Of all the men who were in Kerry’s life long-term, he had no right to be jealous, but he was. And probably the women, too. It wasn’t a sexual thing. He just wanted to be one of those who had the right to share her life.
The thought wasn’t new. He’d had it many times as a kid. Could just be flashing back. He didn’t think so.
But he took it like the man he was. He would never do anything that would unleash the wrath of Payne, or any of the Coltons, on Kerry. She was too precious to be involved in their high-pressure—which sometimes translated into high-drama—stakes.
He wouldn’t let any of them be a threat to her in any way. Keeping that promise to himself was more important than anything else.
“The state police had had no luck finding any vehicle even close to the one you described,” she said, hanging up the phone. She sounded frustrated. “I just don’t get how they keep disappearing into thin air. They’ve got to have some kind of hideout in the desert that we don’t know about.”
He didn’t disagree. But... “The Triple R is in the opposite direction from Mustang Mountain. So are we thinking they’re doing something up on the mountain and then hiding out on the other side of Mustang Valley?”
Her frown deepened. “Or the guy after you tonight didn’t have anything to do with Odin Rogers, Tyler’s death, or Grant Alvin’s, either.”
“Unless he was purposely waiting for me,” he said. “You were warned to back off or Richie Rich was next,” he reminded her. It didn’t make sense that the night’s incident had anything to do with Payne. Killing Rafe would make little difference to Colton Oil.
“It’s possible that he didn’t miss when he shot that gun tonight,” he continued, liking where his thoughts were taking him because they were less life threatening. “He could have fired at my tailgate on purpose. Maybe the whole thing was a warning. Like the rock through your window, and the rock that hit you yesterday. He could have killed you, but he didn’t. Are we really going to believe he just has that bad an aim?”
“We don’t know that it’s the same man.” She was looking at him. Straight at him. Something she hadn’t done all night.
His mood lightened considerably.
“My instincts tell me it was.” For what that was worth. If they’d been talking money, he’d put his wealth on those instincts, but thugs
? “We figured we don’t know yet, what they don’t want us to know. So they only want us to stay off the mountain. Maybe tonight he was just giving me payback for attacking him yesterday. For getting the better of him. Some kind of revenge. Letting me know who’s in charge. Scaring me off.”
Kerry nodded. “Kind of makes sense,” she said, and he felt like he’d just been awarded an A in class.
“What are you working on?” she asked then, still looking at him while she talked. It was as though a switch had been turned on within her. Like she’d just noticed that he was there.
He didn’t want to piss her off, and knew that hiring his own private investigator to look into the case she was working on might just do that. It would point out the differences in their worlds, if nothing else.
But he’d known that when he’d made the decision to call Jason. And had done so with the intention of letting her know what he found out.
“Odin Rogers’s financials,” he told her.
She blinked. Frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”
God, she was beautiful. Just grab-your-gut gorgeous.
“I hired someone to look into his financials,” he said, meeting her gaze because it was what he did with her. “Someone who might look at things that won’t be admissible in court, certainly not without a warrant, but who might be able to give us insights that we wouldn’t be able to get any other way.”
She nodded. Then got up and came around the table. “So what did he find?” she asked, standing right beside him, warm and... There.
“Enough to know that you were right to suspect that he’s hiding something,” he told her. And then, showing her different accounts, and trails that led from one to another, opening several screens at once, he finally summarized with, “There’s enough here to show us that something fishy is going on, but nothing that tells us exactly what that is. I follow all of these numbers, deposits mostly, but withdrawals, too, and match them to various other accounts to see how he’s moving money around, but end up at a couple of offshore accounts that lead nowhere. There’s nothing that shows where the money goes from there. But it’s also not sitting there.”
“These are all his accounts?” she asked.
“That’s not entirely clear, either. I have account numbers, not ownership papers. I can see that some are companies—I suspect probably shell companies—but this is definitely not interest payments, which show up at the same time every month, nor is it return on investment, based on amounts of withdrawals and deposits, and the number of them. There are mostly transfers, not withdrawals. He’s using a network set up by someone with intimate knowledge of the world’s financial systems. And a highly trained technical person, as well.” He was trying to keep it simple, but nothing about what he was looking at was simple. Which didn’t set well with him. “I don’t think Odin Rogers is this smart,” he said.
He didn’t know the guy, but from what Kerry had told him, and what Jason had found thus far...
“I don’t think he is, either,” she said. “He’s a two-bit slime that would be pushing drugs on a street corner if he lived in a big city,” she said. “But I do think he’s in charge around here. I’ve never thought he was a criminal mastermind. Just that he somehow owns a business that traffics for them. He’s a middleman. They’re a dime a dozen to the guys at the top. But in their areas, they are the top.”
“I wish I could give you more,” he said, turning to look up at her and finding her breasts about two inches from his nose.
He knew their scent. Their shape and softness. Their taste.
“But it would take a skilled hacker to get any further. Someone trained to do illegal things.”