Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(79)

“Are you going right back to work?”

“I just thought of something.”

“You’re thinking right now? What are you, Superman?”

“Man of steel,” he said as he paged through his notes. Maybe the money never left. Maybe. His eyes slid over the numbers, looking for an answer. “Hit the showers, sidekick,” he said to a limp Elise. She didn’t move so he gave her a friendly smack, thoroughly enjoying the way her body shot half a foot off the bed in response.

“Hey!”

“Get in the shower. We’re going to the bank.”

“You’re insane.”

Maybe he was, because the sight of Elise rubbing her pink ass as she walked toward the bathroom made him grin like a madman. Maybe he wasn’t spent after all.

ELISE CROSSED HER FINGERS behind her back as Noah looked up from his computer, triumph gleaming in his eyes.

Please don’t let it be Mrs. Castle. Please don’t let it be Mrs. Castle.

“Well,” he said, letting that one word hang between them.

“What?” She crossed her fingers so hard that the tips went numb.

“I’m sorry to say it was old lady Castle after all.”

“No,” she whispered. She didn’t know why she was so damn invested in this woman. It wasn’t like she was going to be the kindly old grandmother Elise had never had.

Elise set her strangled fingers free and crossed her arms instead. “I can’t believe it. You were right.”

“I’m sorry,” Noah said, leaning forward with a look of patently false worry on his face. “Could you speak up? I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

She glared at him, then tossed a look over her shoulder to be sure none of the other team members stood in the doorway. “I said you were right.”

“Wow. That feels… That feels really good.”

“You’re being mean.”

“Aw.” His smug look brightened into a real smile. “Would it make you feel better if I told you she wasn’t stealing the money?”

Her breath left her lungs in a rush. “She wasn’t?” Elise squeaked, ridiculously relieved at his words.

“Come here.”

She edged around his desk, fighting the urge to sit down on his lap and look over the numbers with him.

“You remember my interview with John Castle? He said he’d started taking over some of his mother’s responsibilities back in 1998. She’d started ‘making a few mistakes,’ as he put it.”

“I remember. He was the one who steered the bank toward higher-risk loans.” She rested a hand on Noah’s shoulder, then leaned her hip lightly into his arm. Her body tingled every place it touched his.

“It was so long ago, that I didn’t bother pressing him on what his mother’s mistakes were. I figured he’d cleaned up behind her.”

“He hadn’t?”

“I think he missed some errors. The same ones I missed.”

Elise fought the urge to punch his shoulder. “What?” she demanded.

“During the nineties, Platte Regional Bank offered two options for sweep accounts.”

“Okay.” Business checking accounts were prohibited from earning interest, but a sweep account allowed businesses to sweep their money into an interest-bearing account each night.

Noah tapped the computer screen. “The first account options swept the funds into an international money market. But the second option…” He glanced up at her. “The second option was an internal sweep that moved the funds into one of the banks high-yield interest accounts.”

She still didn’t get it. “And?”

“Every internal sweep account she set up during the first six months of 1998 was paying FDIC insurance to the wrong place.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“So the money these people were supposedly embezzling…it was actually money set aside for FDIC premiums?”

“Yes.”

Oh, this was too good to be true. “And…it’s all still there?”

He shot her a grudging look that was as adorable as it was irritating. “Yes. She recorded the correct administrative account, but when she set up the electronic transfer, she input the wrong account number. An unused slush fund. It’s all still there. That’s how I found it. When you mentioned that the money might still be in the bank, I pulled up accounts with balances that might work.”

“Ha!”

“But I was still right,” he countered. “The money was definitely missing.”

Elise slapped his shoulder, then stifled a squeal when he wrapped his arm around her waist and turned her toward him. “They weren’t bad guys!”

“Does that make you happy?” he growled.

“Yes.”

“How happy?” His other hand slid up her knee.

“Ho-ly crap,” a voice said from behind them. A voice with a heavy Texas drawl.

“Oh, no,” Elise breathed, too horrified to turn around.

“You and Noah?”

She finally got the sense to pull away from Noah. His grip went loose with shock. “Tex, listen,” she said, holding up both hands in a plea. “It isn’t what you think.”