“We should have a doctor take a look at you.”

I glanced at Malaika. “She did a pretty good job. We removed the stitches this morning, and it seems okay. Not completely healed, but getting there.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t believe you were shot, and you still managed to get out of Ellaville. That takes balls, my friend.”

Malaika touched my hand. “And stupidity.”

“Thanks.”

She shrugged.

“You left some trail behind you. The cops in Yuma are going crazy trying to find you. They locked down the hospital, wouldn’t let anyone in or out for five hours last night. And, this morning, they released a composite sketch that is supposed to be Malaika here, but looks like some Asian chick with bad hair.”

Malaika’s eyes narrowed slightly, but I laughed. She slapped my arm.

“What about the Guardians?”

“They came by our offices not long after you must have taken off. Matthew was there and had a conversation with them. They are looking for the ledgers, which tells me that they contain something the Guardians really don’t want us to see. They told him if he knew what was good for him, he’d tell them where you were before this thing got too far out of hand, whatever that means.”

“If that’s all they did—”

“Oh, it’s not. They hit Alli’s last night. Threw a couple of Molotov cocktails through the front door. And they’ve been calling my house, threatening my wife since you disappeared.”

“Hell,” I muttered, glancing at Malaika. “They’re escalating.”

“Yeah. And getting ballsy. They didn’t even try to hide the fact that it was them at Alli’s. Looked right at the security cameras as they did it.” Jack ran his hand over his head. “Crispin and Alli are staying at my place, and we’ve changed the number, made it unlisted. But it’s not stopping them.” He sat back and scrolled through his phone for a second before handing it to me. There were pictures there of our offices, completely destroyed, papers on the floor, furniture broken and turned over, computers smashed. “They hit the offices two nights ago.”

“What were they looking for?”

“I don’t know. The ledgers, maybe.” Jack glanced at Malaika. “They hit the bank last night. Looked like a robbery, but the money was all accounted for.”

Malaika crossed her arms over her chest. “What could be so important?”

“We poked at a sensitive spot.” Jack again ran his hand over his head. “We need to look at those ledgers as soon as possible, figure out what started this thing.”

Malaika shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I looked at them a few times, but I’m not sure I can decipher them completely without Truesdale’s help. I mean…the numbers I get, but there’s code all through it, names that are shortened and dates that are clearly written backward or out of order or something. Without an idea of what he was doing, I won’t be able to give you all the answers you need.”

“Do you have any idea what they are?”

“I think they’re a record of all the transactions the Guardians asked him to make.”

My eyebrows rose. “There’re two books. And they’re both full.”

“It’s a lot of transactions,” she confirmed.

As I contemplated what that might mean, Jack pushed back from the table. “I’ll have Truesdale brought here. He’s due to be discharged from the hospital tonight. I’ll just have one of the operatives fly with him from the Tucson airport.”

“And I’ll get started. I’d like to get a good grasp on them before he gets here so we can just dive in.” She stood and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. I watched her go, the memory of the night before still burning in my core.

“She’s something,” Jack said, rejoining me at the table.

“She is.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “We can trust her?”

“I trust her with my life.”

He nodded. “That’s good enough for me.” We stared at each other for a long moment before Jack sat up a little straighter, leaning toward me across the heavy kitchen table. “I heard about your mom. I’m real sorry.”

“I’m a little worried about leaving them behind back there. I don’t suppose the Guardians would go after them, but if they thought it could give them some sort of leverage—”

“Don’t worry. I’ve already arranged to have her moved. The Joslin Diabetes Center has a connection with the Massachusetts Medical Center. They assured me that they can help with her condition.”

“My father—”

“He was resistant at first, but I managed to persuade him.”

I nearly embarrassed myself as my eyes welled with tears. I reached over and took his hand, shaking it heartily across the table. “I don’t have words.”

Jack shrugged. “My mom died of cancer. Did I ever tell you that?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah. If I could go back and do something to save her, I would. So…you’re part of the Stone Security family. We stick together.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled as he stood. “I have some calls to make. We’ll get ahead of this thing and shut the Guardians down. This will all be over very soon.”

 

 

Truesdale’s arm was in the biggest cast I’d ever seen on a human body. It wasn’t just his arm, but it went down along the side of his chest, a bar incorporated along the underside to reinforce the straight edges of the plaster.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” he asked when he saw me studying it. “They say this type of break has a tendency not to heal straight, so they’ve taken extra precautions. Never heard of such a thing myself. Learn something new every day.”

“I suppose so.”

He came toward me, his uninjured hand reaching for me. “I never properly thanked you for saving my life that night. I do appreciate it.”

My eyebrows rose. “You’re thanking me? After everything I did to you?”

Truesdale glanced at his daughter, who stood a few feet behind him. “Well, I’ve been lectured on the cruelties I inflicted on my customers at the bank in the name of the Guardians. Despite the fact that I still wholeheartedly believe in the church, I’ve begun to see the dangers in a group like them. And I will do whatever is required of me to help you find out who’s behind this.”

It sounded almost like a rehearsed speech, but if he was going to help us, I supposed I couldn’t argue with him.

“If you help us identify this guy, you’ll be my new best friend.”

Truesdale paled slightly. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

I laughed. “Okay. But maybe we’ll be even.”

“I can take that.”

I led the way into the living room, where Malaika had set up her workspace. She was on the floor in front of the fireplace, the ledgers on the low coffee table in front of her, and a scattering of notes and scratch sheets all around her. She barely glanced up when we walked into the room, so deep in thought that she just kept staring at the ledger, her fingers moving over a calculator almost as if they had a mind of their own.

“Ms. Gray,” Truesdale said by way of greeting.

Malaika lifted a hand, but didn’t say anything.

Truesdale seemed a little put off by her distraction. I stood back and crossed my arms over my chest, watching as he perched on a chair near her, his eyes moving over her, the ledgers, and the notes she had scattered around her. He finally picked up one piece of paper and shook his head.

“This isn’t quite right. But I can show you how to get the right numbers.”

And, just like that, they were lost in their financial banking language.

I drew Neri into the kitchen and poured her a cup of coffee.

“Is it crazy that I have very little idea of what’s going on?”

I smiled. “Neither do I. I just know that a couple of guys have tried twice to kidnap Malaika over whatever your father wrote in those ledgers.”

“I’m not even sure he knows how to interpret them. He talked about them on the way here, telling me about the code he used and the transactions he kept track of, but the people ordering him around talked as much in code as he did when writing in the ledgers.”

“Maybe together they can figure it out.”

She lowered her face, letting the steam from the coffee waft over her. I leaned against the counter with a cup of my own, studying her in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to do before. She truly was a beautiful girl. Young. Nubile. Innocent. I felt bad for the thoughts I’d had about her, the things I’d said in my text messages to her, things I never really meant.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

She looked up. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, the things I did to your family.”

She took a sip of her coffee before setting the mug on the counter. She hesitated a moment, staring down into its depths as though she was trying to collect her thoughts.

“In a weird way, I think the things you did forced us into a better place.” She glanced almost shyly at me. “You were with my mom, and that made both my parents see how flawed their marriage was. You got my father fired, and it finally allowed me to prove to him what I’d been trying to prove for a long time, that the Guardians were using him in a way that wasn’t beneficial to him or the church.” She brushed a piece of hair away from her face. “A person who sets out to hurt people isn’t a person who believes in the teachings of the church.”

I lowered my head slightly. “I think you’re right about that.”

Her head came up again. “There was a shooting in Yuma. At the hospital, of all places.” She tilted her head slightly. “Was that you?”

I met her gaze. “They tried to kidnap Malaika.”

A fierceness came into her eyes. “Good.”

“Neri—”

“They’ve corrupted everything I’ve believed since I was a small child! They’ve taken our church and given it a reputation it doesn’t deserve, a reputation it has tried to outrun since its conception! I don’t understand how good, God-fearing people can do such a thing.”

“I don’t think they are. At least, not the person behind it all. I think he has his own agenda in play.”

“Why? What is he trying to accomplish?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone will know until we identify him.”

“When you do, promise me you’ll stop him. That’s how you can make amends to me and my father.”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

Her eyes came up to mine for a long second, then she sighed. “I should go help my father. He can only do so much with one hand.”

“Of course.”

She touched my arm lightly, then grabbed her coffee and walked away. I watched her go, thinking that I’d almost broken that strong, amazing young woman. I was glad I hadn’t.