Filthy Rich Alpha - Virna DePaul Page 0,27
who knows.”
“Cool, so this is personal. Is she hot?”
“It’s a guy.”
“Why don’t you ever need some hot, lonely cougar type followed? Or better yet, assign me instead of my brother to look into the hot blonde. I was a little hurt over that, by the way.”
Something warm stirred in his belly at the mention of Cara. Damn. She seemed to invade his every pore. “You weren’t here the day I called for the background on Cara. Lee got that one by default.”
“Fine. No hot blondes. What do you need?”
“There’s a guy named Greg Johnson. A junior stockbroker, rather obnoxious. I want to know everything about him, including how old he was when he stopped wearing Pull-Ups to bed at night.”
“So info you can’t get off his employee file. That’s it?”
“For now,” Branden said. “As soon as Deena gets all the hard drives downloaded and we go through them, I know there will be more. Do you and Lee have the staff and resources you need?”
“We have way too many people at the moment, actually. Got them sitting around watching security tapes and picking their noses all day. It looks like a family dinner at my parents’ house.”
“That will change soon enough. Get on Greg Johnson ASAP for now. Let me know if you find anything unusual in the guy’s background.”
Alex stood up. “You got it, boss. Just remember me if any of those cougar investigations come up, okay?”
“Why don’t you just go out to the club and find one yourself?”
“You know I’m shy,” Alex said with a grin on his way out.
Yeah, right.
A minute after Alex left, Deena walked in the door.
“I was looking at the copy of an employee’s hard drive today. It has some interesting searches on it for information about Serenity and Lindtz Pharmaceuticals.”
Serenity was a new medication put out by a little known pharmaceutical company, Lindtz. As soon as the medication had been approved by the FDA and hit the market, the stocks for the little company had skyrocketed. Anyone who had gotten in on the ground floor of that deal had made a small fortune.
“Who’s the employee?” he asked.
“A guy named John Turner. He’s been here for ten years.”
“Did we look into his financials?”
“He’s made several cash deposits recently. All just under ten grand, I’m assuming to keep the IRS at bay. He doesn’t own any of the stock for Lindtz, but it seems that he has two brothers, an uncle, and a cousin who acquired quite a bit of it just prior to Serenity being released onto the market.”
“Then John Turner is someone we need to be looking at more closely. Mike can handle it.”
“Not Alex? I just saw him leaving here. Anything I should know?”
Deena already knew about the Deets picture and the shady video and he thought about telling her about Cara’s run-in with Greg, but for some reason that seemed wrong. Like he’d be betraying Cara somehow by sharing. “Nope.”
“What’s Alex pursuing?”
“Something personal.”
“Is this about little Cara Michal?”
“It’s about me and my personal privacy,” he said.
Deena smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
She wanted the information, but too bad. This video had nothing to do with their shared SEC investigation, so he’d handle it without involving his family.
Cara worked nonstop all afternoon. When she finally stopped she had a kink in her neck and the sun had already begun to dip low in the sky behind the massive glass-and-steel skyscrapers that lined the street. Her stomach growled and she looked at the time on her computer. It was already close to seven, the hour Branden had said he wanted her at his place for a dinner date. No way.
She still hadn’t eaten anything, and the two bottles of water she drank weren’t keeping her full any longer. Her head was even beginning to feel a little light.
After kissing Branden, she’d avoided leaving her office all day, but she was going to have to go find something to eat before she passed out. She made up her mind for sure somewhere around three o’clock that she absolutely would not be making an appearance at his apartment at seven, even for a quick drink and conversation. It was borrowing trouble and she had enough already. She picked up her bag and switched off her computer and her office light and headed out for the night. She’d stop at the food cart in front and pick up a bagel or something to tide her over until she got home.
The halls were quiet, but