Reese had already finished his call, but David said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.
“What?” Reese asked.
“I emailed Chaz a few times while we were in Boston.”
“Did you tell him where you were?” David asked.
She gave him the look he deserved.
“Okay, dumb question,” David conceded.
“What were you emailing him about? I wasn’t on those messages,” Reese said.
“I’ve been working on the real estate inventory, remember? There are a couple properties that have documents missing or misfiled, and since the transactions were all handled by Chaz or his father, I was asking him for some things.”
“Real estate?” David asked.
Reese shook his head. “I have no idea what that could have to do with any of this.”
“Me either,” Mati agreed. “Nothing springs to mind, not even now when I’m thinking in terms of seeing it in the worst light.”
“When we get home, we can work through what you’ve got, and what’s missing, together,” Reese said.
Mati winced. “I’m sorry. It never occurred to me my project could have anything to do with this.”
“It may well not. I can’t imagine how it would, to be honest,” Reese said. “And don’t apologize. This is not your fault in any way.”
Mati nodded, taking a deep breath and pushing any guilty feelings aside for now. She and Reese would get into that as soon as they were home, but in the meantime, she had to get it together for what came next—dealing with theothergiant shitstorm in her life.
Reese studied her. “Are you sure you want to tackle all this now?” he asked, gesturing at the bank.
Mati smiled wanly. “I don’t think I have much choice.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
David shook his head. “We’re both coming with her. We stick together until this shit is figured out.”
Mati didn’t love the sound of that. She could picture the two of them hovering over her while she tried to talk the bank out of ruining her family. There were a lot of ways that could go badly.
“We can wait outside the office, if you want,” Reese said. He turned to David. “The walls are glass. We’ll be able to see her.”
David nodded. “That works.”
Mati smiled and took Reese’s hand. “Okay. Thank you.”
Hours later, at the end of what had turned out to be averylong day, Reese threw the last stack of papers onto one of the many piles on his desk and faceplanted onto another.
“There is nothing here,” he growled in utter frustration.
David collapsed back in his chair on the other side of the chaos. “Nope. Not that we’ve found. But I’m no expert…”
Reese lifted his head to glare at David. “So you’ve said, eight times, and yet you’ve done a perfectly capable job keeping up with this wild goose chase for the past six hours, all while cooking us dinner and holding our hands and generally making this about a thousand times less painful than it was doomed to be.”
David studied a piece of paper Reese was certain was of no significance whatsoever and tried to hide his pleased smile. “It was fun helping you guys.”
“Well, there’s always more of that needed, so have all the fun you’d like, for as long as you’d like.”
David looked up and Reese held his gaze, aware of how that sounded and not willing to back down from it. Not an inch.
