by Aiden Bates
Sibley was already getting to his feet. "Let's go."
Carter didn't know this hospital, but he knew hospitals, and he knew how these things usually went. He hugged the walls until he found an omega in scrubs, carrying a little bundle of blankets with a pink hat. "Hey, buddy. You've got to stop now."
"I'm not leaving without my baby." The omega turned around to face Carter. His face was hidden by stubble, and not Carter's carefully maintained stubble either. He hadn't shaved in a while, and he hadn't washed up either. He was probably in his late thirties, and his vanilla sugar scent proclaimed him to be free and unclaimed.
Carter could tell, both by scent and by sight, that there was no way this omega had given birth to the baby in his arms. There was no way that this man had given birth within the past month. "How about if we go and talk this out? I can see that you're hurting. Taking that baby isn't going to make you hurt any less."
"What would you know about it?" The grieving omega's lip curled, but he didn't move when Carter stepped slowly forward.
Carter had seen this sort of thing before. He couldn't let himself feel it now. "I know enough. I know what it's like to lose what feels like might be your only hope for a family." He wrapped an arm around the omega's shoulder. He kept the pressure light and friendly, but he could exert more if he wanted.
"I—" The omega burst into tears and buried his face in Carter's shoulder.
Carter let him have his cry, and supported the baby while he did it. If he just happened to transfer the baby into his own arm as that happened, well, that was just coincidence. "Let's get you some proper help, okay?"
***
Finn would never have admitted it, not even on pain of death, but he hated that Carter was at that conference.
It wasn't that he didn't want Carter to succeed. Quite the opposite—he wanted Carter to shine, as much as Carter wanted to shine. He thought that Carter could use a good dose of ambition, to be quite honest, and of course it could only be to Silver Oak's benefit to have the keynote speaker from a prestigious conference on alpha and omega medicine in their stable.
The problem was personal. Finn didn't like that Carter was all the way in San Antonio. That was in Texas, practically a separate country. What if he needed help and Finn couldn't get to him in time? What if he met a new guy and decided to run away with him and raise goats in Canada or something like that? Okay, it wasn't likely that Carter would want to go and raise goats, but Carter hadn't had great experiences with men. Neither Tom nor Finn had treated him the way he should be treated. Maybe he'd be so enthralled by an alpha who made him feel good that he'd consider goats to be a good option.
Maybe Finn should do something about the way he treated Carter.
He thought he'd made some progress, by driving Carter to the airport. What else was he supposed to do? He knew that there was something else, but he had no idea what that might be. He had no one that he could go to and ask, no wise alpha mentor who could guide him in the way to woo an omega he might want to be with for a while. Uncle Lochlann would tell him to be a man and claim what was his, boy, like your ancestors before the walls of Emain Macha.
Not only was Finn fairly certain that there were laws against what Lochlann had in mind, he was ninety percent sure that nothing happened at that battle the way that Lochlann thought it had.
No, Finn had to find some other way of demonstrating his affection to Carter.
Carter might not want that. Carter might be perfectly happy with a purely physical relationship. He'd agreed to it, after all. Finn had to believe that there was something more there, though. They wouldn't fight the way that they did if Carter didn't feel something. And Carter had stated outright that he was disappointed by Finn's absence during his miscarriage and recovery.
So Finn knew that he needed to do better. He started by texting Carter while he was in San Antonio, just to let him know how things were going back in Syracuse.
It's raining here.
We had a power failure. The backup generators kicked in, but it was ugly.
Hey, the emergency department thinks we should be stocking up on Narcan. Thoughts?
Carter replied pretty quickly after each text, accounting for the fact that he was working of course. He replied to the rain text with a picture of himself out on a balcony that overlooked the Alamo, on a sunny day, with a margarita in his hand. He replied to the power failure text with a picture of a little pen light from the vendor floor, and a promise to bring him three.
The question about Narcan got a real response. The opioid crisis isn't going away. You can either account for it, plan for it, and keep enough Narcan on hand to cope with it, or you can risk running out and expand the morgue. Narcan costs less than capital improvements.
Finn snorted at Carter's typically blunt response. I love the way you phrase things.
Carter replied with another selfie, this time of himself with a bunch of older men sitting around a table at the conference. Finn recognized at least some of them from industry news. Dr. Sibley was the new Chief Medical Officer at Lazarus Health in San Antonio. The man beside him was Art Jaquetti, their CEO. That was interesting; at least Carter had found some higher-ups to talk to.
The next day Finn got an email from Dr. Sibley, with a video clip. Apparently at some point, on the first day of the conference, Carter had stopped a deranged omega from making off with a newborn from the neonatal unit. It had made the local news, and of course the local news affiliate had found out about the shirtless doctor incident from Memorial Day.
Finn hoped that Carter never saw the clip. He had a lot to be proud of, but he knew that Carter would be uncomfortable with all of the attention.
Finn couldn't focus everything on Carter's absence. He had to think about Silver Oak, too. The ongoing audit kept turning up good cost savings, and Finn wanted to start to make inroads on the overruns, but every time that he went to his own CMO with a suggestion the old man just told him that he'd "look into it." Finn had only been there since April and he knew that Dr. Richards wouldn't look into a damn thing.
Finn knew what he had to do. He had to document everything, so that he could have Richards sent back to Ohio or gently encourage him to retire. He preferred the latter option to the former. He had no problem with layoffs. They were part and parcel of the position he held, and they weren't personal. He didn't know the affected people personally, and they happened because of issues with the company and not issues with the people themselves. Firing people, people who he personally knew, was another matter altogether.
Still, Finn had a job to do and he was going to do it.
The auditors were wearing down, too. They'd been here for months, not the weeks they'd expected, and he expected that they would be eager to get back to Cleveland and their own families. They never showed a moment of resentment, though. They just kept diligently at their jobs.
Carter had been gone for three days when Johnston came running into his office. He didn't even knock, just burst into the office. Freeman ran hot on his heels, carrying her laptop in her arms like a precious infant.
Finn raised his eyebrow. "Is something actually on fire?"
"Not yet." Johnston's grin was wide and wicked. "I just locked the general ledger. No one can write to it while we copy everything for evidence."
Finn processed what the auditor had just said. "You've got enough evidence to go to law enforcement."
Freeman's laugh had a little bit of hysteria to go with all of the exhaustion underneath it. "Your guy, he's a real bastard. He tried to make it look like the Senior Accounting Manager did it, because he's got the guy's password."
"Bad idea." Finn drew his eyebrows together. "You don't give anyone your password. Ever."
"I know. And that's going down as a security deficiency on our audit report." Johnston shrugged. "Sorry. It's a drop in the bucket, I mean you've got some of these older doctors who write their passwords down and tape them to their desks, but anyway. Not the point. He tried to make it look
like the Senior Accounting Manager, but that's why we went and cross-checked suspicious journal entries against employee access."
"Your Accounting Manager, Scott Bacon, wasn't here on three of the occasions that his system ID was used to make those journal entries." Freeman opened up her laptop and showed the screen to Finn.
Finn looked at the data. When he first looked at the screen, all he saw were numbers and a few raw, digital-looking letters. Nothing looked like it made sense, and he wanted to scream at them that he'd gone for healthcare administration and not accounting. Then his brain finally remembered that he'd learned to read numbers like this perfectly well, thank you very much, and his eyes widened.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Scott's going through an unpleasant divorce back in Cleveland, that's part of why he was so willing to come here to Syracuse. He had to go back for court appearances." He pointed at one of those dates and times. "I was here, at that time."
"You were. You don't have access to the general ledger. There were only three members of the executive team on site during those hours." Johnston met Finn's eyes and put his hands on Finn's desk. "You, Dr. Richards, and Robert Gerig."
"Son of a bitch." Finn closed his eyes. "I suppose that killing him is right out?"
"It's usually frowned on in white collar crimes." Freeman snorted.
Finn stroked his beard, but he couldn't really feel it. The gesture was just something to do with his hands. He felt numb. "I've know Robert—I've known Gerig forever. Over a decade." He took a deep breath and was surprised to find that it hurt. "I mean, he's been to my house. He's been to all of my houses in the past few years. Why would he do something like this?"
Johnston sat down in one of the chairs. The exhaustion of the past few months showed on his face. "I don't know for certain. I can't know for certain, not until the cops finish their investigation. They'll subpoena his bank records, look into his personal finances. Maybe his wife has a drug problem, or one of his kids has a gambling problem."
"We see all kinds of triggers that can cause someone who was otherwise honest to engage in embezzlement." Freeman pursed her lips for a second. "Extraordinary medical expenses for a loved one are common. Blackmail is another. They don't want to, but the blackmailer will reveal x or y or z about them if they don't. That kind of thing."
"Wouldn't there have been some sign, though?" Finn looked down at his desk, and then up at the auditors. This was no time to sit around and feel sorry for himself. "His outward behavior never changed. Shouldn't he have started to act nervous or sketchy or twitchy or something?"
"Maybe he didn't feel guilty." Johnston scooted down in the chair. "Either he had the same motivations that we just discussed and he felt that they outweighed any other moral impetus he might have felt, or he had some other motivation and he just did not care. I don't know which it is. What I do know is that he did steal the money."
"Well then." Finn folded his hands on his desk and fell silent for a long moment. "I want to say that I can't believe it. I don't want to believe it, but that's not the same thing. Like I said, he and I go way back. It's a huge breach of trust. I'm angry. I'm disappointed. I'm going to have to find a new CFO."
"I think Ms. Wyszniewski might be open to the position." Johnston winked. "She likes it here, and putting an auditor in the role would send a pretty strong message. But hey, I just work here."
Finn gave Johnston a weak smile. Wyszniewski would probably be just fine in the job, at that. He kind of wanted to promote from within, but he was equally annoyed that none of the senior staff had caught the fraud. "All right. Do you want to call the CEO or does that happy and fun job fall to me?"
"The buck does stop with you." Johnston grinned at him.
Finn sighed and placed the call to Bill. The Regent Chief Executive picked up on the second ring. "Finn Riley. How are things going back east?"
Finn had no idea how to answer that question. Could he honestly say that things were going well when they'd just caught a thief? Could he say they were going poorly when the thief had been caught? "Those auditors you sent are pretty incredible, sir. They've done some amazing work. They've made some great recommendations that have already started to show results and they figured out who's doing the stealing. Sir."
Bill fell silent for a long moment. "Did they really?"
"Yes, sir. It's, ah. It's Robert Gerig. Their evidence is pretty convincing."
Bill lapsed into silence for another long moment. "I'll be on the next flight. Don't do anything until I get there."
Finn seethed for a second, but he held it in. Bill had known Gerig even longer than Finn had. "Yes, sir."
"Have they locked down the ledger?"
"Yes, sir. They have." Finn glanced at Johnston, who paled.
"Good. It stays locked until we've taken care of the Gerig situation. The rest of the audit team will be looking into every asset Gerig's ever managed." Bill took a deep breath. "We're going to get through this, Finn. We will. It's going to be difficult, but we're going to get through it."
"Of course, sir." Finn waited for Bill to hang up the phone and then turned to the auditors. "He's on his way here. He doesn't want us to do anything until he's on site, and the GL stays locked."
"How do we explain this to the accounting staff?" Freeman bit her lip and looked to Johnston.
"We don't." Johnston closed his eyes. "Everyone knows accounting systems are glitchy. And they're already side-eyeing the system ever since the whole thing with people's paychecks happened, right?"
"Good point." Finn lifted his head and quoted his boss and mentor. "We're going to get through this. We will. It's not going to be fun, but we're going to get through it." He stood up. "For now? Let's call it a day. I'm beat. I need to process this. You guys have put in an incredible amount of work, and you deserve to have a little fun."
Finn headed back to his cavernous house, where he paced the rooms and counted the hours until Carter came home. He couldn't cope with Gerig's betrayal. He needed distraction. He needed affection. He needed his omega, in his arms.
Chapter Sixteen
Carter stepped off the ramp and looked around. He knew that it was stupid to look around. He hadn't made any arrangements or anything. He didn't think that he'd even told Finn when he'd be back. If he had told Finn when he'd be back, Finn doubtless had plenty of other things on his mind than hanging around in the airport and worrying about Carter.
Except there he was, standing on the other side of the Arrivals gate. The Arrivals area was crowded, but Finn stood out. He would stand out anywhere. Even if people couldn't pick up on that overwhelming leather scent that set Carter's mouth to watering every time, his fashion sense drew the eye like a car wreck. Today he wore a white suit, with a black dress shirt underneath. He looked like a disco accident gone awry.
Carter frowned, unable to believe that Finn was really there to pick him up. Then he walked toward him and left the secure area. "Finn?" He let himself smile, although he didn't throw himself into the alpha's arms. That would have been weird. That wasn't who they were, and anyone could have been watching.
He did wonder for a moment how it might have been, though, if he could have enjoyed a long embrace from Finn. All around him, couples enjoyed happy reunions or tearful departures.
Finn smiled at him and put a hand on his arm, but he didn't pull Carter in for a hug or anything. "Carter. You look good, man. All that sun was good for you."
"Yeah, well, sometimes I think that living up here in the tundra might not be quite right for my complexion. Which is always my first concern." Carter fluttered his eyelashes. "How are things? I didn't expect you to pick me up."
"Well, I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to, you know, with the audit and everything." Finn tugged at his collar. "I didn't want to go making promises I couldn't keep. Especially not at that stage of the audit. But we found what we were looking for last night, or at least the auditors did. Bill McCloskey, my boss, is flying in and should land in a little b
it." Finn swallowed. "So I figured that it gave me the perfect opportunity to pick you up, without being suspicious."
Carter kept his smile plastered on, although he couldn't help but blink a few times. He had no idea if he was still flattered that Finn wanted to pick him up at all, in front of his boss no less, or mortified that Finn only wanted to pick him up if it was convenient. He decided that he could be both and rolled his shoulders. He'd just had a long flight; he didn't want to deal with a fight. "Okay. So is it bad news?"
"It's pretty bad." Finn looked down. "We don't have to talk about it right now. There's not—there's not anything you can do about it, you know? And I'd rather not think about it until I have to go do something about it."
"I can respect that." Carter had been there. He stuck his hands in his pocket and nodded. "So how've things been other than those texts?"