Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. We’ll talk more when you get back home. You staying radio silent till then?”

  “Yep. Make sure Lacy stays in the office till we’re home. I want her to go over my phone.”

  “Don’t worry, after her little adventure out to the cabin to help Richard this last spring, I’m keeping her close on this one. Strictly, of course, out of my own personal interest in self-preservation.”

  “Good idea. Gen’ll have us both neutered if anything happens to that girl.”

  “Anything else?”

  Tons. But nothing I could talk about over the phone.

  “Not yet. See you when I see you.”

  “As you were, then.”

  We both hung up.

  I leaned back in the chair, my elbows propped on the armrests like Peter did sometimes. As I sat there, waiting for the meeting to be over, I began to consider Ashley. I didn’t think she had anything to do with this. Even though she’d fibbed a little in the beginning, she’d been honest the rest of the way through. And now, as I thought about her, I found myself thinking about more than just the case.

  I started to think about her. Her laugh. Her smile. Her new-found confidence. And not just confidence in her good looks, but in her actions as well.

  No, I couldn’t get entangled in thoughts like this about a client. I needed to push these little musings from my mind.

  The way she’d worked with non-profits in the past.

  Stop it, Frank.

  The way she smelled in the forest as we ran from her would-be kidnappers. The way her body had felt pressed against mine, how she’d felt beneath my hands as I carried her into the house.

  I shook my head. No, I needed to keep my distance. This couldn’t happen, not with her. All the other times I’d become entangled with a woman like this, something bad happened. Look at South America. I let my guard down there because I was more focused on the client, and not the job.

  A knock at the door jolted me back to reality. “Frank?” Simon asked. “You finished?”

  “Yep. Reckon I am.”

  The doorknob clicked and Simon stepped inside and shut the door carefully behind him. “Good. Figured we could talk in private while our clients finish up their sit-down.”

  Chapter Nineteen – Ashley

  My stepmother, Elizabeth Maxwell, grabbed both my hands before I had a chance to recoil in disgust. “Ashley, honey, I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  Dark circles hung beneath her eyes, a flaw that her judiciously applied makeup did little to cover up. She was, as always, impeccably dressed, making me blush again in shame despite my assertion that I wouldn’t care what my mystery person thought.

  But now, when I’d finally discovered who it was, that had apparently gone out the window.

  “Hello, Ms. Maxwell,” a woman said in a cold voice on the other side of my stepmother. Barbara Hacks. There she sat, her auburn hair pulled back in a severe bun, her thick-rimmed glasses perched on her nose just like a stern librarian that just caught you whispering in the reference section. Ever since I’d been a child, she’d had that hairstyle. Now, even in her middle age, she’d kept it. “I see you’re alive. Good.”

  I shook my hands free of Elizabeth’s grasp and stepped back from her, speechless for a moment as I put a hand on the table for stability. Despite my efforts, though, the world began to spin. These were not the people I’d expected to see. Where was my father?

  “Here, honey,” the bimbo said as she pulled a chair out for me, “have a seat. You’re going to need one.”

  What was going on? Had something happened to Father? Where was he? I shakily took the offered seat. “What?” I asked after a moment. “What are you two doing here? What’s going on? And where’s Father? Why isn’t he here?”

  Elizabeth took a seat next to me, as my father’s assistant glared at us both. “Honey, there’s a problem. Your father has gone missing, and we think the men who attacked you earlier may be behind it.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, raggedly exhaled, and nodded slowly. “Okay. Father’s missing. For how long?”

  Elizabeth winced, but didn’t say anything.

  “How long?” I repeated, dread growing in the pit of my stomach.

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two fucking weeks?” I yelled. “And you didn’t bother to call me? Text me? Send a fucking tweet?”

  “Ms. Maxwell,” Barbara said, getting up from her spot near the head of the table and circling around to sit across from me, “you must understand. There are other things in motion.”

  “What other things?” I snapped at her. I turned to Elizabeth. “What other things?”

  “News got out amongst some of the investors,” she said, pausing to lick her lips, “that the FBI and SEC have been investigating M Three Investments for the last month.”

  “What?” I hissed.

  “They’ve been pulling their money in droves,” Barbara said. “Just when we realized how much trouble the fund was in, Mr. Maxwell disappeared.”

  “He disappeared? No one can just disappear! It’s the twenty-first fucking century!”

  Elizabeth cringed, but Barbara just kept her steely eyes on me.

  “We know he was headed west, and we believed his final destination would be Enchanted Rock and his cabin there. Apparently, whoever is looking for him believed the same as we did.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen him!” I yelled at Barbara. “How did you two lose him?”

  “He’s a grown man, honey,” Elizabeth said. “He’s not a child.”

  “Don’t,” I replied without looking at my stepmother. “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “Stop fucking calling me ‘honey.’ My mother called me that, and you’re no Tessa Maxwell.”

  The chair shifted as the bimbo rocked back in her seat, but I refused to look at her.

  “Now, why are the FBI and the SEC looking into the firm? Why are you being investigated?”

  “We,” Barbara corrected with a sneer. “You have as much on the line as everyone else. Unless, of course, you think your monthly allowance appears out of thin air.”

  Her words felt like a slap in the face. Now it was my turn to rock back in my seat. She was right, of course. My livelihood depended on M Three Investments as much as the other two women in this room. I nodded. “Ok, fine. Why? Why are we being investigated?” I asked, emphasizing the “we.”

  “They received a tip that leads them to believe it’s a Ponzi scheme.”

  A Ponzi scheme is a financial scam, where old investors get paid by new investors. It’s like a pyramid scheme, in a sense, that there’s no real value there from investments. My father had drilled them into my head, especially back during the Bernie Madoff scandal, about how awful they were. About how he’d never do anything like that, especially after Madoff got a century and a half in prison for defrauding his investors.

  “What?” I growled. “Please tell me my father was never that stupid!”

  “Oh, relax, it’s not a Ponzi. MTI is one of the oldest firms in the country. If it was a Ponzi, things would have collapsed decades ago.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “It’s just that the nature of our business, focusing on non-profits, is similar enough to the Madoff scandal that we’re under scrutiny.”

  I shook my head. “Why did he leave, then?” I asked.

  The women exchanged a look. Elizabeth nodded to Barbara.

  “What? What are you two doing? Tell me what the fucking is going on here.”

  My father’s assistant narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. I promise you, if it does, I’ll hunt you down myself, Ashley, so help me God.”

  I sat back in my seat. Barbara Hacks had never spoken to me like that before. If you’d told me she’d threatened anyone, period, I’d have called you a liar to your face. “Fine. Tell me.”

  She nodded and took a breath. Then she spoke. “We
believe your father was laundering money for criminal enterprises. Namely the Yucatecahs, a Mexican drug cartel, and a group of Russian mobsters.”

  Chapter Twenty - Frank

  “Damn, it’s good to see you doing well, buddy,” Simon said as he settled into the chair across the desk from me. “You living up here now or what?”

  “Yep. Right inside Enchanted Rock. Doing the business, working the cases. No two are the same. It’s a nice change of pace.”

  “At least it ain’t as damned hot as your last gig, right? Sao Paolo, man, that place never cooled down.”

  I laughed. “Guess not, man. Here, though, we got frozen in all this last winter.”

  Simon shifted in his seat, reached into his pocket, and produced a silver flask. “Everywhere’s got its downside, right? Remember that from growing up in Chicago.” He paused and took a nip of liquor. “Awful fucking wind coming off the lake. Probably half the reason I went down there, you know. Just to make sure I didn’t have to go back to that shit.”

  I eyed the flask in his hand. Some things never changed. Simon had always been a little looser with his rules while he was on the job. Truthfully, guess I had been too.

  He offered me the flask, and I waved it away. “I’m good.”

  “Suit yourself, buddy. This job always made me drink. So much damn waiting, just like the corps. Always had to keep my distractions around, you know, just to keep myself sane.”

  “Believe me, I ain’t judging.”

  He laughed. “Course you ain’t. I remember you and that little chippy, the one right before you left the job. What was her name, again?”

  That little chippy was the daughter of the family I was protecting. Twenty years old, and wilder than a mustang. One look from those dark eyes, and this poor boy, fresh faced out of the military, fell in absolute, undeniable lust. Hadn’t seen eyes like that since I don’t know when.

  “Meredith,” I croaked. “Her name was Meredith.”

  At first, we were just sneaking around the house. Nothing like a young, firm woman who knows what she wants pulling you into the laundry room, the pool house, or the guest bathroom. Our hands flying across each other’s clothes, my arms around her. Maybe they weren’t the best times of my life, or anything, but they were fun. Damn fun.

  Simon nodded. “Yeah. Raw deal on that one. Real raw. Always a sad day when the world loses a girl as pretty as that one.”

  I smiled tightly, nodded. That flask he’d just offered was starting to look pretty damn good.

  Meredith and I had been out on a date, sneaking one under her old man’s nose. We’d been together a little over a year, then, and I’d been on the job for maybe two. Her father, though, considered me part of the help, and never would’ve let it happen in the light of day, not in a million years. Besides, for Meredith, half the fun was doing exactly the opposite of what she knew was acceptable, especially when it came to her father’s rules. Even worse, he would’ve sent my ass packing if he found out. Losing a job for breaking the rules and fooling around with the client’s daughter? My career would’ve been over. And I would have lost Meredith, too.

  We’d slipped out to a nightclub one night. It was the last night I saw her alive. I went to get us some drinks from the bar, but when I came back, she was gone. I never should have taken my eyes off her. Never should have left with her in the first place, or been involved in that kind of a relationship with a client. Even if she was beautiful and wild—especially because she was beautiful and wild.

  Simon shook his head. “Crazy shit, man. Whatever happened with that? You took off right after they found her. Crazy about that wolf. Who would’ve thought a wolf would attack a man in a city in South America, of all places!”

  As he spoke, my eyes drifted down to the flask on the table and settled on its metal form as it shone in the neon office lights. I didn’t need it to wash the phantom taste of blood from my mouth, but it would help. Enraged, I’d slipped out of the nightclub, disappeared into an alley, and shifted into my wolf form. I’d tracked Meredith and her abductors through the streets of Sao Paulo and out to a favela, a slum. Their scent was red to me, redder than even my anger, as I hunted them and picked them from the millions that lived in abject poverty there.

  I fell on them, letting the beast inside me take over. Throats torn, bodies shredded. Gurgling screams filled my ears, screams of terror echoing off the walls of the alley. When the mist cleared from my eyes and the corpses surrounded me, I found Meredith. She was lying there, no longer among the living. I lapped at her cool cheek, whimpering, leaving a trail of bloody paw prints on her side.

  “And then you were gone, man, even without a goodbye. Figured you left the business.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah, came back after that. Hit me pretty hard losing a client like that.”

  “First one’s the hardest,” Simon said with a solemn nod. “Especially if you’re close.” He picked up the flask and offered it to me again.

  “Nah. I’m good.”

  He raised the flask. “To Meredith.” He tipped it back and took a hearty swig, his eyes staring into my soul as he swallowed it in one gulp. We sat there a moment longer without saying a word. He wasn’t just dredging up my past. He had something else to talk about.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “We just catching up in here, Simon?”

  He shook his head, but then shrugged. “Sorta. You ever think we got a raw deal with this gig, Frank? Like we’re protecting a bunch of bozos for no reason?”

  I laughed. “Trying to get me to sign up for your newsletter or something? Your commie chapter?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, if you had an opportunity to get it, to grab it with both hands…would you take it?”

  Uneasily, I settled in my chair. Just what in blazes was he getting at here?

  “I mean,” he started over, “if I had an opportunity for you, a way to get your hands on a big score, would you take it? Money that no one knew about? No one could track? Would you take your shot at the big time? Go for broke?”

  I turned my head slowly, not exactly sure what he was talking about. But whatever it was, it didn’t sound exactly legal or ethical. And it might put Ashley in danger. “Maybe? I mean, I like the work, but not that much, I guess.”

  “Who does, you know? I mean, you really wanna take a bullet for any of these assholes? They ain’t exactly President of the United States and we ain’t exactly the Secret Service, you know?”

  I nodded, even though Ashley’s face flashed into my mind like a lit up billboard on the Las Vegas strip. “I see your point.”

  He stuffed the flask away in his pocket and leaned forward, his eyes straight on mine. “I’m just saying, I think, given the opportunity, you’d come down on the right side of things.”

  “The right side?” I asked, smirking a little as I leaned forward. “What side is that?”

  “Ours. Yours and mine. Definitely not them rich bitches.”

  Chapter Twenty-one - Ashley

  “Mexican cartels? Russians?” I asked, shaking my head. “No way. I don’t fucking believe it,” I spat. “He’d never get involved in that kind of thing.”

  Barbara gave me a look, a look that said he had. That there was truth to the investigation.

  I groaned. “How could you let him do it, Barb? How could you?”

  “Let him? I can’t let him or make him do anything. You know how your father is. You know what kind of man he is, how headstrong he is.”

  “And now,” the bimbo added, “it’s finally gotten him into real trouble.”

  “What evidence is there?” I asked. “The FBI and SEC are looking into it, right? What do we know about it?”

  Barbara sighed. “Yes, unfortunately. When they started sniffing around, I began looking into it. He began taking the money from these different organizations back when Tessa was still alive. For years. He’d clean it up and spit it back out their shell companies. Either he was sloppy and didn�
��t know about it…”

  “But Father’s not sloppy. Anything but sloppy.”

  “No,” Barbara agreed. “No, he’s not.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Money has been exiting the funds but it’s not returning to clients. Embezzlement, Ashley.”

  “Father was stealing the client’s money?”

  She shook her head. “No, just the criminals’. It’s been leaving through checks to a series of bank accounts in the Caymans.”

  I face-palmed. She couldn’t be serious! The worst thing a stiffed client would do is report you to the cops. A stiffed client that’s also the leader of a criminal organization. “So that’s why they’re coming after us?”

  “They tried to get into the penthouse in Manhattan,” Elizabeth said. “And the house in the Hamptons.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I shook my head. “Why? Why was he doing this? Just for more money? How could we get any wealthier than we are now?”

  Barbara just shrugged. “To see if he could? The only one who knows for sure is your father.”

  “And Martin’s missing.”

  “Somewhere in Colorado, you think?”

  “Somewhere here, yes. With the passwords for those Cayman Island accounts.”

  “Fuck. How much? Do you know?”

  “Upwards,” Barbara said carefully, “of thirty-five million.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Holy shit.”

  “Yes. That’s an understandable reaction, Ms. Maxwell.”

  I bit my lip and brushed my hair back from my face as I gave them both a careful look. “Why are you two telling me this? Am I in danger?”

  Barbara snorted. “Well, of course. Look at what’s already happened. Clearly, they think they can get to your father through you. Or perhaps that there’s an off chance you might know something.”

  “What can I do?” I asked. “The sooner we get this over with and get him into FBI custody, the sooner he’s safe, right?”