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“Oh, I remember that,” she said with a smile in her voice. “A few months ago, a guy came in and said he was your boyfriend. He wanted me to let him up to your apartment so he could surprise you. He had a wicker basket and a blanket. It was so romantic.” She sighed, then cleared her throat. “I’m sorry if I ruined your surprise, but I couldn’t let him up—as lovely as a surprise date is, I hadn’t seen him before, so I didn’t want to breach security. I told him that, and he shrugged it off. He took out a note and laughed, telling me that he was prepared. He asked me to stick it to your door. I would have put it in your mailbox, but he begged me to put it on your door in case you didn’t check your mailbox and inadvertently stood him up.”
The whole scenario—the story, the actor, the props—made my skin crawl. With a shudder, I replied, “He wasn’t my boyfriend. I don’t know him.”
Her horrified gasp was a comfort in some respects. It meant that I wasn’t overreacting. But if they thought for one moment that she was disposable, if killing her was a means to get to me, then what? Laura had done me a solid by not letting him up. We were lucky that they hadn’t pushed things further. But what if we weren’t as lucky next time?
“Would the security cameras in the lobby have picked up the exchange? I’m trying to confirm who he was.”
“Yes, but we only keep footage for thirty days.” The slight shake in her voice made my gut twist. I needed to calm her down, or she’d call the police the next time he came in, and who knew whether he’d retaliate. “The most recent times he came in might still be on the system.”
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.” I pulled up the dates I’d received the threats and instructed her to check the footage for me. I made her promise that if he came in again, she would do exactly the same thing she’d done in the past—take the note and deliver it to my door as promised. Then she needed to clip the footage and send it to me.
“You should call the police, Professor Reid,” she advised. “Stalking is serious.”
“It’s being handled… by ah… the university,” I bluffed, hoping that my spur-of-the-moment lie didn’t bite me in the arse later. “I think one of my students got my address and is playing a joke on me. I’m having it investigated, and the university will apply sanctions if necessary.”
She hesitated for a moment. “I mean, obviously you know what you’re doing, but if he’s coming to your home….”
“Yeah, it’s not ideal. But like I said, don’t worry about it. I’ve got it under control.” We said our goodbyes, an anvil sitting in my gut at the knowledge my building manager was the first line of defence against this person. How the hell could I protect her too?
“Ah, guys,” Flynn called. “I’m seeing a pattern here.”
I moved over to Flynn, a blanket of worry wrapping around me. Fear sank its claws into me, ratcheting up the tension in my spine until my head was pounding. Rubbing my temples, I looked at how Flynn had organized the transactions. He’d set them out based on date order rather than by the account numbers. Each line was highlighted in yellow, green, or aqua, a dizzying combination, but it was clear that each of the accounts was being used in turn, likely spacing the transactions out between them.
Flynn indicated a series of three entries, each in a different colour. They’d occurred within two days of each other and totalled over eight million dollars. Better still, the transfers were all to the same recipient. There was no doubt in my mind that the accounts were being operated by the same person.
“Someone bought something big,” Flynn explained.
“That was just before Rosa and Ash went missing.” Ezra sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face and running his fingers through his hair.
“A hit?” I asked.
“Nah, it’s too much money. You can get someone killed here for fifty grand. Fake passports and even full identities aren’t anywhere near that much either. I agree with Flynn. I think they were buying something.”
That didn’t make me any more comfortable.
Flynn hummed thoughtfully. “So we’re looking for an asset. What can you buy for eight mil? The possibilities are almost endless.”
“Given the recent transactions from the open account were from Mauritius, I think we should start there,” Ezra recommended.
I agreed, but had nothing—no suggestions, not even an idea of where to start.
“Yeah, I agree,” Flynn stated, opening an internet browser as he spoke. With just a few clicks, he had found a list of luxury properties in Mauritius for sale. “My money is on a beachfront mansion. It’d be the perfect place to disappear to.”
“Or a yacht. That gives them mobility.”
“Could have been crypto,” Flynn bounced back. “Bitcoin started around then, but it was worthless. No one in their right mind would have invested that amount of money in it. And if they did, the market for it would have exploded way earlier than it did.” He sat back in his chair and rubbed his smooth chin, his moves short and sharp. He was clearly frustrated. But what he’d said had triggered an idea.
He continued, oblivious to the cogs in my mind clicking into place. “Heck, they could have bought people for that amount of money. Who knows what these sick—” He exhaled harshly, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose and cutting his own words off. “Who knows what they’re capable of.”
“The databases,” I murmured as it hit me. My heart pounded in my chest, beating at a frenetic pace. My breath caught, and nerves borne of possibility and dread coursed through me. That was it. The key.
And I had it at my fingertips.
“What are you thinking?” Flynn asked as I flipped open my laptop and logged onto the university library. It had a treasure trove of rarely accessed databases that contained exactly the kind of obscure data I needed.
“If this was a multi-million-dollar property purchase right when the GFC was sending markets toppling, it would have made the news.”
“So…,” Ezra prompted, dragging out the vowel.
