Page 18 of His Custody

“The financials for the O’Connells came through.”

Good. They’d been waiting on those for too long. It should’ve been straightforward but for reasons he couldn’t bother spending too much time on, the O’Connell’s attorney had been dragging his feet, making excuse after excuse to avoid giving him the information. Not that it mattered; it wasn’t like he needed the money to take care of Keyne. He had more than he knew what to do with.

“And?” That didn’t seem like the kind of thing Deja would’ve busted down his bedroom door for at six o’clock in the morning. She’d done it before, but for a crisis.

“And there’s nothing there.”

His pacing came to an abrupt halt. What the hell?

“What do you mean there’s nothing there?”

“Okay, not quite nothing, but not nearly the amounts there should be. Maybe we should talk about this in—”

“No, we’ll talk about it now.” He resumed stalking his way across the posh waiting room, careful not to bang his shin into the Lucite coffee table that dominated the seating area. He glanced over at the receptionist, but she was busy clicking things on her desktop. Probably playing solitaire.

“You’re the boss. Like I said, there’s nothing there. No retirement accounts, small investment portfolio, no real estate holdings except the house. A bunch of their accounts are overdue. At the end of the day, I’m guessing their debts and assets will just about cancel each other out.”

“What about Keyne’s trust? I know she has one.” They all did. He’d gotten access to his when he’d turned twenty-five. He’d been a week from getting his MBA and used the lion’s share of it for seed money for his company. His father had chastised him for taking such a big risk, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was Jasper’s money.

Gavin had a trust, too, one he wouldn’t get to use now, and his parents had left behind considerable assets. He’d assumed the O’Connells would’ve as well.

“There’s nothing there, Jasper. After probate settles the debts, there’s not going to be anything there. Your little orphan hasn’t got a penny to her name.”

His eyes darted to the door, behind which Keyne was likely sitting on a couch and playing along with the therapist. He wasn’t sure how much good these sessions were doing, but at least Mr. McCarthy could rubber-stamp they’d gone through the motions. And on the off chance they were doing more good than Keyne would let on, he’d keep bringing her.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. There would be time to get to the bottom of this later, but there was an immediate symptom he could treat without curing the disease. “Fine. That needs to not be true anymore. You get a trust set up in Keyne’s name right away. Move whatever amount was in Gavin’s trust into it. Get it done quickly and quietly. I don’t want a word of this getting out, especially not to Keyne, and you get ahold of that lawyer. I want to know what the fuck happened to all that money.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“And Deja?”

“Yeah?”

“Any news in from the Coast Guard?”

“Only that they’re still combing through the wreckage. Takes time to get any information out of a blast like that, like finding a needle in a haystack.”

More like pulling a suspect out of frigid oil-slicked ocean waters and twisted metal, but the result was the same. Nearly impossible.

“You’ll let me know if that changes.”

“Of course.”

He clicked off his phone and stopped himself from chucking it across the room. What the hell? But the truth was, whatever had happened, it didn’t matter. If the money was gone, then it was gone. He’d keep that knowledge from Keyne, though. She didn’t need to know. She didn’t need any more on her slim shoulders than she already had.

He’d sit down with Deja tomorrow and dig through whatever documentation she’d gotten her hands on. He trusted her to keep quiet. He trusted her with everything.

Deja was his Jiminy Cricket in some ways, pushing back when he was going too far. He didn’t always listen to her, sometimes made choices that made her swear like if a cross-country truck driver and a merchant marine produced an exponentially foul-mouthed offspring, but when she put her foot down and threatened to quit he’d give in. She wouldn’t let him go too far.

She’d also understood when he called her in the middle of the night a month ago to tell her what had happened. It had been her first question: “Where’s Keyne?”

And now she was telling him Keyne essentially had nothing. What the hell had happened to all of that money?

Chapter Six

August

The next week was horrible. He’d kept his word to Deja and refused to let Keyne sleep in his bed, despite the cost. And there was a cost; it was wearing on them both. He could see it in the shadows under her eyes, the bags under his. His temper shorter than usual with the people who worked for him, and Keyne was more skittish than usual during the day, no small task.

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