“How was he connected?”
“He was a cop before he got fired. Then he was a janitor at the prison until he got injured in a riot.”
“Did they work together, Mr. Walsh and Mr. Winn?”
“I don’t know. I was kind of hoping Cheryl could check into that.”
“Give me a list of the plaintiffs and I’ll have her check it out.” I continued to look over the papers she had taped up. “Have you made any other connections?”
I think some of the records from the basement are missing. I can’t find some of the personnel records from the first few years Caballo was in existence. And there’s a lot of the financial records missing.”
“Financial records?”
“I thought maybe Ox had given them to his lawyer for use in the case. That’s what they’re suing over, after all. They want profits from the company based on promises the older Mr. Winn made.”
“Profits? From what time period?”
Skylar carefully moved around the stacks of papers she had meticulously organized and picked up a few legal documents. “It says here that they stopped receiving their profits eighteen months ago.” She handed me the documents which consisted of the original filing in the court case. “That would be about the time Ox stopped working on assimilating the paperwork into the computer system. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”
“I don’t know,” I said softly as I read through the complaint. “But you’ve given me a new lead. Thanks, Skylar.”
I kissed the top of her head as I began to retreat.
“Hey, watch yourself, Mister,” Prescott mumbled from the floor where he’d made himself a nice little pallet to take a nap.
“Watch yourself, you silly Englishman!” I scooped up a crumpled piece of paper from the floor and tossed it at him.
Prescott just made a sort of moaning sound, batting the paper away before he turned over and went back to sleep.
Cheryl was still in the conference room, her head down on the table, her eyes closed. I almost hated to wake her up, but I needed her help.
“Don’t worry about it,” she groaned, making it clear that she wasn’t really asleep. “I was just resting my eyes.”
“I need you to take this list and figure out who all these people are. I need to know what their connection to Ox’s father is, and where they are and what they’re doing now.”
“Okay.” She took the list and looked it over for a second. “I’ll get my boys on it right now.”
“Thanks, Cheryl.”
She slowly stood, making a face when she picked up her coffee mug and discovered her coffee had grown cold. She went to the machine and poured the last few drops into the mug, then headed out. “I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Hey, Cheryl?”
She paused in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Do you know who has primary access to the internal accounting software around here?”
“You mean billing and acquisitions?”
“I mean everything—payroll, expenses, taxes—whatever.”
“That would be Ox and the head of the accounting department.”
“Who’s the head of accounting?”
Cheryl shrugged. “I think his name is Emilio or something like that. They’re down on the second floor.”
I glanced at the time on my phone. It was a little before seven. Most of the support staff should be headed in soon. “All right,” I said, deciding not to pursue it any further until I could speak to this Emilio fellow.
As she finally disappeared down the hall, I tugged out my phone and called the lawyer listed on some of the documents Skylar was reviewing, the one representing Ox. I got an answering service since it was still a little early, so left a message to have the man call me the moment he got in. I had a distinct feeling that this lawsuit was directly related to whatever was going on here. I needed to know as much about it as I could.
But right now, I was going home to get my kid off to school, and maybe take a quick nap.
Chapter 8
Ox
We were sitting on the counter sharing a cold can of beans and another of sliced peaches. Kinsley’s face was streaked from her tears, and she wasn’t talking much, but she seemed better. Hell, she was fucking strong. If something like that had happened to me, I think I’d probably be in a room with padded walls for the rest of my life.
She was an amazing woman.
“You know, there’s a panic room beneath Caballo. You could take me there so that you wouldn’t have to come back here.”
She shook her head. “Ironic as it might sound, you’re safer here. If they found out you’d been hiding in Caballo’s building all this time, they wouldn’t just charge you with hindering an arrest; they’d arrest everyone in the building for hindering prosecution and harboring a felon.”
I nodded. I’d kind of known that, but… it wouldn’t do to put my people in that sort of danger.
“Do you want me to drag the bed outside and burn it?”
“I’d like to burn the whole place down,” she said, a fierceness in her voice that made it impossible to think she was anything but serious. “But it’s a necessary evil right now.”
She set down her can of peaches and seemed about to say something, but her phone alerted us both to an incoming text. She shifted, leaning against me a little as she tugged it out of a back pocket of her tight skirt.
“Akker says they’re making progress. He’s got Cheryl following a lead Skylar came up with.”
“Skylar?” Ice entered my bloodstream at the sound of her name. “You got her involved?”
“I told Akker to call everyone we could trust. He chose Cheryl, Brock, Prescott, and Skylar.”
My appetite suddenly disappeared. I tossed the can of beans into the sink and jumped down from the counter, the cuff tugging at my wrist as I tried to move further from the pipe. I couldn’t even pace with this damn thing on! I cursed under my breath, saying a few things I never should have said in front of a lady. My father taught me that.
Fuck my father!
“Skylar is probably the sweetest, smartest, kindest woman I’ve ever met, and you’ve just put her in a hell of a mess!”
“I think we’re all in a hell of a mess, Ox. Mostly because you refused to allow anyone to help you!”
“That isn’t what this is about.”
“Isn’t it? None of us would be here now if you’d told just one single person what’s going on! We still don’t know what the hell is going on, except that some bad cop thinks you killed your father! And why would he think that? The original investigators know damn well you were never anywhere near your father that night.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know plenty.” She crossed her arms over her chest and studied me, anger snapping in her eyes. “I know your father fell down the stairs while arguing with your mother. And I know you were in the kitchen with your brother, doing the dishes. What I didn’t know was how domestic you are at heart.”
“Hell, Kinsley, tell me you didn’t get Oliver involved in this!”
“Where else were we going to get information on that night?”
“He’s been through enough!” I bellowed, charging toward her. But my arm, once again, was yanked back when I reached the end of my leash. “He doesn’t need to know what’s going on here!”
“Don’t you think he’ll figure it out when they arrest you?”
“It’s not…”
I stopped before I said too much, but Kinsley, as observant as she always was, knew what I’d done. She jumped off the counter and approached me, her small body storming up toward me more intimidating than I would ever admit.
“What were you going to say?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It all matters, Ox. The longer you refuse to tell me what you know, the longer it’s going to take us to save you from yourself.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“You promised you w
ould answer my questions if I answered yours, and I did.”
“I don’t hear any questions!”
We glared at each other for a long moment, like two cats preparing to fight over the same territory. I was the first to back off, moving to lean against the wall where my arm could fall naturally to my side instead of sticking awkwardly behind me at an odd angle. She stepped back too, moving to lean against the counter again.
“Why does Chad Lindsay have such a problem with you? Did he know your father?”
I slowly nodded my head as I let it fall forward, moving a hand over my hair. “My father was a senior patrolman when Lindsay began on the force nearly thirty years ago. They worked out of the same precinct, sometimes together. From Lindsay’s point of view, they were friends, but I suspect it was more of a business arrangement.”
“What sort of business?”
I was quiet for a long moment, remembering the time when I’d finally put it all together myself. I’d been going through my father’s records for Caballo. He’d kept the majority of his records in handwritten reports, claiming he didn’t understand or trust computers. When Walter had taken over, he’d implemented a computer system, but he’d never bothered to have my father’s records put in the system. I’d dragged my feet about it, too. And sometimes I wished I had continued to drag my feet instead of finally digging in.
“My father had a gambling habit, back in the day. Long before Caballo, back when we kids were small. It was an expensive habit, to hear my mother talk about it, but my mother is… well, let’s just say she tends to exaggerate. Anyway, that’s why he named the place Caballo. I also thought, for some time, that inconsistencies I found in his accounting records were because of that habit. And that maybe that’s how it started.”
“Financial inconsistencies?”
“Too much money. Unsubstantiated payments from clients who didn’t appear to exist anywhere but in the financial records.”
“He was cooking the books.”
“So was Walter when he took over; he was just much smarter about it. When I figured it out, I went to him to ask what the deal was. Before he slammed the door in my face, he said if I was smart, I wouldn’t mess with it. The system worked, he said.”
“The system?”
“Yeah. Cash would be deposited in small amounts and then written down as a payment on an invoice for one of these nonexistent clients. Then, at the end of the month, this same money would be used to pay profits to a list of former cops who had, at one time or another, been listed as partners in the firm. The way my father set it up was a little crude, but Walter made it into a smooth operation that no one would have caught on to if they hadn’t seen my father’s handwritten files.”
“Your dad was laundering money for these cops.”
“Exactly.”
Her eyebrows shot up high on her forehead. “And he never got caught?”
“No one ever bothered to look too closely. Besides, he hired this guy as his accountant who once cooked books for the mob. And that guy… he knew what he was doing!”
“But you figured it out.”
“It wasn’t hard once I figured out where to look. See, my father wasn’t always the most intelligent person in the room. He kept records of every transaction in great detail. I just happened onto these books that were different from the books they obviously used to show the government. He listed names, amounts, how it was to be paid out. Everything was there.” I shook my head, remembering my incredulity in finding that. “Man wasn’t a genius. He just had them in the file cabinets with everything else.”
Kinsley was quiet for a long moment, probably struggling with the idea that some cops in her precinct might be bad. When she finally looked up, she asked, “What does Chad Lindsay have to do with all of this?”
“Isn’t it obvious? His name is on the list.”
“Your father was laundering money for him?”
“For more than two dozen cops.”
She shook her head. “They can’t all be cops. Where are they getting the money they want laundered?”
I gave her a look. Clearly, she knew the answer to that—she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. They were bad cops. They were siphoning money off cash found at drug busts, cash and other items found in the homes of violence victims. Anywhere they had access to unaccounted-for valuables, they would take it.
Kinsley shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t think a cop is capable of temptation? Do you know how much money we’ve found at the homes of drug dealers, embezzlers, sex traffickers, even prostitutes in the work we do at Caballo? I’ve caught a couple of my people trying to take off with some of that stuff. I can imagine the temptation is even stronger for a cop who puts his life on the line on a daily basis and gets paid less than half what I pay my people.”
“But what you’re suggesting is a scheme that’s been going on for twenty years! How is that possible?”
“Like I said, the accountant my father hired had been doing this for years. He knew what he was doing.”
She shook her head again, pushing away from the counter to pace the small space between it and the fridge. I watched her, taking small satisfaction in the fact that she was finally understanding why I’d tried to push her away from all this.
“You’re not just dealing with the law here, Kinsley,” I said as kindly as I could. “You’re dealing with bad cops who might be desperate enough to do just about anything.”
“Like get a friend to issue an arrest warrant for you so that they can search your office and house?”
I rolled my head. “That’s probably what he’s after.”
“They want that list.”
“They also want me out of the way. Lindsay pulled me over last month within minutes of me discovering a bag of heroin in my Escalade—yes, I drive an Escalade and a Porsche—that I managed to get rid of just as his lights came on behind me. This whole murder warrant… it’s a last-ditch attempt that exposes—for me, anyway—a few more of the players involved in this whole thing.”
“Like your mother.”
I nodded, a sadness taking the air from my lungs for a moment. Not anger, not outrage, just sadness. “They probably promised her a cut. The one smart thing my father did for Oliver and me was to create a trust fund that he placed a big chunk of the wrongful death lawsuit money into. And when he died, his will dictated that a large portion of his life insurance go into the trusts as well. My mother had her own big chunk of money, but she’s drunk most of it.”
“What do you think their plan was? To shoot you on the courthouse steps?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t have let it get that far. They’d do away with me the first night in lockup. Maybe put me in with a drunk they paid off to knife me, or slip a little bit of drugs into a drink that would look like I’d overdosed in the cell. Something like that.”
She shook her head again, clearly agitated by the whole thing. But she didn’t argue with me, which suggested she knew I wasn’t completely off base.
“And who would take over at Caballo?”
“I think their plan would be to offer to clear Oliver’s record if he’d run the place the way Walter did. Or maybe they would have put my mother in charge. I don’t know, really. But I do know they wouldn’t have gotten what they wanted.”
“How could you know that?”
“Because I put a few safety measures in place that will prevent them from cooking the books again.”
She stopped and looked at me. “That’s what you meant when you said you’d been working to protect Caballo.”
“It’s more about my brother and my employees—my friends. Caballo isn’t just a business to me, never has been.”
She nodded, her expression softening. But then she charged at me, slamming both fists against my shoulder. I yelped, catching one of her wrists before she came at me again, but she didn’t. Instead, she molded her body against mine and reached up to kiss me. And not just any kiss. One of
the most passionate kisses I’d ever received from any woman.
“Asshole,” she moaned, pressing her forehead to my chest when she pulled back to catch her breath. “How could you let me put cuffs on you and walk you out of that building if you knew they wanted you dead?”
“Because it was the only way to protect the people I love.”
“What about me?” she smacked my chest as she pulled back to look up at me. “How do you think I would have felt if I’d processed you and put you in a cell just to find out you’d died? Weren’t you interested in protecting me?”
“But you didn’t take me in. You brought me here.”
“If I had—”
“I don’t waste my time dealing in what ifs.”
She kissed me again, just as passionately as before. I buried my fingers in her hair with my free hand, tugging her hard against me. I was done with all the arguing, all the games. I still didn’t know how this day was going to end, but I wasn’t going to miss another opportunity to hold this woman in my arms.
We kissed so long that my lips swelled, and they felt sore when I let them move gently down over her neck. I nibbled a little, drawing a moan of pleasure from her sweet lips. When I pulled back to look into her eyes, they were closed, her lips partially open, this look of complete abandon on that gorgeous face. I pushed her back and lifted her to the edge of the counter, close enough to the pipe that I had use of my hands, both hands. I slid them both under her skirt, sliding my palms against her outer thighs, an ache that had been constant all night burning and becoming something bigger and harder to ignore. We kissed again, stealing each other’s breath as my fingers found the upper edge of her lace-trimmed panties.
I tugged, pulling at them until she moved her hips, lifting her ass slightly off the counter so that they would come free. The moment they left her full hips, they fell easily, almost of their own accord, to the ground. I worked my way down her throat again, reluctantly moving my hands from her thighs to her blouse, unbuttoning all those damn buttons to expose more lace on her dainty bra. If I’d known how delicate her intimates were under all this professional attire, I might have tried to undress her a lot sooner!
Caballo Security Box Set Page 84