Page 93 of Caught in the Axe
I closed the distance between us, my heart racing. “You make me want to stand still and savor every second. I want to take road trips with you, watch old movies and hike to hidden waterfalls.” I blew out a breath and gripped the back of my neck, bolstering my courage. “You asked why I’ve never been married.”
Her eyes widened as she surveyed me. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and the air escaped her in harsh breaths. Good. She was feeling it too. The magnetic pull, the strength of this connection.
“This is why. Because no one has ever made me look atthe world differently until now. No one I’ve ever met has altered my perception the way you have.”
I ran my knuckles along her jaw and tipped her chin up. Then I lowered my head and pressed my lips to hers.
I could stay here forever with her. Fuck work, fuck the business. Fuck the world’s expectations.
This feeling, right here, was all I wanted.
Chapter 32
Owen
“What am I going to do with you?” I nuzzled her neck and gently nipped at her soft skin.
She arched up into me, pushing her breasts into my chest. She’d come in to show me a pattern of deposits from Deimos Industries, but her words were lost on me. Because she was wearing a tank top.
“Focus,” she snapped. “I think I’ve worked something out.”
I nipped her earlobe and tried to force my brain to function.
She handed me a spreadsheet. “I isolated all the transactions. For Deimos and some of the other unknown vendors. And they follow a weird pattern.”
She pointed to the lines highlighted in yellow. “Those deposits occurred every twenty-nine or thirty days. And these withdrawals followed a similar pattern, occurring fourteen or fifteen days after the deposit.”
“Okay…” I wasn’t totally following, but in my defense: tank top.
“And there were twelve of these cycles each year, except for every two and a half years, when there were thirteen.”
I looked at her, still not clear.
“The lunar cycle,” she said, a self-satisfied grin on her face. “Each of these massive payments occurred on a full moon, dating back for at least seven years. I don’t have access to the records before then, but I’d bet on it.”
“And when did they stop?”
“There was a full moon six days after your dad was arrested. No payment.”
Shit. Something was related, but what?
“And I did some more digging. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. Deimos is one of the moons of Mars. These couldn’t have been legitimate business expenses, because they followed no discernible business need or pattern. Instead, they paid out on the full moon. Even those on weekends, when no other payments were made.”
“Someone thinks they’re clever.”
“Yup. And while we don’t yet know what these transactions were for, it’s starting to look a lot like money laundering.”
I pushed my hands into my hair. “Fuck.”
“We have no hard evidence. It’s not like I can go to the feds and talk about the damn full moons. They’d laugh me out of their offices. But at least we know these weren’t legit, that the books weren’t accurate. Now we can at least account for it and make accurate projections.”
She was right. Any information that helped to discernlegal versus illegal conduct could only help us in a sale, but fuck if I wanted to get mixed up in this.
“I’ll talk to Gus,” I said, pulling her close. “You’re fucking brilliant.”
She arched back against me, and I thanked the wonky HVAC system as I grasped her waist, deposited her on my desk, and kissed the hell out of her. God, I would never tire of this. Her lips were intoxicating. Even though we’d snuggled for so long after the alarm had gone off this morning, she was almost late for her shift at the diner, I needed more.
She threw her arms around my neck and slid her knees farther apart.
