Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(45)

‘That’s all?’ she asks, knowing it isn’t.

I nod. ‘That’s all.’ I shoot Steve a look that tells him if he spills any more of the story, he’s going to regret it. He seems to get it, because he doesn’t push it. Instead, he says something I’m not expecting.

‘Frank Cooper is looking for you.’ His expression is neutral. I can’t tell if Frank Cooper looking for me is good or bad.

‘Did he say why?’ My mouth has gone dry; it is all I can do to get the words out.

‘He said he needs to see you as soon as possible. He said it would be best if you came to him.’ He lets that lie between us a few seconds, then adds, ‘I told him I didn’t know where you were, but if I found you, I’d let you know.’

Steve has covered his bases. And I also notice that he is not pushing me out the door. Does he have the same ominous feeling about this that I do?

‘He chartered one of Chip Parsons’s boats,’ I say. ‘Ian, I mean. Not Frank. But he didn’t show.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Talked to Will at Bethany’s. He saw Chip at the Kittens last night.’

Steve’s eyebrows rise into his forehead. ‘Why were you out at the airport? Was it because the car is there?’

And then I remember the license plate.

I feel a sudden surge of adrenaline. This is something I can do, something I can find out. Granted, Frank Cooper probably already knows, but he won’t tell me, I feel pretty sure of that.

I don’t answer Steve, but turn my back on him and Jeanine and find the website I need. It doesn’t matter anymore; Steve knows, and Jeanine suspects, so I let them watch me at work.

It is surprisingly easy to find an open portal on this site. I make a mental note that after all this I need to contact them about that. I used to do that, sometimes, back then: hack in somewhere just to see if I could and if so, I would anonymously let the system’s owners know, so they could add security and keep people like me out. I know there are hackers who do that on a regular basis; some companies specifically hire hackers to find security holes in their systems.

Maybe if I survive all this, I can start a new business.

I enter the BMW’s license plate number and wait. Steve and Jeanine are ominously quiet behind me, but I can feel their eyes on me, on the computers, on what I am doing.

When the information pops up on the screen, I can barely believe my eyes.

The BMW is registered to Tony DeMarco.

Why is Ian driving a car registered to him?

My head is spinning, and I barely hear Steve’s voice, until he puts his hand on my shoulder and asks, ‘What does this mean, Nicole?’

I shake my head.

‘Who is Anthony DeMarco?’ Jeanine asks.

If I had known what the search would bring up, I would not have brazenly done it in front of her. Because now I really do need to give her an answer.

‘He was one of my father’s business associates,’ I say flatly, unable to look at her for all the lies I have told her over the years.

‘Your father?’ In all these years, Jeanine has not known me to have any family, and now I have a father.

I nod, but I am distracted. Why is Ian driving Tony’s car?

The question keeps circulating in my head until it lands on something that makes my heart pound. I have been worried for Ian with Carmine here, but he did tell me that he was only the first one here. Maybe he was sent ahead, and now that Carmine has arrived, that’s why he’s disappeared. Maybe that’s why he chartered Chip Parsons’s boat. Because his job was done.

But that was wrong. The job wasn’t done. I hadn’t done what he’d asked. I’d run away from him.

I look from Steve to Jeanine. ‘I can’t tell you any more. I think that it could be really risky.’

‘Risky, how?’ Jeanine demands, her brow knitted into a frown.

‘There are some scary people after me.’

The money wasn’t all going to Ian and me. It was going to the person who’d set the whole plan in motion from the start. Who’d known that I could do the job but would never do it if he were the one to ask. He had to find someone who I would do it for: a poor boy who was desperate and wanted to be rich.

For a moment, I feel sorry for Ian, sorry that my father used him like that. My father was a pathological con man, a greedy man who used both of us for his own purposes. The millions that I transferred went to his accounts set up specifically for my transaction.

My father wasn’t the only one who was going to benefit from my skills. Some of the money was going to Tony DeMarco. Tony was one of my father’s most important business associates. He sent my father his first client, and then more and more. My father gave Tony kickbacks, or, as they say in the financial industry, ‘finder’s fees.’ He thought he was going to make a lot of money off my transactions.

Until he found out that one of the accounts we broke into was one of his, and his money vanished. I had rerouted it into the account I’d set up to pay Tracker that I hadn’t told anyone about. It was the only account that wasn’t frozen because the Feds couldn’t find it. I didn’t know Tony was the account holder. All I had were numbers. But if I had known, I don’t know whether it would have made a difference. After all, none of it was personal.

Tony DeMarco thought my father and I planned it together. So he went to the Feds and in exchange for his testimony about my father’s business and, by extension, me, he got a pass. It took a couple of years, but my father went to prison for life. I had disappeared, and no one could find me.