“What are you saying?” Thomas asked.
“I am saying that I don’t have the answer to this right now. For now, don’t resign and don’t reveal your situation. Give me a few days to think this through and perhaps seek counsel from a trusted elder. I don’t want you to leave; you both mean a lot to me. I also don’t want you to suffer at the hands of your own.”
“Fair enough. We will wait to see what you have to tell us once you are ready to sit down again.”
“Thank you, Kara. In the meantime, it is I that has a favor to ask of you.”
“What is that?”
“I know that you are opening your own accounting business. Is it up and running now?”
“Not yet. We open the doors this week,” she told him, knowing it might not make it much further than that if she had to leave the village before the children were born.
“Would it be too much to ask that I provide you with some copies of books to review for me?”
“Copies? Why not the originals?” she asked.
“This is in complete confidence. Something is not adding up with the village accounting, and I fear that the bookkeeper employed to answer for it is only putting up smoke and mirrors to divert me from the source of the problem. My wife, Kate, and I have personally made copies during the hours when they were locked away so we could get an independent review. I trust you, and I trust Thomas. I’d appreciate it if you took a look at them for me.”
“It would be my pleasure, then,” she told him.
“Thank you, Kara,” he told her, standing to walk around the desk. He took her hand, shaking it before moving on to Thomas. “Follow me, and I’ll give them to you. They are stored in the house.”
Kara and Thomas followed him, noting that the house was very dark and quiet. They waited in the hallway just outside the kitchen as he retrieved the books from his study, bringing them out in two boxes which he sat on a nearby hall table.
“I apologize for not offering you tea or anything. Kate and Owen McCord’s wife, Amy, have taken the children to some sort of children’s workshop for a few days. I don’t know where anything is in this place, which I suppose speaks poorly of me as a husband. I have come to rely on my wife to make sure I eat, drink, and sleep, I’m afraid. Since she’s been gone, I’ve done nothing but eat at Cassi’s old diner and fall asleep in my recliner.”
“It’s fine. We need to be going anyway. I’ll look over these and get them back to you as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, and, of course, I will pay you for your time. Just bill me at whatever your going rate is once you’re done.”
“Very well. We will talk to you soon,” Kara told him, as she retrieved a box and Thomas grabbed the other to walk out to their car.
A few moments later, they were on their way home, each of them lost in their own thoughts. It was Thomas who eventually broke the silence.
“Are you okay, Kara?”
“I guess I will have to be, won’t I?” she replied.
“I suppose we both will. Don’t forget that we are in this together, Kara.”
“Are we? You aren’t the one that’s a freak.”
“We are all freaks in this village, Kara,” he reminded her. “If you don’t believe me, walk into the center of the nearest human town and shift into a dragon.”
She nodded and looked back out the window, feeling very uncertain about the future, for herself, for Thomas, for their children, for everyone who wasn’t the same as everyone else.
Chapter Seventeen
A few days later, she sat puzzling over the copies of the books that Aaron had given her. He was right. Something was definitely out of whack with them and in a major way. Thomas was nearby, working on putting up a desk in her new offices, while she sat at the one he had already finished, looking over the numbers in front of her.
“Look at this,” she told him.
“You’re the accountant,” he replied. “What am I looking at here?”
“Gaps in payment. Someone has been cooking the books for years,” she told him.
“How so?” he asked her.
“They have been very careful, but the problem with trying to fake a set of books is that you are bound to make mistakes. In their case, their mistake is thinking no one would review their numbers.”
“What do you mean?”
“The entries are legitimate, but the addition is off. They have been adding a few pounds here and several pence there, increasing the debits and reducing the credits in ways that simply make it look like an adding mistake, but it’s very deliberate.”
“How do you know?”
“Because only someone who is completely inept would make this many mistakes in their accounting. This is deliberate.”
“And what do they accomplish by doing that?”
“There are two brothers doing the accounting. One is the accountant, and one is the banker. They operate as a check and balance. Whatever one brother shows on the books, the other should show in cash, receipts, and holdings. There are zero mistakes in the non-cash items, but the cash entries are full of them.”
“So, they subtract more for payouts than they should and add in more for debts than they should. In the end, what is showing on the books is less than what is actually in the vault?”
“Precisely. In simplest terms, if they drop a one from their addition in the right place, they turn the 30 euro in the bank into 20 euro and pocket the difference. Over a period of time that can add up to some serious side cash for two people who have been completely entrusted with the care of all the village’s money.”
“Wow. The McCallum brothers have been doing the books since well before even Aaron’s predecessor, Aiden, took over as clan leader. They must be minted by now.”
“How could Aaron have even let them stay in place after he removed Aiden from power?” Kara asked.
“They were like everyone else. He gave them a chance to step down if they weren’t willing to support the new leadership. They expressed that they were completely on board with him, and he never gave it a second thought, I guess, at least not until he realized something was not quite right. I wonder what tipped him off.”
“I don’t know, but I can certainly understand why they feigned support. I’d have to look at all the books, but I can guarantee that they’ve stolen millions of dollars over the years based on the totals I’m seeing in just this sampling.”
“I wonder what they do with it. They seem to live quite modestly. You’d never know they were embezzling so much.”
“No clue, but look close enough, and it will turn up. People hide it in gambling habits, safe deposit boxes, et cetera. They hoard what they can’t dispose of without notice.”
“Aaron is not going to be happy about this.”
“I’d say not,” she replied.
“Okay. I want you to go home and stay there. Lock yourself in.”
“What? That’s being overly dramatic, don’t you think?”
“No, not at all. Aaron has a bit of temper when it comes to people taking advantage of his good nature and doing harm to this village. He watched Aiden do it for too long to put up with it under his leadership. The moment I tell him this, he will confront them, and there is a chance they will come after the person who revealed them.”
“It’s not like he will tell them who he had review the books, I’m sure.”
“Who else would it be? Other than them, you are the only accountant in the village. They will make assumptions that, since I am on the Dragon Council, you did the review, and they will be right,” Thomas pointed out.
“It still seems a bit overly dramatic,” she replied.
“It isn’t. Go,” he told her.
“Fine. Just be careful. I’ll be at home, when you get them sorted out,” she said, still unconcerned about what she perceived as two old men who would be no match for Thomas and Aaron if they got out of hand. Even if they did figure out that she was the secondary accountant that revealed their crime, they st
ood little chance of reaching her before the Dragon Guard took them down.
As it turned out, she was wrong. The moment they were called to their chambers, they made a beeline for her instead. It was just as Thomas had predicted that they instinctively knew it was her that revealed them, but even he hadn’t expected them to not even come to defend themselves and go directly for her.
As he and Aaron waited in chambers, along with a half dozen members of the Dragon Guard, the two brothers made their way to the Higgins household, landing heavily on the ground just outside the kitchen window of Thomas and Kara’s home. She looked up at the sound, puzzled by it, but assuming it was just one of the neighbors who had gone out for a late-night flight. After a moment of not hearing any further movement, she returned to preparing the casserole she had started making for when Thomas returned home.
“Crap!” she exclaimed as she sloshed the mixture onto her clothes while putting it into the oven.
She finished setting it inside before making her way to the bedroom to change out of her clothes. Slipping off her button down, she pulled a clean t-shirt over her head and started back to the kitchen with the other shirt, intent upon letting it soak to prevent a stain. Instead, she was startled by a loud crash at the front door. It took a moment to sink in that someone was kicking at it violently. She dropped the shirt and ran back into the bedroom without thinking and immediately regretted it, but before she could get back out and make it to the back door, she heard the front door crash in. She was trapped, unable to shift into dragon form in the tiny confines of the bedroom.
Chapter Eighteen
Kara cowered in the corner. She could hear heavy footsteps on the floor outside the bedroom. Two men by the sound of it, and she was certain she knew what men it would be. Even though they were older, they were stronger than her, both in human and dragon form.
“Where are you, you bitch?” one of them shouted.
“We know your husband isn’t home. He’s where he always is, with his nose shoved firmly up the backside of the dragon leader. So, we thought we’d come by and fuck you up just as much as you have us,” the other added in a gruff voice.
Kara couldn’t help but find a very brief moment, when all she could think of was how ironic that two mild mannered accountants were here to harm her. You expected this sort of behavior from rougher men, but not ones that spent their lives crunching numbers for a living. It was almost surreal when you considered it. “Battle of the Accountants,” she mumbled to herself in disbelief. Then the moment of levity was replaced with terror as she heard the knob to the bedroom turn.
“So, hiding in the bedroom then?” one of them hissed through the door before kicking it. It was a heavy door and withstood the pounding much better than the front door had done it seemed. But after a few minutes, it began to give way, and Kara was still standing frozen, staring at it as if she was an ice sculpture.
Then it came to her. For a moment, in the heat of what was happening, she had forgotten herself. She hunched down and waited for him, conserving her energy for just as soon as the door broke open. She saw his eyes change, from anger to fear, as he suddenly realized he had been the one making the mistake. Instead of the petite lady accountant he had expected, he found himself instead being pounced upon by a huge tiger with teeth bared and claws extracted.
His screams filled the room as she attacked him with all the ferociousness she could muster to save herself and the tiny seeds of tomorrow she carried. There was no way for him to shift in here, and he was at her mercy. He had no doubt expected to drag her out where they could shift and overpower her in dragon form, her dragon being smaller and weaker. They had no way of knowing they would encounter this and that was to be her saving grace.
He attempted to free himself, but she had him pinned, her powerful teeth tearing at his flesh as her tiger paws held him down. A loud noise outside diverted her attention, and she yanked her head in that direction, just long enough for him to escape. She went after him, but it was too late. He had already shifted, taking flight out into the darkness, and there was no sign of his partner.
She shifted back to her human form and immediately found herself being charged from within the house, his brother apparently having been hidden somewhere inside. She shifted into her dragon form and took flight with him rapidly on her tail. They headed out toward the sea, where she found that his brother had doubled back despite his injuries from her attack. She used her speed to dive downward and avoid her larger opponents.
A flame shot out, nearly clipping one of her wings as she eluded them. Spotting a grove of trees down near the beach below the cliffs they had just passed over, she dove down toward it, putting as much distance as possible between herself and her pursuers to buy some time. Once on the ground, she quickly shifted back to human and tried to catch her breath. The sound of their heavy feet on the ground nearby let her know she didn’t have much time, but she waited as long as possible to maintain her strength, preparing.
“Please, let this work. It has to,” she breathed to the night around her before concentrating her entire focus on shifting. Suddenly, the two dragons appeared through the bank of trees beyond the small clearing in which she stood and stopped in their tracks. The one brother was out of fire, as he had already used it in the sky before they landed and hadn’t had time to rebuild a supply. She watched as the other one sucked in his mighty chest and prepared to launch a sizzling stream in her direction, and she did the same.
She had never felt anything like it – the chill as it arose from her throat and shot out at the pair of dragons, encompassing both of them in its mighty blast. The flames that had only begun to escape one of the brother’s snout were suddenly doused with the ice that extinguished them and coated both of them, freezing them in place. Kara didn’t let up until she had given out all that she had and stumbled back, gasping for breath. When she was certain they were actually frozen and not moving, she used the last of her energy to take flight.
She could feel how weak she was after the repeated shifts and fight, her body dropping heavily onto the cliffs at the edge of the mountains. It was as far as she could go without resting, and as she collapsed there, she looked up to find herself looking at the Dragon Guard, all in shifted form. They began to charge her, and she found she was too weak to defend herself, instead falling to the ground and shifting back to human form.
“Oh, my God!” she heard Thomas scream. She could see his blurry figure as he dropped back into his human form and came running through the ranks to get in front of the Guard, followed closely by Josh. Then, she passed out.
Chapter Nineteen
“Ah, there you are,” Thomas said as her eyes fluttered open, blinking against the bright light that seemed to surround her. Everything around her was white–colorless and illuminated far too brightly it seemed.
“Am I dead?” she asked. “Are we dead?”
“Dead? What? No, of course not. You are in the hospital in the bottom of the Council chambers. The doctor brought you down here, where you’d be safe while you recovered.”
“What happened to me?” she asked, feeling confused as only bits and pieces of last night seemed to be coming back to her.
“You were exhausted, that’s all,” he told her.
“The babies?” she said, her memory coming back to her now.
“They are fine, too. I’m sorry, Kara. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I thought you’d be safe at home. I thought they would come to us, not knowing what we called them there for. I should have known they were expecting to be discovered sooner or later.”
“But why come for me? I mean, once I had told Aaron, it was already too late for them.”
“Because knowing and being able to prove it are two different things. They had a plan in place for destroying the books, but you obviously had copies if you were able to go through them without their knowledge.”
“I would have thought they would go to the office to look for the books first,” she said.
“Well, I guess we’ll have a bit of a clean up there and at home, huh?” she told him.
“I don’t want to upset you, but we won’t have to worry about the office. They burned it to the ground for good measure.”
Kara sighed and laid her head back to stare at the ceiling. She had worked so hard to build that office–both of them had. It hadn’t even officially opened yet, and now it was all gone.
“Great,” she said, finally.
“Don’t worry about it, Kara. We will rebuild.”
“My casserole,” she said suddenly.
“I swear, Kara. Only you would be worried about a casserole after what you’ve been through tonight. I came home and saw the mess and saw that the oven was still on. I turned it off and sent for the Dragon Guard to come and find you. I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Thomas, they saw me. They all saw me.”
“Yes, though I don’t think the brothers are going to be able to say much about it,” he told her quietly.
“I killed them, didn’t I? I’ve never killed anyone before, Thomas. It was horrible,” she said, tears falling down her face.
“You had no choice. If you hadn’t, they would have killed you, but first they would have tormented you until you told them where the copies of the books were. You did what you had to do.”
“The Dragon Guard,” she breathed, suddenly looking even more afraid. “They all saw me. They know what I turned myself into. I was a monster. Will they arrest me? Is that why I’m down here in the underbelly of the Council chambers? Is this a secure hospital?”
Journey to India (Exiled Dragons Book 7) Page 9