The Right Kind of Trouble (18 page)

But the windows didn't open.

“Where is it?”

Pain … his hand smashing into her skull, grinding her into the dirt. “I've got … money … in the house…”

“I don't want money.”

“What … do…”

“He left a treasure here. Patrick McKay. Where is it?”

“Ms. McKay?”

She turned on shaky legs to look at the federal employees for a moment, then looked at Baxter. “Could you get me some water please?”

He looked hesitant, then smiled. “I'll get you some tea. You sound like you need that more.” She smiled at him. As he slid out of the office, she sank into her chair and met the gazes of the other two. “When, exactly, did you receive this report, if I might ask?”

When they hesitated, she touched her throat. “If it helps, the answer could be relevant. I'll explain why I'm asking.” She laughed, the sound shaky and desperate. “I can even have a police report sent over.”

*   *   *

An hour later, the dynamic duo from the IRS had left with promises to follow up.

They had a copy of the report from the police department with them. Gideon wasn't back. She was more than a little thankful of that because this wasn't the sort of conversation somebody had over the phone. Now she had a few hours at least to figure out how to explain things to him. As long as nobody mentioned she'd called requesting a copy of the report.

She'd tell him once she saw him. For now, she had other things to worry about—like this bullshit report. The IRS had gotten the call two days ago, well after her attack. She commented on the speedy follow-up and Calloway sheepishly admitted that she'd been the one to take the report and it had seemed so out of the ordinary, she'd shown it to her partner.

Moira had a feeling the young woman was still in training, but Adams had let her take the lead on this. A good teacher. She had no idea how things in the IRS worked, but it seemed that something like this
should
get followed up on—even if it was proving to be a pain in her ass.

As she explained what had happened, what her attacker had said, they had looked more and more grim.

Although they didn't voice anything, she had a feeling they were smart enough to see what she saw.

They didn't even have the whole picture, either.

Somebody was looking to make trouble for her family, and it was pissing her off.

The musical ring from her phone nudged her out of her daze and she picked it up without thinking. If she had taken even a second
to
think, she might have ignored it.

She didn't want to talk to anybody.

Two seconds into the conversation, she was really,
really
wishing she hadn't answered, because she had no idea what was going on.

“Neve … I don't know what … would you start over,
please
?”

She could hear her little sister take a deep breath—and practically grit her teeth.

“Moira … did we … buy property … in Louisiana?” Neve asked, her voice almost falsely sweet and the pauses between words deliberate—and annoying.

“Neve … we buy … property … all over …
the fricking country
.” She rubbed her throat and got up to get the tea Baxter had brought her earlier. It had cooled off, but she didn't care. He'd laced it with whiskey—Baxter had been raised by his grandmother, a sweet lady who believed in the value of a real hot toddy for “what ails you.”

Granted, Baxter hit his toddy even when he stubbed his toe, but right now, she could kiss him.

Neve made a growling sound under her throat. “Utilize those resources you were always bragging about ten years ago. Narrow it down. I need to know if we bought a piece of land—specifically a house—about an hour north of Baton Rouge … what was the county?”

Moira frowned as Neve called to somebody and there was a low, familiar voice that offered a response.

Moira recognized the county name. “I know where it is—who is there with you?”

“Would you just answer the question? The place is close to the state line.”

“About an hour north of Baton Rouge? Close to the state line?” Annoyed, Moira put her cup down with a little more force than necessary and some of the tea splattered out, drops spraying out onto a stack of new contracts.

Grabbing a tissue, she blotted up the marks and studied it. “Neve, why don't you call the lawyers? They have better access to that info than I do. Hell, we own property in twenty-eight states, at last count. And in forty-two countries.”

Neve made a disgusted noise. “Why the hell do we need so much property for anyway?”

“Because we own companies. Companies that make things. Companies need to be built on land as they haven't figured out how to do that Cloud City thing that was so cool in
The Empire Strikes Back
. Our tech departments
are
working on it, though, I promise.” Her voice started to fade out near the end and she grimaced, reaching for her tea.

“Smart-ass. And you're straining your voice again.”

“That's because I had an unexpected meeting—and I'm arguing with you.” She stuck her tongue out at the phone and felt a little better for it.

“We're not arguing. Has it been that long since we have that you've forgotten what we are like when we argue?” Neve almost sounded amused. “Okay, maybe this will help. The Bittner project?”

Moira paused, then resumed lifting her tea. “The Bittner project?” After taking a long, slow sip, she closed her eyes. Nothing came to mind. Finally, she turned to her open laptop and accessed the database. McKay Enterprises was the head of a huge conglomeration and they had fingers in many, many pies. She couldn't possibly keep track of all of them.

A few keys strokes had the information coming up on the screen, and it left her frowning. “Okay, I see what you're asking about. The Bittner project—home and surrounding property purchased. It's fairly local. I'm surprised I wasn't made aware of this purchase.” She eyed the date, did some mental math, and suppressed a curse. She knew exactly why she wasn't more aware. The entire deal had been closed within a six-week period. The six-week period during which a certain somebody with penetrating eyes and a mouth that she could still feel against her own had been injured in the line of duty.

Mentally, she hadn't been sitting behind a desk and shuffling figures, attending board meetings, and listening to key personnel on new patents or suggestions on new product lines. Mentally, she'd been in a hospital on the other side of the world, holding onto Gideon Marshall's hand and telling him that if he died, she'd kick his ass.

He'd ended up with a medical discharge and a few months later, he was a cop in Memphis. Six months after that, she was married to Charles Hurst.

If Gideon had come home then …

If he'd come home, what would have happened?

She'd didn't know, but he hadn't.

A chance dinner in New York had her bumping into Charles again and when he'd asked her out, she'd all but flung herself into his arms, desperate to forget that fear, desperate to forget Gideon even.

It had been a kick in the face, in the heart for him to actually come
home
just a year later. But she'd already been married, and when he looked at her, it was with a sad sort of understanding.

They'd been over.

If he'd come home …

Stop
, she told herself, forcing herself to focus on the details on the screen.

It wasn't a typical deal for McKay, although the notes highlighted in the file made sense in a way.

“Okay, so what about this piece of property?” Moira asked.

“I want it.”

The bluntly stated words had Moira sitting up straighter. “Ah … Neve? It's company property.” She eyed the sum paid for the said property and added, “It cost 1.2
million
dollars.”

“It wasn't supposed to be ours anyway. I want the property. I'll take the money out of my account and give it to the damn company. I want the deed, Moira.”

“Well, I need more than that,” she said. Her voice made a weird creaky noise halfway through and she swore. “Neve, we're not discussing this on the phone.”

“Damn it, the owner promised to sell it for two hundred thousand to his neighbor. They had a contract—it was signed and the guy had even put money down. They just hadn't done anything official because the original owner wasn't going to move until he … shit, he was
old,
Moira. Then the old guy up and had a heart attack. His son comes along and says no dice, puts the land up for sale. Then McKay came in, brokered this deal and bought the land, and now this man I'm here with is out fifty thousand
and
the land he'd been planning to use to expand the dog rescue operation he's got going.”

At the end of her sister's rant, Moira was sitting there with her eyes covered and the bad, bad feeling that she was going to have to make some heads roll by the time she was done.

“Are you there?” Neve demanded.

“I'm here.” Her voice made that weird sound warning her that it wasn't going to last much longer if she wasn't careful.

“What do we need a house for anyway?”

Good question,
Moira thought. The gist of it had been in the notes in the computer, but she wasn't going into that with Neve out there and her here. “The general idea is to use it for company retreats and team-building exercises.” Since nobody was around, she grabbed a pen from her desk and mimed stabbing herself in the temple. “Have you seen the contract?”

“I'm holding it right now. Most of my experience with contracts is all from my time in modeling, but it looks legit, Moira.” Neve's voice was shaking. “A company retreat. This guy worked his whole life for this and our company stole it out from under him for a company retreat?”

The pure fury in Neve's voice was no surprise. Moira suspected she'd be pissed off herself before too long. Feelings, egos, and pride often ended up bruised in business, but the McKay family did business the way they'd always done it—ethically.

If somebody had ended up screwed over in a deal with the company, she was going to raise hell.

“Does it look legit?”

Neve heaved out a sigh. “I just said—”

“You majored in business, Neve. You've dealt with contracts before—you just said so. Is it for real?”

“Yes,” Neve said after a moment. “It's for real. It's got a notary's signature on it. I figure somebody could find loopholes if they wanted, but that's not how we do business.”

“No.” Moira stared out the window in front of her. “It's not. Who is this guy?”

“His name is Zeke Sanders. I … well, he raises dogs. I wanted to buy one.”

Something in Neve's tone had Moira's eyes narrowing, but she was already straining her voice to the limit and she couldn't deal with this if she ended up voiceless again. “Okay. Give me addresses—no, better idea. If you've got enough bars, take pictures of the contract with your phone and shoot them my way. I'll need details of what all I'm looking for, names, et cetera.”

“We're going to make this right, Moira.” Neve didn't wait for an answer. She just hung up.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Moira contacted somebody from legal to handle transfer of the house from the company to Neve, putting the price at something more fitting of what it was probably worth.

She wasn't certain just
why
this particular place had gone at over a million—it certainly wasn't worth it, not from where she was sitting. She'd pulled up the full profile on the transaction and while the property was pretty, the house itself was dated and would have to be overhauled before it could be used as any sort of retreat.

That alone would cost several hundred thousand.

And the house was just
sitting
there. Nobody was doing anything with it. From what she could tell, it hadn't been touched in the seven years since they'd acquired it.

“Sanders, why didn't you try to take us to court or something?” She rubbed at her temple. Not that she
liked
the idea of it, but this was an ugly weight in her gut and she didn't like knowing some guy had been pretty much robbed of fifty grand.

And she
still
couldn't understand why anybody would want to buy this for some so-called retreat. The location was
awful
.

It was so far away from anything, none of the staff who would likely use it would have found it appealing after the first few hours. Moira might have just been delighted—she didn't mind roughing it when she could actually
get away
. But she knew most of her key personnel, and their idea of roughing it was getting coffee they poured themselves … or worse, coffee from a gas station instead of a Starbucks.

Starbucks hadn't quite penetrated that quiet little spot in Louisiana.

Neither had any store larger than a mom and pop–style grocery store or a Dollar General.

It didn't make sense.

After she'd compiled all the information she could, she put in a call to Jenny Green—the assistant for one Kevin Towers.

Kevin was the one who'd handled this project.

Kevin had been with McKay for a long time. She would give him the courtesy of trying to explain before she gave him a cardboard box and told him to clear out.

But she really, really wished she had a cardboard box in her office.

“I'm sorry, Ms. McKay … he's … excuse me one moment, ma'am. Please, Mr. Towers isn't in. One moment and I'll take a message—no, I cannot take it now.” The woman came back on the phone and said, “I'm terribly sorry, ma'am. Mr. Towers isn't in. He left just a short while ago, taking the rest of the day off. He wasn't feeling well, I don't think—sir, I will be
with
you in a moment.”