Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,67
message from a proud parent, but now certain lines bubbled back up, shifting with hidden meanings.
I’m not giving away shit. They don’t know that. They can’t see what we’re about to do. Was she talking about Aaden winning the tournament or the two of them stealing the prize?
Nora walked faster, weaving through the laughing, posturing, shadow-boxing crowd, dodging limbs and the hawkish swoop of vendors. Perspiration dripped down her back and her breath became jerky. The only person who knew what really happened, the only person alive and conscious—Nora swallowed—was Logan Russo.
She looked up at the press box and stopped cold.
Logan stood at the window, staring right at her.
Nora was too far away to make out her expression or even, in fact, if Logan had picked her out of the crowd, but her skin prickled with a bodily awareness. She felt like a bug being surveyed by a callous god. Before she could decide what to do, someone bumped her from behind and began profusely apologizing, momentarily distracting her. When she looked up again, Logan was gone.
Nora pushed through the crowd, working her way back to the concourse. She grabbed her phone and it immediately lit up with a call from her analyst.
“We can’t talk to Logan right now.”
“Why not? I just saw her. She’s up there.” Nora cut through a massive line for vStrike and, once she’d gotten clear, started jogging toward a bank of elevators.
“Yes, but so are the police.”
She looked up again but didn’t have a view of the press box anymore. “What do they want?”
“We don’t know.”
Nora swore and hung up. The analyst found her less than five minutes later, pacing outside the stadium. She clearly had no idea how to handle her unraveling boss.
“Anything?” Nora bit out.
“No.” The analyst watched her, openmouthed, and then began babbling about the rest of the team’s lack of progress, trying to fill the silence. “We’re haven’t gotten any hits with our resource at FinCEN.”
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network maintained a vast database of bank deposit information across the country, assisting law enforcement with uncovering and prosecuting money laundering and fraud. All of the Magers Construction refunds were multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. If they were transferred within the United States, FinCEN would have records of them.
“Obviously.” Nora couldn’t stop moving. “The money’s offshore. Our only hope is that the online account will be in Strike’s name so Gregg Abbott can access it. Beyond that we have no idea where to look.”
“We can’t do anything with the online account today. Everything’s closed for the holiday.”
The word tugged at the back of Nora’s mind. Holiday. An offshore holiday.
The memory jerked into focus and she pulled up short, almost dropping her briefcase. “The blogs.”
“What?”
“The Strike blogs. Oh my god.”
Shouting at the analyst to stay where she was, Nora ran into the skyway.
GREGG
EVERY MARRIAGE is different. Good marriage, bad marriage—if you’re that binary—young marriage, lifelong marriage, multicultural marriage, marriages of convenience, love, or economics; no two functioned the same. Still, there are commonalities, like being in a unique position to observe your spouse, knowing things the outside world would never see. Even in a marriage like mine, a marriage some people might’ve called a merger, I’d learned things about Logan no one else in the world would’ve dared guess.
Logan doesn’t lie. She doesn’t beat around the bush. She doesn’t mince words and she sure as hell won’t pull a punch. She’ll gut you but she’ll be honest about it, or at least that’s the image Logan Russo has cultivated. I know. I helped her trademark it.
Logan’s lies were hard to spot because she believed them. She was the ultimate salesman, the one who’d already sold herself and could then sell anyone. But I’d lived in the legend’s shadow for two decades. I’d been her partner for so long that, if I didn’t stand in her way and make myself an opponent, she forgot I was even there. That’s when you learned the most about someone—when they thought they were alone.
Let me tell you a story about Logan lying.
I was adopted by a couple who lived in suburban Chicago, the husband a computer programmer and the wife a Mary Kay skin care salesman. My biological parents were from Ohio, the agency said. That was all. Ohio. An entire state I avoided because I refused to see someone with my face in a gas station, looking horrified by the echo of some long-ago half-drunk mistake. Strike has no clubs in Ohio, and Logan has