“Maybe Moresco was the one stealing,” Virus offered. “Doesn’t he have to report up to his dad? Maybe he wanted more than the percentage the old man was letting him keep?”
“Maybe,” he said, but it didn’t sit right. “What’s the total amount of the invoices on that spreadsheet?”
Rosemary looked down at the computer screen. He liked watching her work. Even in pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, she looked intelligent and efficient.
“Almost fifteen million.”
“And what’s the date of the earliest invoice?”
“About five years ago.”
“That’s right around the time the bureau started focusing on the Morescos. I wasn’t involved then. The surveillance and background team gathered intel for about eighteen months before Phillipe and I went under.” Aleksei paused for a moment. It was still so fucking hard to say Phillipe’s name out loud. “Sal’s grandfather, Lorenzo, moved to Italy about six months before that. He stepped back so his son could take the reins. Sal is the functioning head of the family. I hate the guy, but I just don’t see him faking invoices. Yeah, the honor payments to Lorenzo are a percentage of the profits, but the percentage is so small that faking invoices to inflate expenses so the profit looks lower and they pay less in honor payments seems like a lot of work for what’s probably a few hundred thousand dollars.”
“It’s not worth it to risk betraying his father for that,” Virus said.
Aleksei agreed.
“Maybe Armando was embezzling money and the Morescos found out. And then they thought they had to get rid of the server and eliminate all the people who knew the details of their business, so Dante sent the laptop with me on vacation to preserve the records,” Rose suggested, and then scrunched her pretty pink lips and shook her head, rejecting her own theory.
“If the Morescos really do need their records, it’s too big of a risk to throw them on a laptop and assume they’d be safe with me. I could’ve spilled coffee on the laptop or accidentally dropped it into the lake, or found the spreadsheet, gotten suspicious, and called the cops. It would make more sense to leave the server alone and just address the Armando issue.”
She’d just voiced the same theory he’d been tossing around in his own mind, and she rejected it for the same reasons he had.
“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense. Giving you that laptop doesn’t feel planned to me. I think it was a spontaneous decision.”
Weeeoooo. Weeeoooo. Weeeoooo.
A three-toned siren emanated from speakers in the ceiling. Virus stiffened and spun his head toward the wall of screens.
A black Ford Bronco was climbing the hill toward the same chain link fence Aleksei had used his fingerprint to open last night. Virus shifted from the table to the chair in front of the counter. His fingers flew over buttons on a keyboard, and one of the screens zoomed in on the driver’s face.
“Any idea who that is?” Virus asked.
Gary fucking Kemper.
He’d known Kemper would find him eventually. But this was quicker than he expected. If Gary had found them so easily, Moresco might not be far behind, and if Gary had made the tripall the way out here, the pile of shit they were in had likely gotten a hell of a lot deeper. He needed to know how Kemper had found them and what other fucknado had struck to bring him here.
“Let him in.”
* * *
Special Agent in Charge Gary Kemper seemed uncomfortable in the old armchair next to the wood-burning stove. Rosemary had a hunch that Virus had intentionally placed him there and then turned up the heat. Literally. She found Virus’s living area on the main floor cozy and inviting with its woven rugs, mismatched furniture, and curtains that featured moose and trees, but Agent Kemper was sweating.
Of course, the fact that Virus was sitting on the edge of a rocking chair, glowering while cleaning a wicked-looking rifle he’d set on a tray table in front of him, could also be the source of Agent Kemper’s perspiration. The man looked stiff, hot, and itchy. She’d been there too many times to count. Sympathy gnawed at her stomach, but neither Aleksei nor Virus appeared concerned. Instead, they both seemed irritated by his presence. She was the only one happy to see Agent Kemper.
Gary. He kept telling her to call him Gary. She needed to remember that...and happy wasn’t really the right word for her current emotional state. She was more relieved. Gary had brought news that Sal knew she had the laptop and wanted it back. He hadn’t gotten into the details yet, but she considered it progress. She hated the idea of sitting around waiting for something bad to happen.
“How did you find me?” Aleksei asked.
Snuggled next to each other on the couch, she and Aleksei fit together like a lock and key. Being tucked in tightly nextto him with his arm heavy around her shoulders filled her with a soothing, slow warming, hot-tea-on-a-brisk-fall-morning feeling. She could stay here forever.
“It wasn’t hard,” Gary answered. “The field team finally got in touch with Rosemary’s sister. She told them Rosemary was camping at Ricketts Glen State Park. I figured that’s where you’d called me from, so I pulled up Google Maps, skimmed around, and saw Trout Run. I remembered you and Phillipe talking about a hunting trip here to visit one of your buddies from the Marines. I put some tech guys on finding the names of your unit members and cross-checking them with the real estate records in Trout Run. I had the address in an hour.”
Aleksei’s body tensed against her side, but his tone remained cool. “I’m surprised you didn’t come with a SWAT team. I thought I was the prime suspect.”
“That changed when Sage told the investigators Salvatore Moresco called her, demanding to know where Rosemary was and threatening bodily harm if Rosemary didn’t return the laptop to him at one of his warehouses by midnight tonight. Sage said he was emphatic on the deadline and that Rosemary come alone.”
Every bit of warmth leached from Rosemary’s body. The quick summary Gary provided when he arrived was that Moresco wanted the laptop returned. He hadn’t said anything about Sal calling her sister. He hadn’t said anything about Sage being in danger. She had to keep her sister safe. She wouldn’t survive if anything happened to Sage. Especially if it was her fault. Sage had given everything to take care of her. Everything. Sage had saved her life. Rosemary was not going to let anyone hurt her sister.