I leave my cell where it is, tangled in a dark drawer with the forks and knives and spoons, and fetch my laptop from the table. I need to back up, concentrate on the facts and start at the very beginning. Four and a half million isn’t exactly petty cash. You can’t just swipe it from the company account without somebody noticing. Maybe if I figure out how he took it, I’ll find a clue as to where it is.
I carry my computer over to the couch and type “corporate embezzlement schemes” into the Google search field. A California CFO pocketed almost ninety million. The head of a Chicago meat processing plant ran off with over seventy million. A VP of a West Coast merchandising company stole sixty-five million dollars via a kickback scheme, then gambled all of it away. Closer to home, a Savannah employee benefits manager made off with more than forty million in fraudulent wire transfers.
And then my gaze falls on a story at the bottom of the page, and my heart rate spikes. With shaking fingers, I click on the link, which shoots me to a website profiling the nation’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
In the mid-’90s, a man by the name of Javier Cardozo was accused of stealing over seventy-three million from his employer, a Boston mortgage bank. When the police arrived at his house to arrest him, they busted in his door to find the television on and a half-eaten plate of still warm macaroni on the kitchen counter, but no Javier. Both he and the money, every single cent of the seventy-three million, had vanished.
In a year or two, will Will’s name be added to this list?
I return to the embezzlement schemes and scroll through the links. From them, I learn two things. First, four and a half million is chump change. I’m sure Nick and the AppSec board think otherwise, but the amount is little league compared to the others I come across.
Second, the money is almost always taken by someone with direct access to the books. A corporate officer, a head of finance, someone who handles billing or payroll. Will was a software engineer. His programming skills may have brought in business for AppSec, but how could he get money out? There had to have been someone else involved. Someone higher up within the company, someone who either paved Will’s way or covered his tracks.
Which brings me back to Nick. He didn’t mention investigating any other employees, but then again, he was being purposefully vague, and technically, he did threaten me. He also said his job was on the line, so it’s not a long stretch to think he might be desperate. I sigh and sink back into the couch, pushing my computer aside and picking up Dad’s legal pad. I flip to a clean page and jot down what I know:
Money is missing from AppSec. Four and a half million dollars and counting.
Nick thinks Will is the one who took it, and if I’m totally honest, so do I.
Will would have had to move funds from AppSec’s account to one he controlled, and in multiple transfers spanning many months, if not years.
The money is not in the house, but a clue to where Will hid it might be.
Nick wants the money back. So does whoever is on the other end of the 678 number, and he’s willing to kill for it. Same person?
My heart gives a hard kick at the last one, and blood pulses in my head. Whoever it is hasn’t texted again, but it’s only a matter of time. You don’t send a threat that specific—Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him—and then just fade away into silence. And if I’m to believe him, which I think I should, he knows how to get around an alarm.
The growl of a lawn mower roars outside. A dog starts up across the street. Both spike my pulse, and I retrace my steps after my parents left, when I locked the doors and punched in the code on my gleaming keypad to arm the system. I tell myself I’m fine. I’m tucked safely behind the best alarm money can buy.
Still, my heart doesn’t quite settle.
24
The lawn mower sounds like it’s coming from just on the other side of my kitchen window. I twist around on the couch, catching a split-second glimpse of a tall, dark figure before he disappears around the corner of the house.
“What the...?”
I pop off the couch and run to the side window, peering through the glass at a shirtless and sweaty Corban. He’s got his head down, his shoulder muscles straining as he pushes a mower across a patch of grass that winds around from the side of the house into the back. Beyond him, neat strips of cut grass lie in perfect rows across half the yard. The other half is still wild and unruly, thanks to an unseasonably wet spring and rapidly rising temperatures.
Without thinking, I yank open the back door, and a siren slices through the air. Corban’s head jerks up in surprise, and his feet freeze on the lawn. I slam both palms over my ears. “Oh, shit!”
There’s no possible way he can hear me above the racket. He leans down and flips a switch on the side of the mower, as if that would help any.
“Hang on!” I take off down the hallway to the front of the house and punch in the code on the alarm pad. The screeching stops instantly, a second or two of blissful silence before the house phone rings.
I snatch the handheld from its stand on the kitchen counter on the way back to the yard, willing my heart to settle. On a bright note, at least I know the alarm works. Any intruder who isn’t halfway to Florida by now would have to either be deaf or dead on the floor from a heart attack.
“Hello?”
“We’ve received an alert for 4538 Ashland Avenue. Do you need us to send the authorities?”
“Oh, no, sorry. False alarm, and totally my fault. I’m still getting used to this thing, and I forgot to turn it off before I opened the door.”
“Can you please confirm the error?”
“I thought I just did.” I step into a slice of sunshine in the backyard, where Corban is standing, hands to his hips, at the edge of the terrace. I wave an everything’s okay hand, and he traipses back over to the mower.
“I need to hear the code word, ma’am.”
That’s right, the code word. The one Big Jim said they’d ask for each time I spoke to them on the phone, the one that lets them know everything is okay. “Rugby.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You have a nice day.”
I drop the phone onto a stone table and turn toward Corban with an apologetic wave. “What are you doing here?”
Corban looks pointedly behind him, at a strip of freshly mowed grass, then back to me. “I’m mowing your lawn.”
“I can see that, it’s just... My yard service is going to be really confused when they show up here Tuesday morning. They’re going to think I’m cheating on them.”
Corban gives me an oh well grin. “Best to keep those guys on their toes. Men work harder if they think they’ve got competition.”
Before I can respond, he yanks on the cord to start up the mower and gets back to work.