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Callie chuckled. “Actually, no. She’s still fun and smart and wicked protective of me, but she’s leftthosedays behind her. When she didn’t have anything to rebel against, she turned that energy to her career. She’s still as fierce, but it’s directed toward other things now.”
They fell into a comfortable conversation that touched lightly on a number of topics, each testing the surface, dipping a toe in. A part of her wanted to ask more questions, but another part of her recognized the moment for what it was—time for their systems to adjust to the change, for their nerves to stop vibrating with apprehension, for their wariness to not be so alert.
By the end of the night, after she dropped him at the club and drove to her cabin, she felt almost relaxed. And as she climbed into bed that night, she acknowledged that while neither of them had let their defenses down entirely, perhaps both were showing a few cracks.
20
Philly arrived at HICC the next morning bearing Bun Times doughnuts only to find Callie and Leo already set up in the conference room. He glanced at his watch, confirming he was, in fact, ten minutes early.
“I dropped a box in the kitchen, too,” he said, setting half a dozen treats on the table.
“They’ll be gone by now,” Leo said, opening the box and snagging an apple fritter.
“We haven’t started yet. Not on the Nolan files,” Callie said to him as he took a seat. He nudged the doughnuts in her direction, but she shook her head.
He narrowed his eyes. She’d barely eaten her dinner the night before either, taking four of the six chicken strips and most of her fries home in a to-go box. As she’d methodically packed the container, he realized that he’d never seen her eat a full meal. She picked and nibbled but never finished her plate. He didn’t think she was starving herself—she looked healthy and said she ran most days—but she had an unusual relationship with food he didn’t understand.
“What have you gotten started on?” he asked, reaching for a doughnut.
“Leo was giving me the lay of the land. Who’s who at HICC and all that,” she replied, eyeing his maple bar. They used to be her favorite, and he’d made sure that three of the half dozen in the box were maple bars.
“Okay, so where do we start?” he asked, running his finger along the edge of the icing and licking it.
Her eyes tracked his movements, then met his. She jerked them away and looked to Leo.
“I ran a program last night that confirmed the transactions were manually initiated from Rian’s computer in the business’s headquarters in New York. But we’re not taking that at face value,” Leo said.
“You already confirmed they came from his computer, but he works with family and probably some employees who arelikefamily. People who would have access to his office and his devices,” Philly said.
“Exactly,” Leo said, sliding a computer in front of him. “We’re going to compare the transactions against Rian’s travel.”
Callie narrowed her eyes. “Why his travel? Couldn’t he take his laptop with him and arrange the transactions from the road?”
“Yes, but he can’t mimic the IP address, which is consistent across all transactions, indicating it’s a desktop,” Leo replied, then paused. “Well, technically, it’s possible, but he doesn’t have the skills to do that.”
“So, we start by confirming he was in New York when the transactions occurred?” Callie clarified.
Leo nodded. “That’s step one. Assuming we find he was in town and able to initiate the transactions, then we need to find out if he actually did.”
“How do we do that? How do we do any of that?” Philly asked. “And how far back are we looking?”
Leo flashed him an unholy grin. “The bombing was four years ago, but once I started looking more deeply, it became clear that the bombing wasn’t the Nolans’ first rodeo.”
“How many years of skimming money and funding terrorists are we talking about?” Philly asked.
“I stopped looking at fifteen years.”
Philly blinked. “Was Rian even working for the company fifteen years ago?”
Leo nodded. “He’s thirty-nine. He started right after his MBA at twenty-four.”
Exactly fifteen years.
Callie’s gaze flickered to him, but she remained silent.
“I assume you have his travel records?” Callie asked.
“I do. I could have designed a program to compare the data, but figured with the three of us, it would be faster to divide it up and go through it.”
