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ADAM
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“ARTHUR SMITH IN TECH Security, Rachel Turner in Finance, and Joseph Parissimo in Customer Service,” I said for the third time.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line while Oliver evidently wrote these names down with his toes or something. The pause was, in fact, long enough that I was just about to ask him whether he needed me to email the names to him when he finally started talking again.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” he said, acting like this had been rocket science.
Honestly, the guy was my best friend, and I’d known him for an incredibly long time—long enough that he’d actually helped me start Miller and Co—but there were times when I thought his whole devil may care attitude went a little bit too far. Sure, he had an ability to see things that I couldn’t necessarily see, and he definitely thought outside the box when I was so straightforward that I didn’t see anything outside of my own plans, but I couldn’t lie.
Sometimes it drove me fucking crazy.
It was currently making him act like this whole thing was an easy breezy thing, when it was really the opposite.
The company was bleeding money, courtesy of someone in the Houston office, and though Katie Walters, private investigator extraordinaire, and I had come down to Houston to investigate the case personally, we still hadn’t found anything. We’d spent an entire week following the wrong guy and looking for leads in all the wrong place (it sounded like a song when you put it that way—one of those terrible country western ones). We’d had some personal complications between us—of the best sort, if I was being honest—and had gotten sidetracked on more than one occasion.
In short, we were doing a pretty shitty job of being personal investigators so far. Which meant the company was still bleeding money.
Which meant that these three names, given to me by some of the higher-ups in this office, were our next-best leads. And that meant that we needed to move on figuring out which of them was the most suspicious, and how we could nail down whether they were actually doing anything or not.
None of which seemed to go with Oliver’s current attitude. I wondered if he was actually sitting in his office sipping a martini, or something. Playing the big boss like it meant he didn’t have to do anything real.
He’d always thought my job was easy, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was pretending that now that he was in charge of the New York branch, he didn’t really have to do anything.
I bit my tongue against saying any of that, though, and waited.
Because Oliver might be pissing me off this morning, but there was a 95 percent chance that my frustration had more to do with our failure at finding the right guy up to this point, and less to do with Oliver himself. The guy was my best friend, for shit’s sake. I could give him a second to get things together.
Still, I glanced at James Andrews, the head of the sales department and my would-be boss in my current persona, and made a face at him in the silence.
James, knowing me well enough now—and knowing who I was—gave me a wry face in return. He’d guessed at who I was pretty early in my tenure in Houston and had been in on the meeting where Katie and I finally came clean about what we were doing there. He knew that this company was my baby. He knew how important it was that we caught the guy who was stealing from me. And if his look was anything to go by, he wasn’t any more in love with Oliver’s delays than I was.
Maybe it wasn’t just me, then.
“So what am I doing with these names?” Oliver asked, his voice coming out a lot oilier than I remembered it being.
Shit, I’d been in Houston for a week, and I was already starting to lose my tolerance for big city types. I’d been that kind of guy just a month ago.
Well, not as bad as Oliver. But still, the kind of guy who made a daily run past the bakery for bagels and cream cheese every single morning and thought it was totally normal to be able to order Thai food at midnight on a Tuesday.
The thought made me grin, because it was just so ridiculous, and then I jumped on Oliver’s question.
“Find out who they are, how long they’ve been here, and what their backgrounds are,” I reminded him—because this wasn’t the first time I’d told him this, either. “These are our top three suspects, courtesy of the executive suite at this branch. They’ve noticed some odd behavior coming from all three parties and suggested that we look into them next. I want to know everything we have on each of them.”
“And what if we don’t have anything useful?”
“Then I turn Katie loose and let her find whatever we don’t have,” I said quickly. “That is why I hired her, after all.”
“And here I thought you just hired her for her pretty face.”
I would have laughed last week. But right now...
No. Not after what she and I had been through over the last week. Not after everything we’d done.
Besides the truth was, she could probably run circles around Oliver when it came to her intelligence. Not that he would ever admit something like that.
“She’s a whole lot smarter than you give her credit for,” I said bluntly. “A whole lot more than just a pretty face.”
I heard the laughter in his voice when he replied. “Oh, getting attached, are we?”
“More like appreciating how quick her mind works,” I retorted. “If we can’t find it, she can get it. You and I have better access than anyone down here, but we can’t match the level she can get to, and her experience is so far beyond anything I’ve ever had. Her instincts are amazing. And at the end of the day, I hired her for a reason, and it wasn’t because I thought she was gorgeous. I want her mind at work on this. I’m hoping we don’t have to turn to her milking her connections for better information, but if we do, she’s my secret weapon.”
Oliver cleared his throat, and I could hear him trying to reset himself with my stated boundaries. Don’t mess with Katie. Get your job done. Find out what we can about these people so I know whether to pursue them or not.
They couldn’t be sitting well with him. He didn’t like boundaries, and he didn’t like rules. He liked to be able to do whatever he wanted. He was, without a doubt, the most spoiled person I’d ever met.
But he was also brilliant, so I generally let him run with it. Hearing that I was giving him such firm guidelines must have been a real shock.
That thought got another smile from me, because was there anything better, at the end of the day, than shocking your usually un-shockable best friend? I very rarely got to catch him off guard.
I’d had to fly all the way to Houston to get it done. But I was definitely enjoying the experience.
“Right. So background check, history with the company, and have finance look for anything weird in their spending accounts. Does the Houston office have anything we can use? What are they using to identify these people in the first place? What are they doing that’s got the suspicion turned on them?”
“Discrepancies in their spending accounts. Suspicious behavior with other employees that they’ve been watching for some time. Gut instinct. Enough for me to take it seriously.”
I’d been through what they had. I knew it was enough to warrant another look. And Katie had agreed. I didn’t have one single doubt about looking into them. Oliver didn’t really need that sort of information, anyhow. He didn’t need to know the what or why or when, because that wouldn’t affect his research in any way.
I just needed him to actually get that research done. He had access to my networks in New York right now, and I didn’t. And it was his damned job to help me, here, not question my decisions.
Maybe I was sending psychic thoughts through the phone line to that effect, because Oliver suddenly came online.
“Right-o, boss man,” he muttered. “I’ll get right on this and get you something by the end of the day. And in the meantime, I’ve got the finance department here working on looking through all the spending accounts in Houston to see if we find any other discrepancies. Anything that looks wrong. You want me to go through the other offices as well? We might think it’s coming from Houston, but we might also be wrong. Someone could be diverting the path in order to hide their trail.”
Now that was what I expected from Oliver. Thinking outside the box. Seeing things I wasn’t seeing. It was one of the things I loved best about him, and it had always been one of the things that made him a terrific second-in-command. He saw things that I was sometimes in too much of a hurry to see. I was always so gung-ho about moving forward, finding the right solution, getting things done.
It was what had helped me get this company off the ground in the first place. Without that drive, that insane need to get things finished, I would have given up at least five million times. But it very definitely led to me skipping right over important details—and failing to see things that might not fit with my idea of how the world worked.
Oliver had always been able to slow down and see those things better than I could. He’d always been able to force me to pause and consider what I might not be considering.
So yeah, my drive was one of the reasons the company had worked. Oliver’s ability to look outside the box was another. Without him, I didn’t think the company would have become what it was.
And I needed him to turn that instinct even higher right now because I wasn’t finding anything down here in Houston that looked like an answer. Which meant I might very well be skipping right over something important.
“Yes. Terrific idea. And Oliver?”
“Yep?”
“I’m counting on you. Thanks for covering my tracks up there.”
“You know I’ve just been waiting to get into the corner office, Adam. I’m here for you, man.”
He hung up without saying goodbye, and I stared at my phone for a second, frowning at that response.
It didn’t sound like the response of a faithful second-in-command. It sounded like the response of someone who was trying to undermine their boss.
“Interesting guy,” James said, cutting into my thoughts. “Think he’ll actually get you what you need?”
I looked up, meeting his eye and hearing exactly what he wasn’t saying. “He’ll do it. He doesn’t take life as seriously as I do—never has—but he knows how important this is. If the company fails because someone is stealing from it, he also loses a job. And at the end of the day, Oliver always looks out for himself.”
James gave me a shrug. “As long as it means he’ll get us what we need in terms of files on these guys. Because I’ve been doing some research, but I haven’t found anything more than Samuel gave us to start with. I’m counting on your friend Oliver—and you—having better clearance than me. Deeper clearance.”
I scooted over to sit next to him and glanced down at the papers on his desk. “We both definitely have deeper clearance. I just don’t have access to the network in New York right now. I should have thought to have that set up on the laptop I brought, but I didn’t think about needing it. And I didn’t have Katie—who definitely would have told me—advising me yet. I suppose I could get it if I need to, but it’s easier to just have Oliver handle it, honestly. Still, if you need someone to get into the highest levels of the records in Houston, I’m your man. I might not be able to do it myself right now, but I know the people who can, and I have 24/7 access to them. Now, what have you got for me?”
James slid the paperwork over in front of me so I could have something to look at but spoke through it as well. “Suspect the First: Arthur Smith. Tech Security, which means he’s working with the security aspects of our devices. Everything we sell has security measure after security measure to make sure our clients aren’t opening themselves up to hackers by using our equipment. Then again, I’m guessing you already know that, seeing as how you own the company.”
I grinned at him. “Sure do, but I appreciate you double-checking.”
“It’s just hard to get used to you being who you are,” he said with a shake of the head. “I have two versions of you in my head right now, and they’re not meeting up. So Arthur also knows the security we use in the office. Firewalls, software, you name it. He’s not directly involved with any of the money departments, but he could probably find his way in if he wanted to. And he could hide his tracks.”
Right. So the guy was dangerous, and he had one of the best chances in the office of going places where people couldn’t follow him.
“Got it. Next?”
“Next: Rachel Turner, Finance. She’s obviously got access to the money. And ways to cover her tracks.”
Rachel. Katie’s friend. I felt a twinge of guilt at the fact that we were even looking into her, just because I knew Katie was already so attached to her, but I put that to the side. We had to investigate everyone who looked suspicious. Period.
“And why are we looking at her, specifically?” I asked. “Out of all the people in finance, why her?”
“We’ve seen her going back into the same accounts again and again,” he said promptly. “More than anyone else. Changing numbers more often than anyone else, and for reasons we can’t figure out. I haven’t seen any ultimate outcome from this, but she’s taking steps that no one else is taking, and we don’t know why.”
Okay. That seemed straightforward enough. Definitely a reason to look at her.
“And the last guy?”
“Joseph Parissimo. Customer Service. Nothing that creative here. He’s giving more refunds than anyone else. Costing the company money just by doing that. We figure there might be something there.”
Okay, also straightforward.
“So who’s our best bet?” I asked. “In your opinion. Who do we need to look at first?”
James stared at the papers for a second, a frown creasing his brow and his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners, and I took the moment to appreciate how much he was helping. He’d seemed pretty... well, shallow, when I first met him, and I hadn’t given him much credit in the old intelligence field.
It turned out I’d been wrong.
The moment I needed a wingman down here, he’d jumped right into the role and started working his butt off to get me what I needed. Katie was the best PI in the business, but she was handcuffed by having to maintain her disguise when it came to everyone else in the company. She couldn’t exactly go around asking questions and demanding that people answer her, pronto. Her supervisor didn’t even know who she was yet, and that was intentional.
The higher-ups knew we were. But we needed everyone in her department to keep treating her like she was just another employee so she could maintain her access to everyone. Which meant she had to keep working her regular job.
And I’d needed someone who could take time away from that to help me. James had turned out to be just the guy.
When he answered me, he just confirmed my thoughts.
“Arthur,” he said immediately. “He has the highest level of access. Higher even than Rachel. He could get into any system he wanted to, and we would never know it. He could be doing something that we can’t even see. The problem is, I don’t have the access to be able to watch him.”
I took the papers back and slid them in front of me once again, my eyes going to the short background they had on Arthur. He’d been here long enough to know his way around, and because he was a security guy, didn’t really have a supervisor. He was basically in charge of making sure everything ran the way it should. Hard stop. And he was sort of freelanced out to the department that dealt with security on the actual devices we sold.
Yep, he definitely had access. And he didn’t have anyone watching what he was doing. He also had higher clearance than James—which meant James couldn’t watch his actions, digitally speaking.
“You might not have that clearance,” I said, looking up and grinning at him. “But I do.”
We quickly cobbled together a plan, whereby we were going to give him a project that I designed. And since I would know what he was doing, it would mean I could get into the system using my clearance and look for him in the places he should be working.
I’d be able to see if he went sideways. Made any unplanned visits to places he shouldn’t be working—like the bank accounts.
It was really smart, if I did say so myself. I knew Katie wasn’t going to be super happy that we’d come up with it on our own, without involving her. She’d probably be even less happy that she wasn’t actually a part of the plan itself.
She was, after all, the PI.
But I had more important plans for her. Arthur might be the best bet, but Rachel was second-best, and Katie knew her personally. It would make the most sense for Katie to go after her first.
And it would definitely be more efficient if I took care of Arthur while she got whatever she could on Rachel.
I’d just have to make her see that I was right on that one. Luckily, after the last week and the relationship we are starting to build with each other, I was pretty sure I had an in.
