Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(71)

She reminded him a bit of his Becca, but he did not like what she was saying.

It wasn’t true.

“You haven’t had a long time with that data,” Robert pointed out.

The gang was all here. All except Tucker and Sasha, who were working at Huisman, and Nina, who had a shift at the café.

“She’s had days with it.” Ezra sighed and sat back. They were at Ezra and Tucker’s place across town. It was a nice-sized apartment with a view of the CN Tower. Tucker was right. Ezra was definitely a minimalist. There was no furniture in the living room, merely this long table and a bunch of folding chairs. It was his version of a conference room on the run, Owen suspected. There were two large white boards on wheels. One tracked where the central players were and everything they knew about Hope McDonald’s operation. The other had information on Rebecca Walsh.

He hated that board, hated the fact that she’d been pared down to nothing but facts and theories about how involved she’d been in McDonald’s research.

He could answer that. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Phoebe leaned toward the camera. “Owen’s right. I’ve only had a couple of days with this but I wanted to let you know the preliminary results. According to what I’ve found, that money moved from one of her accounts to a single Swiss account, and then to her charity in the form of donations. They were done as wire transfers, so I can’t compare signatures, and obviously the Swiss do not share information on their account holders. Adam might be able to figure it out, but we try to keep the boss out of jail for hacking.”

Jax might be able to do it, and it wasn’t like he wasn’t already wanted for even worse crimes. But the truth was he didn’t need to see someone else’s name on the account to know that it wasn’t hers.

“She didn’t do it,” he insisted. “If she did it, why would she have asked me to come to you? She gave me the data. She gave me permission to give it to you.”

“I don’t know,” Phoebe replied. “Maybe she’s being set up. Does she have enemies?”

He held on to that thread. “Of course she does. The same one we have. Levi. This is his plan. He’s going to go to her and offer to not turn her in if she hands over that damn box McDonald sent to her.”

“It sounds like something Levi would do,” Ezra agreed. “It’s straight out of his playbook. He knows how to gain leverage and then use it to his own ends.”

Phoebe was shaking her head. “These go back almost a year. I thought you said Levi didn’t find out about the package until a couple of months ago. Whoever is doing this has been planning it for far longer than a few months.”

Dante leaned forward. “Could Mr. Green have known about the doctor for longer? Solo got us the intelligence, right? Could she have lied?”

He didn’t want to believe that of her, but he certainly didn’t believe Becca was a thief. “We have to consider it.”

Robert gave him a “what the hell” look. “I don’t think Solo would lie about this. She doesn’t have a reason to.”

“She’s always got a reason,” Ezra said, his bitterness soaking through his tone. “However, I still have some sources at the Agency I trust and they confirmed what Solo told us. Levi didn’t know there was anything but a professional connection between Walsh and McDonald until a few weeks before the Colorado op. Not even that fucker can backdate bank transfers. Not in that way.”

“I’ll keep looking into this,” Phoebe promised. “It doesn’t make sense that she would turn this over to a forensic accountant if she knew she was the one who’d done it. But I will tell you that her charity foundation was on shaky ground before this influx of cash. I’m not sure how she wouldn’t know about the money and question it.”

“You said they were donations.” He wasn’t about to explain that Becca’s attention was on her research and she struggled to divide her focus. She wasn’t a multitasker. She gave everything she did one hundred percent of her attention. From what she’d told him, she was close to making her breakthrough. She wouldn’t question the donations. “Were they done anonymously?”

“Of course,” Phoebe replied. “Another thing that should have made her suspect something was going on. Large anonymous donations should have tipped her off.”

She didn’t think that way. “Rebecca is na?ve about a lot of things. She’s also an optimist.”

“She’s let you believe that,” Ezra pointed out. “Owen, you’ve known the woman for a week, but you’re acting like she’s utterly incapable of doing anything wrong.”

He was on thin ice. He could practically feel it under his feet. One wrong move and they would pull him. He couldn’t let that happen. “I was giving you my opinion. I might not have known her long, but the time we’ve spent together has been intense.”

“The time you’ve spent together has mostly been in bed,” Dante pointed out.

“What Owen is saying is he’s the only one who knows her on any kind of an intimate level,” Ariel said. “I only know her from what I’ve read and the brief period of time I got to spend with her before Owen dragged her off.”

“She was the one who dragged me,” he corrected. She’d known what she wanted and she’d gone for it. That was Becca Walsh.