Page 35

35

KATIE

Halfway around the island, Katie finished the last of her personal-size pizza. She had work to do, a clear assignment from Lei to do a deep dive on Roger Nettle—and she didn't want to wait until tomorrow to do it.

She folded the small pizza box into the recycle bin and went to her computer nook. Her rigs were already awake and humming, waiting for her. Katie leaned forward in her chair—eyes fixed on the screen. She adjusted her headset, ready for a long night. Sorry, Lei. I’ll sleep eventually, but not until I figure this guy out.

But first, a little stop into her online game wouldn't hurt.

She was still looking for the aggro and mysterious Dark Wizard in her game. That jerk hadn't been around in a few days—not that she'd had time for any gaming herself! But it was time to set a little trap. Something that she didn’t have to be online to catch him with.

Katie opened up a tracker program and, her fingers flying on the keys, quickly pulled together a paragraph or two of code. She set up a digital version of a noose and left it dangling over a frequently trafficked trail through the world of the game.

The next time Dark Wizard logged on and entered her particular level, he'd be tempted to click on a carelessly discarded jewel . . . and once he did, the snare would tighten around his avatar and give her a trace directly to his IP address—and his physical location in real time.

All she had to do to catch him now was wait. "Unfortunately, I've never been good at that," Katie muttered. “At least I'll get the douchebag next time he visits the game.”

She logged out and began a new file, pulling together the dossier Lei had requested on Roger Nettle.

Katie dove into the first layer of her search, combing through public records. Roger Nettle’s information was sparse. Almost too sparse. No family, no known address before a few years ago, no school records she could find. The guy was practically a ghost before arriving on the island. Her fingers flew as she set up a deeper web search, scouring for any sign of him under aliases, business records, social media.

She hit something. A small, barely noticeable discrepancy in a public registry from New York City: a business license for a limousine service, registered under the name “Roger Nettle,” but the social security number attached to it had been used in a completely different context—a legal case involving a man named Ronald Mank.

Katie’s pulse quickened. “Gotcha, scumbag .” She opened a new window and began cross-referencing.

Ronald Mank had quite a history. He was wanted in three states—California, Nevada, and New York—for fraud, blackmail, and check kiting. He’d been charged multiple times but always managed to slip away, leaving a trail of fleeced victims in his wake.

Apparently, he’d reinvented himself as Roger Nettle in Hawaii, ingratiating himself with Kuleana as the “cultural expert” known as “Kahuna.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “Cultural expert, my butt.” If Mank was running scams here, there had to be a reason he’d latched onto a group like Kuleana. They were well-funded and privately powerful. What was his angle? What could he possibly gain from pretending to be an environmental consultant?

Katie pulled up the Kuleana team’s public profiles, focusing on the key players. She zeroed in on the three victims again, but her gut told her Roger wasn’t after them specifically. She started looking at the rest of Kuleana’s extended team leadership.

But she paused as she thought of Helen Steinbrenner. She recalled the picture of Bill Wilkinson’s hand on Helen’s behind. There was something off there. Maybe Wilkinson was just a creep, but if Helen had something going with him, it made her vulnerable. And if she was vulnerable, she could be blackmailed.

Katie ran a quick search on Helen. The widow had a significant amount of personal wealth. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine someone like Ronald Mank targeting her, especially if she had secrets—or an affair—that she wanted to keep hidden.

Katie’s eyes narrowed. Could this guy have been blackmailing Helen Steinbrenner? It made sense. He could have found out about an affair with Bill Wilkinson, snapped a few compromising pictures, and leveraged them to extort money from her. Or worse—maybe he’d been blackmailing both of them.

“But what does Mank have to do with the murders?” Katie sat back and scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to piece it together.

Maybe that’s why the killings happened—to cover up Mank’s blackmail of the core team members.

Katie cracked her knuckles and leaned forward. She was going to need a lot more before bringing this to Lei.

She started again, this time digging into any possible criminal activity Roger—no, Ronald —could have been involved in during his time on the island. If he was blackmailing, as his pattern had been before, there had to be a trail. Money transfers, offshore accounts, something. Even as she worked, a quiet voice in the back of her mind nagged at her.

What if she wasn’t the only one digging tonight?

If Mank knew she was onto him, he might go after her, too. Katie glanced at the small window on her screen, showing her tracker program for the online game. The Dark Wizard still hadn’t logged in.

But if Ronald was as tech-savvy as she suspected, he wouldn’t be sloppy enough to log into an exposed game server when he was under pressure. He’d be covering his tracks.

“Come on, Ronald,” she whispered. “Come out and play. Let’s see how good you are.”

There was still something she hadn’t figured out yet—who was Ronald Mank blackmailing? Was it possibly Helen and Wilkinson? Or were there others?

Beck Noble, project manager. Currently in police custody “for his own protection,” Noble had been the one to request a “cultural expert” be hired for the Kuleana project, and Lei wanted to rule him out as a suspect since he was the last remaining core member of Kuleana who hadn’t been killed.

Katie pulled up Noble’s file again, her eyes scanning quickly over the details. Beck Noble was boots on the ground, overseeing Kuleana’s development projects, and her instincts screamed that he was hiding something. Katie dived back into the financials she’d hacked into earlier.

Kuleana’s builds were supposed to be state-of-the-art, environmentally conscious developments. But as she dug deeper, she found discrepancies. Overbilling. Invoices for materials that were never delivered. Kickbacks to companies that didn’t exist.

Katie’s pulse quickened. Beck Noble was embezzling.

He’d started off subtle at first, with small amounts here and there, easily written off as standard project overages. Over time, the amounts grew larger.

Beck had been siphoning money from Kuleana, padding his pockets by using substandard materials and cutting corners. The contractors he liaised with had to be in on it since they were the ones building with the materials. Noble had been doing this for months, maybe years, without anyone catching on.

And then they took on the controversial Iao Valley build, and David Steinbrenner brought Ronald Mank/Roger Nettle into the picture.

Katie’s fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up more records, cross-referencing payments, internal memos, emails, and financial documents. There were transfers—encrypted, funneled through offshore accounts—that led from Beck Noble to Ronald Mank, aka “Kahuna.”

Yep, Noble had been paying Mank to keep quiet about the overbilling, the kickbacks, and the shoddy materials being used on Kuleana’s buildings. Noble wasn’t just an innocent bystander. He was a man with everything to lose if Mank’s blackmail ever came to light.

Katie’s eyes flicked to the timeline of events she’d created. The murders had started after the Kuleana team had been finalizing the plans for one of their largest projects—the Iao Valley build.

The first victim, Goodwin, a high-ranking team member, could have been getting too close to discovering the truth. Same with the second, Jonas Kleftes. And then David Steinbrenner, the third victim and also the company head—maybe he had uncovered something about the fraud. Maybe he’d been about to expose Beck or Mank.

But there was still a gap in Katie’s speculation. What was the trigger for the murders? And why the whole Hawaiiana thing?

Katie tapped on the desk. “Hmm.” Maybe Beck Noble hadn’t orchestrated the murders—maybe he was just a pawn in Mank’s larger game. But someone had killed three people, and Noble was the last person standing from the original Kuleana team.

Katie pulled up the list of Kuleana’s projects again, focusing on the largest and most contentious one—the development in Iao Valley.

This project had caused the most friction with the local community. It was the one that had required Steinbrenner at Noble’s request to bring in Mank as a “cultural and environmental expert” to advise on the development’s handling of the land and any artifacts; even so, the project had been plagued with issues from the start.

Katie dug deeper. Mank had been blackmailing Beck Noble, but who else had he been targeting? Mank was a master manipulator, so there had to be others—other team members who had secrets, who had been compromised.

With a renewed sense of determination, Katie opened a secure channel to the case files and began compiling everything she’d found so far. She attached her notes on Roger Nettle’s real identity as Ronald Mank along with the charges pending against him in other states. She pulled together the documentation showing the blackmail between Beck Noble and the fake cultural expert. And then she flagged Captain Omura, just as Lei had asked.

But before she hit Send, she hesitated. Beck was in custody, but Mank was still out there. Though his previous crimes hadn’t included murder, he might have escalated. The murders might be about silencing the truth of what Beck and Mank had been up to. She had to make sure he was brought into custody, ASAP.

Katie’s eyes flicked to the tracker program running in the background. Dark Wizard still hadn’t logged in, but it was only a matter of time. Mank wasn’t the type to disappear for long because he thrived on easy pickings—and Katie had set the perfect trap for him.

She saved her files, locking them down with her highest level of encryption, and sent the email to the Captain. She then picked up her phone and rang Lei’s number. Her boss answered, voice sleepy. “This better be good, McHenry.”

“I’ve got a solid lead regarding Beck Noble and Roger Nettle,” Katie said. “I mean, Noble’s not involved in the murders—not directly, I don’t think. That would be killing the goose with the golden eggs. But he’s been overbilling Kuleana, using kickbacks and substandard materials. And Ronald Mank’s been blackmailing him. I mean, Roger Nettle, who is actually Ronald Mank. Wanted in three states.”

“Ronald who? Blackmail what?” Lei was trying to wake up.

“I’ve got the data and financials to back it up.”

Lei exhaled sharply. “So Nettle’s behind all of this?”

“Ronald Mank. Roger Nettle is an alias. And I think so,” Katie said. “I don’t have the full picture yet. But I think Mank might have been blackmailing other people, too—maybe even Helen Steinbrenner.”

Lei was quiet for a moment. “Pull together the data and send it to me, even if we can’t use it in court, because I’m not going to even ask how you got all this. But be careful. Pono and I will scoop Mank up tomorrow and bring him in for questioning. You did good, McHenry.” She ended the call.

Katie grinned and fist-pumped the air. “Better than winning a level at Worlds of Magic. Now for some shut-eye while I wait for the Dark Wizard.”