Chapter Nineteen
Luke
I down a gulp of my beer.
“After seeing you with her, and her with you, I can tell you that’s bullshit. I assume she didn’t like what you had to say about Kurt because he was obviously on your mind when you went looking for her.”
“Not even slightly.” I set my bottle down. “But damn it, Kurt made big money, and neither she nor Kasey properly inherited.”
“Define properly.”
“Hers is tied up for years. Kasey was left the ranch but had no money to operate the business. Where’s Kurt’s fortune? And what kind of nasty people was he in bed with? Ana wants to believe this is all about one package on one dreaded day. I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Which is why you have Blake looking into Kurt.”
“Exactly. She’s not even trying to see the truth. And there’s a truth there, a dirty one. I keep thinking Kasey, for all his shittiness, inherited whatever that dirt was from Kurt. Or maybe he dragged him into it. Whatever the case, I can’t end this by cutting off a tail. I have to cut off the head of the beast.”
“Agreed. So, what are you thinking?”
“I need a damn computer, which I don’t have, to do some digging.”
“Blake’s doing that for you. And he’s the best of the best. We both need to rest. We have five days until we meet up with the tail of the beast at Ana’s property. We won’t find the head if we are both sleepwalking.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. “I need to take a jog.” I run my hand through my hair. “And yes, I know that’s not possible. Is there a damn treadmill or something around here?”
“There’s a basement bedroom next to an exercise room.”
“That’s my spot. I’m going to call Blake and then I’ll just sleep down there.”
“You sure that’s what you want to do?”
“Me and Ana are like oil and fire right now and we’re either going to burn each other up or drown in the sludge of it all. She needs some space and so do I.”
“You had two years of space, Lucifer. Consider that might not be the answer.”
“I’ll consider when I have some sleep.” I push to my feet and head for the gym, trekking a path downstairs.
Once I’m down in the finished basement, I slip in my earbuds, step on the treadmill, and dial Blake. “Tell me you know something,” I say when he answers.
“Man, you gotta give me two fucking seconds. I’m working on it and I’ve got a couple of our guys working on it.”
“In other words, you can’t find shit.”
“I really can’t,” he says, “not yet, but I will.”
I stop the treadmill. “What does that mean?”
“It means someone made Kurt’s financial records disappear, and before you say anything, the man trained assassins for the government. I don’t see this as unusual.”
“But Kasey took that business over.”
“And everything to do with that business is wiped out. I can see Kasey’s personal accounts. They’re sparse.”
Which is why he was running side jobs, I think. “What does that mean in terms of answers?”
“The problem we have is that when someone like Kurt is wiped away, someone like me does the job. We aren’t going to find those records. I can’t even get to his tax returns.”
“Ana’s supposed to inherit at thirty-six. Jefferson McDonald holds the trust, or that’s what the will said.”
“Give me a minute or I can call you back.”
“I’ll wait.”
His fingers punch keys and I turn the treadmill back on. I’ve been running a good five minutes when he says, “There’s no trust. They managed the will, but there is no bank account attached. The firm’s records indicate an account held by a third party.”
I stop running and turn off the machine again. “There’s no money.”
“There’s no money, which obviously makes no sense. He was one of the most sought-after operations in the world, well-known and well-paid for what he did.”
Yes, I think, yes, he was, and he never seemed to hurt for money, but I wasn’t around a lot the last year he was alive. I was off trying to make the big bucks before I retired. Damn it, I hate how this is going to gut Ana.
She won’t care about the money and I have shit tons of money I’ll happily make hers, as well, not that she would want anything that’s mine. The problem here is that I’m not wrong about Kurt being in some kind of trouble. “Kurt died when he did something unusual and went with a team of guys on a mission himself. I don’t suppose you have a contact who can find out why he did that and for who?”
“I’ll dig. Do you know who the guys were?”
“It was a government mission. Jake was with him. We know little else. She wasn’t even informed of his death until a week later when Jake showed up.” Memories of Ana’s knees buckling with the news, my damn warrior princess falling apart, gut me all over again. “He didn’t want a funeral and he wanted to be cremated. It was months before we were sent his ashes.”
“Are you sure that was what he wanted? Or was he cremated to hide something?”
“That’s what Ana was told he’d requested in his will. But am I sure? I’m not sure of anything right now. I need to know who was with Kurt the day he died. Because whoever that is knows more about Kurt than even his own daughter.” I scrub my jaw and step off the treadmill as something hits me. “Jake kept logs of the jobs he did on some online program he used on his phone. He was meticulous about it.”
“I’ll dig. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.” He disconnects.
I walk into the bedroom and sit down on the edge of the mattress before I lay back, staring at the ceiling. The day those ashes came in, Ana had melted down. Two days later, we’d driven to the great divide, a place fitting for a man who’d sat on top of the world most of his life, and dropped his ashes. I’d held Ana and she’d quaked in my arms. I didn’t think she was going to stop crying.
She hurt that day. She still hurts over his loss to this day. If he’s not dead, he’s behind all of this somehow. He’s the reason Ana is on a hit list. I’ll find him and I swear to God, I’ll kill everyone connected to this to protect Ana. Even him. I’ll give him about thirty seconds to explain himself and make me understand, but I will not hesitate. I’d rather Ana hate me for life than see her dead. And that’s where this is headed, with her dead. I can feel it in my bones. And the only way I’ve ever learned to survive the bad shit is to embrace it.