By the Book, page 1
Coming soon from G.B. Gordon
and Carina Press
Bottom Line
Also by G.B. Gordon
The Santuario Series
Santuario
The Other Side of Winter
Bluewater Bay Series
When to Hold Them
Bluewater Blues
Operation Green Card
Match Grade
By the Book contains non-explicit depictions of childhood trauma, including death of a parent.
By the Book
G.B. Gordon
For Y, always, because without you, none of this would be real.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Pack of Lies by Charlie Adhara
Chapter One
Ben
A quarter million dollars.
Ben stared at the number on his scratchpad, then back at the account on his screen, willing them to match, to make sense, but of course they wouldn’t. He’d gone over the accounts three times already, forward, backward, and sideways. There was still a difference of a quarter million dollars between the company’s net income on the books and the actual money in the bank.
The sounds of clicking keys and a murmured conversation seeped into the bubble of his concentration. Pen tapping a tattoo on the pad, head bent low over his desk, he threw a glance around the office floor from under his eyebrows. At the greige desks, the cable nests underneath, the twenty-odd other people around him all staring at their screens. He didn’t know any of them well, had trouble recalling some of their names even. Which wasn’t their fault. Ben had never been interested in the casual acquaintance game. Not even at college. Too random.
He frowned at the number on his pad, trying to get back into the zone. The mistake wouldn’t jump out at anyone casually glancing through the books. Or even at someone probing deeper into certain accounts. There were too many layers of acquisition and operating costs, payments of fees, rent, loans—in and out, and a slew of other transactions.
Ben had only worked at Venture Im-and Exports for six months, but he could already have drawn up a long list of measures to streamline the company’s financial infrastructure. It was...opaque, at best. No, it was a mess, really.
So, the mistake couldn’t be found unless someone took an in-depth look at all the accounts together, adding and comparing every single entry. Short of an audit, Ben doubted anyone had done that in a while. Certainly not Henderson in his posh corner office. How that guy had managed to get promoted to accounts manager was anyone’s guess.
To be fair, Ben doubted he’d have found anything himself if he hadn’t been trying so hard to make a good impression in his first real job out of college. Three years of part-time accounting for Chen’s Groceries and various contract work had taught him a trick or two, but it didn’t count for much on a resume and hadn’t paid enough for rent.
But now, with an apartment of his own and the full-time job, life was looking up; he wasn’t throwing that away by not trying hard enough. And trying hard meant learning as much as he could about every aspect of Venture’s accounts. That was all there was to his diving so deep into the books. He certainly hadn’t expected to find a quarter million dollar screwup. Jesus Christ.
He should go and take his findings to Henderson and hope his boss wouldn’t kill the messenger. It wasn’t Ben’s fault the discrepancy was there. And the sooner it was investigated, the better. Who knew, his efforts might even be recognized with a raise. Andy was back in Ben’s life, and regular employment wasn’t Andy’s forte; he tended to look to Ben for help. So, Ben could certainly use a financial bonus.
In any case, the error needed to be addressed, and Ben wouldn’t sleep a wink until it was. He liked things just so, or at least to add up, and these numbers didn’t.
With a sigh, he stood up, stretched the kink out of his shoulders, and grabbed his laptop and the notepad.
* * *
Henderson almost disappeared behind his fortress of a desk. He beamed a smile when he saw who’d knocked on his door, but he didn’t get up.
“Ah, Coyne, how’s it going? Everything all right? Come in, come in. Don’t just stand there. Have a seat.” He waved Ben into his office with one hand, indicating the padded leather chair in front of his desk with the other.
Ben perched on the edge of the chair, because he knew from experience that the seat leaned back precariously if one sat too far in. Great for a nap, not so comfortable when trying to talk to your boss. With anyone else, Ben would have suspected design behind the choice of chair, a game of power. But with Henderson, it was probably just part of his general benign incompetence. The man had a pink Post-it note on his keyboard, with his username and his password on it. WHEND for William Henderson, and notyourbirthday. Ben could just imagine the IT guy telling Henderson to change his password, and, For God’s sake, make it not your birthday this time.
He tried hard to keep his face neutral. “There may be a problem, sir.” Ben opened his laptop and turned it so Henderson could see the screen, but his boss wasn’t even looking.
“Tell me about it,” he said instead.
Ben bit his cheek. He’d have preferred to show Henderson the columns of numbers he’d be talking about. Listening to lengthy explanations wasn’t Henderson’s strong point, and the proof was a bit convoluted. “There’s a large discrepancy between how much money we have in the bank, and how much there should be.”
Henderson leaned back, folding his hands over his ample stomach. “Come now. Are you accusing anyone of skimming?”
“No! Oh, no, of course not.” Shit. The problem was so clear in his head that he’d left out what Henderson might consider a key point. “There’s more money in the bank than there should be.”
Now Henderson laughed. “When has more money ever been a problem?”
What? “Uh, it’s still a discrepancy. A large discrepancy. In accounting.” Whether it was too much or too little was completely beside the point. “This is not a sum we can just net out or disappear into a suspense account. We need an audit.”
“Well, let’s not go overboard just yet.” Henderson was still chuckling. How did he think this was funny?
“It would be worse if money was missing, is all I’m saying,” Henderson added. “We’re dealing with large sums every day. In such a huge operation, things can’t always add up to the penny.”
Ben stared at him until the chuckle faltered. “It means the accounts are wrong,” he finally managed to say. He swallowed the rest, that he hadn’t even found the error itself yet, or likely more than one. That Venture’s bookkeeping was such a disaster that burning it to the ground and restarting from scratch might be the only way to get a trackable audit trail from end to end. Hell, at this point he wasn’t even sure if the extra money was actually in the bank or if that was the mistake, though that was unlikely.
“Yes, yes.” Henderson waved his hand as if dismissing the problem would make it go away. “All I’m saying is, it can’t always—how much are we talking about exactly?”
Ben didn’t even have to look at his pad. The number was burned into his brain. “Two hundred fifty-six thousand, four hundred, and eighty-five dollars.”
Henderson’s mouth dropped open. “The hell?” He finally seemed to get it.
Ben tried to keep the smugness out of his voice when he added: “And thirty-seven cents.”
Henderson choked on a reply and started coughing. He poured himself a glass of water from the carafe on his desk and nodded at Ben’s laptop. “Show me,” he croaked, then gulped the water down like a man fresh out of the desert.
Ben tried, but after half an hour, he didn’t think Henderson had a better idea of how the money didn’t add up than if Ben had drawn bunnies on his notepad.
Henderson leaned back, visibly lost, but trying hard to regain his usual bonhomie. “Well, you certainly seem to know what you’re talking about.”
Hell yes I do. When Ben kept his face impassive so his contempt wouldn’t show, Henderson gave him a wobbly smile. “Tell you what, Coyne. Why don’t I go over a few of the details and get back to you?”
“Of course.” A delay wasn’t what Ben had been hoping for, but the sheer magnitude of the error was a lot to swallow. The poor bastard deserved a grace period before he had to inform the higher-ups about how royally his department had screwed up. And that the newest junior accountant had been the one to find out.
Well, better not get smug about that one either; at least one person was going to get fired over this. Ben doubted it would be him, but if they didn’t find the one responsible? The last one hired was never safe.
* * *
“So, did he get back to you?” Andy’s voice had that get-on-with-it tone that set Ben’s teeth on edge. They’d turned the TV down but not off, and the
“Yeah.” Ben eyed the pizza on the couch table in front of him, debating a third slice. “Kind of. He says he took it to Sullivan. That’s the owner.”
“Well, that’s good, right? I bet there’s a raise in it for you.” There was hope in Andy’s voice that Ben knew not to be entirely altruistic.
Ben shook his head. “He said he didn’t see a reason to drag my name into it.” He couldn’t help the air quotes.
“Dude... That sucks.”
“It is what it is.” Ben didn’t even know why he was so disappointed. He hadn’t been hoping for anything concrete. Maybe he’d been thinking about a raise, yes, but any kind of recognition would have felt good. Was that how Henderson had gotten his job, by taking credit for other people’s work? Was the whole jovial act just that, an act?
“What a douche, though. C’mere.” Andy wrapped both arms around Ben’s shoulders, and Ben let himself be pulled into a somewhat awkward embrace. Andy didn’t really know how to give comfort. He only knew sex. And he knew how to be comforted, which usually suited Ben just fine, but right now Ben wasn’t in the mood, so he freed himself before things turned down that way.
Andy shrugged. He was dark haired and good looking, in an edgy, hungry sort of way that compelled Ben to feed him. They’d been an on-again, off-again thing since college, where they’d shared a dorm room and then a bed until Andy’d had a better offer than college and left town, and Ben.
Andy had come back three months later, flat broke. He’d told Ben he’d made a terrible mistake, and to please take him back. Hard to say no to pleading, so Ben had taken him back, and Andy had pulled that same stunt twice more in the last three years.
He’d shown up again with his forlorn, hungry eyes, looking for love, five days after Ben had signed the lease for the apartment a few months ago, so Ben had let him stay the night. It had been a mistake. Ben wasn’t a wide-eyed college kid anymore, and Andy’s opportunistic pattern was getting harder to ignore. He raised every single one of Ben’s protective instincts, but what he was looking for wasn’t love. It was sex and a place to crash.
Ben got up. “You’d better go. Take the pizza, I’m full.”
Andy’s fave expression number one was adorable pout. “I thought I’d spend the night.”
“Nuh-uh, early day tomorrow. I need to sleep.”
Fave expression number two was persecuted princess. “When are you going to give me a key?”
“When you’ve learned to do dishes and laundry.” Which was never going to happen. Ben grabbed Andy’s jacket from where it’d been thrown over a chair back and held it out. “See you Saturday?”
Andy peeled himself off the couch. “Not tomorrow?”
“You know I have dinner with my mother on Fridays.”
“Forgot.”
Of course you did.
In the hallway, Andy turned back, one finger to his forehead, as if the thought had just that second entered his head. “Almost forgot. Can I borrow a couple of twenties?”
It was the same story every time. “When are you going to get a job?” Ben asked as he handed Andy a fifty, helping out a hard habit to break.
“That’s what this is for,” Andy said, waving the bill around. “It’s a sure thing, you’ll see.” It always was, and yet, Andy was always short a twenty or a fifty. The unwelcome feeling that he wasn’t looking to Ben for help, but rather considering him a source of income was becoming harder and harder to shake.
They kissed briefly, then Andy was out the door. And Ben wondered whether he’d feel better if he’d let him stay. Or kicked him out for good.
* * *
Ben spent Friday silently cursing Henderson for stealing his thunder, for not letting Sullivan know that it had been Ben who’d found the hard-to-track mistake, not pointing out that Ben knew his job inside out and was worth keeping. Sullivan didn’t know any of that. All Ben was to him was the most junior name on the payroll. If the fallout of Ben’s discovery meant that heads would roll, Ben’s head would be the first one on the chopping block. He could not afford to lose this job. It had taken him too long to get it. The market sucked for beginners. He needed more experience, more time to build a reputation, a chance, at least, to leave here with a killer recommendation.
He kept an eye on Henderson’s door, dreading to be called in and handed his papers, but when the summons finally came just before five p.m., it was an anticlimax. It didn’t have anything to do with being fired.
“Ah, Coyne, good, good.” Henderson handed Ben a key labeled Records, along with a piece of notepaper. “Throw these files in a box for me, will you, and run them down to my car? Good man, I’ll be there in a minute.”
The note had nothing but a range of numbers on it, which Ben assumed referred to the filing system. He’d never been to the records room, and could only hope it was labeled properly. “Might take me a while to find them,” he said.
“Well, don’t stand here then, go on. I don’t want to be late.”
For what, he didn’t say, but then Henderson always left as soon as the clock struck five, the only one in the department who never stayed later. Ben doubted it was anything beyond that. “Of course, sir.”
He left and briefly considered booking his time already and heading out to the subway right after dropping off the box, since he’d already be downstairs, but Ma didn’t expect him until seven, and it wouldn’t take him more than half an hour to get to her place. No, better to come back after and finish what Henderson had interrupted. Putz.
The record room didn’t have any windows and smelled of cardboard and dust. Beige filing cabinets lined one wall, and industrial shelving, crammed with boxes, covered the other three. Ben found his files quickly enough; they comprised almost half of a drawer of ancient sales records, the youngest of them at least twenty years old. What the hell someone like Henderson wanted with those was beyond him. Ben poked around for an empty box, found a pile of flats in a corner and assembled one of them as quickly as possible. He was sure this was a fool’s errand, but less sure whether it was him or Henderson who’d been sent on it.
He threw the files in the box, then took the stairs down to the parking garage. Since he spent his days mostly sitting at a desk, he tended to squeeze in whatever exercise he could get. Especially legs, because his workouts were usually geared to arm and shoulder endurance and drawing more weight on the bow.
Henderson’s bright yellow Camaro was parked in its spot right by the door. But there was no sign of Henderson. Had he been called in by Sullivan on his way out? Or grown tired of waiting and gone back upstairs? But Ben hadn’t taken that long.
He walked around the Camaro, and there was Henderson, next to the driver’s door, facedown in a pool of blood.
Ben stared at the little round hole at the base of Henderson’s head, angled just a bit off center, as if to give Ben the perfect view. The hole seemed to grow larger while he stood there looking at it, fighting not to get sucked into the black vortex it morphed into in front of his eyes. He knew where that would lead, and shoved the memory aside with every ounce of force he could muster.
Concentrate on the here and now. That helped, though it was far from pleasant. He drew a deep breath and drowned in the stench of rust, cold exhausts, rubber, and concrete, trying to line up a thought. Any thought.
Should he check for signs of life, even if the man looked so obviously dead, or was that ludicrous? Would he merely be destroying evidence if he did? Of what? People didn’t just get shot in the middle of Boston. Except that Henderson had been, of course.
Ben craned his neck, trying to see Henderson’s eyes without touching the car or stepping into the blood. No eyes. Half the face was gone.
Now would be a good time to throw up. Except Ben didn’t feel sick. He didn’t feel anything. No, scratch that; he felt exposed. He glanced over his shoulder, suddenly conscious of the possibility that whoever had done this could still be around.
You’d be dead if they were.
Probably. Maybe. He carefully set the box down, pulled his phone out, and dialed 911.
