The Dangerous Thief (Stolen Hearts #3)(36)
Willa couldn’t help but look out of the corner of her eye to see where James stood a few feet away from her. Somewhere in the middle between the two other couples in the room, she supposed.
“Is everything okay?” Willa glanced at the newcomers and waited for an introduction.
“That’s a complex question,” said Toni. “But for now everything’s fine. Willa, I want you to meet my sister, Jennifer, and her boyfriend, Austin Miles, er, Austin Benedict now?”
He nodded. “Austin Benedict now.”
“I should know that,” said Toni. “I’m the one who made the docs for you.”
Willa frowned. “Why the name change?”
“Austin Miles is dead,” said apparently not Austin Miles. “It was a tragedy. Lots of tears.”
“Lots of celebrations,” said Jennifer with a sideways grin.
“It’s relative,” he said.
Jennifer giggled and Willa felt suddenly uncomfortable. She usually didn’t mind being around couples, but it felt distinctly more strange to be around two people who seemed so happy while standing just a few feet away from her... what? Fuck buddy? That seemed too graphic. Booty call? Too casual. Leave it to James Weston to defy labels. No job title. No relationship title. She sighed and tried to chase those thoughts out of her head. “Come on in. I was just about to make breakfast.”
“You don’t have to cook for us.” Scott led the way to the living room. “Since Jennifer and Austin are here, we thought it would be good to regroup and figure out our game plan.”
Willa followed him into the living room. She moved the barstool from where she’d been standing on it to dig through the cabinets so she could sit in front of the island while she let Jennifer, Austin, and Toni have the couch. Scott remained standing and James was.... Where was James? As soon as she realized he was gone, he came back. He’d put a shirt on and he handed her a zip-up gray sweatshirt with coral flowers. He’d noticed that she was uncomfortable?
He leaned on the island next to her and she forced herself not to stare at him and instead put her attention to Toni. “What have you found? Did the hack thing I did on Jadon’s phone work? What about the laptop? You’ve had that for a week now, right? Can we just take that to the cops and be done with it? Do we still have to look into this at all or can we just push this off to the authorities? And....” She noticed that Jennifer and Austin were giving her a questioning look.
She was blabbering on again. She shut up and waited for Toni to start in.
Toni didn’t look annoyed, though. She simply smiled and leaned forward. “All good questions,” she assured her. “Cloning his phone worked out great. From the hidden files that app put onto his phone, we are getting copies of every text he sends and receives and we can listen to all of his calls. Even cooler, I can turn on his mic at any given time and listen in on him. So we effectively have a bug on Jadon Belli now.”
Jennifer’s gaze hit Willa once more and Willa averted her gaze. She couldn’t tell what this new woman thought of her. Willa had connected the dots, though. Toni’s mother had been murdered by someone who worked with Jadon, and Jennifer and Toni were sisters. So they were both trying to get revenge for their mother’s murder. She didn’t seem to be vibrating anger or anything, but Willa knew she was just a way to get that revenge faster.
“What about the laptop?” asked Jennifer. “When I talked to Melody, she said she really thought that would be the key to finding Sterling.”
“Where is Melody?” Willa’d feel a tad more comfortable if there were more people here who she knew.
“Melody is being punished for having her face plastered over every TV in the country by being sent to exile in Hawaii with her new boyfriend,” said Toni. “Remind me to do something to get in trouble. I need a Hawaiian exile with a hottie too.”
Willa noticed that Toni’s eyes cut to Scott as she said it, but she’d looked away before Scott noticed.
“Tell them what you found on the laptop,” said Scott, obviously less interested in the gossip of the family.
Willa could understand why Toni would be so interested in Scott Hart. The former cop was sexy in the exceptionally broody, angry sort of way. She wouldn’t have thought he was the quirky and stubborn Toni’s type, but what did she know? Either way, he didn’t seem all that interested in Toni.
Toni ran a hand through her dyed blonde hair. “I found a lot. And Willa, I totally understand why you didn’t go to the cops after the murder. It looks like he’s got people on his payroll from all corners of government. Pentagon guys, White House staff, FBI, street cops. I think your dad is singlehandedly funding the black market economy right now.”
Willa opened her mouth and closed it. That wasn’t surprising to her. Even when she thought her father was mostly legit, she assumed that he had people on the payroll. But what she wanted to know was so basic, she felt foolish for not knowing already. “Can you, um.... Can you tell me what he does? How he makes money?”
There was a hush over the room. Apparently no one wanted to answer the question. “Just tell us, Toni.” James’s voice was low, but the tone was just menacing enough that Scott and Austin both narrowed their eyes.
Scott spoke first. “Jadon Belli positions himself as an investor. Publicly, and according to the IRS, he made his money through stocks, real estate, and pretty much anything else you can park money in and wait for it to grow. Privately, he’s been doing the same thing. He is the broker between rich people and people who want to hide their money. We dealt with a guy a few months back, Greg Stranger, who would hide the money. Jadon makes it. He had his fingers in weapon sales, human trafficking, drug running, everything. Toni found documents on his laptop that details it in some way or another.”