Augustine frowned and looked troubled. With those fathomless dark eyes and perfect bone structure, he was hot even when he was troubled. “Is there anywhere else you could go?”
“Maybe,” Dree said. “I’m still working on it. Besides, they’re probably after you. I don’t think my Phoenix drug dealers speak French all purty like those guys who jumped us outside the Louvre were, and I don’t think they could have gotten anybody here so soon when we went to the Eiffel Tower.”
“Ah,”he sighed. The tension left his face, and Augustine’s next glance at her was full of relief and a hint of sparkle. “Good. All right, those dirkwads—”
“Dickweeds.”
“—dickweedswere surely after me. I’m leaving Paris in two days, anyway. I’ll be beyond their reach after that. We can dodge them for two days.”
“Then let’s just stay here. We can just hole up in the hotel. I’m cool with that.”
Augustine shook his head. “We can figure out security. This is the point of what I want to say: things may be a little dangerous for me over the next few days. We’ve got forty-eight hours left before we each get on separate planes and go to very different places, I’m sure. If you don’t want to put yourself in danger, I’ll transfer the full amount we agreed on right now to whatever bank you want me to, and you can go somewhere you’ll feel safer.”
Dree attempted to keep her jaw from falling into her lap but didn’t succeed. “That’s generous of you. That’s far too generous of you. I don’t want to leave you here alone, though. I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
“I think we should do the first part, anyway. As I said, I’m not sure what’s going to happen over the next two days. Let’s get this done now. I’d recommend setting up a new account because it seems as if that ex of yours is into all of your banking matters.”
She winced inside and plastered a smile on her face because of shame. “I still feel astonishingly stupid for letting Francis have access to all my accounts. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
Augustine said, “Pick a bank. Set up a new account and tell me where to transfer the funds.”
“Do you mind if I use your computer? The mobile versions of the websites are hard to navigate sometimes. I’m always scrolling back and forth and back and forth on them, and sometimes I miss things, or it seems harder than it should be.”
Augustine gestured toward the living room and told her the password to his computer,RuckusEatsHisPoop*3.
Dree hoped Ruckus was a dog.
Augustine added, “I’m going to go take a shower. Those guys were all over me, and there was a lot of spraying blood. I wonder if the hotel has a vat of rubbing alcohol I can swim in.”
Dree toddled off into the living room and found Augustine’s computer lying on the desk. Dree opened the laptop and started it up, entering the password when the window appeared.
Still gross.
Dree found one of her usual bank websites and started with a whole new login and a different email to open a new account, flipping back and forth between her email inbox and the bank to set it up. Luckily, she had her identification numbers memorized, and she wrote down the routing and account numbers for Augustine.
Then she logged in with her previous credentials and closed her old checking and savings accounts. Screw Francis. She was not letting that jackass get any more of her money. Not one goddamn penny.
While she was on the bank’s website, Dree logged on with yet another login and password to check the account that she shared with her sister Mandi that they had set up for Victor’s therapy.
The balance was a red twenty with a negative sign in front of it.
The account was overdrawn.
Horror struck her, and she scolded herself for stupidly believing that Augustine would actually transfer money into the account or that he even had money to move into the account. He was probably just another swindler, just like Francis, who was stealing everything he could from everybody. She was stupid to believe any man about anything.
When she went into the deposits and withdrawals, however, forty thousand dollars had been deposited into Mandi’s account from a Swiss bank.
She mentally apologized to Augustine for the thing that she had not said.
—and then the money had been transferred out just two hours before she logged in.
No, no, no.
Dree found the help number on the bank’s website and used her nifty app to call them. “Money has been stolen out of my account.”
The woman asked, “Do you have the transaction number?”
Dree read it off the website to her.
