She stood at the door with her purse still strapped across her body, her hand resting on the outside flap as if ready to leave.
When he got to his truck, he turned and waved.
Emily nodded, but she seemed to be looking over his head at the driveway that wound down to the street.
Knots formed in his gut as he drove away from the house. Emily’s smiles and good cheer had seemed forced this morning. Her jumpiness made him second-guess everything. He’d be keeping a close eye on the video feed this morning.
At the office, Nash got ready for an online meeting with a forensic accountant. They were digging into the finances of Las Moscas. They knew there had to be some major money-laundering schemes on this side of the border, and they were investigating several suspects.
Nash brought up the spreadsheet that contained the list and several notes he’d already made on each. While he waited for the meeting to start, he set up his personal laptop next to his work computer. Had Emily noticed it missing yet?
With several taps of the keyboard, he brought up his security system and watched Emily cleaning up Wyatt after breakfast. The kid seemed thrilled with her. That was all that mattered right now. So, she was a snoop. Maybe she wanted to find out more about him. Or was that just wishful thinking on his part?
The two meals they’d shared yesterday felt like dates—except for the presence of Wyatt at dinner. He liked her, liked talking to her, and their attraction was undeniable. Again, wishful thinking?
“Good morning, Agent Dillon. Sorry I’m late.”
Nash shifted his attention from his personal computer to his work computer and the face of Special Agent Webb filling his screen. “Good morning, Agent Webb. Right on time.”
“My name’s Bruce. Can I call you Nash?”
“Absolutely.” Nash took a sip of coffee. “I have my list up and can take notes as we talk. Who do you want to discuss first?”
“Probably the guy I got the most hits on. His name is Marcus Lanier. He’s a Phoenix businessman, a real mover and shaker. He’s married to Ming Lee Hong, daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur in China. We’re not sure his father-in-law is on the up-and-up, either.”
“Makes sense. The wife went from one criminal family to another. What do you have on the guy?”
While Webb went on about anomalies in Lanier’s finances, Nash multitasked. He listened to Webb, made notes in his spreadsheet and kept one eye on Emily and Wyatt.
After about an hour discussing two of the possible Las Moscas contacts, Webb started to wrap up. “I’m going to send you Lanier’s and Booker’s latest payments and withdrawals for your files. It’s not like you’re gonna find any payments to drug dealers in there, but they serve to outline and support some of what I’ve been talking about this morning. We can set up another meeting to discuss a few of our other suspects, but I wanted to get to those two first. I have the file, and you’ll have the file. That’s it. We’re not spreading this info around just yet.”
“Sounds good, Webb. You guys are thorough.”
“I love numbers, man. What can I say?” Webb chuckled and signed off.
Nash waited a few minutes for Webb’s email to come through with the attachment. He clicked on it and saved the file to his computer.
Then he stood up and stretched. Taking another glance at his security feed, Nash turned with his coffee cup in hand to get a refill.
Valdez beat him to it, filling up his commuter mug.
“Leave some for the rest of us. What are you fueling up for?”
Valdez’s lips twisted. “You missed it while you were in your meeting, but it looks like we have a body at the border.”
“Damn. You going out?”
“Yeah, I’m lead on this one.” Valdez swallowed. “It’s almost in the next sector, so we’ll probably be out all afternoon.”
“Decapitation?” Nash grabbed the coffeepot from Valdez’s none-too-steady hand.
“Not sure yet. Drone picked it up and I was the lucky one monitoring the drone footage, so it’s mine.”
“You’ll do fine, Valdez.” Nash gave the green agent some tips before he set off for the border, and then returned to his much less exciting work on finances.
He had done most of the work on the map of tunnels they’d received from April Archer. Nash had the backbreaking job of investigating most of those tunnels, so it was his turn to sit in the office now and look at numbers. With Wyatt’s arrival, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.
How did Jaycee know he wouldn’t be on the border for days and unable to care for Wyatt? Jaycee didn’t think. He’d been happy when his sister, Eve, had gotten the harebrained notion to run off to New York to study acting, just because it had separated her from Jaycee. She’d had their parents’ money behind her to explore this whim. Jaycee didn’t have a dime. Did she have a husband?
Nash blew out a breath as he sat behind his desk, setting down his coffee cup next to his computer. A quick glance at his laptop showed him all was well with Emily and Wyatt.
He grinned as he watched Wyatt’s antics on the floor. Emily was right—if Jaycee didn’t return soon, she would miss her son’s first attempts at crawling.
Nash cracked his knuckles and opened his folder on Aaron Booker. He dragged the newest financial info from Webb into the folder and then opened it. He scanned through the expenses. This guy definitely lived the high-life, but he had the income to support it—at least on the surface. Webb would dig into the money source and get to the bottom of the pit.
Nash also had a folder on Lanier and repeated the actions he’d performed for Booker. Lanier lived a similar lifestyle. Nash’s eye scanned down the expenses and the payees when he stumbled across a familiar name.
Lanier had transferred five thousand dollars into the
