Page 31 of Maximum Risk (The Andrades 3)
Max didn’t say anything, but Tara guessed he knew why she didn’t want Gio to have his phone on him. “Gio, Tara and I have something we need to talk to you about.”
Tara and I.
Tara met Max’s eyes and smiled. She wondered if he knew how much that simple statement meant to her.
Gio put his glass of wine down and said, “It’s fast, but I’m happy for you.”
A huge smile spread across Julia’s face, and she clapped her hands. “Are you engaged?”
“No,” Tara and Max said emphatically at the same time.
Gio frowned. “Pregnant?”
“No,” they both said in unison again, then looked at each other and smiled.
Julia put a hand on Gio’s arm and said softly, “Maybe we should let them tell us.”
Tara reached into her purse and took out the flash drive, along with the card. She laid them on the table near her plate of food. She didn’t know where to start.
Max took her hand in his. He looked across the table at Gio and said, “We know what’s going on at Cogent. Tara believes she has information that can help you resolve the situation.”
Tara shot Max a grateful smile. “I do. It’s on this flash drive. And if you call this number I’m confident the person you speak to will know how to make the rest of it go away.”
Julia’s mouth fell open. “Make what go away? Gio, what are they talking about? You said there wasn’t a problem.”
Gio looked down at his worried fiancée. “I can’t involve you in this, Julia. The less you know, the better.”
Julia put her hand on Gio’s cheek. “We’re a team, Gio. You don’t have to protect me. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t care what you did. I know you. You’re a good man. You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t have a really good reason to. So, if you’re in trouble, we’re both in trouble. Let me in, Gio.”
Gio turned his face and kissed Julia’s hand. “I’m being blackmailed.” He outlined essentially what Alethea had told Tara, except his version came with the rationale for why he’d done it. When he’d first taken over his father’s company he’d thought his father had been the one siphoning money out of the company and had covered it up by falsifying documents and pouring his trust fund into the company. Recently money was disappearing again, and his people couldn’t figure out how.
Tara pushed the flash drive across the table to Gio. “Your answers are on there.”
Gio picked up the drive and frowned. “Who are you, Tara? You’re obviously not just Maddy’s friend.”
“Maddy hired me to uncover what she thought was a big secret that was keeping you and your brothers from reconciling.”
Gio’s voice rose and he sat forward. “Maddy knows?”
Tara hastened to reassure him. “No. She knows nothing about this.”
“Thank God,” Gio said, and relaxed back into his seat.
Max shook his head as he processed the scene before him. “So, this is all true. Why didn’t you come to me, Gio? I would have—” Max stopped, slammed his hand on the table in front of him, and said, “It doesn’t matter what I would or wouldn’t have done. I’m here now. We’re going to make this go away, and we’re going to do it together.”
Tara had to blink several times to stop tears from spilling over. This was the man she’d told herself was hiding beneath his supposed indifference. She wanted to tell him she was proud of him, but he and Gio were already walking toward the other end of the apartment.
Max paused before walking out of the living room and turned back to look at Tara. There was a question in his eyes. She nodded. She’d wait for him. He was where he needed to be, doing what needed to be done. She’d wait an eternity for a man like that.
Julia moved to sit beside Tara. Her eyes were round with worry, but she had a tentative smile on her face. “You were really here only because you were working for Maddy?”
“Yes.”
“So, no long friendship with her? No breakup you needed cheering up after?”
Tara found it difficult to meet Julia’s eyes, but she forced herself to. “That was my cover story.”
“And Max?”
Tara shrugged sadly. “I don’t know. Does any relationship work out when it starts with a lie?”
Julia moved closer. “I don’t care how we met, Tara. Thank you for helping us.”
Tara folded and unfolded the cloth napkin on her lap. “I’m merely the messenger.”
“I doubt that,” Julia said gently. “I told you I was worried, and you came back with a solution. That’s not a messenger, that’s a friend.”
Nick and Rena arrived a few minutes later. They spoke to Gio first, then Rena joined Tara and Julia. Nick walked off with Gio and Max.
Rena greeted Julia with a hug and sat across from Tara—not saying anything, just studying her. Finally she asked, “You’re really a private investigator?”
“Yes,” Tara said with a sigh. She had a feeling she would be having that conversation several more times that evening.
Julia brought Rena a cup of coffee. Rena accepted it without taking her eyes off Tara. “Who are you working with? Besides Maddy. Gio said there are files on that drive no one could access unless they’d hacked into his server.”
“I can’t disclose my source.”
“You’ll have to. You can’t give someone sensitive information like that and not expect them to demand to know how you got it,” Rena said.
Tara squared her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter who demands what. I made a promise, and I take those seriously.”
Julia intervened, “Rena, stop grilling Tara, she’s on our side.”
Rena frowned. “I hope so.”
***
In Gio’s office, Max, Gio, and Nick were seated around a laptop. Max had originally been surprised when Gio had called Nick and told him to come over, but it quickly became apparent their relationship had changed since they’d been working together. There was a mutual respect between them Max hadn’t thought possible.
Gio had made a few phone calls after quickly viewing some of the documents on the drive. Everything that could be verified without revealing the reason for an inquiry checked out. Paul Morriseau had started working in the finance department of Cogent before monies had gone missing the first time. He had access to the computers that would have allowed him to mark bills paid that were still outstanding. Gio’s team had looked into Paul already and dismissed him as being involved. His team had missed one very incriminating fact—Paul had several sizeable offshore bank accounts. The largest deposits into those accounts had been during the time money had first gone missing and then right about the same time money started to disappear again. He was definitely siphoning money out of Cogent. He had to be the blackmailer.
Max held up the card Tara had given him, the one with only a phone number on it. “Who do you think this is?”
Nick sat back and crossed his legs. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to help you uncover Paul. What did Tara say they would do if you called them?”
Gio rubbed his temples. “She said they’d make it all go away.”
Nick made a face. “Am I the only one who is concerned by what that means?”
Max handed the card to Gio. “It has to be one of your friends. Who do you know with the kind of hacking skills to handle somethi
ng this complex?”
Gio turned the card over in his hand and studied it. “Stephan, maybe. But why wouldn’t he want us to know it’s him?”
“Did Tara say anything about where she got this flash drive?” Gio asked Max for the second time that night.
Max answered calmly, “Nothing more than I’ve already told you. She won’t disclose her source.”
“I’m not willing to accept that,” Nick said firmly.
“You’re welcome to ask her yourself,” Max said and stood. “But do it while I’m there and do it respectfully.”
Nick waved a hand in the direction of the door. “Tara could be working with anyone on this. How do we know if she’s telling us the truth or that this isn’t another setup? We have to consider the possibility that the person who is offering to help us may have an agenda of their own.”
“Tara wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
Nick countered, “Didn’t you just tell me she lied about who she was? How do we know she’s not lying about more?”
“She’s not,” Max said, his jaw tightening as his frustration grew.
“And you know that because?” Nick looked at Max then shook his head in disbelief. “Just because you’re sleeping with her doesn’t mean we can trust her.”
Trust didn’t come easily to Max. Part of him wavered in the face of Nick’s cynicism. Not just Cogent was riding on how this all played out. If Gio’s actions were exposed, he could go to prison for what he’d done. Was Max willing to put that amount of faith in Tara?
Max took a deep breath and did something he’d never done: He trusted his heart. Tara was a good person. Max didn’t believe in much, but he believed that. “I trust her,” Max said simply.
Gio looked at Max for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay, so, assuming Tara is exactly who she says she is, she didn’t know any of us before Maddy contacted her. That means she would have made this contact through her or one of us. Who have we seen her with?”
