Page 26 of Howl Lotta Love

“Look at the transfer amounts.” Emma tapped three entries in a row, frowning at numbers that refused to behave. “Ordinary skimming runs on percentages. Round numbers. A ratio that scales with each charity’s endowment. This doesn’t scale with anything.”

“It scales with a pattern.” Tucker spun his monitor around, color-coded columns glowing. “Every transfer lines up with a property acquisition inside thirty days. Not a coincidence.”

“So he’s not stealing to get rich.” Emma stared at the wall, pieces rearranging into a shape she didn’t like yet. “He’s stealing to buy one exact thing.”

“Land?” Jace stayed bent over the map, tracking a pattern he’d already half-solved before she’d finished the question, jaw doing the thing it did when a puzzle turned into a threat. “For what?”

“Give me a real map and an hour, and I’ll tell you.” Emma pulled her legal pad closer, already sketching, connecting dots she couldn’t fully see yet but could already feel adding up.

Tucker cracked his knuckles, pulling up a fresh window. “I’ll start pulling zoning records. If he’s building a perimeter, the permit filings will show it too.”

“Good instinct.”

“I’ve got several. Nobody listens to most of them.”

Roman wandered in with a bag of bread rolls, eyed the wall for two seconds, and delivered his verdict unasked. “This investigation needs garlic bread. Every good breakthrough happens over garlic bread. It’s science.”

“That’s not science.”

“It’s my science.” He dropped a roll next to Tucker’s keyboard, ignoring the lack of consensus completely, and wandered off humming a tune that sounded suspiciously victorious.

Emma looked at Jace. Jace looked back, resigned. He’d stopped fighting Roman’s logic years ago and learned to route around it instead.

“I’ve got a contact who might know which firm’s brokering these deals.” She grabbed her coat off the chair. “Financial guy. Won’t talk on the phone.”

“Then we go see him.”

“It’s lunch. Public place.”

“Good. Easier to watch.” Jace was moving, no debate, no delay, only motion, and the speed of it lit a warmth in her stomach that had nothing at all to do with lunch.

He caught her elbow at the door, already scanning the street through the window before either of them had stepped outside. Some men checked their phones walking into a room. Jace checked exits. She was starting to find that highly attractive.

The restaurant sat two blocks off Fifth, small and loud and crowded enough that nobody at the surrounding tables could eavesdrop even if they tried, which was the entire point.

Her contact—a nervous man named Weller who’d spent fifteen years auditing hedge funds and visibly aged double that—showed up twelve minutes late, ordered nothing, confirmed the brokerage name in a voice pitched barely above the room noise, and left before the bread basket arrived.

“Efficient,” Emma said, watching him go, already cross-referencing the name in her head.

“Terrified.” Jace didn’t look bothered, scanning the room out of habit though the meeting was over. “A man that scared doesn’t hand over a name unless the alternative terrifies him worse.”

“Welcome to my job. Everyone’s scared of a thing. I get paid to find out what.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“It works.” Fast, automatic, and she caught him noticing the gap between what she’d said and what she meant.

Neither of them got up to leave.

A waiter arrived instead, unasked, carrying white roses neither of them had ordered. The card needed no signature: To the Adorable Fiancés. Eat a vegetable. I worry. Also, sapphires. I’ve decided for you.

Emma dropped her head into one hand. “How does she always know where we are?”

“I stopped asking months before you existed to her.” Jace read the card twice, a reluctant fondness tugging at his mouth. “It’s better for my blood pressure.”

Emma’s phone buzzed on cue, summoned by nothing more than bad posture. Don’t slouch, darling, it reads as guilty. Also I’ve already told the caterer sapphires. You’re welcome.—G

“She’s going to be unbearable at the wedding.”