“Happens all the time in business,” Gray said.
“Do me a favor and don’t help.”
“I have no idea why you do anything, Noah.” She hesitated for a second. “Maybe if I knew more about your past I could answer that.”
Her lack of faith stabbed at him. Jabbed him right in the dead center of his chest until he felt as if one of his lungs had deflated. “You think I’m a convicted felon now.”
She waved him off. “I know you’re not.”
Of course not. She knew because she’d checked. His disappointment morphed into fury. “So you were the one who investigated my past. You lied to me.”
Gray scowled. “What the hell is up with that, Alexa?”
“The recent check. The cursory one.”
“Is that supposed to make it better?” Noah asked.
“I was trying to figure out if you were the one behind the stealing. It’s serious business. I didn’t have a choice.”
She acted as if that made her behavior better. “But I’m the only one in the company you bothered to investigate.”
“Getting past the intricate security system at Scanlon and into the building was nearly impossible. But someone did and then got a look at private financial paperwork and started moving funds around.”
“What happened when the building’s alarm went off?” Gray asked.
“It didn’t,” she said.
Noah experienced the first ah-ha moment of his life. Someone broke into his system, to one he took months to install, got around it, and the suspicion now fell on him. If he owned Scanlon, he’d place the blame on the security expert as well.
“I don’t get any of this.” Gray stood up and paced to the window. “Someone is blaming Noah for a break-in?”
Lexy slowly shook her head. “Noah is the most likely culprit. The system is one we insisted was impenetrable when we sold it. It’s personally designed.”
“By me,” Noah said.
“Exactly.”
Gray slammed his hand against the window ledge. “Blaming Noah is a fucking insult. He would never do something like this.”
Noah appreciated the support. Good to know someone in the Stuart clan believed in him. Noah just always expected that person would be Lexy.
Despite the force of that emotional hit, he knew another one was coming. Her story felt unfinished. The police never contacted him. No one at Scanlon complained. Something deeper and more complex was at work here.
Lexy knew what was going on. Noah planned to know before the next all-green meal hit the dining hall table.
“And?” Noah heard his voice waver from the anger running through it.
“There’s more?” Gray’s voice raised a decibel.
“There’s more,” Lexy added in a soft tone.
This was one time Noah hated to be right. “You’ve gone this far. Don’t stop now.”
She shuffled through her papers until she came upon a computer printout. She held it out to him as if seeing the document explained everything. It didn’t. Noah stared at the lines and lines of babble. He was computer savvy, but hardly an expert. He depended on Dex for help with that part of the systems.
“What exactly am I looking at?”
“The cyber footprint leads back to you. If that’s not bad enough, one of the accounts into which the stolen funds were deposited is registered in your name. Well, in a bunch of fake names that eventually go back to you.” She held the papers closer to his face. “See?”
Gray peeked over his sister’s shoulder. Whatever he saw on the documents made his face tense with anger. “You can’t possibly think Noah stole money.”
Lexy tugged the papers back when Gray tried to take them. “Some proprietary information is missing as well. The Scanlon execs are most worried about that development. Since Scanlon deals in military components, the long-term implications are huge.”
Noah understood how it all unfolded. Lexy’s role remained unclear. “You didn’t say whether or not you thought I did all of this.”
“Of course she doesn’t.” Gray looked at both of them. “Right?”
“I did. This fell right as I learned about Karen.” She turned to Noah. “When you refused to talk about anything.”
Noah felt the emotional hit down to his feet. “So you decided that I hid something far worse than an ex-wife.”
“Yes.”
“You took it upon yourself to bring me down. It explains the access and document issues. You were pushing me out while you gathered the evidence.” The words scraped against his throat. “Was the plan to hold a board meeting and present your findings? Make some big scene to get your female revenge for Karen?”
He could see it in her eyes. He got a few parts wrong, but he nailed most of it. She wanted to expose him. Ruin him.
She took a step toward him. “This was never about your wife.”
“Ex,” he said without thinking.
“And you didn’t let me finish what I was saying.”
He rubbed his temples in the hope of ending the knocking sound echoing in his brain. “I’m not sure how much more I can take.”
“I did believe it because I was hurt and frustrated.”
“Welcome to the fucking club,” he muttered under his breath.
“Noah, I’m sure she didn’t mean—”
“But I don’t anymore,” she whispered the last piece of information.
The invisible hammer pounding into the top of his head and nailing him in place eased up. “No?”
“No.”
His raw nerves kept snapping. “Why the change?”
“You have a lot of issues—loads of them—” She snorted as if she thought her comment needed emphasis. “But stealing for the sake of the thrill of it is not one of them.”
Not the most flattering defense, but it was something. “Okay.”
But Lexy was not done. She kept talking as if she was realizing the truth of her statements as she said them. “After all, you have money. You’re known in the community.”
He did not want to hear anything else. He doubted her reasoning would make him very happy. “I said, okay.”
For some reason, the subject made her chatty gene take over. “If you wanted to steal or needed to, you would be smart enough not to get caught and risk everything you’ve accomplished.”
“You’ve made your point.” She made it several minutes ago, but for some reason kept right on going.
“You certainly would not steal from a company and leave a direct line right back to your doorstep. You’re not that dumb.”
Even Gray was staring at her now.
“Feel free to stop defending me.” Much more of this and Detective Sommerville would have more than a murder charge on her mind.
Lexy’s mouth clamped shut…but only for a second. “I was being supportive.”
“You were engaging in a case of overkill,” Gray said. “I’m guessing that was guilt talking.”
Noah was grateful that his friend stepped in. Lexy did not look as if she was in the mood for a lecture from a fiancé she pretended was an ex. And they had much more material to cover before he could let this subject drop. “How did you get involved in all of this?”
What Noah really wanted to know was why no one bothered to confront him with all of these suspicions. He dealt directly with Scanlon on the security project. He had the relationship. If someone there had a problem, he should have gone to the source and not crawled behind his back to his girl.
“The Scanlon VP, Frank Wallace, and I are friends,” she said.
Jealous jumped up and bit Noah. He knew Frank. The guy was fifty-ish, savvy, and married. “What does that mean?”
Gray chuckled. “Down boy.”
“Simple. It means we’ve known each other for years.” She held up a hand. “Because of our history—and not that kind of history, so back off—he contacted me with the banking info and the tracing Scanlon’s internal tech folks did.”
“I still don’t—”
�
�He knows our family and has been with the firm for years. Basically, he was looking for a reasonable explanation for what happened. At first, he hoped the whole thing was a fake security test.”
Noah still did not like how the entire scenario unfolded. “So he contacted you and not me.”
“Think with your head. Why would he call up the guy he thinks stole from him?” Gray asked.
Lexy nodded. “Right, and he asked me to investigate on my end and see if I could dig up anything. He was also concerned that I had hooked up with a professional con man.”
A red-hot flush ripped through Noah’s body. No one ever questioned his integrity. He never expected it, certainly not from the woman he intended to marry.
“So you investigated me.”
“The only thing I looked into was your whereabouts at the time of the incident, some financial stuff to see if the money showed up anywhere, and all of our records on the Scanlon job. Nothing about your work history or background prior to coming to work for us. I had everyone else investigated on a lesser level as well.”
“Everyone?” Noah stared at Gray when he asked the question.
“I think he’s asking if you’re including me in that pile of people.” Gray smiled at the idea. Clearly he thought he was immune to suspicion.
Lexy smacked her lips together then answered. “Everyone.”
Gray was not laughing now. “What?”
“Employees, trainees, and everyone working on any project, no matter how tangentially related. I looked into all of it, tracked down everyone’s potential motives and actual locations.”
The risk she took ticked Noah off. “Since when are you a member of the police?”
She was no more in the mood to back down now than she was at the beginning of the conversation. The ways her voice rose and cheeks puffed out proved that. “I had a fiduciary responsibility to the company.”
But not to him. That was the unspoken fact zipping around the room.
Noah now understood why she did not have the time to work on the firm’s PR project. Lexy had been a very busy lady. Unfortunately all of those projects put her close to danger.
“I would have thought at some point you would have confided in me. I think you owed me that.” She owed him more than that. Apparently loyalty and trust meant nothing to her.
“Frank confided in me. Keeping you in the dark was part of the deal. Since we were no longer together—”
“You would be wise not to bring up that topic again.”
“I was the perfect person to look into this.”
Gray continued to glance back and forth between them like a guy watching a tennis match. “And?”
“And when I traced back all of the people involved with the firm or who had access to firm resources during that time, Henderson’s name popped up.”
“In what way?” Noah asked.
“He was at the firm for training. He stayed on to do some computer work and analysis with us. I came here to find him.”
“I never saw him,” Gray said.
“Me, either,” Noah answered at the same time.
“What were you going to do when you came face-to-face with him? Knock him down and nag him until he confessed?” Gray asked with as much sarcasm in his voice as Noah had ever heard.
Good question. She acted as if she believed she was safe from violence. Finding a dead guy on her floor should have clued her in to the reality. Apparently not.
Lexy clenched the papers to her chest. “I planned to follow him, maybe check his room, and eventually confront him.”
Noah did not know whether to hug or strangle her. “Damn it, Lexy. That’s nuts.”
“And dangerous.” Gray hovered over her. “Did you ever think to call me in on this?”
“This was something I needed to do alone.”
“Because you have a death wish?” Noah asked.
Her knuckles whitened from the strength of her grip on the edge of the desk. “Because I was walking away from the company and wanted to make sure everything was fine. I owed the family.”
Gray pointed at her. “You owed Noah.”
She shook her head. Shook it a bit too hard and fast for Noah’s liking. “We were over.”
“Stop saying that.” Noah kept losing ground on this issue. He had hoped their night of lovemaking might soften her, or at least make her stop declaring the end of their relationship to everyone who would listen.
“It’s true,” she insisted.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Gray said, his anger obvious.
But it did not come close to matching Lexy’s fury. “Excuse me?”
Gray’s defense stunned Noah. Rather than jump in, he waited to see what Gray would say next.
“Alexa, who are you kidding here? You did all of this with Frank and Henderson and the investigation because of Noah. That’s the same reason I backed off and made it easy for him to come find you.”
Silence filled the small hotel room after Gray’s pronouncement. Noah thought about clapping, but refrained for fear Lexy would smash the television over his head.
“The point is that Frank has not pressed charges out of respect for our past work association. He put his butt on the line. He has been monitoring the accounts and files for more activity, even set up a few traps, but everything stopped once Henderson left town.”
“What did you talk to Henderson about yesterday?” Noah asked.
Gray’s eyes grew wide. “You talked to the man?”
“I was going to search his office and he stopped me.”
Noah took a calming breath. He wanted to yell, but he wanted answers more. “What exactly did he say?”
“That he knew you and Gray. That he figured out I was following him.”
“Good job, sis.”
“Obviously someone else at the resort has information on all of this.” To Noah, the bigger issue was whether this entire episode could be traced back to the blackmail attempts against him.
Someone had been sending threats via e-mail. Someone claimed to know about his past and planned to disseminate bits of information along with some twisted facts, enough to ruin his reputation, or so the blackmailer thought. No one knew about the e-mails. Noah kept the information quiet as he tried to track down the perpetrator.
The blackmailer said he or she would be back in touch with his demands. Noah worked day and night trying to come up with a list of suspects. God knew he did not have a more interesting way to spend his evenings.
Then Lexy took off and his priorities changed. Let the blackmailer, whoever it was, try to ruin him. Noah was more concerned with making sure Lexy was safe and that their relationship was back on track. Interestingly enough, the blackmail messages stopped once he left town. Now he wondered if the attempts to frame him for theft and the threats to expose him pointed to one person. Hard to imagine there were two people out there who wanted to destroy him.
“No one else affiliated with Scanlon or our company is here.” Lexy sighed. “Well, not that I can tell.”
“It is possible someone was after Henderson for another reason. If he is involved in scams and thefts, he’d have enemies.” Gray sat back down. The energy pounding off him a minute earlier had faded a bit.
“If his body turned up anywhere else on the resort grounds but Lexy’s room, I’d agree.” Noah knew in his gut the death had something to do with the theft. He never ignored that stabbing feeling in his gut. “No, this connects to Lexy somehow.”
“Then she should leave here. It’s not safe.” Gray looked around as if wanting to pack her up and go.
Noah understood the protective feelings, but running away was not going to happen. Whoever was tracking Lexy would follow her back to San Diego. At least here in the middle of nowhere, with fewer people and a police mandate to stay put, he had a shot at narrowing the suspects. He planned to start with Tate.
“She can’t,” Lexy said. “The detectives want us in Utah.”
“And I want us here wh
ere I can look into this and into everyone staying or working at the resort.” Noah dreaded doing all of that work with Lexy around. He just knew she would insist on helping. More like bossing.
“She needs to have one of us with her at all times,” Gray said.
“She is a big girl and has gotten this far by herself, so stop treating her like a child,” she said.
“You’ve been lucky not to get hurt,” Noah pointed out. “Now you’re stuck with us.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the killer.”
“Never going to happen, babe.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m starting to hate Utah.”
Funny, but he was starting to appreciate the place.
Chapter Sixteen
“W hat is this? And don’t say food.” Gray hovered over the dinner options in the dining room with an empty plate.
“I wouldn’t.”
“It sure as hell isn’t edible.”
“You don’t see me eating it, do you?” Noah stood next to his friend while drinking from the beer he smuggled into the resort after the morning trip to the police station.
Gray used a serving spoon to poke around in a bowl of vegetables, but did not take anything. “I refuse to believe people pay to eat like this.”
“You’ll notice no one else is in here.” Noah glanced around. A half-hour into the two-hour lunchtime and they were alone in the large room. Quite a difference from the pre-murder packed-to-capacity crowd.
“I thought the dead guy was keeping them away.” Gray let a blob of mashed something plop back into the bowl. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“I stopped at a fast-food joint before you got here. Actually drove twenty miles out of my way, over your sister’s protests, just to get my hands on a hamburger.” And had to go back through the drive-through a second time when Lexy ate his food.
“Where is she?”
“Aerobics class.”
“You let her go alone?”
“I walked her there.”
“Bet she complained every step of the way.”
“Nagged and complained. Your sister excels at that sort of thing.” Noah shook his head at the memory. “But I’m convinced this isn’t a case of a serial killer running around mad at the resort. The clues, what little there are, point to someone taking Henderson out for a specific reason. Lexy is safe, but I’m sticking close just in case.”
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