At Wolf Ranch (14 page)

“First, Travis isn’t likely to watch the news.” She nodded, agreeing to his assessment of Travis and his TV-watching priorities. His preference probably leaned more to pay-per-view porn. Lord knows, the only person he’d get lucky with was himself. “Second, I’m telling you, there isn’t anything in that stuff that pertains to the cattle or the paintings. Unless you found something in those papers, there’s nothing to find.”

“There’s something. There has to be. This is the last place she came. She spent two days here. Where did she go? Who did she see? What did she find? That’s what I came here to investigate and now I’ll never have the chance. He wins.”

“Wait. Stop. His plan is unraveling. If you come forward and tell the police he killed your sister, they’ll have to investigate, and he won’t be able to stage a drug overdose for you and make it look convincing.”

“I don’t have any proof. It’s his word against mine. He’s got a detective who can make the evidence lab falsify reports on his side. How many other officials are in his pocket who can cover this up and make it look like I murdered my sister?”

“Then we stick to the plan. Find the evidence and bring it to the authorities. There has to be something you missed. You knew your sister better than anyone. You share the same DNA. You know how she thinks. How did she find out about your uncle and what he did? What would she do to find the proof? Where would she start?”

“Not here. Not at the ranch. Something prompted her to come here?”

“Okay, so what brought her here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think. Something he said to her. Something he did at your house, or at the company that piqued her interest. What changed about her over the last few days you saw her?”

“Nothing. She worked as usual. Then she disappeared for three days. I thought maybe she found someone special and ran off for a lovers’ weekend.”

“Wouldn’t she tell you about that?”

“We shared everything, but I thought maybe she’d fallen for a guy and wanted to keep it private until she knew for sure. I thought she wanted to keep it for herself for a little while.”

“Because you shared everything and something like that she’d want to hold on to because it’s hers,” he guessed.

“Yes. We only know what it’s like to be identical twins and have our experiences and lives so intertwined that nothing is ever really just ours. I thought she’d found something special. Someone that was hers to share her life outside of sharing mine.” Choked up, a tear rolled down her cheek, followed by a dozen more. “She’ll never fall in love, get married, and have a family of her own. I’ll never have nieces and nephews to spoil. We were supposed to grow old together. I don’t know how to live without my other half. I turn to tell her something ten times a day and she isn’t there.” Ella started to cry and fell into his arms when he reached for her. Her hands clutched his shirt and she buried her face in his chest. “I’m all alone, and I don’t know how to be just me when it was always us.”

Every heart-wrenching word tore at his heart. The depth of her sadness made him ache to his bones. He didn’t know what to do, or what to say. Nothing would bring her sister back, or make her feel better.

She exploded out of his arms and paced away and turned to face him. “I was too late. I should have run faster. Gotten there sooner. I left her there. I didn’t do anything!”

“You lived. And that’s okay, Ella. It’s what she wanted.”

“I was right there. I should have saved her.”

“How? Your uncle wants you both dead. What were you going to do, walk in there so he could kill both of you and make it look like a murder-suicide? Stop beating yourself up and thinking you deserved to die in her place. You knew each other better than anyone. She knew you’d finish this, so think like her and tell me, what would Lela do if she discovered something about your uncle?” He hadn’t meant to yell at her, but she needed to focus on what she could do, not what she didn’t do and couldn’t have prevented in the first place.

Ella sucked in a ragged breath and focused on him. She wiped her wet eyes with the backs of her hands. “She is . . . was . . . meticulous about her schoolwork and job. She took notes. She kept her files and homework organized. She researched everything like crazy. If she found something that didn’t fit, she’d investigate and figure out how it did, or why it was out of place.”

“So she probably found something at the company and it led her here.”

“That’s the only thing that makes sense, but I don’t know what she found.” Ella stared off in the distance, her gaze on the window and the snow-covered fields outside. “She discovered the cattle. That’s the only thing at the company that ties to the ranch. But it’s not enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t account for how angry she was about what my uncle did. So he kept the money earned from the cattle. That’s small compared to what the company makes on the whole.”

“What if the cattle is the tip of the iceberg? The cattle led her to investigate further and she found something else.”

“Possibly. Yes. It had to be something more to make her that outraged and to tie in to the fact that Uncle Phillip admitted he and the detective had covered up a hell of a lot more.”

“So Lela discovered the cattle scam and started going back in the company records to see how far back your uncle’s deceit went. What else did he do?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

Chapter 15

E
lla had spent some quality time in the IT department at the company and became fast friends with a very interesting employee, who had a talent for coding. The company wasted Chris’s talent on menial tasks. She and Lela promoted him. Their systems had never been more secure and their databases had not been used more productively in years. They’d reap the benefits for years to come with targeted marketing campaigns and improved customer service.

Right now, Ella needed Chris’s skill set for an entirely different reason.

She used the prepaid cell phone Gabe picked up in town that morning when the snow had let up for a bit. She texted a message to the private number Chris used for family and friends to contact him when they crashed their computers, needed to install a new program, and just messed up something and couldn’t figure it out. Chris cursed people for clicking on every emailed link, unknowingly opening themselves up to spyware and viruses. He joked that even his mother contacted him more for technical support to get her back on her beloved cooking websites than just to say hi and catch up.

Ella: I need your help. Lela needs your help.

Chris: What is going on? No way you killed Lela.

Ella: No. Someone just as close to her did. Help me prove it.

Ella held her breath, waiting the thirty seconds it took Chris to make his decision. Did he believe her?

Chris: What do you need?

Ella: UNTRACEABLE access to the Wolf Enterprises database systems.

Ella bit her thumbnail. Gabe’s hand settled over hers and made her stop. The seconds ticked by, turning into minutes with no message.

“Why doesn’t he answer already?” Gabe asked.

“I just asked him to commit what is probably a felony.”

“It’s your company. Your data.”

“If I’m convicted of my sister’s murder and he helps me, he could be in a world of trouble.”

Chris: Access the system using the link I’m sending you. Log in under the admin account I showed you, using the PW I gave you.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Gabe asked.

“Yes.” She stared up at Gabe, unable to hide her excitement. Finally, a chance to do something to avenge her sister.

Ella: Thank you, Chris.

Chris: I’m sorry about Lela. I hope you find what you need.

Her phone beeped again with the URL. She typed it into Gabe’s laptop. “I’m in.”

“Start with the cattle business. See where that leads you,” Gabe suggested.

“I’ll do that right after I check my sister’s emails, files, and calendar to see if she left any more clues.”

It took Ella twenty minutes to discover the only thing out of place in her sister’s organized electronic world.

Friday—2:30 PM—Mechanic—27 Elk Rd., Crystal Creek, Montana.

No name. Her fingers flew across the keyboard for another ten minutes, digging for anything she could find on the address. Frustrated, she slammed her hands on the table, startling Gabe watching TV on the couch.

“What’s wrong?”

“I found an appointment for Friday with an address here in Crystal Creek.”

“Really? Who’d she meet?”

“I’m not sure. Everything tied to the address is in Tom Wright’s name, along with three other addresses.”

“Rental property,” Gabe guessed.

“Right. We need to go and see who really lives there.” Ella stood to grab her jacket.

“Hold on. We can’t go now.”

“Why? This is a lead. A place to start. If my sister met with someone at this address, we have to check it out.”

“Ella.” Gabe dragged out her name. “Look out the window.”

The whiteout snowfall that started last night, but had waned this morning, thickened with every passing moment. Dark, ominous clouds in the distance promised even more. She turned back to Gabe just as the “Severe Storm Warning” alert flashed across the TV screen.

“We caught a lucky break after breakfast when I went to get you that phone, but in another hour, we’ll be lucky to have power, let alone a satellite signal. So, if you want to keep searching the company records, you better hurry up. We’re about to be stuck here for at least a couple of days.”

“No.” Her voice rose with her conviction. She attempted a more rational tone. “We have to go now.”

“It’s not safe. But you will be for the next few days, because if we can’t get out, no way anyone comes here for you either.”

She held his intense stare. “Gabe.” She pleaded with her gaze for him to understand the urgency building inside of her bones to do something. Now.

“I give you my word, as soon as the storm passes and the roads are safe to travel, I’ll go to that address and find whoever lives there. I’ll make them tell me what they know about your sister.”

“You swear.”

“I don’t break my promises.”

He was right. Frustrated, but resigned, she sat back at the computer determined to find anything else tied to her uncle.

Over the next two hours, she discovered a few more interesting facts. The cattle business contracts were buried in the system. Money got paid out to the Dorsche Ranch, but no income came in, which could only mean the income went to an account outside of Wolf Enterprises. Probably directly to her uncle.

She checked on Jim Harrison, the guy in charge of Western Operations. Interesting that his salary increased ten percent every year with a substantial bonus, when the company’s employees’ raises averaged five percent. Bonuses were given to key employees, but Jim received the largest, besides the executive staff. Reading between the lines, she guessed Jim overlooked the lack of income from the cattle business, orchestrating her uncle’s embezzlement.

Her uncle hadn’t started with the cattle, though. Gabe had been right about that. His deceit went further back. All the way back to two years before her parents died. Once she knew what to look for, or rather what wasn’t there, namely income to match the orders going out, it was easy to follow the trail and uncover who else in the company covered it up.

“What’s with the big sigh?” Gabe asked from the sofa, his arm draped along the back. Casually handsome, yet she felt his interest and restraint while he waited out the storm and the tedious computer investigation she performed despite the fact they both wanted to act on the one lead they had that might actually end this for her uncle.

“My uncle’s embezzlement goes all the way back to when my father ran the company. It’s more than him taking the income from the cattle business, despite the company paying Dorsche Ranch. Take the small appliances division. Deliveries went out to two particular distributors, but payment didn’t come in. Same thing on the restaurant side. They aren’t huge accounts, but still, the balances don’t add up. In some cases, the price of stock going out doesn’t match the income coming in. Some accounts get heavy discounts because of volume, but nothing like this.”

“Why didn’t your accounting department find these discrepancies?”

“Because my uncle had the accountant in his pocket. The person in charge of these accounts gets a very high salary and bonus each year. Like Jim Harrison, who runs the Western Operations division the cattle ranch falls under.”

“So Lela found the embezzlement and came to check on the cattle business?”

“No. According to her search history, she didn’t access any of these files.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. She came to meet the mechanic. But why?”

“I’m as antsy as you to find out.” Gabe changed the subject back to what she could focus on. “What about audits of the accounts?”

“I’m going to check that now.”

“Hurry. Snow’s getting thicker. The TV is getting fuzzy. We’ll lose the signal soon.”

With another heavy sigh, she got back to it and followed the audit records, or lack thereof to the personnel files. Why hadn’t the audits been done? Because the auditor died before he could do the job, according to his file. She looked up his replacement.

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Do you find it odd that just after my uncle started stealing from the company two auditors died?”

“Definitely a strange coincidence. How’d they die?”

She typed the man’s name into her search engine and checked the various links that came up with that name. One stood out. She opened the news article and read.

Gabe must have felt her surprise and dread. He rose and came to stand beside her. “What is it?”

“Mr. Trahan worked for my father. He died in a car accident. Run off the road at night. No witnesses. Do you think . . . No!” The TV went blank and she lost her Internet connection. Her gaze shot to the windows and the near-impenetrable wall of snow falling from the dark sky. “Damn it.”

Gabe settled his hands on her tense shoulders. “Time’s up. Satellite is out.”

She slammed the laptop cover and let out a disgruntled huff, falling back against the chair back and crossing her arms under her breasts.

“I think you’re right.”

“About what?” She snapped the words out in a huff.

“If your uncle could shoot your sister and calmly discuss how to cover it up and murder you, I think he’s killed before.”

“He killed that auditor.” Ella’s mind filled with scenarios and possibilities. She spoke the one question that had circled her mind since her sister’s death. “How many other people has he murdered?”