Page 86 of Out of the Shadows

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Holy shit, my eyes are crossing,” Gavin grumbled, scrubbing his hands over his face. After a relaxing evening with Bean getting slaughtered atFortnight, they’d spent the rest of the night in her bed, relaxing in a completely different, more satiating way. Like clockwork, they were both up early and back at the office by seven. He had to be honest though, the rinse-and-repeat was a lot more enjoyable with her by his side.

“No kidding,” Xander said, leaning back in his chair.

They’d been going over the McClintock Family Foundation’s bank transactions since they’d arrived at work, and it was now a quarter past noon. He and Xander were currently seated at Team Two’s workstation. With the team out of the office, he and Xander had figured they’d mix up their scenery from the large conference room to the main room. The view out the floor-to-ceiling windows was nice—gray and overcast with an occasional miraculous sunbreak—but it was still fucking tedious work.

Abbot cleared her throat as she walked by. “Imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would have been if I’d justprinted all that shit out for you guys like you’d wanted so you could do your old-school investigating.”

“Point to you, Abbot,” Gavin said, giving her a salute. “Thank you.”

The cyber team’s lead had balked when she’d received their request to print out two years’ worth of banking transactions for the McClintock Foundation. Bean had quickly thrown them under the bus, telling Abbot they wanted to go through the documents line by line with pens and highlighters, like an old-school investigation. Which, to be fair, was exactly what they’d wanted to do.

Abbot had flat-out refused. In under five minutes, she’d emailed Excel spreadsheets of all the foundation’s transactions to him, Alvarez, and Xander. She’d even included separate tabs with the transactions sorted by date, vendors, and transaction amounts, because she’d figured they would ask her how to do that shit anyway.

She hadn’t been wrong.

Paper pushing with contracts and agreements was one thing. Spreadsheets of mind-numbing data? Not his favorite.

They’d hooked up their laptops to Team Two’s oversized monitors, and Gavin had been looking into a few of the companies that the foundation had made large and multiple payments to—those that weren’t retail stores.

A throat clearing had him looking up. “Is Bean around?” Alvarez asked, approaching the station where he and Xander were working.

Gavin shook his head, a grin blooming on his face. “She went for a hike.”

Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. “Bean?”

He chuckled. “I know, right? Some program of hers was doing something. I don’t know exactly what, but it pissed her off. She needed a break.”

“Why aren’t you with her, seeing as the two of you are joined at the hip?”

He flipped off his friend.

“Oh, please, tough guy,” Xander muttered. “He was getting ready to go with B, but McClintock called. So the poor baby here had to let his lady go by herself.”

“Christ,” Gavin muttered, slouching down in his chair.

“Please, dude,” Xander scoffed. “You were full-on pouting when you took McClintock’s call.”

“Whatever.” Weak comeback? Absolutely. But nothing his friend had said was wrong. He’d much rather be out hiking with Bean than staring at a spreadsheet with these two. He glanced at Alvarez. “Anyway, why are you looking for Bean? What’s up?”

“Maybe nothing, but I was looking at some of the foundation’s charges for the charity gala, particularly for the catering and event planning. The charges totaled just over a hundred grand and seemed excessive, so I tried to find out more about the companies. But I couldn’t find anything. No websites, no Yelp reviews, no socials. Which is odd for companies that charge that much, right? I was hoping Bean could do her magic and see where these companies are based.”

That was odd. “Let me see if Tiny’s available.” Gavin grabbed his phone, and after the second ring, the other man picked up.

“Hey, Frazier. What’s up?”

“Bean’s out of the office for the next hour or so. Are you free to look up some stuff for us?”

“Of course. I can patch in to one of the Smartboards. What conference room are you guys working in?”

Gavin glanced at his and Xander’s monitors. “Uh...”Shit. “How about I get Abbot to set us up on this end and have her let you know where to connect.”

Tiny chuckled. “Sounds good. I’ll be on standby.”

“Thanks, man.” Gavin disconnected and called out, “Abbot. Can you set us up in the large conference room and get Tiny up on the Smartboard?”

She gave a brisk nod. “You got it, Frazier. Bring your laptops to the conference room and I’ll handle everything.”

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