The panicked look Asher gave me said his blood pressure was on the rise. Worried we might be giving him a heart attack, I plunged ahead. “We think we know what the thugs were looking for in my apartment.”
“What?” he asked.
“How about I go clean up and then I’llwalk you through it?”
He frowned. “Or we can look at it now.”
“She smells like a fish and chips shop, Ashey, let her shower.”
He gave me a reluctant nod and I left him hanging long enough to take a quick shower. Then I rejoined him and Addison on the sofa. Addison popped the flash drive into her laptop and pulled up the spreadsheet.
“What are we looking at?” Asher asked.
“This is the fullcompany budget. My job was to code receipts and enter expenses and make sure nobody went over their allotment. Kirk’s expenses were in this department.” I circled the appropriate cells with my finger. “You should be able to go into the cell and see the formula that’s pulled from the additional tabs—that’s where the detail goes—but the formulas are screwed up. Someone added expenses directly to theformula instead of adding them to the detail.”
“It’s not a ton of money,” Addison said, eyeing the sheets. “A couple grand here, a few grand there. Would someone really kill for this?”
“Uh, thatisa lot of money,” I said, doing the math in my head. “It’s close to a million when you add these all up. This is just the quarterly budget for my first quarter there. Who knows how long this has beengoing on?”
Asher nodded. “And it probably still wouldn’t get them noticed in a company as big as yours. The question is... where’s the money going?”
“I don’t know, but maybe Kirk found out about it and someone offed him,” I said.
“More likely Kirk-the-Jerk was in on it and the killer got sick of paying him off,” Addison said.
We speculated a little more before I copied the spreadsheet ontoanother flash drive and handed it to Asher for safekeeping.
“Had you not broken the law to get this, I could use it to request a review of the financials,” Asher said, stuffing it in his pocket.
“Well, there was a version in my backup files, but it was corrupted,” I said.
He scratched his chin. “Maybe we should let the dust settle on tonight’s felony before we bring it up.”
“Probably a goodplan. Wait, felony? I thought B&E was just a misdemeanor?”
“You took something, Dylan. Breaking and entering with the intent to burglarize is a felony.”
“That damn intent. Gets me every time. But honestly, my intent was to find something that could keep me out of jail. Has your friend found anything?”
“Yeah, he did, actually.”
“Really?” I asked.
“It could be nothing, but it lines up withwhat we’re seeing in this spreadsheet.”
“Money’s missing.”
He nodded. “Investors aren’t happy. Bridge City Management Company has been overspending and underperforming for a while now. There have been rumors of an audit.”
“But an audit would be good, right?” Addison askes.
“Possibly, but I want to be involved to make sure they don’t fuck it up.” Asher rubbed his temples then stretchedand looked at his watch. “I need to get going.” He wrapped Addison in a hug. “About this benefit dinner you’ve been planning, Sis. Dad wants you to bring a date. Preferably one with a nice-sized bank account.”
“Well that’s too bad for him, because I’m bringing Dylan,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to her side.
Asher frowned. His sexy, hungry eyes drifted back over my body beforehe locked gazes with me. “I was kind of hoping Dylan would come with me.” His voice was all low and husky again, making my knees weak and raising my temperature.
“Oh. Oh!” Addison said, practically shoving me into him. “I’ll have to hunt down a sexy detective to bring.”
