking.”
“Come to bed, Zee,” Flynn pleaded, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear.
His touch was gentle, but I pulled away. If I let him—or any of them—near me, I would shatter.
“I’ll stay up with you,” Tristan volunteered just as Ezra gestured inside and said, “How can I help?”
“You can see if I’m misinterpreting anything in the coroner’s report,” Ry replied. “I want to reconstruct a timeline and map for their trip.”
“I’ll take another look at the liquidator’s report,” Flynn volunteered. “There were a few things Jude said in class that haven’t been sitting right with me.”
“I agree,” Tristan added. “I’ll help you.”
Tears filled my eyes again, and I blinked them away. These men. My men. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Go and get into something more comfortable, kitten,” Tristan instructed. “We’ve got a lot to get through.”
Ry and Ezra got set up around the table with printed maps of the Broadwater and coastline down to Cook Island, folders of information, and a roll of paper taped to the wall.
I led Tristan and Flynn to my office so we could pour over the data we already had—the liquidator’s report, the financials for the company, and the investor’s details—in conjunction with the data I’d downloaded from the Reserve Bank.
I couldn’t believe that barely twenty-four hours had passed since I got it—it felt like a lifetime ago—but now that I had the database records, I was using every bit of data.
“I think we need to look at our assumptions again,” I murmured, examining the timeline I’d put up on the wall, filled out with the new notes from our hours-long session. Rubbing my tired eyes, I sighed. I’d tried to push aside the feeling, the lingering black cloud that had hovered since my dream, but it was only getting stronger. Like I was tracking a scent, my nose was firmly planted to the ground. But I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that there was something. It was frustrating as fuck.
“What do you mean?” Flynn queried.
“Nothing about the company failing was suspicious. The liquidator concluded that it was simply a sign of the times. It’s what I expected; Mum was innocent. So why are we still considering this? Why is the feeling that I’ve missed something only growing?”
“It’s personal,” Tristan replied, coming to kneel in front of my chair. He interlaced his fingers with mine, his warm hands comforting me when I needed it most. “You’re shaken up from your dream. Maybe you should try to get some sleep and consider things in the morning.”
I shook my head and leaned forward, snuggling into his shoulder. I was exhausted, utterly spent. But I had to keep going.
“I’m still not convinced the guy from the US doing the liquidation isn’t a red flag,” Flynn interjected contemplatively, as he shuffled papers. “Take a look at this notation in the limitations set out in the liquidator’s report.”
Tristan took the papers and, without moving me, began leafing through them. “You’re right, angel. This basically confirms what I was thinking too. Accounting rules aren’t standardized across the world. Tax and company laws between the United States and here are entirely different. The report excludes liability for certain errors made by the liquidators. There are always limitation of liability clauses in these kinds of reports, but having this particular clause in there isn’t normal. It smacks of a dereliction of duty caused by the American liquidator being given free rein when it should have been run by an Australian expert.”
Flynn huffed in disgust. “Hey, the amount of money lost justified a full audit too.”
I pulled back and gnawed on my lip, contemplating how to explain to them that I had more data when as far as they knew, I hadn’t gotten anything from the Reserve Bank. Stalling, I stood and led Tristan over to the couches they’d been working on.
“I’ve been able to reconstruct some of the company’s transactions. I think we’ll get close to doing a full audit of at least parts of the business.”
Tristan blinked and swallowed hard. I pinned him with my gaze and silently pleaded with him not to ask the question how. He looked away, and a moment later his shoulders dropped as he exhaled.
“Do I want to know?” he murmured.
Flynn threaded their fingers together in a move that was a plea for Tristan not to leave that also lent him strength.
“Please don’t ask me,” I begged.
Tristan flexed his jaw, biting hard as if he was trying to get his temper under control. He squeezed Flynn’s hand and shook his head in annoyance. I had never promised that I’d give up doing what I did for a living, but I did promise to protect him, and that meant keeping him completely oblivious to anything that even bordered on illegal.
“What parts can we reconstruct?” Flynn asked, moving us along.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Tristan focussed back on him.
