Were we just fired?” Gabby was shell-shocked. She hadn’t been fired since she worked at Chili’s in the early aughts.
“Not yet,” Markus said, “but expect to be when we get back.”
Gabby blinked back tears. This mission had taken a hard turn.
“I’m going to have that drink with G,” Markus said. Shoulders slumped and looking generally defeated, he took his leave.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. They had lost their jobs, and it was her fault. And now she was supposed to sit in the room and wait to be evacuated. It was humiliating. Poor her. Poor Markus.
Gabby had done fucked up good this time.
She sat there for a few minutes before coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to give up that easily. Gabby slipped on her new favorite pair of sweats (thank you, Jasmine), her Crocs (eh, Kyle), grabbed the laptop, and hoofed it to Phil’s room. Markus had gone back to have another drink with Genesis, so she didn’t even need to explain that she was going to her ex’s room for a work question and not because she was in a dark place having regrets. Sure, she’d just been fired, but was she low enough to relive Red Lobster? No biscuits were that good.
Gabby was ready to fight the good fight for justice and for her sweet, sweet government bennies. Lucas still needed braces. She padded through the night, her route barely lit. The paths were intended for daytime use, not for spies darting about at midnight. She clutched her engagement taser tightly. Palm trees swaying in the breeze and ocean waves met her ears.
The main building was empty, the front desk unmanned. When Aspen, etc., went to bed, the main building shut down hard. The cheerful “ding” of the elevator’s arrival sounded like an alarm in the night.
Upstairs, Phil answered the door in much the same shape as Genesis, reeking of whiskey and regret. He was wearing an old T-shirt from his college days, a shirt Gabby herself had worn to bed many a night. It was threadbare and a little stained, kind of like Gabby and Phil.
“Gabs?” he said, as much a question as a greeting.
“Hey, Phil, I was wondering if you could help me out?”
“With what?” He drew his eyebrows together in concern. “Is Markus, er George, or…” Phil gave up on the name. “Something happen to him?”
“He’s fine,” Gabby answered brusquely. “I have a finance question.”
He glanced out the window at the darkness outside. “At this time of night?”
Gabby could see the wheels spinning in his head, so she said, “I can’t sleep unless I figure it out, and I saw your light on.”
When he looked unconvinced, she reiterated. “Just finances, Phil.”
“Oh-kay.” He wandered back to the couch and put his feet up. “Hit me.”
She sat down next to him and pulled up the laptop. How to phrase it… “Jasmine was trying to figure out the finances of Inner-G. She offered me a discount if I could sort through some of it.”
“She askedyoufor financial help.”
Gabby flashed a self-deprecating smile. “She knows I’m an executive assistant at an investment firm and seems to think I know more than I do. I could really use the discount. These rooms are expensive.”
With a shrug, Phil took the computer. “Sure, I’m not doing anything else.” Clearly, Phil’s eyes on this were illegal, but if Valentina hadn’t fired her, she would have used internal help. Now Phil was her only option.
Gabby got him to the page of resort financials. “Do you see anything suspicious here?”
“Um, apart from insane deposits.” He started laughing at something. “What the fuck are these people up to?”
“I thought maybe that was normal. They’re operating on a different level.”
He nodded and looked a little deeper. He pointed to a line. “Look here, you have a twenty-million-dollar deposit into this account a couple of months ago. A five-million-dollar deposit another month back.”
Those numbers sounded big, but everything here was so outsized.
He spent a little more time scanning documents. “The numbers don’t add up. I don’t see how they’re bringing in enough to pay for this place.”
“So where’s the mystery money coming from?”
“Some holding corp, PowCup Financial.”
