Page 95 of Capturing You

He shouldn't banter with her. Not to joke or laugh or let his guard down in any way. If he did, she’d slither through whatever crack he allowed, and then he’d be a goner.

Focus, Ballentine.

He tried. Really, he did.

But he’d stared at the first page of the stupid ledger for hours the night before. All he saw were dates, dollar amounts—assuming those squiggles were supposed to be dollar signs—and other numbers that made no sense. The first line read:

3/4/99 650 x 4 $10.5m

Not exactly a paltry sum.

The other lines were similar. The numbers were slightly different, but all had the same pattern. A date, three digits multiplied by single digits, and then a dollar sign and high number.

There were only four lines, one a month for four months. His family had been murdered on June twentieth, seventeen days after the last date.

“Let’s assume,” Brooklynn said, “that Ballentine was smuggling drugs.”

Drugs.

This was why Forbes couldn’t make heads or tails of the journal.

Because of course his father wouldn’t be involved in drug smuggling. Antiquities, tobacco, or liquor, to avoid the taxes, maybe.

But not drugs.

And yes, he saw the irony of counseling Brooklynn not to trust her friends while he refused to believe his father had smuggled drugs.

Brooklynn didn’t look up, didn’t see his reaction.

“And let’s assume they were using the same size crates to smuggle back then as they used the other day. They looked like three-foot cubes, each carried by two men off the boat, then moved with a dolly.”

“Big men,” Forbes said, thinking of the so-called Bernie. He closed his eyes and remembered the photograph he’d been shown. His guess was, those crates had been heavy.

“Strong men,” she added. “So, what would fill three-foot cubes and be heavy enough that two strong men would struggle to haul it?”

He had no idea. “Let me do some research.” He nodded at the four lines. “See if you notice any patterns.”

Not that there was much data to draw from.

She reached for his notebook, moving into his personal space for a pen.

Her hair tickled his arm, causing a reaction that tingled to his toes.

He snatched the pen and plopped it on top of the ledger, probably too hard.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine.” He pulled his laptop close, opened an AI browser, and typed in the question,How much would a 3x3 crate of drugs weigh?

AI gave him a list of multiple drugs and their weights.

Heroin weighed thirty to forty pounds per cubic foot. Meth, forty-two to fifty-five pounds. Fentanyl, fifty to sixty.

A three-foot cube had twenty-seven cubic feet, meaning each of those numbers would have to be multiplied by twenty-seven.

Forbes did the math.

Calculating for each of the drugs, he doubted any of them fit the bill. Few men could lift eight hundred pounds and carry it as the men in the photos had, much less the sixteen hundred pounds fentanyl would weigh. Assuming the boxes were filled to the brim. Assuming there wasn’t filler or something on top to hide the drugs.