The Red Ledger: 7

by Meredith Wild

  “I came for you as soon as I heard you walk through the door.”

  When I look away from the road, her features are painted with regret.

  “I’m sorry, Tristan. I didn’t realize he was going to be like that.”

  I shrug and look ahead, even though I feel anything but casual about it. “I should have known he would go too far.”

  “We had to risk it,” she says without much force.

  Was finding out that Boswell is on his deathbed worth the permanent visual of Kolt pressed against her? I sure as hell hope so.

  “You could have flattened him, you know? You held your own against Vince just fine. Kolt’s a puppy next to him.” Seething, I shake my head. “Christ, he was all over you. You didn’t even try to stop him.”

  “Yes, I did.” Her words have bite now. “I tried to push him away and he came on stronger, so I hesitated. It was a matter of fighting back and turning him against me or waiting it out so I could get to Kristopher’s office. It’s not like I was enjoying myself.”

  I work my jaw, letting my frustration simmer. “Sorry. It was hard to listen to. Harder to watch.”

  “Try experiencing it. Don’t forget, I was the bait in there, not you.”

  My jealousy takes a sharp turn into guilt. Granted, I would have preferred a different approach, but this was the plan we agreed to. Together.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  I hear her sigh. Something inside me releases too. The adrenaline is tapering off, and all I’ve done is make her feel awful for what played out over a matter of seconds. She made a call, and I have to learn to be okay with that.

  “I’m used to reacting to bad situations differently and with a lot less empathy,” I say. “I know you’re not like me, and I’m glad for that. I just really fucking hate that guy.”

  She takes my free hand in hers. I can’t deny the relief it gives me. I don’t want to fight with her. Kolt’s not worth it.

  “Well, we never have to see him again. It’s over,” she says.

  I acknowledge that with a tight nod, grateful at least one chapter of this nightmare is closed. Doesn’t help us with the others much, unfortunately.

  I glance at the folder in her lap. “What’s in there? I thought you were going to take pictures.”

  She opens it, revealing a stack of photographs among some other papers. “I found the file he kept on me. Didn’t figure they’d miss it.” She sifts through the pictures, studying each one closely. “These are from Rio.” She sets them aside and starts looking through the rest of the contents. “They had a private investigator following me. That must be how they found my apartment.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  She shakes her head. “Just some canceled checks from the payments to the PI.”

  “Nothing on Felix?”

  “Nothing obvious, otherwise I would have grabbed it.”

  “If Kristopher Boswell was behind this plan with Felix at one point, it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. He’s knocking on death’s door. The emphysema is going to kill him so I won’t have to. I guess karma took care of that one for us.”

  “I’m not sure how to feel about that,” she says after a moment.

  “Me neither.”

  Kristopher’s condition is a break in the chain we thought linked Chalys to the Company.

  “Why did Jay tell us Kristopher was offered a seat with Company Eleven, then? Was she lying?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it happened before he got sick.” It certainly wasn’t above Jay to lie, regardless of how vulnerable she’d been when she confessed about the existence of the Company. But why lie about something like that? I glance over to the opened file. “Who signed the checks?”

  Isabel thumbs through them, one after the next. She’s quiet for too long.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she says, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  Tired of being held in suspense, I swipe one from the stack to see for myself.

  “Jesus,” I mutter under my breath and hand it back.

  “I don’t get it. Vince knew Kolt could have been killed when you came for me. His mother couldn’t have known. That’s her son.”

  “If Gillian Mirchoff signed those checks, that means she knew damn well about the next job. Which means she knew Kolt could have gotten caught in the crossfire.”

  She sifts through them again. “All of them. My God, Tristan, something’s really wrong.” I know she’s talking about Kolt’s safety. The prick who doesn’t know what “no” means was born into this mess. That’s not my problem.

  The bigger problem is the player who was never on our radar.

  “With Vince dead and Kristopher incapacitated, Gillian is calling the shots now. Hell, maybe she has been this whole time and no one ever knew it.”

  Before we can ruminate any more on that possibility, Isabel’s phone vibrates. She answers it and urgently presses it to her ear.

  “Hello?…Yes, of course.” She scribbles down an address on the front of the folder. “I’ll be there.”

  “Who was that?” I ask after she hangs up.

  “Landon. He wants to meet.”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  ISABEL

  My thoughts are whizzing by faster than I can keep up with them. The call with Landon was brief but promising. As much as I want to hear what he has to say, I can’t stop thinking about Kolt’s mother. His mother. I knew Vince was a monster. Kristopher too.

  If what my mother and grandfather believe is true—that Kristopher Boswell orchestrated the untimely end of my sister’s life—I have no reason to give his daughter the benefit of the doubt. Kolt and I said our last goodbye. Of that, I’m certain. Still, I can’t deny the urge to at least warn him. Even if I did, I’m not sure it would be enough to make him leave. And if he left, they’d probably find him. Oddly, the safest place for him might be right where he is.

  Landon’s house in Marblehead is only slightly off the route that would bring us back to the apartment in the city. When the GPS announces our next turn, I force my thoughts away from Kolt and hope that Landon can give us some insights that we haven’t unearthed yet ourselves.

  When we pull up, I wait for Tristan to do his usual surveillance and ready his weapon, which I doubt we’ll be needing. Nothing about my meeting with Landon set off alarms. He didn’t give me what I wanted, but I never once thought he’d do me harm.

  When we make our way up the stone path to the front door, Tristan keeps a step ahead of me. Always my shield, always my protector.

  After we ring the bell, Landon’s wife answers the door. “Oh.” She looks Tristan up and down, her hesitation obvious.

  I don’t miss the way his gaze lands on her swollen belly before darting away.

  I step forward. “Hi, I’m Isabel. This is Tristan. He’s with me.”

  Her apprehension softens. “Right. Blake’s expecting you. I’m Erica, by the way. I remember seeing you at the office the other day. Come on in.”

  She opens the door, and we step inside.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you this late,” I offer guiltily.

  She waves me off. “No worries. Blake keeps odd hours sometimes. It’s normal for us.”

  She motions for us to follow her through the house, so we do. When we get to what looks like the home office, we find Blake parked on a couch, his forearms resting on his knees. His attention is glued to the opposite wall, where various papers and photos are pinned up.

  “Blake, Isabel is here. This is her friend, Tristan.”

  He turns his head, appraising Tristan a moment before rising to his feet. “Have a seat. We have a lot to go over.” He walks to the wall and stares at it a moment longer before giving us his attention again. His arms are crossed, his expression stoic. “I promised myself I wasn’t ever going to go down this road again. But this is personal.”

  Erica leans against the wall, worrying her lip.

  “Pope?” I say.
>
  “No, although I’m going to enjoy ruining him with all this. Davis Knight is another matter entirely. As soon as you said his name, I knew I couldn’t walk away from this. Anything he touches is dirty. If he’s involved, you can bet it’s a shady operation.”

  I frown. “How do you know him?”

  “We had a little run-in when I was younger. A few friends and I figured out he was running a Ponzi scheme, taking people’s money with big promises, dumping most of it into his account, then robbing Peter to pay Paul. He was getting away with it until I hacked into his bank and started redistributing funds. He wasn’t the only one involved, but because I was young and far too idealistic, I didn’t realize that what I did only became a convenient distraction from the actual crime. He got away with it.” He shrugs. “Ultimately so did I. But sometimes the repercussions aren’t always what you expect them to be.”

  The extended pause and his defensive posture aren’t inviting me to dig deeper on that topic, but my guess is this is what got him into trouble all those years ago.

  “Do you think Knight is linked to this plan to release Felix?”

  “I do.” He starts slowly pacing back and forth in front of the cluttered wall. “I started with the accounting records like you suggested. Of course nothing’s ever in plain sight, but it put me on the right track. The Chalys records, at least from a cursory review, are unremarkable. So I moved on to the Boswells’ personal private banking accounts. They have several accounts in the name of the family trust. They’re all flush, of course, but they don’t have a lot of activity, which made one particularly significant transaction stand out.”

  He rips a piece of paper from its pin on the wall and hands it to me.

  “A twenty-million-dollar transfer to Oberon Enterprises. Who are they, you’re probably wondering. They are a shell corporation, registered in Delaware, naturally, which wasn’t enough to keep me from finding out who the shareholders were.”

  I glance over the transfer statement and back up to Landon.

  “Let me guess. Davis Knight is one of them.”

  “Bingo.” He takes it from me and pins it back to the wall.

  “Can you find out where the funds are going?” Tristan asks.

  “That’s where it gets interesting. Davis has been busy. A couple of months ago he was in Houston. I’m guessing to coordinate with Pope, among other things. Then a quick trip to San Diego. Another stop in Los Angeles. Then a couple of weeks ago he was in Miami.”

  Tristan and I share a look. If Davis was in Miami two weeks ago, chances are high he was on Simon’s yacht too.

  “So what’s the connection?” Landon asks, a grin playing at his lips, like he expects us to guess the answer he already knows.

  I’m ready to tell him to spill it when Tristan speaks.

  “Ports.”

  Landon’s face splits with a winning smile. “You got it. And if they’re wanting to flood the market, San Ysidro’s the place to get people to look the other way on incoming shipments. It’s the largest land border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana and probably a really good place to drop some cash for bribes.” He turns, rips another paper down, and hands it to Tristan. “Significant cash withdrawals were made prior to each stop. Fifty thousand. Hundred thousand at a time. They’re probably spreading it around between border agents and the powers that be at the different port authorities.”

  “That would make sense. They’re already connected to the higher-ups at the Port of Miami,” I say.

  “What about the East Coast?” Tristan leans in. “They want this to be a national crisis. It’ll take weeks for drugs to make it from the border to here and filter down to smaller towns where the abuse is rampant.”

  “Davis is based in New York, so he wouldn’t need to travel. But I checked his debit card. He’s been spending a lot of time in New Jersey lately. He likes a particular place called Luca’s. Happens to be a well-known haunt of the Generazzo crime family. The balance went down pretty significantly around that same time. More than usual. Their people have been linked to port theft on more than one occasion. Criminal or not, that’s their turf, so he’d have to pay the toll to set up any kind of operation there.”

  “Shit.” Tristan pinches the bridge of his nose.

  Landon narrows his eyes a fraction. “Friends of yours?”

  Then it hits me.

  “Crow.”

  “Yeah. Fucking Crow,” Tristan mutters. “Idiot. Definitely not a friend.”

  I don’t care as much about Crow as how far along the plan has already progressed. “If Davis has already paid out all these bribes, that means the shipments might already be through.”

  Landon nods. “It’s very possible. I get that they want to line this up with their new launch, but this isn’t corporate America. They’re not going to be able to get the product overwhelming the street market on any kind of organized timetable. Nothing’s that precise. But the ripples could very well have already started.”

  I push my hands through my hair with a groan. “This is starting to feel like a runaway train. We have no idea how many shipments there are, where they’re coming from or when. There’s no way we can stop this.” Not unless we can figure out how to be a thousand places at once.

  The room falls quiet. I could cry for all my frustration. We can’t let them win, but what choice do we have?

  “Maybe you can’t stop this from unfolding completely, but you can try to slow it down,” Erica says. “There’s no way they’ve paid off everyone who cares about a huge influx of illicit drugs into the country. Tip off the authorities. Let them do the jobs they’re already paid to do.”

  “She’s right,” Tristan says after a moment. “It’s better than nothing. Letting them know to expect an incoming wave could help them stay ahead of it or put some heat on the usual players. Does your father have any friends at the DEA?”

  I meet his cool stare. “I’m guessing he might.”

  Landon doesn’t seem satisfied. His brow wrinkles with a deep frown. “I can keep digging. I’ll see if I can find any more specifics.”

  He looks to Erica. She answers with a nearly imperceptible nod. Permission. To help us and expand their own risk. He crosses his arms tightly and casts his gaze to the ground.

  “You should know that Knight isn’t the only reason I’m helping you. I’d love to see him really pay one of these days for being a serial dirtbag. But what they’re doing hits home.” He pauses a beat. “I spent a long time, a lot of money, and plenty of sleepless nights trying to get my brother back on track after he got mixed up with drugs. Time we won’t get back, time that neither of us are especially better having spent. Maybe these guys really have figured out a cure, and that’s great if it’s true. But if launching it comes with more drugs flooding the streets, more people dying…” His jaw ticks with tension. “You have my full support. I’ll be a resource.”

  In that moment, I feel his frustration and his resolve. They echo my own but stem from his own pain and experience, the extent of which I can’t know. Whatever cause motivates him, I’m fortified knowing he and Erica are on our side and willing to help as much as they can.

  “Do you think there are any more stops on Knight’s bribery tour?” Tristan asks.

  Landon moves to a desk in the room and begins tapping on the keys of his computer. “Next stop is Paris. Actually, he’s due to land in the morning.”

  Paris.

  I look to Tristan.

  “I guess Knight and Gillian Mirchoff are about to have company,” he says.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tristan

  “Has Simon reached out to you?”

  “Nothing yet. Why?” The connection isn’t great, but Mateus’s voice through the phone is a welcome sound.

  “We think the Company might be meeting in Paris in the next day or two. Maybe not everyone, but a few key players at least. Kristopher Boswell’s daughter and their money guy, Davis Knight. Not sure who else.”

  “I’ll co
ntact Simon for an update. I can be there in a few hours if he extends the invitation,” he says.

  I hesitate. If Mateus is in Europe already, he’s the perfect choice to collect intel and clue us in to their next move. He’s a member of the Company now, after all, though I suspect he hasn’t been fully introduced to all they do. I still don’t relish the idea of involving him further, but knowing it’s an option is the reason I called.

  “Isabel and I are going to catch a flight tonight, but it’s a matter of timing. They’re a day ahead of us.”

  “Keep the flight, and I’ll make the call. It’s time they heard from me anyway. We can convene after.”

  I sense Mateus’s determination hasn’t waned since we parted ways in Miami. “Knight is staying at La Réserve. We’ve booked a place nearby.”

  “Perfect. Let me know when you get into town.”

  “Will do.”

  I hang up and join Isabel in the living room. She’s in her usual perch in the window seat. She pulls her knees up to make room for me to sit beside her.

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s going to try to get a meeting with them. He’s already close,” I say.

  She rests her temple against the glass and looks out wistfully.

  “What are you looking at over here all the time?”

  She shrugs. “I guess I’ve taken an odd fascination with watching strangers live in the world I used to know.”

  I take her hand in mine. The physical connection does little to ease the guilt weaving itself into these barriers around us. Isabel’s life will never be the same. She’ll never experience the world the way she did when things were simpler. I’m not the only one to blame, but I was the one who introduced her to all this darkness.

  “We’re getting close,” I say, hoping to sound reassuring.

  It’s not necessarily the truth, but maybe she needs the comfort of a little lie.

  “Are we?”