AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ezra scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned.
“How are you going with the yacht info?” I asked.
“I’ve got nothing on yachts. Without knowing more information, I can’t narrow down the search,” Ezra huffed, his frustration clear.
“Search for holiday accommodation,” I suggested. “I’ll check how property ownership is recorded over there. We might just be able to do an online search to find who the owners are once we narrow them down.”
At one point Mauritius was a British colony. Systems of land ownership were often one of the things the good ol’ Brits foisted upon their colonized lands. How else would the king demonstrate ultimate dominion over them than by creating a land ownership system to reinforce it? It was a feudal system of ownership that reflected centuries of inbuilt oppression and inequality. Then Robert Torrens came along and revolutionized how ownership was recorded, streamlining Australia’s systems, and soon after that, much of the Commonwealth. If Mauritius was one of those countries, we’d be able to search the records.
*****
“Okay, so Ezra realized that one person might have been operating the accounts. Flynn figured out that they bought something big with eight million dollars, give or take.” Zali looked between us, and we each nodded. She quirked her lips, biting back a smirk, no doubt at our almost identical reactions.
“Based on the location of the transactions I identified, you’re guessing it’s in Mauritius. Tristan, you found some articles, so you think it could be property there, and Flynn has narrowed down which properties it could be, using Google Earth.”
“In a nutshell,” I responded.
“Okay, then.” Zali slumped in her seat and yawned. She hadn’t had much sleep, but she did look more rested than before.
“I’ve matched a few of the properties in the article with holiday accommodation. Tris has figured out how they keep a record of property owners and how to search it too,” Ezra added.
She shook her head and lifted her palms up in a shrug. “I can’t believe how much progress you’ve made. It’s more than I’ve done in weeks.”
“No, not true. You laid the path. We’re still kind of guessing,” Flynn challenged.
I agreed and said, “We don’t know whether the money was paid to a real estate agent or not. We’re assuming it was. We’re also assuming that it was one of the ones mentioned in that article. I could be completely off base. We had a hunch, and we’re finding evidence to support that hunch, not letting the evidence lead us to its logical conclusion.”
“It’s possible that we’re completely wrong,” Ezra warned her.
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” Zali ushered Flynn off her executive chair and brought up a search engine. “Tristan, can you find me the website for the government organization that registers property owners? Flynn, I need those addresses.”
I entered the website I’d found, and Flynn handed her a piece of paper.
She typed like her fingers were on fire, command prompts popping up on the screen and disappearing as she swapped between them, issuing orders to do her bidding.
“Zali, please don’t cause an international incident,” Ezra begged. “This is another country’s government records. It’s espionage.”
“Have faith, boss.” She smirked and tossed him a wink that had Ezra chuckling as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Behave, jailbird.”
The others went back to work, Ezra looking for the messages that put out the threat against me, and Flynn checking transaction data. Headache raging, I needed a break.
I also needed to speak with Ry.
Four
Ryder
“Knock, knock,” Tristan said from the open doorway. My office was a broom cupboard compared to Zali’s, but she’d made it clear that it was my space, just like my cabin was, and I appreciated Tristan treating it the same way.
“What can I help with?” I asked. They’d been at it for hours, researching and theorizing, trying to come up with the who and the why. I wanted to be there with them, but it got suffocating. Knowing that Rosa’s company collapsing was the cause of my dad’s death made it hard to be sympathetic to her death. But that fucked me up even more. How could I not be sympathetic when it was Asher’s mum who’d died?
Asher was my best friend. He’d been my light during the darkest time of my life, and I’d lost him too. In some ways I was still grieving for him. I didn’t think I would ever fully accept that I’d never see him again. There were days when a memory hit me, or I got such a strong sense of déjà vu that I turned around, expecting him to walk around the corner or call out to me.
I sometimes wondered what Asher would be like if he were alive. We’d still be friends—I’d make sure of that—and I knew he’d be larger than life. He would have been the most popular guy at work, and I had no doubt that he’d be doing something extraordinary. I could picture him on a research vessel somewhere off Western Australia, searching for new species of shark or something like that. He was obsessed with the predators and fanatical about scuba diving. He would have ended up a marine biologist or ecologist with just as much personality as Steve Irwin.
I missed him—more than I cared to admit most days.
