Page 25 of Sizzling Nights

"Right. Well—her house burned down. It’s on fire right now."

Theresa’s stomach twisted.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

"Oh my god. Oh my god."

Mitch continued. "I decided to test them and see how far they’d be willing to go. So I sent one of my employees into the house. They drove Theresa’s car to the driveway, went into the house, and then slipped out the back door and through the back area to Hospital Drive. They circled around. I was sitting at the end of the street with my lights off, watching it all. I saw somebody come running through the woods and throw a Molotov into the window, and the place caught on fire. My employee ran and got Theresa’s car out of the way. I don’t know if they stayed to watch or not, but I hope she had all of her stuff out of there. And I’ll say this—more than ever, she needs to stay hidden. They’re beginning to get bold in their scare tactics. If that’s all this was."

Marco stared into her eyes as he replied. "They wouldn’t kill her until they had the files they wanted. I’m reasonably sure of that."

Mitch commented, "But of course, we can never be too sure. So, I think this was a way to flush her out and really scare her. Maybe hoping that she’s going to leave town so they can catch her on the road. So that’s what we’re gonna let them do."

Marco’s jaw clenched.

She stared between him and his phone as if she were hearing a foreign language.

She finally said, "What?"

Her heart pounded so fast she didn’t even know if she could breathe. He was going to send her out there?

Mitch continued, "I think what we’re gonna do is have my employee put that long wig back on and drive your car out of town. We’re gonna make a few trips around town first, so they see you—wherever they’re watching from—and then start to head out of town. And we’re gonna be following. Maybe we can flesh out who’s actually watching and how they’re following you."

She placed her right hand over her stomach and took in a few deep breaths.

"Oh my god. Oh my god."

Marco’s hand reached over to hold hers.

He squeezed gently to comfort her.

And she was grateful for that. But what comforted her more was his strong steady presence and the way she felt sitting next to him. She was incredibly grateful for that. He made her feel more secure than anyone she'd ever had in her life. Oddly, she felt safer now, with a cartel on her tail, than she had ever felt in her life.

15

Marco watched Theresa as Mitch explained his plan. Her eyes rounded and he could see her chest rise and fall in rapid succession. He held her hand for comfort, but when Mitch was finished explaining what they planned to do, Marco changed the conversation.

"Mitch, I'm watching some businesses today to see what I can find out about their activities."

"That's a good idea. What are you focusing on?"

He grinned at Theresa. "Rents that are too high. Bank deposits that are abnormally large for a small town."

"How are you going to figure out large bank deposits?"

"Usually when someone is laundering money, they take a lot of cash at the business they're laundering from, but they also make more than one bank deposit in a day - to several different banks. And, if they're using a mule to transfer the money from the place of business to another location for laundering, there will be a mule coming and going. My thought is to specifically watch the new brokerage and the attorney's business. If I sit and watch the comings and goings of people in a new business, a smurf should show themselves in short order."

Theresa cocked her head. "What's a smurf?"

He grinned as he responded. "It's someone who is helping in the laundering process. He or she breaks up large transactions into sets of smaller transactions that are each below the reporting threshold. Then they pretend to invest them or take them to various banks."

"In what way?"

He turned in his chair to face her. "A smurf might pretend to be a landlord. He'll take in far too much money for rent on a building. It may be a residential rental like an apartment or Airbnb. He actually only collects the regular rent, say a place is worth a thousand dollars a month. But on the books, he writes in three thousand a month. In many cases, there are only a couple of tenants in a building so there's activity, and they are instructed to tell anyone who asks that they pay three thousand dollars a month for rent. So if authorities come around and ask, it seems legit. If anyone questions how this person can afford that kind of rent, they're instructed to say they have a trust fund or something. The other units are usually empty, so they don't have too many people on the books. But fake leases and names are used. The money comes from other sources, say drug deals or illegal smuggling, etc. But it's laundered through the apartment building."

Theresa nodded slowly. "I guess I never heard that term. I did see transactions on the ledgers I found that didn't add up and that's why. That's how I started investigating in the first place. They were also using laundromats, pizza places, and dress shops. Basically, any business. But even though I'd investigated for so long, I didn't look outside the state of Maine. I should have. So now I'm going to go back through my information and figure out a few more things."

He grinned. "There you go."

---