Page 69 of Blind Luck

There was a lot to unpack there, the most interesting snippet being about Jerry’s past.Anotherman? Honestly, I’d never pictured her as the relationship type. She was so independent, and didn’t she live with a whole gang of women?

“She was involved with a guy before?”

“He was a slimy little quisling, and the breakup wastotally not her fault. But I’ve background-checked Cole, and he doesn’t seem to be a treasonous snake, so she should spend more time with him.”

There was a window behind Echo, and it was starting to snow. The bunny ears turned frosty.

“Shouldn’t Jez be the one making that decision?” I asked.

“She’ll come around to my way of thinking.”

“And that’s why you’re hiding on a mountain somewhere?”

“Just keep your mouth shut, okay?”

That conversation had taken place hours ago. Since then, I’d video-called with Zach, stuffed myself with sushi from a platter Lila had ordered for Rennick—he hadn’t eaten a thing—and reread my own background checks on the Fuller family while I waited for Alexa to dig up any dirt she could find.

Stanley Fuller’s name had come up early in the investigation due to his informal offer to buy the Galaxy, but with nothing else pointing to his involvement, he hadn’t progressed up the suspect list. If not for Jerry’s instruction to keep the investigation hush-hush, I might have spoken with the man, but I hadn’t wanted to risk word of my visit getting back to Cole.

All my research suggested Stanley wasn’t the type of man to resort to common thuggery, but his sons… I’d figured all the big decisions would be made by the boys’ father, but what if Jace was trying to play God and influence his thinking? And was Jackson involved too? He was the golfer in the family.

Jackson Fuller, the older son, was easy to find. As well as several wins on the PGA Tour, he’d landed a number of sponsorship deals, and he was also fond of falling out of nightclubs in Nice, Milan, and London with pretty young women on his arm. He’d been arrested twice—once in LosAngeles for driving while intoxicated and once in Lisbon for carrying drugs. Thanks to high-priced lawyers, he’d wriggled out of the charges.

Jace Fuller? There wasn’t much information on him. He’d kept his nose clean, or at least, he hadn’t gotten caught. If Erin and Kina were right, he wasn’t too good at hiding the darker parts of himself. Did his wife know he paid for sex? That he hit on contractors who clearly rejected his advances? His social media account was a mix of car videos, pictures of him at fancy events, gym selfies, and photos ofstuff. Expensive watches, designer clothing, snapshots of a luxury apartment. He had money, and he liked to flaunt it. I was reading through the captions when Rennick let out a quiet, “Yes!”

Lila leapt up. “Ohmigosh! You found it?”

“Yes. Not an exact million—it’s just over that—but there’s a significant anomaly.”

“A loan?” I asked.

“An anomaly. In no way has it been accounted for as borrowings. How much do you know about accounting?”

“I know that I keep copies of my receipts and invoices in a folder, and at the end of each quarter, I give them to my accountant.”

Rennick sucked in a breath. “Do you recall the issue we had in the Torres case? The shortcuts taken with the bank reconciliations?”

Lila looked at the floor because that had been partly her fault, and she’d paid dearly for the error. I nodded.

“There’s a similar error here. Not the same, but similar.” He glanced at his calculations. “Accounting is a balance. Every debit has an opposing credit. If cash comes into the business, you debit your bank line. If there’s a sale, you credit the revenue line. If you borrow money, you credit a liability. Do you follow?”

Not really. “Kind of?”

“In the trial balance, each bank account has a separate general ledger account, so every currency is accounted for separately. But the financial statements are presented in US dollars. So, each transaction is translated at the rate from the previous day and recorded in the profit-and-loss account or on the balance sheet. But the currency sitting in the balance sheet isn’t retranslated daily—it’s revalued once as part of the month-end procedures.”

“Okay.”

“You wouldn’t find the anomaly by looking at the accounting system alone. It was necessary to compare the accounting entries with the transactions in the bank accounts themselves.”

“How did you get those?”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “You sent them to me last week.”

Fucking Alexa.

“Ah, right. Yes. I did.”

He gave me a strange look, and Dusk giggled because she knew exactly where the bank statements had come from.

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