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I turned in his arms and met his gaze. Playing with the soft cotton of his open button-down shirt, I responded, “I’ve got a country. Now I just need an address.”
“Can you get it?”
I nodded, tentative but hopeful. “I think I can. It’s a bit of guesswork, but with a bit of luck, I’ll find them.”
He shook his head and cupped my face, dropping a soft kiss to my forehead. “You don’t need luck, love. You astound me with your skills. You’ve got this.” He smirked and patted me on the butt. “Now get out of the kitchen. I’m cooking breakfast this morning. Go take a nap while I burn everything and we end up eating Ry’s food anyway.”
I wandered outside and stretched out on the lounger. It was already warm. Even an hour after dawn, the late summer sun still packed a punch. Closing my eyes, I napped until the smell of sizzling bacon and coffee filled my senses.
Tristan and Flynn were in the galley, dishing up plates for Ezra and Ry. Their conversation was hushed until Flynn spotted me and came over to kiss me good morning. “Glad to see you got some sleep.”
I smiled, but it was an effort. Exhaustion still held me under, my movements slow and my thoughts even slower. But I was hungry, and that ruled my movements for the moment. “Yeah. Food.”
My guys shared a look, and Flynn passed me to Tristan, ushering us out of the galley.
“Come on, let’s get you comfortable,” Tristan murmured against my temple as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the sofa outside. I curled into him, using his chest as a pillow. Holding a plate of food, Flynn joined us, and he fed me bites of scrambled egg and pieces of bacon while I lay there. Ezra sat on the coffee table next to Flynn. He held a cup of green tea up to my lips, letting me drink from it without having to hold the cup. Ry was with us a moment later, carrying sunscreen, a gauzy sheet that he laid over my bare legs, sunglasses that he slipped onto my face, and a hat for Tristan.
We were quiet, the guys letting me eat and drink my fill until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.
I forced myself to move though. I still had work to do. I had a whole country to whittle down.
“Stay,” Tristan ordered gently, holding me in place.
“Need to find out who it was.” I was almost delirious. But I was determined too.
“Let us help,” Flynn coaxed. “We know where to look. It’s just a matter of finding them now.”
“I’ll stay,” Ry offered. “You’re all better at investigations than me.”
I was shuffled around. Tristan stood up, and Ry slipped into his place, tugging me against him once he was settled. He stretched his feet out, propping them on the table, and ran his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. I groaned, my world going dark as I slipped into sleep once more.
Three
Tristan
“How do you want to tackle this?” Ezra asked us as we sat down in Zali’s office, Ezra next to me on the couch and Flynn on the coffee table in front of us.
Hooking my foot around Flynn’s, I smiled at him and shifted closer to Ezra, my shin pressed against his thigh as I leaned my side against the back of the couch.
“Zali narrowed the location of the online activity to Mauritius. Starting there is obvious, but we don’t have the same skills that she does to attack it from an IT perspective. We need to better utilize the information we already have. If we approach it differently, we’ll be able to see what shakes out.” I paused, thinking through my approach. Ezra was as skilled in investigations as I was. It was a nice change being able to spitball ideas with him rather than having to keep secrets between us, and Flynn had proven himself a keen study.
“What information do we have?” Flynn asked, but it was a rhetorical question. He didn’t give either of us a chance to answer before he began listing items on his fingers, first holding out his thumb. “We have the bank transactions. We know from Zee that we’re looking at Mauritius.” He held out his index finger. “We have… is that it?”
“We have a timeline,” Ezra supplied. “We know when the accounts were opened and when transactions have happened.” He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead, but it flopped straight back into place in front of his eyes.
I reached out, fingering the strands and then tucking them behind his ear. I wanted to pinch myself. I couldn’t believe I could do that—just reach out and touch him like a lover would do. He bit his lip, smiling shyly at me, a flush rising in his cheeks as he laid a hand on my thigh. Warmth spread through me at his touch, and I threaded our fingers together, squeezing his hand.
“You two are so stinking cute together,” Flynn quipped with a grin.
I narrowed my eyes playfully at him, and he barked out a laugh.
Ezra rolled his eyes and huffed before adding, “We’ve considered the transactions in each account individually. But if one person was pulling the strings, the three accounts can’t be considered in isolation from one another. Let’s see if there are any regular transactions being made or any pattern within dates or amounts. There’s got to be something there.”
“I can do that,” Flynn offered. “The statements are all spreadsheets. It’s just a matter of re-ordering them.”
He hopped onto his laptop and plugged in the portable hard drive we’d saved the raw research to.
“What else have we got?” I asked Ezra.
