Page 27 of Buried Treasure
The door locked behind them and Sydney realized she had been holding her breath the whole time. She let it all out though as she fell into a surprisingly comfortable conference room chair. Her head fell backwards and she stared up at the ceiling, trying to center her mind from going crazy.
"What is he doing here?" she asked bitterly.
"He's our client as well," Lucy explained. "But don't worry. The judge isn't going to want a witness mixing with a defendant, so Brian is making sure we don't share any work between us."
"Oh, because that will help protect me from people seeing what an idiot I was," Sydney said.
"You're not an idiot," her friend replied. "Once you see this paperwork, you'll realize that John had some dirty books. At least that's what I can tell so far. We have some work to do to unravel all of it."
Sydney pulled her head up to take in the mound of paper on her own conference table. She dropped her purse on the floor next to her chair and rubbed her eyes before looking back at the pile.
"Fine. Where do we start?"
"I've got real investments for fake clients, fake investments for real clients, and then the real stuff for the real clients," Lucy explained. "Pick your poison."
Sydney just stared. He had been faking clients? And investments?
"Wait a minute. If there's a bunch of fake money on the books, where's the real money?"
Lucy sat down next to Sydney and looked her in the eye.
"Honestly, I don't know, and I don't think Brian knows either," Lucy said. "Hell, I don't even know if there is any real money that ever existed. But you worked in that office for years. You'll see things that we would miss. So can you help?"
Sydney dropped her head into the palms of her hands, trying to rub the weariness off of her face. It wasn't working. Instead, she turned to Lucy for some guidance.
"You promise you can help me?"
"I can, but you have to be honest with me, Sydney," Lucy said. "Did you know about any of this?"
Sydney wordlessly shook her head.
"And you promise not to keep any secrets from me?"
"I promise."
"Then I promise I can help you get rid of all of this," Lucy said.
She stood up and walked over to a green and white box at the end of the table and brought it over to Sydney's seat. Flipping the lid off, she grabbed a thick binder of paper and dropped it unceremoniously in front of her.
"You ready?" Lucy asked.
"Oh yeah," Sydney replied bitterly. "I can't wait to get started."
