Page 12 of Behind These Four Walls

“That’s the thing—it checked outtoowell, you know?”

Isla didn’t like the crack in his usually calm demeanor. He was the unflappable one of their group. Nat was very flappable—unless she was in character. And Isla was the ... well, she varied. Maybe the angry one. Maybe the one who had faith in no one. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Chapter Nine

Rey said, “Before, when we got the job and I started looking, the affair popped up pretty quickly. There was nothing in his accounts that seemed off. We talked to the woman; she confirmed and showed pictures and receipts.”

Nat nodded. She had been the contact with Stephanie. Isla motioned for Rey to continue what she already knew he would say.

“But after we dropped off the info, Isla was saying how something didn’t feel right, and when Victor Corrigan showed up, I started wondering too. Why did a company care if two of their employees were banging? He wasn’t her superior. And I thought maybe it was because the company is big on image. An affair when one of them is married with a baby on the way is a bad look, but it still wouldn’t damage the company because that’s personal shit.”

“Truth,” Nat seconded.

Isla said, “So you looked again.”

Rey nodded gravely. “So I looked again. Deeper this time.”

Isla waited. “And?”

“And this time, there was something. A big something. Like Nat just said—like weallsaid,” he corrected when Isla was about to protest. “This job was a quick turnaround. Urgent, right? What usually takes us weeks to find and verify and verify again, we found in days. Like it was just waiting for us to find it.”

“A present wrapped in a perfect bow,” Isla added.

Rey pointed at her, a silentbingo. “We found what they wanted us to find. The affair is true. The embezzling ... I’m not sure, because why wasn’t it there when I initially ran it through my cursory systems? Why pop up all of a sudden? How’d the media get ahold of info that I, who am way better than Chinese hackers, mind you—no offense, Nat—”

“Wait.” Nat startled. “What?”

“—could not find?” Rey finished, dodging a projectile Nat threw at him. “Hey, watch my shit.”

Isla said, “Because someone planted it.”

Rey pointed.Bingoagain.

Nat groaned and leaned over with her knees on her elbows and her forehead dropped into her hands. Her long, dark hair fell over her like a curtain.

“Like someone had the affair ready for us to find. Yeah,” Rey confirmed. “I went back in now that Michelle and her management weren’t up my ass to get this info in.”

Isla asked, “Do you think the firm was in on this?” She hated to think that Michelle would have anything to do with a setup that had led to someone’s death.

Rey shook his head. “Nah. They don’t make the bombs. They just light the match to the fuse. We were the ones who filled it with the components so it could go boom.”

Nat dismissed his extended analogy. “Forget all that analogy shit, Rey. What’s the bottom line?”

He checked himself. “So I find all this evidence of embezzlement, right? Looks like he did the shit. He’s up a creek, okay? But when I looked deeper, the info has inconsistencies.”

Isla prompted, “Like?”

Rey faced one of his keyboards and began typing. The screen showed one of Leonard’s bank statements that they’d delivered to the PR firm and the Corrigans. “Well, for one, the bank account Leonard supposedly established and funneled the money into was in his own name. Smart people who are embezzling and setting up accountswouldn’t use their names and have such an easy path to link them. That account wasn’t his. It was established by someone else under his name, and the money was just transferred to accounts he owned, not long before we got the case.”

Nat asked, “How would you know that? If they did it under his name, where’s the proof?”

Rey looked at Nat like she was some poor, unfortunate soul. “For one thing, the IP address of the computer that created the account didn’t originate from either his work or his personal computer.”

“And how would you know that?” Nat asked, making Rey work for it.

“Girl, come on. Who am I and what do I do? Don’t try to play me,” Rey said. When Nat rolled her eyes at him, he returned the act, then continued unfazed. “The IP address originates from Virginia. Leonard hasn’t been to Virginia in years, if ever.”

Virginia. The word struck at Isla like a bad violin cord, plunging her into a basin of anxiety she thought she had long overcome.