Page 78 of Chasing Simone

“This could be hard to juggle with Jack-ass-o’-lantern in the room,” Punk points out.

Butch shrugs. “We’ll manage.”

True. We’ll manage as we do with all our cases. It may be more work, but we’ll deal with it.

Simone bites her full bottom lip, hesitant. “You may need to use your skills outside of the firm’s intranet.”

This can’t be good. Butch and I eye Simone wearily.

“More than likely the money was transferred to offshore accounts,” Simone informs. “If that’s the case, it’s going to be hard to retrieve the funds without the account information.”

Butch’s head fall into his hands. “Fuuuck. We’re never going home.”

It doesn’t take a genius to guess Butch’s piss-whining has a lot to do with him not seeing Candy for an extended period. Poor bastard. I’d be miserable, too, if it weren’t for Simone being on our team.

Punk looks agitated. His leg bounces a mile a minute where he sits on the edge of the bed. “At what point do we wash our hands? Shouldn’t the feds be handling this shit?”

“We can’t hand this over to the feds until we have more evidence,” Simone explains. “I made a dent in last year’s files, but I haven’t gotten to the current year’s documents yet. Besides, the payday on this will be huge. We’re getting paid for the work we do, but we’re also on a commission. The more we return to the financial organization, the bigger the percentage we take home—Atlas had me draft it specifically into the contract with P.L. Moore Financial.”

“Smart move,” Punk compliments.

Money is nice, but it isn’t everything, especially when it could cost us a shit-ton of time and resources. “Exactly how much cash are we talking, Numbers? What’s our cut at the end of all this?”

“Guesstimate? We’re looking at eight figures.”

I nearly choke. “Double digits—in the millions?”

“From the little I’ve calculated in the missing funds, I’m being conservative in my estimate.”

Butch lets out a low whistle.

“I know the MC isn’t hurting for money, but it would be nice to have a large reserve for when shit goes south in the club,” Simone continues. “If it weren’t for Piero Bianchi flipping the bill on Operation Bring-Home-Jo, we would’ve been financially screwed. We need this big score if we want to do large-scale operations while remaining independent from investors.”

As much as it’ll drive me nuts to work this case longer than any of us wants to, Simone’s right. The MC would benefit from having this lump sum.

“How long are we talking?”

“I’m not sure,” Simone admits. “We originally thought two weeks. It could be double or more.”

“A month is a long time,” Butch mutters, with a morose face.

The wheels in my head have been turning since Simone mentioned the inconsistency in the perp’s procedure. Humans rarely don’t follow a pattern. They may go off course occasionally, but they always revert to old habits. And habits make it easy for hackers like me to hunt people through the dark web. I chew on my lip ring, mulling the ways to speed things along.

“We could cut down the time,” I venture. “If I created a program to help with the algorithm of the operation, we could get out of here on time.”

Butch scoffs. “This isn’t like Turing developing the Bombe to crack the Enigma Code, Chase. We don’t have time to fuck about.”

“Your lack of faith in my ability hurts, bro. Turing would have killed to have me on his team. Besides, we aren’t dealing with a system constantly changing its cipher—we have two systems at play. One precise, and one erratic. The program itself is straightforward.”

“How can you say there are two systems at play? The whole embezzling procedure appears intermittent, making it difficult to see the common patterns,” Simone reminds me.

“It may appear sporadic, but more than likely you haven’t had enough time to spot the trends. That’s where my skills come in.”

Simone looks doubtful as she lists off the obstacles. “How are you going to manage tracing the money while creating a program to crack the thief’s code, all while juggling Trent?”

“Divide and conquer, Numbers. Butch will trace the funds, and I’ll make the program. We can give Trent enough busy work to keep him out of our hair. If I work on the program tonight, I may finish by tomorrow evening.”

My sassy accountant throws her hands in the air. “And when are you going to rest, huh? You couldn’t have slept last night in the chair, at least not soundly. You won’t be any use to the team if you run yourself ragged.”

---