Rascal (Edgewater Agency Book 2)

by Kyanna Skye

  When she returned to her hotel room she collapsed directly onto her bed, exhaustion feeling as though it had played a larger part in her day. She sighed deeply and the darkness of the growing night around her enveloped her like a wave upon the sand. She felt lost, but also elated at the same time. It was an odd feeling, and she knew its cause.

  On one hand, she was getting nowhere with her case and she knew that she was nowhere near to discovering where the money had gone to. But on the other hand, she felt like she was making progress with Mr. Rizzuto… with Dominic… on a level that felt, well... more personal than that which was normally shared between a lawyer and a client. She felt attached, in a strange way, to Dominic.

  She smiled at that. Even just thinking his name, especially after today, she felt oddly closer to him. They had shared something today and really shared it. She’d given him details of her life, albeit only slightly significant ones and he’d done likewise for her. But it had seemed as though what he’d shared had been infinitely more profound.

  After today she realized that she had learned something about the man, not what he’d been put in prison for or what he’d altogether done to her employers. And somehow, that seemed like the proverbial quantum leap compared to the lack of progress she had been making lately. It seemed the most important thing that she had taken from today’s session. It seemed that it was the most important thing, in fact.

  Strange as it was, there was something… appealing… in listening to the way Dominic talked of his father today. There had been times when, as a child, her own father had sat her on his knees and told her about her other relatives. She’d heard stories about a great-grandfather that had worked on the Western Pacific Railroad… a grandfather that had worked in prisons during the Great Depression… on and on like that. She remembered the stories and remembered feeling entranced by them.

  Dominic’s story had been no less gripping. Brief as it was, she felt taken in by his words. Even now she remembered the subtle things about today’s conversation. The way his face lit up when he mentioned going on outings with his father… how he would rush into his father’s arms when he came home… how he seemed grief-stricken even now that his father had passed on. There was something tender in that.

  Tender and appealing, she thought with a girlish smile.

  She rolled onto her back and allowed a momentary surge of raw instincts to overcome her. She thought of Dominic as she had seen him before during their other talks. The way his clothes seemed to hug every contour of a perfectly sculpted body… the way his hair, wet and thick, had framed his face when he climbed out of the pool… and that smile that he constantly wore that wouldn’t have melted ice, it was so cool.

  She felt a stirring of lust inside of her and that brought her back to her senses. The thought struck her like the front-end of a semi-truck: sex with Dominic? Yes, there was a certain appeal in that. But caution counseled that it would come with repercussions that were wholly not worth it. She would be facing disbarment from any kind of legal practice, for one. Years’ worth of her parent’s money and time training her to do what she was currently doing would be lost for another. Then, of course, there was the fact that it was nothing short of a breach of principals that she could ill afford.

  A lawyer did, of course, have to remain objective in the work that they did. There was no room for personal feelings whatever the circumstances of the case were. She knew that she had to focus on her objective here and that her feelings for Dominic – Mr. Rizzuto – had to remain immaterial. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by him.

  She froze at that thought.

  Distracted… magic… Mr. Rizzuto likes magic tricks!

  She sat up with the speed of a ballistic missile being shot off as the profoundness of her realization penetrated her mind. All at once, a billion thoughts came crashing down on her and she couldn’t make heads or tails of them, they were so many. But she latched on to the simplicity of what she had just thought like a lifeline and focused all of her efforts on that. Combined with what she now knew about Mr. Rizzuto’s character suddenly made a strange sense that permeated the mystery that had been surrounding him until now.

  And none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t stuck to my methods! She allowed herself a moment of triumph in thinking that.

  She bounded from her bed for her laptop with the speed of a bullet. She switched it on and waited impatiently for the machine to boot up as her thoughts began to align themselves. How could I be so stupid? How could I have missed it? It’s so damn simple.

  Once her laptop was ready she hastily opened up the Hahn’s Peak detention roster. As an attorney with a client inside she was privy to certain details of her client’s internment. Quickly she drew up Mr. Rizzuto’s finances and kicked herself in the head mentally for not having realized it sooner. It was so damn obvious a fact that it was literally as plain as the nose on her face… and she hadn’t noticed it.

  It hit her like a boxing glove filled with cement. Hahn’s Peak was a white collar prison. And in white collar prisons, unlike regular correctional facilities, prisoners had to pay for the treatment that they got. Private rooms, the clothes that they wore, the luxuries that they enjoyed, the TV channels that their cells came with, the sauna… the pool… the archery range… the lounge… the food… all of it had to be paid for with money that the inmates alone could provide. There was no tax-payer money involved in such institutions.

  And the money that he uses has to come from somewhere! Like an account holding ten million dollars that he claimed to know nothing about, perhaps?

  Quickly she began looking at Mr. Rizzuto’s finances all the way back to the day he had arrived. The average cost of living inside Hahn’s Peak for him was in the neighborhood of $300 daily; average for someone with millions of dollars in store somewhere. And after listening to him today, she was able to judge for certain that he didn’t come from a moneyed family if he and his father made trips to a joke shop where a highlight was fake dog turds. No, no, no… the money that paid for his cushy life here in the prison had to come from somewhere else.

  And I bet I know where, she thought, her fingers dancing furiously across the keyboard to check if her theory was correct. She looked at all of the transactions numbers that appeared in the prison’s daily ledger for Mr. Rizzuto. To a one, they were a match. The money that paid for his stay in prison was all coming from the same place.

  I’ve got you now, she thought happily as she began a back trace, but still the hurt in her mind as to how she could have overlooked this very simple fact burned at her. Hell, this was something that the forensic accountants at Lester & Desoto should have missed. But somehow they’d all missed it. And in the back of her mind, it all made sense. But even if her hunch was right then the joke would still be on her… as well as Mr. Rizzuto.

  Somehow, the latter more than the prior worried her.

  After a day like today, she realized that she was growing to like him. He was kind, thoughtful, and obviously, he had a sharp mind and a good heart to him. All of which were things that she had thought a good man should have. But if she was right about this whole thing, then she would be ruining him.

  The thought dug at her like a knife.

  She put the thoughts aside as her back trace completed and her laptop dug up an account number for her. Got it! I found his money! I found his goddamn money! The thought was one of triumph, but again there was that small pain of ruining Mr. Rizzuto if she divulged what she knew.

  She was stymied by that for only a moment. This was a matter that needed to be handled delicately. She had to be sure of her evidence. There was no room for error. She had to double-check what she knew before proceeding. It would only be embarrassing if she went to her employers with what she knew and it all turned out to be a false trail.

  Just another magic trick, she thought.

  She calmed herself and quickly gathered up her cell phone. She dialed a number that she had used a dozen times already
and waited for the other end to pick up. After only a few rings she got her answer.

  “Lester & Desoto Law Firm, finances office,” said a voice on the other end that she imagined as belonging to some pimply-faced kid.

  “Hi, this is Jamie Lombardo on special assignment. I need some help with a back trace on an account number. It’s an account being used to finance the stay of a prisoner at Hahn’s Peak Correctional Facility in Colorado. I just need to know whose name is on the account and where it’s coming from if you can tell me.”

  “Sure thing, just give me the number and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

  She fed the numbers to the accountant on the other end and waited. Only a few seconds passed before the voice on other end responded, “Huh… that’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “Well, I’m looking at the transaction history here… you say that this account is financing an inmate’s stay at Hahn’s Peak Correctional?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it’s weird for sure then because according to my data here, Lester & Desoto is footing the bill for his stay.”

  She was silent for a moment before finding the words in her mind to make sure that she had heard the voice on the other end correctly. “You’re saying that our law firm is paying for this man’s stay in prison?”

  “It sure looks that way. But it’s got to be a mistake, right?”

  She was quiet a moment before she replied, “Yeah… mistake.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t found the money yet?” asked Mr. Desoto over the phone. “I thought you said that you were making progress on this case?”

  The words stung at her with the viscosity of molten metal. She cringed her eyes tightly as she listened to the venom in Mr. Desoto’s words, hearing the terseness in them as though she was standing in the room with him. “I thought I was too, Mr. Desoto… but something tells me that I could be making a very large mistake with what he’s told me. I need to be certain that I haven’t been led down a false trail.”

  There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone and she could almost see the short and portly man grinding his lips together in frustration with her. She could hear him take a deep and patient breath before he spoke next. “Ms. Lombardo… you are aware that Mr. Rizzuto is due to be released in a few days, are you not?”

  She tried to remain calm. How could she be unaware of it, being as close as she was to this case? “Yes, sir, I am.”

  There was another brief silence, this one filled with a kind of malice that was she was thankful she wasn’t present to witness firsthand. “You’re a very smart woman, Ms. Lombardo. I’m certain that you’ve ascertained why you’re there and what it is that we want you to do, so I’ll not beat around the bush any longer because time is a factor. We chose you for this task because we believed that you could deliver. If Mr. Rizzuto doesn’t divulge the location of the money that he swindled from us before he is released from prison… we’ll lose it forever. And that would not be good. Not for you, or for your future with this – or any other – firm. Is that clear?”

  She swallowed the knot that had tied itself in her throat, but not before noting that he hadn’t mentioned how it would hurt the firm either. “Yes, sir.”

  The line went dead.

  Jamie hung up her cell and reclined against the headrest of her car. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tightened her grip until she could hear the faux the leather groaning in protest under her fingers. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” she muttered, squeezing the wheel.

  Her moment of anger ebbed and she released the steering wheel from its unnecessary assault. She unbuckled herself and left her car and entered back into the prison that she had become so familiar with.

  She waited in the receiving area with nervous anticipation, uncertain of what it was that she was going to do or what she wanted to say. All she knew was that she had figured out something that she knew would either make or break the firm she worked for, not to mention her own career.

  Oh? Why yes, I did have a hand in the Rizzuto case. Strange one, wasn’t it? Yes, the man had supposedly embezzled millions from the firm and he used it to pay for his own prison sentence. How was that for irony? He worked for them, swindled them, and got them to pay for his time inside. I still laugh about it when I’m with friends.

  Yes, she could see how that would certainly appear funny to someone who had an ax to grind with Lester & Desoto. But she could also see the other side of that coin, as to how it could affect her on a personal and professional level.

  Jamie Lombardo? Oh, yeah… she was the one that uncovered that whole Rizzuto business, wasn’t she? Buried her own firm because she wanted to prove that what she thought was right? Yeah, I remember her… nobody wanted to hire her after that. Everyone was afraid that she’d put them out of business. We all know she’s good at that.

  In a strange way, Jamie felt like Lady Justice, blindly holding the scales in one hand and a sword in the other. She had always found that figurehead curious as a child, being uncertain of its meaning. But now, she felt she understood it in a way she never had. The scales would tell her what was right from what was wrong, but the sword held more appeal as she felt she could more easily have thrown herself upon that blade rather than endure what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion.

  She could ruin Dominic Rizzuto, which would get him sent to a whole new prison and for a new sentence. In doing so, she knew he wouldn’t survive. He wasn’t an evil man, not from what she had gathered, but she did know that he wasn’t physically given to violence. An ordinary prison, where inmates fought and killed each other left and right would certainly be the death of him.

  Or, she could remain silent, ruin her reputation and be cast out as one that no one would hire in the future. Sure, that would cause the least amount of trouble for everyone, although the thought of seeing the disappointment on her father’s face stretched deeply into her imagination.

  But there was also the third option. She could break her silence and ruin the firm she worked for. By disclosing that their money hadn’t really been stolen, she would prove herself a success, yes, that was true. But oh, shit, wouldn’t Lester & Desoto become the laughing stock of the legal world? People with millions – even billions – invested in the firm would lose confidence in them and they’d never take on another client again. The firm that had jailed a man who stole millions, but those millions weren’t really gone, they were just moved to another account somewhere within the company and they never even suspected it.

  Either way felt like she was losing something.

  “Shit,” she muttered a final time before the entry doors opened and Mr. Rizzuto entered.

  “Ah, Jamie,” he said with a winning smile. His eyes took in the sight of her, no doubt noting that she was dressed rather informally today being clad only in a pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt. “I hope you had a relaxing evening? You seemed so exhausted when you left yesterday.”

  She bit her lip nervously. The exhaustion that she had felt yesterday as she’d left was nothing compared to the fatigue she felt now, even being freshly rested. “Uh… not really, no… it’s kind of hard to explain.”

  His expression changed, becoming concerned. “Is there something wrong?”

  She rolled her eyes contemplatively. “Why don’t we speak outside?” She didn’t know what she was going to say and she felt like she was only seconds away from doing what her conscience compelled her to do, but she knew that privacy was definitely going to be a part of the recipe.

  He gestured for her to leave the receiving room and they entered into the familiar open grounds on which they had already spent many a day walking, talking, and generally getting to know one another. The day was still warm but Jamie felt herself sweating for reasons that were entirely unrelated to the weather.

  “Do you have some news regarding these people you represent who wish to help me?” Mr. Rizzuto ven
tured.

  “Not exactly,” she replied, feeling a cramping feeling in her gut that was begging her not to relinquish the truth. “I’m afraid that our business today has to be a bit more… forthright.”

  “Forthright?” he asked, arching a curious eyebrow.

  “Yes,” she said, feeling her stomach roiling as though something was alive inside of her and begging to get out. She paused in their walk, standing in a wide open space of the prison yard. A quick look around told her that she and he were as alone out here as they were going to get. Save for a few prison guards and one or two other prisoners that were well out of earshot, they at least had this portion of the grounds to themselves.

  Standing there, she recalled something that her father had once told her. “Sometimes, sweetheart, you have to choose your spot and stand on it. You can’t let anyone else push you off of it. You pick the time, you pick the place, and you draw that line in the sand and say, ‘mine’. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

  The memory of the words and the voice that had given them rang in her ears, lending her strength. This is my spot, she thought resolutely.

  “Mr. Rizzuto… I need to be honest with you now… completely. I work for the firm that you used to work for and I’m here to find out about the money that you swindled from them. Specifically, I need to know about the money you stole and where it went,” she said, feeling an iceberg plummet into her belly, squishing the gyrating creature in her belly but giving birth to newer ones all at once.

  Mr. Rizzuto’s eyes widened in what she knew could only be a bonafide shock. She wouldn’t have expected less from dropping an A-bomb on him. His mouth was slightly agape and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked at a loss for words. Still, he managed to maintain his composure and his lips fluttered looking for a response.