Ashley

I could breathe a little easier now that I’d told Jimmy about what I found. Cass had been right. Telling him even though I didn’t have any answers was what I needed to do, not only for the company but for the sake of my sanity. With that off my shoulders, I could focus on other things like setting up the rest of my new place and making sure my mother was okay.

Her last episode had me worried. Her lucidity was fading, and it was becoming almost impossible for the nurses at the home to treat her without constant medical intervention. She was growing angry and becoming combative. She was forgetting she was hungry and missing meals. I used the time I wasn’t unpacking my apartment to do research and figure out where I could go from here with my mother and what the best course of action was. If the nursing home she was in didn’t have the ability to take care of her, that was fine. They had taken care of her for the past three years, and they had done a wonderful job.

Maybe it was time for me to find her a new place.

Sitting down at my desk, I tried to focus on the PDF I was creating for the investors, but my mind kept going back to those balance sheets. I wish Jimmy would’ve let me talk to Ross, not because I could’ve communicated the message better but because I wanted to get a read on his body language. I didn’t think Jimmy would steal from his company but approaching him gave me the ability to study him. To gauge his reaction to the situation and figure out where he stood with it. I was able to scrutinize him without him knowing what I was doing, which went a long way in me trying to figure out who L.R. was.

Because Jimmy wasn’t going to fight this fight alone.

Being able to tell Ross would’ve given me the ability to scrutinize him as well. In the back of my mind, I knew Jimmy didn’t have a bad bone in his body. He would never dream of stealing from his company. But owners and operators did that sort of thing and so did COOs.

I didn’t want to think Ross was capable of something like that, but no one ever knew until it happened.

In situations like these, it always seemed to be the person least suspected of doing it.

I sent off the quarterly PDF to the investors before Ross came and knocked on my door. Jimmy was holding a meeting in his office to go over the possibilities of who L.R. could be. I gathered my things and locked up my office, suddenly paranoid about anyone going in there while something like this was happening.

When I walked into Jimmy’s office, I could tell he was distressed.

“Ross, shut my door,” Jimmy said. “We can sit in the corner on the couches.”

“Jimmy, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Doors shut,” Ross said.

“You’re worrying me,” I said.

“Ross went and talked to the IT department yesterday. He was able to pull up the past few months of faulty transactions and trace the IP address. Someone’s tapping into our system from outside this company,” Jimmy said.

“And you have proof of that,” I said.

“Yes,” Ross said. “IT is sending us a full workup this afternoon. I wanted them to give us IP addresses and trace them back as far as they could pull up the original transactions.”

“So, we aren’t looking at someone in the company?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” Jimmy said. “But with the tampering coming from the outside, it’s going to force us to involve the police.”

“Which means more media attention if someone talks,” Ross said.

“So make them sign an NDA or something,” I said.

“The police don’t work like that,” Jimmy said.

“Hire a private detective. A security team. Something,” I said. “Jimmy, if this gets out to the public—”

“I know, I know,” Jimmy said. “I know, Ashley, but I don’t have a lot of choices here. If this was coming from inside the company, tracking the person down would be easy. I don’t have the tools or the resources to track down who this could be outside of these walls.”

“Then pay someone, Jimmy. That’s your resource,” I said.

“Told you she wouldn’t be a fan,” Ross said.

A knock came at the door before the knob began to turn. I watched Jimmy’s face morph from confusion to anger until the door slowly opened. Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief as Markus walked through the doors, and I was glad he was there.

Maybe he could talk some sense into Jimmy.

“Everything good?” Markus asked.

“We’re just ... having a meeting,” Jimmy said.

“Anything I can help with?” Markus asked.

“Actually, yes,” I said.

“Jimmy? You want to loop him in?” Ross asked.

“Loop me in on what?” Markus asked.

“Just hold off on your lecture until later,” Jimmy said.

“I’m all ears, then,” Markus said.

“Someone’s been stealing and tampering with company money,” Jimmy said.

“What?” Markus asked.

“Ashley was the one who caught the figures. The balance sheets dating close to the inception of the company all have weird little transactions. The entire balance sheet for any given month has been tampered with,” Jimmy said.

“I don’t follow,” Markus said.

“Someone’s moving money around under the initials L.R.,” Jimmy said. “No more than fifty dollars at a time but it’s frequent. According to Ashley’s totals, it’s over twenty million since the start of the company.”

“Basically,” Ashley said. “The first three years of transactions don’t have a username or initials attached to the transactions, but I’m assuming it’s still the same person. Or at least the same basic action.”

“Someone’s stealing from my damn company, Markus, investing in stock before cashing the accounts out, going back into the balance sheets themselves, and fudging the numbers at the end of the sheets to reflect what they should. Whoever this is, they’re good, but they’re also not in this building.”

“How do you know that?” Markus asked.

I furrowed my brow as I watched Markus’s face. At first, he seemed shocked, but it was expressed by his eyebrows, not his eyes. He was studying Jimmy intently, hanging onto every word. Which would have been normal, had it not been coupled with the fidgeting Markus was doing. It was concealed, and the only reason I noticed it was because I did that kind of fidgeting all the time. Wiggling my toes in my shoes. Picking at my nails at my sides. Clenching my jaw and biting the inside of my cheek.

Markus was nervous.

“Do you have any idea who could be doing this?” Markus asked. “Because if the media gets a wind of this, you’re toast.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Jimmy’s wanting to involve the police.”

“As opposed to a private team?” Markus asked.

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “What do you think he should do?”

“I think you should keep it as contained as possible until it’s absolutely necessary for you to involve outside forces, whether it’s a private team or the Miami PD,” Markus said.

“Markus? Do you have any idea who L.R. might be?” I asked.

“What’s L.R.?” he asked.

“The initials that keep popping up with the transactions,” Jimmy said.

“Not off the top of my head. If you’re looking at someone from the outside like you think, it could literally be anyone,” Markus said.

“No one at all? From the investor board or anyone from the parties we threw together?” Jimmy asked.

“I told you I don’t know,” Markus said.

I looked over at Ross as I drew in a deep breath. Defensiveness. Markus was getting defensive at our questions. Why? Did he feel he was being interrogated? Ross looked at me with a weird stare before we turned our gazes to Jimmy, but his back was to us, and he was looking out the window. His hand was raking through his hair, and his leg was jiggling. His shoulders pulled taut, he heaved a heavy sigh.

“I’ll do what I can to help, but if you really want my advice? Keep it contained,” Markus said. “For as long as you can.”

Markus’s statement sat with me all night. Why would someone who cared so much about Jimmy not want him to take whatever measures necessary to figure out what was happening? Keeping it within the company seemed idiotic, especially when they had proof the transactions were happening from outside the company. I sat in my apartment that night and racked my brain. I knew I was missing something obvious, something vital.

I closed my eyes and finished off my glass of wine. Jimmy had dismissed me early from that meeting but kept Markus and Ross with him. Part of me was irritated that he wanted me gone, but part of me saw it as a good thing. I was able to come home, relax, and try to see if I could figure out what it was I felt I was missing.

I brought my wine glass to my lips as I rifled through my memories of Markus.

Then, it hit me.

The conversation I’d had with Markus last weekend.

“The last time I visited my mother, she called me Lou. Which was close. That’s my middle name. My father’s name was Lou, and I figured she thought maybe I was him.”

My skin crawled as I continued to recount the conversation in my mind.

“Worse. She sometimes forgets she even got married. The nurses will come in and call her by her name, and she’ll correct them, tell them her last name is Roth and not Bryant.”

Was it possible? Was I reaching too far for this? Jimmy had told me on several occasions Markus had been in this with him from the beginning as his very first investor. That would’ve given Markus access to all sorts of things, especially if Jimmy had leaned on him for financial and business advice. Hell, Jimmy might’ve given Markus access to his accounts to help him grow his company in the beginning. And Jimmy would be blind to it. He trusted Markus like a son trusted his father, which meant the last person he would consider would be Markus.

In situations like these, it always seemed to be the person least suspected of doing it.

I shot up from the couch and set my wine on the coffee table. I couldn’t believe I was just figuring this out. I had to tell Jimmy. I had no idea how I was going to tell Jimmy, but it was the only thing that made sense. With Markus being there from the beginning and having his setup in Alberta, it would make sense as to why the transactions were coming from outside the company. And if “Lou Roth” was the reason for choosing the initials L.R., it meant there was only one last question to ask.

When had Markus moved to Alberta from Miami?

Because I bet if I asked Jimmy, he would say nine years or so, which would be three years after his company was started.