More times than not, the view makes up for the annoying buzz in your ears the next three days.”
He nods. “True.” His lips twist as he struggles to hold back his smile. “If you’re there for the female clientele.”
His reply has me smirking like a smug prick. Our brief conversation exposes he saw me follow Isabelle to the Dungeon dance club weeks ago, but he has no clue about our kiss, which proves he’s not watching Izzy. The only thing I need to work out is if he’s targeting the same man our taskforce, is or is he playing devil’s advocate.
I lose the chance to underhandly work it out of him when he taps on his watch, announcing the two minutes he gave Alex with Albert is up, but his murmured comment when he heads back to the conference room door ensures I’ll be keeping an eye on him. “Tell Dimitri I said hello.”
I’ve only worked my jaw side to side twice when he guides a handcuffed and bloody Albert past me. I’m not shocked Albert was roughed-up by Alex, the Rogers are well known in the Bureau for their ‘investigative tactics.’ I’m just stunned he had the gall to do it in front of an IA agent. There’s only one way in and out of the room. Agent Russell didn’t leave.
I discover that Alex’s tactic was successful when he hands me a crumbled piece of paper with a handwritten sequence of numbers on it. From the length of the digits, I’m going to assume it is a bank transaction. “I need to know anything this number could correspond to, and I needed it last week.”
“Does this correspond with our target or the man who just left with a broken nose?” When he glances up from his bloody knuckles to me, his glare furious, I add, “If I know who to focus my search on, I’ll have more chance of working out what these numbers correspond to. It could be anything.”
Alex’s trust appears as low as mine, but he still gives it to me. “I didn’t have enough time to get more out of him, but I’d recommend adding both our target and Vladimir Popov into your search parameter.”
24
Brandon
While climbing the stairs of my apartment building, I rub at a kink in my neck. If I had any doubt Isaac’s many corporations weren’t shady, I don’t now. It took me over four hours to discover the sequence of numbers Alex handed me was a transfer of ninety-three hundred dollars from an offshore account of one of Isaac’s many shell corporations to a casino in Las Vegas.
Whoever organized the wire transfer has a strong knowledge of cybercrime. Grayson taught me everything he knew. I’ve hacked into servers that are supposedly unhackable. Alas, even I’m struggling to work out exactly who the funds were transferred to. It probably doesn’t help that I stopped my investigation partway through to help Isabelle write up a report on the evidence she located when she followed Megan to a Motel 6 on the edge of town.
Alex was as cocky as fuck when he told Isabelle he’d place two agents on Megan in the morning. He wasn’t lying when he made his statement. That’s how confident he is that his arrest warrant for Isaac will be issued overnight, freeing up a handful of his agents for less pressing matters like psychotic stalkers with a fascination for pop stars.
It turns out Megan isn’t an ex-lover of Isaac’s. From the evidence Isabelle unearthed, her eyes aren’t set on a broody, enigmatic businessman. She wants his little brother—the playboy guitarist who’s almost the polar opposite to his big brother. Nicholas Holt was put under the spotlight when the Bureau arrived in town. It didn’t take the agents following him long to realize he had no clue about his brother’s shady businesses. Other than sleeping-in until midday and playing lead guitar in his band, Rise Up, Nick occupied the rest of his time chasing a strawberry-blonde teenager lightyears out of his league.
Hey, don’t judge. I’m just telling you what the reports said. They were taken by a rookie agent who seemingly had a crush on Nick’s girl, so do with it as you may.
My hand drops from my neck to my chest when a shadowed figure moves into the light hanging above my apartment door. The lights in the hall were hardwired by the building supervisor, so I have no choice but to have my door lit up like a Christmas