Friday, September 6th, 10:05 am
The roar of the engines whipped my jacket around as I followed Erin across the tarmac toward the plane's steps. I stopped at the bottom of the steps and turned to gaze out at the Scottish highlands one last time, enjoying the intense greens that reached up toward the gray overcast skies as if trying to impart some of its vibrancy to the drab colors overhead. So far, this had been my favorite spot to visit during my European excursion. I enjoyed the bustle of large cities like London and Paris; the uniqueness of places like Amsterdam had been fascinating, but Scotland held a majesty and beauty that the other places hadn't. It was probably comparing apples to oranges, considering I bought a castle in the countryside.
Of course, Lillian wasn't much of a help at preventing biases. I wasn't in love by any stretch, but I could easily see myself adding the young, curvy Scottish beauty to the little harem trailing behind me as I flitted around the world. While I could afford it, I didn't think it would have been fair to her. She had a life to lead; all I could do was disrupt that in exchange for momentary pleasures. I'd be back, and perhaps we would see what happened in time, but for now, saying goodbye to her would have to do.
Turning, I headed up the plane's steps and entered with Chloe in tow. It wasn't as big or luxurious as mine, but it wasn't bad either. There was a large common area with comfortable-looking seating, a hallway to the left leading off to what I assumed were a few private rooms, a toilet, and a minibar, which Shea was already perusing. She gave me a little smile and a wink. "Looks like this place is fully stocked. Why don't you go ahead and get comfortable? Once we've leveled off, I'll get you some breakfast."
A thin, cream-colored folder slapped me in the midsection, cutting off my response. Chloe stood beside me, holding a folder against my chest until I took it from her.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Reading material," she said, nodding back at Jon, the last one up the stairs. He shut the door and edged past us to head toward the cockpit. "Should give you enough to do till breakfast."
I flipped open the folder, leafed through the pages, followed Chloe, and took up one of the empty seats.
"Is this Hannon's findings on the laptop?" Erin asked, peering at the folder as she sat beside me.
"It is," Chloe said, sitting opposite me so we could face each other. "Before we get into that, though, I thought you should know I've been briefed on Håkansson's place. She keeps minimal security at her mansion and only has one bodyguard on her when she leaves. It's pretty remote. I'd like to stay near you, but the rest of my guys can ease off when we get there."
She continued, "Astrid says they picked out the meeting place--a remote cabin only accessible by chopper. This is the best Tanaka would agree to. According to Astrid, you, her, and Tanaka are the only ones allowed there. I told her I was going, or it wasn't happening, so she finally relented to each person having one bodyguard. No weapons. Astrid's there to broker the peace, so her security will check all four of us for contraband before we can step foot in the cabin where negotiations will be held. A small crew of four will be at the cabin to serve us food and whatever--all unarmed civilians."
By this point, the plane had taxied out to the runway, the engines were revving up, and I could feel the plane begin to lunge forward at a rate that made my stomach churn slightly. Minutes later, we were taking off.
"What do we know about Ryo Tanaka?" I asked as I settled back in my seat and scanned the documents.
"Not much that isn't easy to find on a Google search," Chloe said. "He went to Yale and fucked around for about seven years before finally graduating. Fucked around for another six years in business school before finally getting an MBA. He's hot-tempered, entitled, and goes through women like a fourteen-year-old boy goes through Kleenex."
"Jesus," Erin said. "Hiro attracts losers, doesn't he? Sounds a little like Carla."
"Worse, I'd say," Chloe said dryly. "Tanaka has a daughter, and it looks like Hiro is a traditionalist. I can't find much on her besides a transcript. She got her MBA in four years, but I can't find any evidence that she works in the company."
"Her too?" I asked. "Don't MBAs normally take two years?"
"Yeah," Chloe said, "But I'm talking about getting a degree and an MBA in four years. She's twenty-one, which means she probably graduated high school early, too."
"But Ryo's the one we're meeting with?" Erin asked.
At the same time, I asked, "What's the deal with all the spoiled rich boys?"
"There's plenty of spoiled girls out there," Chloe said.
"Ashlee," Erin said.
Chloe nodded. "Carla." She shrugged. "I'm no psychologist, but if I had to guess, I'd say Hiro wasn't the most present father, and your father was dead. I doubt either of them had any strong father figure."
The thought made me even more appreciative of my dad, and I made a mental note to call my parents just to check in. I hadn't talked to them since the weekend I threw the party at the house.
"Cool. Meeting Ryo tomorrow. Just you and me. Got it." I held up the papers she'd given me. "Now, what's this?"
"A lot of guesswork," Chloe said, her lips compressing in a frown. Her nose crinkled a little when she did it, which was cute as hell. Combined with the light dusting of freckles and the blonde hair, it was almost enough to make me forget how cold and deadly she could be.
"From what the team at Hannon can piece together, it's a list of bank accounts and routing numbers, although they haven't had any luck pinpointing any of the institutions they belong to. The numbers could be some kind of code, but no one's been able to break it. I think they might be linked to shell corporations your grandfather owned. It's probably to do with some of the more illicit parts of his business."
I felt an eyebrow raise. "Colin had his information written out in some kind of code?"
Chloe nodded. "We're pretty sure it's a code because one of the guys at Hannon managed to crack some of the other information we pulled off the laptop. It's a bunch of names, dates, and locations. Hannon is working with Psalter to track down the few leads we've managed to pull from the info."
"Getting information off a hard drive with a hole drilled through it is great work," I said, looking up from the papers, "But this doesn't tell me much about the flash drive they were after... or anything at all."
Chloe shook her head. "This is information from the flash drive. Whoever stole it must have looked at the information on it with the laptop before destroying it. They found it in..." she checked a note, "they found it by doing a RAM dump?"
"Okay," I said as if I knew what that meant. "So all this is information from the flash drive."
"Yep. Here's where it gets interesting," Chloe said, leaning forward. Her dark brown eyes were alight with intrigue; it was the most expressive I'd seen her... save for that night in Vegas when I caught her watching Ashley, Shea, and me enjoy each other's company.
