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“I know.” I eye him, really wishing I could just fall asleep against him, but I’ve got other things to do first.
I stand up, going back over to my desk, and move the mouse so the screen wakes up. Even though the brightness is on the lowest setting, I still blink against the light.
“What are you working on?” Caleb follows me, pulling one of the other chairs along with him, and sits next to me, apparently not going to sleep either.
Well, I guess there’s no harm in telling him. Since I’ve not been able to make much sense of it on my own.
“Jorge found these transactions between someone from the Hearts and the three from Hubert Russell’s pack. It’s how he initially found out they were connected. These are all from before you came here. I’m trying to figure out what the transactions are for. As far as I know, nobody in Russell’s pack has a business that moves these kinds of numbers.”
I show him the breakdowns and the dates. “Do they make sense to you?”
Caleb looks at the numbers, slowly shaking his head. “Do you know what the money is being used for?”
“Normal stuff, groceries and things like that. There are no unusual expenses, they’re mostly just leaving it in their accounts. It’s like everyone’s pretending it’s not even there.” Which is confusing.
There aren’t even any small expenses that could be gifts, either for themselves or others, or anything like that, just business as usual. Mortgages, groceries, bills, boring normal stuff.
It would almost betoonormal, but we’ve got numbers going back years and it’s all the same. This pack doesn’t seem to do gifts much, and doesn’t seem to splurge on much at all. It’s all very confusing.
At the same time, it’s a constructed pack, so keeping things as consistent as possible is very important to keeping the peace.
Caleb’s voice is calm, but his pheromones shortly spike in anger. “You’ve checked all the usual reasons why the Hearts might give people this much money?”
I nod. “Hearts don’tbuytheir victims, they just take them. There are enough kids living at the edge of society that won’t be missed. They don’t need to take them from places where people will notice when they’re gone.”
“Finder’s fee?” The angry growl in his voice is unmistakable and I put my hand on his knee. I know how he hates the ‘business’ that the Hearts are involved in. And every time it’s brought up, he gets furious about it.
Before he met Vera, he helped out kids who were rescued from organisations like that, so he knows what they go through. Which makes his anger very understandable.
“The others from the Suits Syndicate might do that, but the Hearts don’t.” It’s possibly their only redeeming quality, though definitely offset by their lack of concern about the age of their victims. “You’re more likely to end up dead if you try to pull that off than to get paid.”
“Could they be paying for housing? Storage locations? Transport?” He takes my hand and entwines our fingers, rubbing his thumb over the top of my hand. It’s like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it, but it seems to calm us both down.
“Not as far as I can see in the pack’s other records. It’s all accounted for, both going back years and years and since you’ve gotten here.” I pull up a shoulder, trying to look disinterested. “The only thing out of the ordinary was a pretty fancy funeral a few weeks ago, but nothing else.”
He shows me a slight smile, satisfaction clear in his pheromones before he suppresses them again. “Well, that might have been out of the ordinary, but wasn’t unexpected.”
“Very true.” I scroll through a different list, this one with all the ‘normal’ transactions.
Caleb lets out a long breath. “No other connections between the Hearts and Russell’s pack? Might they be working for a lesser-known sub-organisation? Maybe from one of the other Suits?”
“Not as far as we can see. It could be possible, but it’s not very likely. They don’t do business with many companies outside of the Hearts’ area and nothing that stands out.”
His anger flares, his body tensing. “Could the money be for selling you out?”
I shake my head. “I had considered that, but it doesn’t make sense. They got the money before the last three attempts that they made to get you two back. Why accept the money and then hire three different groups before hiring me? And they didn’t need the money for any of it, they already had enough money to pay them or me.”
“Why do you feel that doesn’t make sense?” He lets go of my hand, balling his into fists as his pheromones are filled with anger and disgust.
“To me, it makes all the sense in the world. The money they got might have simply been a nice bonus for some other thing they got out of the deal.”
He stands up, stalking over to the window as he stares outside. “To be able to hire you, they have to have connections with certain other people first, correct?”
“Correct. Russell had connections with multiple of them.” I watch as Caleb opens his mouth so I quickly continue. “He already had those connections before the three got the money. Even more confusing, he had those connections more than a year ago. So he could have hired me much earlier, but never did.”
I stand up. “The Hearts know where I am. They knowwhoI am. Why would they pay some random guys to hire me? Actually, why would they pay some random guys to make them make their pack leader hire me?”
Caleb’s eyes go wide and he suddenly looks really focused as his eyes land on me. “Why didn’t anyone know that the three of them were part of Russell’s pack? Why didn’t Jorge find that out the first time?”