Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(68)

“Please understand that I’m not even sure it was stolen or misappropriated,” she answered. “There are only a couple of people who could access the funds directly. It could be an accounting error.”

He doubted that. “I have a friend who’s a forensic accountant. Let me have her take a look. You can talk to her. She works for a company called Miles-Dean, Weston and Murdoch Investigations. They typically work missing persons cases, but she was with the CIA for years.”

All true, though he didn’t tell her that Phoebe was already looking into it. He wasn’t about to let her know he’d stolen the documents that first night.

“I would like to talk to her.” She seemed to relax a bit. “I’m not an accountant. I’ll be honest, I’m pretty bad at paying attention to that sort of thing. The accounting department of the foundation audits us regularly, but they give us a pretty free hand in spending. It’s one of the reasons I was interested in moving up here. Huisman has always been a place that lets researchers work without a ton of red tape.”

“What you’re telling me is it would be easy to move money around?”

“We can spend pretty freely. If we need a piece of equipment and we’ve got the budget for it, we buy it. Not every team has the kind of funding mine has. The honest truth is I’m pretty far along on my research. If I need money, someone will give it to me, so I don’t think about it a lot.”

“How did you catch the discrepancy?” he asked.

“One of the accountants is a friend of my assistant’s. She’s prepping for the quarterly audit and she pointed it out to Cathy, who brought it to my attention. I was sure all I would have to do was track down the order forms, but there was an incident yesterday that makes me think something weird is going on.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “The same day you think someone was in the building watching you?”

“Yes. I didn’t think about that. I got this odd message about finding out where the money went. It was couriered over. Do you think they could be connected?” She sat up, turning again so she could look him in the eyes.

He would be shocked if they weren’t. “I don’t believe in coincidence. What’s the security like in your building? How do you protect your research?”

“We all have key cards to get into the building. The elevator requires them, too. There are a couple of places in the building that require biometrics.”

“What kind?” He was surprised a high-tech facility like Huisman used key cards instead of biometrics for everything.

“Iris recognition on the actual labs,” she explained. “That’s where the real research happens, but honestly the data is on computers. We use the highest security so we can ensure that nothing happens to ruin the experiments and the studies. Believe it or not there are people who will wreck research either to help out their own or because they don’t believe in what we’re doing.”

He thought about it for a second. “But other than the actual laboratories, I could get in by nabbing your key card?”

“There’s a security guard on site twenty-four seven and we have tons of CCTV. I’ve already asked them to get the footage from that night,” she explained.

He would like to see that footage. “What were you saying about a message? Is that the weird thing that happened?”

“Well, the first weird thing that happened was that I lost the documents accounting sent over,” she mused. “I thought they’d fallen out of my bag on the train. It’s a giant tote bag and it doesn’t close. But now I wonder if maybe it was stolen because the note I received yesterday told me if I want to know what’s happening with the accounting, I’ll need to meet someone at Casa Loma where the duchess resides. I know Casa Loma is the big mansion the crazy dude built, but I don’t know that a duchess ever lived there. Isn’t that weird?”

It was more than weird and it made him very curious about who would show up to meet her. “I want to track down who sent that. You said it arrived by courier.”

She nodded. “But they’re closed today.”

“I’ll give them a visit in the morning.”

“So you’ll, like, do everything and I don’t have to worry about it?”

Yes, he definitely had something she needed. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “You worry about your research and I’ll handle everything else.”

A look of pure relief spread across her face. “Thank you because I’ve got a big week ahead and the last thing I need to worry about is weird treasure hunts. I’ll talk to accounting and let them know we’re looking into it. Cathy can go through all the requisitions of the last year in case it’s an error.”

He would bet a lot that it wasn’t an error, but he was curious as to why it was happening now. Levi Green was in town and he would make his move sooner or later. Was this part of his move?

She started talking about everything she needed to do the next week and he let her enthusiasm drift over him.

He couldn’t let her out of his sight. Not until they knew what Green’s game was.

He felt his mobile vibrate and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the boss giving him the all clear, but he didn’t make a move for his phone. It was too nice to sit in the open with Becca, to listen to her plans like he was nothing more than her boyfriend.