Her dark eyes moved over his face, and then she smiled at him. “Gedeon, we’ll get her back. The answer is in the books or the tablet. It won’t take us long to see the pattern with the two of us working.”
He nodded curtly, grateful he hadn’t looked like a jealous kid. He took the first of the books and she took the second one. The moment he flipped it open and started familiarizing himself with the columns, the rest of the world dropped away. The business Atwater was running seemed legitimate enough at a cursory glance, but once he started delving into it, he could see the regular payments made to the various accounts.
He didn’t care about the business or how much money it made. It didn’t even matter that Atwater was bleeding money from hardworking families. He was two months in when the thefts began. The first time the money disappeared it was a very small amount. It could have been put down as a mistake, but there was just a little too much gone and no way to account for it.
Gedeon wrote down the date and the business and reached for the next book, putting the first one aside. Meiling was already doing the same thing. They went throughthe stack of books systematically, carefully writing down the dates of each time money had disappeared from one of Atwater’s businesses. They recorded whether he had a partner in the business and if it was a legitimate business or not.
Several times Gedeon glanced up at the clock. Twice Evangeline refilled his coffee cup and once she brought them pastries filled with ham and cheese. He managed to look up without breaking his concentration to give her a vague smile of thanks.
“Thank you, Evangeline,” Meiling murmured. “We appreciate it. We’re just swamped with work and not paying attention.”
“Keep at it,” she said.
Gedeon registered her answer, making him think Timur had reported to Fyodor and Fyodor’s wife had been informed there was a child’s life at stake. He didn’t look up. He had the notebooks spread out in front of him and was comparing Meiling’s findings with his.
“Fredrick had to have known who was taking the money, Meiling,” he muttered aloud, more to try to puzzle out the logic than for any other reason. Deliberately, he used their client’s first name. Leopards had excellent hearing, and he wasn’t about to tip off the Amurov family who he was working for.
“It’s too obvious for him not to have known, even if he was being drugged from the start, which I doubt. Who would know he looked at the books every week besides Harold?”
Gedeon sat back in the chair and rubbed his neck. “That’s a good question. We have a long list of suspects. Fredrick listed them all, with one exception. That tells us right there that he knew who was ripping him off.”
Meiling didn’t say the name aloud. She wrote it down and shoved the paper to him. Gedeon glanced down. GeorgiChaban. Leopard. Related how to the Lospostos family? “Why wouldn’t Fredrick call him out on the money disappearing right away, or take it to someone above him?”
It was an excellent question. Involving a man of Elijah’s stature was dangerous. They would have to find out what Georgi Chaban meant to Elijah before they informed Elijah of anything they would be doing. In fact, Gedeon wasn’t going to take any chances. Georgi was up to his neck in this shit. He’d taken the money, and every instinct Gedeon had screamed that he’d taken the child as well.
She tapped Lospostos’s name. Then wrote several question marks after it.
This time Gedeon made certain the cameras couldn’t pick up anything he did, shielding what he wrote with his hand.
“Ruthless. Rumor has it he put out a hit on his only sister so she couldn’t be used against him, although I’m not certain I believe it. He has a wife and children. Not too many people would go after his family because he’d cut out their hearts while they were alive. He’d retaliate and kill every member of their family.”
The moment she read the words, he blacked them out with a Sharpie and then tore the note into tiny pieces. He stuffed those pieces in his pocket.
“Was Fredrick taking the money, and Georgi found out first? Did he blackmail him? Was that how the larger amounts started to pile up?” Gedeon mused aloud.
Meiling shook her head. “No. I can’t see it happening that way. Look at the books. He hired this Georgi and almost immediately the money began to be taken. Small amounts first and then much larger amounts.”
She pulled one of the sticks from her hair and a mass of shiny black tresses snaked down her back. “It was Georgi from the beginning, and he started almost immediately. He was hired on as bookkeeper and I think he came toFredrick with the intent of stealing from him. Whether or not someone else put him up to it remains to be seen, but he had a plan in place before he ever got there.”
Restless, she twisted her hair back into the knot she favored, replaced the stick to hold it and jumped up, as if forgetting they were in a coffee shop. Gedeon had seen her like this often, her brain working so fast she could barely stay still. She needed action. Sometimes when she was putting things together, she would go outside their home and pace along the sidewalk, around the block, up and down, and come back having figured out what piece of the puzzle they were missing. Or what piece they needed.
They couldn’t leave the books, notebooks and tablets out in the open, so he had to let her go out by herself. The sun was coming up. They had to figure this out soon. He texted Harold, needing some answers. If Atwater and Brinks weren’t more forthcoming with them, the investigation was going to take longer, and he had a bad feeling every minute was going to count. He had instructions for Harold that needed to be followed to the letter.
He stretched, glanced up at the camera and nodded. If Fyodor wanted to have a private talk with him, now was the time. He wasn’t going to keep catering to the Amurov family, although if he was being truthful with himself, he liked them better than most. They seemed very loyal to one another and to their women.
Gedeon stretched his legs out in front of him and tried not to think about Meiling pacing along the sidewalk in the early morning hours with the commuters mobbing the sidewalks. Timur would have her watched over. He would feel bound. She was on his property. They were working in the bakery where Fyodor had offices, and there was no way Timur would allow a female leopard to walk the streets unprotected no matter how lethal she was.
He knew he set everyone on edge the moment he came into town. No doubt Lospostos was already aware he wasin town. He didn’t like that Elijah was in any way mixed up in this. Harold and Atwater should have told him right away. A man as dangerous as Elijah Lospostos had to be cleared immediately. He swore silently as he drummed his fingers on the table.
Meiling was right. Georgi had had his plan in place long before he had been hired by Atwater. Gedeon waited impatiently for Harold’s reply. Who had recommended the bookkeeper? How had he come to be hired?
Timur emerged from the kitchen. Simultaneously, Kyanite and Rodion stood and moved with fluid grace to the counter. They looked casual as they approached, but they were anything but casual. Fyodor came through the double doors on some hidden signal from Timur. Fyodor went up right behind his wife, circling her waist with one arm and bending down to place a kiss behind her earlobe. She smiled, her face lighting up.
Gedeon had never seen a time when Evangeline hid her emotions, especially when it came to her husband. She loved him fiercely and it was there on her face for all to see. Only an idiot would miss the stark, raw emotion in Fyodor’s eyes when he looked at his wife, brief though it might be. She was his world.
Fyodor made his way through the opening in the counter to the main floor of the coffee shop, stepping easily into the middle of the diamond his guards provided, Timur at the top point. A fourth man, younger, built strong with blond hair, stepped behind Fyodor as they walked together completely in sync to Gedeon’s table. Gedeon began to rise, but Fyodor waved him back to his seat and took the chair opposite, extending his hand.
“Good to see you again, Gedeon. I wish it was under better circumstances.”
