“You want a cup of coffee?” she asked as he came stumbling out of her bedroom, looking incredibly sexy in nothing but his underwear and a t-shirt.
“Please,” he replied, kissing her on the forehead.
Adriana got up and put a fresh pod in the coffee machine before pushing a mug beneath it and hitting the start button. Dane stood looking at the notes she had spread out all over her kitchen table. He smiled as she walked back over with the cup and set it down beside him.
“You have terrible handwriting. I can’t make heads or tails of any of this.”
“That’s the point. I don’t have to worry about folks reading over my shoulder or trying to decipher what I’m writing when in close quarters. Sit down and I’ll walk you through it.”
“Okay.”
“So, Parquo was laundering money for some people out of New Jersey. I don’t know who they are. I couldn’t get close enough to find out, so I was only able to reveal that they exist.”
“Shifters?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know that the guys he was doling his money out to were shifters. They used a variety of methods to launder the money; at least, I believe they did. I was only able to nail down two of them. One is through a chain of car washes, and the other was a chain of laundromats.”
“That’s not a cliché or anything,” he quipped.
“Right?” she laughed. “Anyway, that was only small time. There were much bigger operations in the works, according to one of my sources, but I never could get any more information on them.”
“What about the source? Who were they?”
“No idea. The information came from them through emails only,” she said, tapping a printout of an email. “[email protected]”
“Traceable?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t try, but after all was said and done . . . after Parquo’s body was found, we turned the emails over to the police. I have a guy that works on their tech team who helps me out from time to time. He said that the email provider is based overseas and not subject to warrants, so they were unable to track down the person who contacted me.”
“Overseas? They think he or she is foreign?”
“No, not necessarily. Anyone can get a Proton mail email. It’s part of their marketing to provide a secure email that isn’t subject to American authorities.”
“What about the IP address?”
“Scrambled. Bounces across multiple servers with no origin in sight. Not one was based in the U.S.”
“Okay. So, a mystery man gave you this info about the laundering and you investigated it further. You came up with no other laundering facilities. What about names?”
“Just these,” she said, pulling out another piece of paper.
Dane looked down the list. He recognized none of the names. He lay it aside and sat there, sipping his coffee.
“Why do you think any of this is connected to Turner and Hood?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really put my finger on it. Just a gut instinct. You want to take a ride with me?”
“Where are we going?”
“My office,” he replied.
“You going like that?”
“Maybe I’ll put on some shoes.”
“Cute,” she laughed, kissing him on the cheek.
He finished his coffee and went to shower while she continued to look over the papers on her table. Nothing was standing out to her, and perhaps there was nothing to stand out. Men and their hunches weren’t always right, and normally, she’d shoo it away as imagination, but she had a feeling that Dane was rarely wrong about the things he felt were true. It was likely the reason he’d taken the mildly successful real estate development company his father had left him and turned it into a giant of the industry in the past few years.
Since he’d turned up on her doorstep, they’d been pouring over the information she had on Parquo, but he’d also only gone home to shower and change a few times since he turned up here. She knew that there was a lot more to this for her than just the love of a good scoop, but she also had to admit that she was more than a bit spooked by how quickly she was falling for him.
“Alright, you ready to go then?” he asked as he reappeared from the bathroom.
“I’m ready,” she told him.
They made their way out to his car and drove across town to the glass and metal behemoth known as Jensen Development, Inc., where they parked in the garage, entering the lobby through a side door.
“Mr. Jensen. We weren’t expecting you today,” a young woman told him as they walked through the glass doors on the opposite side.
“No one ever expects me,” he replied.
Adriana glanced at him, and he smiled slowly, letting her know that he wasn’t as cocky as that had sounded. The girl apparently didn’t think so either. She laughed light-heartedly and nodded.