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It was only a matter of a few minutes before he discovered an anomaly. Only what he’d found wasn’t what he’d thought he’d find. He couldn’t explain it, not right away, and he kept digging while Violetta continued her call.
He’d just discovered another piece of the puzzle when Violetta walked back into the room. Everyone looked at her expectantly. She tapped her phone against her thigh, her eyes fixed on some point across the room. Then, with a deep breath, she looked at him and spoke.
“I know why Bernie called Jeremy, and I have my suspicions about why Jeremy called Julian. If I’m right, then I know exactly why Jeremy was killed.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Talk to us,”Cyn said. Six pulled her gaze from Gavin and looked at her friends. She didn’t have all the answers, but at least she had one—one important one.
“We all believe that Jeremy was planning on bringing a lawsuit against Shanti Joy for their actions in Indonesia. And we believe he was killed to stop him from doing that. But one of the questions I’ve had since all this started was how Shanti Joy—or whoever hired those two men to kill Jeremy—even knew about the suit. It wouldn’t be something Jeremy would have talked about. Hell, his own sister didn’t know what he was doing.”
“What changed that?” Gavin asked.
She glanced down at him, then walked to the couch. Sinking into the comforting upholstery, she told them. “It wasn’t Bernie who called Jeremy. Not really. When Jeremy managed to get Abyasa, Candra, and Shinta out of the country, he gave Abyasa’s mother Bernie’s name. He couldn’t leave a phone with her since she didn’t have consistent enough electricity to keep it charged. Nor, for that matter, did he want to leave anything that might tie back to him and get Abyasa’s mother in trouble. But he told her that if she needed to reach him or her daughter, to go through Bernie.”
“But isn’t Bernie based in Jakarta at the main embassy?” Devil asked.
Six nodded. “He is, but he travels around to the other islands, and at least once a month, he visits the consulate on the island where the plantation is.”
“What drove Abyasa’s mother to reach out to him?” Gavin asked.
“An auction,” Six said, her stomach roiling as she spoke. “And yes, it’s as bad as you think it is. She’d heard a rumor that DePalma was planning to auction off two young women and a young man.”
Six closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the couch as her friends filled her office with all sorts of inventive swear words in several different languages. When they quieted down, she continued. “Jeremy received the call early that morning and was then stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
“Say nothing to tip Shanti Joy off, and the auction moves ahead,” Gavin said.
“Or say something to Shanti Joy in the hopes of scaring them enough to stop it, but tip his hand in the process,” Nora finished, her voice tinged with pain for the decision Jeremy had had to make. A decision that had ultimately cost him his life, although it might have saved three others.
Silence fell across the room, then Cyn spoke. “We all know what choice Jeremy made,” she said. “Do we know if it stopped the auction?”
Six opened her eyes and drew strength from the presence of her friends and, oddly, Gavin. “Bernie went out to the plantation to check on things and dropped a few hints that he’d heard rumors about their operations and now had eyes on them. There’s no guarantee it didn’t, or won’t, go forward, but he said he has people looking into it.”
The room fell into a deep silence. Six had no idea what everyone else was thinking, but her thoughts flitted between the agonizing decision Jeremy had been forced to make, and the strength of the woman who tracked Bernie down because she didn’t want what had happened to her daughter to happen to any more young people.
“I found an oddity in Julian Newcross’s finances that I can’t explain,” Gavin said, interrupting a moment that was close to turning maudlin. Six rolled her head to look at him and he continued. “The day Jeremy was murdered, Juliandepositeda total of $1,200,000, spread across three of his managed accounts. In fact, the funds were deposited about two hours after Jeremy was killed.”
Six frowned. “Was Julian paid to kill Jeremy? If he was, I guess he could have hired those two men to do it for him.”
Gavin shook his head. “No, I don’t think he had anything to do with Jeremy’s death. Not directly. A few days before the deposits, he withdrew the money from those same accounts.”
Six sat up, and her friends straightened in their seats as well. “So he deposited the same money he’d withdrawn from his own accounts a few days earlier?” she clarified.
Gavin gave a sharp nod. “That’s what it looks like.”
“But why would he do that?” Cyn asked.
“And what does that have to do with Jeremy?” Nora asked.
Gavin met Six’s gaze, and in his eyes, she could read the conclusion he’d come to. “Hewasbeing blackmailed,” Six said.
“And then something happened to change his mind about paying out,” Gavin finished.
“Wait, what?” Cyn said, rising from her seat and coming around the desk. Leaning against it, she crossed her arms and demanded more intel. “I know we’ve established that DePalma has a reason to blackmail, but why would you think Newcross was his victim if there wasn’t any payout?”
“And more to the point, if Newcross was his victim, why would he have changed his mind? He had a lot to lose,” Devil chimed in.
Six looked to Gavin, who gestured for her to explain. She nodded and turned to her friends. “He did have a lot to lose, but what if he was going to lose it anyway?” She paused, organizing her thoughts, then continued. “What if he withdrew the money, intending to pay. But then Jeremy called and, rather than reach Julia, he spoke to Julian and toldhimabout the lawsuit he was planning to file. Maybe even mentioned the videos.”
