Even if she wasn’t involved in whatever was going on inside her lab, Kat had been pretty damn adamant he not find out what Derek had found.
If he was being honest, Matt didn’t really want to know.
His phone began to ring, momentarily taking the decision out of his hands. Hurrying over to the table where he’d left it, Matt saw it was Derek and answered as quickly and quietly as he could.
“Hey, D,” he spoke with a hushed voice. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Matt. I know I haven’t given you much time, but did you happen to go through those files yet?”
Sorry. I was too busy having sex with the bane of my existence.
Matt cleared his throat. “Not yet. Why, what’s up?”
“My computer sent me a notification. Pulled over to the side of the highway to check it. Turns out we got a hit on one of the lab employees.”
Holding his breath, Matt asked, “Which one?”
“Todd Kennedy.”
Matt’s profound relief flipped open a valve, releasing the air from his lungs. “What did you find?”
“A money market account was recently opened in his name. His wife is listed as the beneficiary. Two large, electronic deposits were made into the account within the last few weeks. The most recent was dated the day before the explosion.”
“So we were right. Kennedy was in bed with someone wanting that formula. Why didn’t he just give it to whoever was paying him off and be done?”
“That may be a question for your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” Matt growled.
“Right. My bad.” There was a pause before Derek said, “Anyway, I’m runnin’ a program to trace the originating account. In the meantime, his basic financials came back with what could have been his motive for getting involved in all this in the first place.”
“What’s that?”
“Six months ago, Kennedy’s wife was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. From what I’ve found, it’s a very aggressive kind. Treatments have been eating into all of their savings, and they were about two months away from foreclosure when the first large deposit hit.”
Damn.“The guy was trying to get extra money to help with his wife’s medical bills.”
“Looks that way.”
“What about his investment accounts? Could the money have come from any of those?”
“Nah. They weren’t doing very well, and even if they were, none showed any signs of withdrawal activity.”
So they had the answer to whether or not Todd was involved, but that was only one piece of the puzzle. They needed to know who’d paid him to steal the formula.
Matt felt bad for Todd’s situation with his wife, but it didn’t excuse what he’d done. He glanced at the bedroom door and thought of the woman currently sleeping behind it.
Asshole could’ve killed her.
“It was a shitty thing to do, for sure,” Derek spoke as if he could read Matt’s thoughts. “I gotta say, though. Part of me gets it.”
“The guy killed himself and two of his co-workers,” Matt bit out. “Damn near killed Kat.”
“I’m not sayin’ I condone what Kennedy did.”
“Then what are you saying, D?”
“That there’s not much I wouldn’t do to help Charlie if she needed it. I know that may be hard for a guy like you to understand, but—”
