“Her name is Brené Brown.” I took the kitten from him but held her away from my body as I walked her back to the bathroom. Not only did I not quite trust her to have the run of the apartment while I was gone, but I also had a lint roller in there.
“Come on, Stark,” he said a few minutes later, as I attacked his suit with the roller. “I’m the one who has to perform, not you.”
I laid a hand along his jaw. “Oh, my sweet summer child. I am your date. You will be judged by me, which is why I almost didn’t wear the tennis shoes, but ... I hate heels.”
“No one’s gonna be looking at your feet,” he said before pointedly directing his gaze to my cleavage. “In fact, let’s just skip the whole thing ...”
“Nope,” I said. “We go. You play nice with Gramps. We get free food and free booze. We come home. We get naked. That’s the plan.”
He winced. “There are so many reasons why I only like the last part of that plan.”
“Come on. You can tell me on the way.”
As we drove to the Hilton, Malone told me about how he’d flown to the Caymans and then to Wyoming in search of information. He’d come up empty both times.
“Because you were looking for shell companies and had some reason to believe Blake might be in town to create one, dissolve one, or just visit Old Faithful,” I said.
“I can’t get anything past you, can I?”
“And shell companies are a great way to hide, launder, or embezzle money. Or to avoid paying taxes.”
“High marks, Ms. Stark. We’ll make a forensic accountant out of you yet.”
“No thanks. I took one accounting class so I could handle the books for the PI business, and it’s not my ministry. Come to think of it, I can’t wait for Ken to come asking me to do the taxes next year. That’s going to be a big fat no.”
“All that and brains, too.”
“Laying it on thick, aren’t you?” I said. “I mean, keep it up. Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Oh, keeping it up isn’t going to be a problem. Keeping it down until it’s time to get it up is going to be the problem.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “You’re incorrigible.”
“And you love me for it.”
That I do.
Nope. Not even. Uh-huh. No L-word. Time to change the subject. “I still bet you that Blake makes an appearance.”
Malone snorted. “He’s not that stupid.”
“I told you. It’s not about being stupid. He tricked you into thinking he was somewhere else. He probably thinks he’s destroyed all the evidence you’ve been collecting, so why not?”
He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it.
“Speaking of, Malone, what do you have on your cousin?”
“I can’t tell you, it’s—”
“Classified,” we said together.
“But who am I going to tell? I’ve served the papers, but I wish I could help Trista get her hands on some of the money he took from their joint funds.”
He stared out at a sea of brake lights. I gave him time to consider. He had plenty because there was a wreck up ahead. Thanks to both the accident and rush-hour traffic, it was going to take us twenty minutes to go five miles. Finally, he said, “There was a security breach a few years back, and Grandpa called my company in to both investigate and shore up security.”
“Okay,” I said.
“We found the source, a nasty piece of malware, and I strongly suspected Blake was behind it at the time, but I couldn’t prove anything.”
