Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,72

an easier time locating a body on the ocean floor than finding money in Nevis, and Corbett—if he’d somehow become involved in this—knew that.

“The articles of incorporation specify that either of the shareholders has the power to open and close accounts independently. She could have easily and legally opened a local bank account while they were on holiday. Should I set up an interview with Mr. Abbott?”

Nora’s last encounter with Gregg flashed to mind, along with the smell of the dingy Northeast apartment. He’d seemed precariously close to his limits, replaying violent memories of his wife with the managing partner of a proven fraud investigation. She exhaled slowly, steadily.

“Not yet. Until we have enough evidence to support a scenario, we’re keeping this channel of investigation confidential. To everyone.” If Corbett could be compromised, anyone could be. Right now, Nora didn’t trust a single person outside this room.

She moved to the spray of islands tracing the north side of Cuba. The Bahamas had become less attractive to money launderers in recent years, but it still offered plenty of wiggle room for run-of-the-mill tax evasion or a multimillion-dollar divorce. She had to believe, based on the references in Logan’s blog, the money had gone to The Bahamas.

“There’s nothing in either of their expense reports from that time. No plane tickets, hotel receipts, or car rentals. I can’t tell where they went,” another analyst piped up, flipping through multiple windows of data.

“No, it was a personal trip. Or it was supposed to look like one.” Nora leaned in, squinting at the islands. Someone, sensing her next order, zoomed in further so that Nassau, the major banking hub in The Bahamas, stretched over the center of the screen. Nora blinked and saw it immediately.

“There.”

Right above the banking center—a bridge to an even smaller island.

“Paradise?” One of the analysts squinted as she read.

“Paradise.” Nora flipped back to the blog entry and read, feeling her excitement mount. “ ‘I woke up a few days ago as a fifty-year-old woman in a villa in paradise. That’s not a metaphor.’ That’s where they were, Paradise Island in The Bahamas!”

“Okay … maybe.” The analysts glanced at each other, clearly not convinced, but then another spark fired, a shock of lightning to her brain.

“Pull the Aaden Warsame police report!”

Rushing to another computer, she opened Strike’s banking files. “Read the account number from the piece of paper that was found in his wallet.”

One of the analysts recited the digits, while Nora scanned the known Strike accounts. The number in Aaden Warsame’s wallet didn’t match any of them.

“This could potentially be it.” Her mind raced ahead. “This could be the offshore account. He sent the email initiating the fraud. He may have been privy to the next destination of the funds.”

“Or it could be his own bank account. He had unexplained deposits.”

Nora dug through her briefcase until she found the deposit slip Bilan had given her.

“No!” The last four digits on the slip didn’t match the piece of paper from his wallet.

“Where did you get that?” one of the analysts asked, but Nora had already blazed ahead. On the smart board, she shrank the map of The Bahamas down to half size and put the note from Aaden Warsame’s wallet next to it. She pulled up a list of every international bank with a branch in Nassau and they began pinging them one by one, sending account verification requests listing the Strike name and the account number from Aaden’s wallet. All they needed was one match.

When they finished the Nassau bank requests, Nora had everyone keep working. Covering their bases, in case she was wrong about The Bahamas, they moved on to the British Virgin Islands, Barbados, St. Kitts, even Nevis, all the places U.S. money liked to hide. If they were lucky, they’d receive responses on a quarter of their requests. The only sure way to confirm an account was to send it money, nominal transfers of a few dollars, but the risk was too high—a deposit notification would tip their hand and increase the odds that whoever had stolen twenty million would transfer it instantly to another ghost account on another shadowy island. The money trail, Nora knew, could be endless.

The longer they worked, the more Nora’s euphoria drained and reality set in again. Despite her hunches, they were no further along than they had been this morning, and there was only one day left in the tournament. Twenty-four more hours of frantic searching, but now with the weight of Corbett’s