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  Before she could respond, the paramedics came out with an elderly woman strapped to the stretcher. There was a little difficulty maneuvering her down the stairs before they placed her in the back of the ambulance. A second younger man in a baseball cap stood watching. “I’m sorry,” the man – Aiden, she remembered suddenly – said. “I’ve got to go.”

  Zoe returned to her car without speaking and watched while Aiden briefly spoke to the young man – who she saw now was only a teenager – before hurrying into the back of the ambulance with the stretcher and the paramedics. As they pulled away and turned toward the hospital, Zoe turned her car in the other direction and somberly drove home.

  Meanwhile, Aiden was wondering what could have brought her there. Had she purposely sought him out? He had given her his address so she would know where to send the bill. Maybe she’d decided it wasn’t worth her time and she’d changed her mind about making him pay for it. Was she there to apologize for her behavior earlier? He hadn’t even had time to tell his grandmother about the minor accident before she collapsed. She’d suffered a heart attack a few years before and had to take a multitude of medications every day to keep healthy.

  He only had his grandmother and younger brother and didn’t know what he would do without her. She was the source of his strength and he was the apple of her eye. She’d lost her son and daughter-in-law when Aiden was thirteen and his brother was just a few months old. She raised the two boys on her own. Now Aiden looked at his grandmother in the ambulance and a tear formed in the corner of his eye. She looked so frail lying there as the medics poked her and called out readings to one another. He didn’t want to lose her and was worried she wouldn’t wake up.

  Zoe could not get her mind off Aiden. There was a mix of emotions going through her mind and she found it hard to sort through them. Even as her heart went out to him for whatever he and his loved ones must be suffering, on some level, she wished she could erase her premature admiration for his strong forearms and obviously broad shoulders.

  Aiden was the last man she should be attracted to and the idea that she had found him attractive, even for just a second, disgusted her. He had hit her car and added to an already stressful day. She didn’t want to like him and resented her brain chemistry for triggering an attraction to someone she was determined to despise. Infuriated with herself, she stripped off her clothes and dumped them in the hamper. She’d only worn them for a short time but they felt dirty to her. She felt dirty. In only her underwear, she climbed under the covers and pulled the comforter up to her chin.

  “Argh!” she growled in frustration. “Get out of my head, you fender-bending moron!” Try as she might it was impossible to forget those few moments before she recognized him. He was normal then, just a man…a very attractive man. The vibrating of her cell phone on the nightstand startled her and she quickly answered.

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  “Zoe, are you all right? You sound funny.” It was Mason returning her call.

  She was relieved and happy. Hearing Mason’s voice was like a breath of fresh air and she wished, as she had on many earlier occasions, that they were better suited romantically. She would just have to comfort herself by enjoying their deep bonds of friendship, which she knew would last forever.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she wanted to tell Mason about her night but wasn’t sure what she made of it herself.

  “Are you sure?” she could hear him yawning on the other end of the line. “You said it was urgent I call you back.”

  “Sorry about the time difference. I know it’s ridiculously late there, but Mason, I need you.”

  “That’s unexpected. When did you finally realize?” He teased.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter. I need you to come to California. Can you spare me a couple of weeks?” her voice had taken on a serious tone.

  “I can probably squeeze you into my schedule. What’s up? Does it have something to do with your father’s company? Is everything all right?”

  She could hear the concern in his voice and proceeded to reassure him that she was all right and only needed him to help her check out the accounts. She declined to tell him of where her suspicions were leading her because she still wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to jump the gun over something harmless. The last thing she wanted was to come across to her father and the Board of Directors as paranoid.

  “Okay, it’s the perfect thing to put my father off a little longer. When’s good for you?” he asked, excited about spending time with Zoe again. It had only been a few days but he missed her reassuring presence. She helped him stay strong when dealing with dear old Dad.

  “How about Saturday?”

  “Saturday’s fine.” They finished the conversation with him promising on the lives of his future merger-arranged children to come and Zoe felt better by the time Mason hung up the phone. At least she had gotten Aiden off her mind temporarily. Damn. There he is again, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Her first day at the office Zoe was a nervous wreck, but her nature would not allow her to show it. She prepared for the meeting by spending the morning in her father’s office getting briefed on the names, photos and functions of the different managers. The staff meeting she’d arranged was meant to be casual and she wanted the people she would be working with to relax around her, so she asked everyone to congregate in the staff lounge which was relaxed and comfortable.

  “Hello, everyone. I’m Zoe Dunmore and I want us all to have a great relationship from this day onwards. Now I’m going to come around so you can introduce yourselves, I can ask some questions, and I can get to know each of you better….” She stopped as someone rushed in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” the man said.

  She turned to face the latecomer and met a familiar pair of amazingly blue eyes. Taken aback by seeing Aiden at her staff meeting, her face went ashen.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice betrayed her hostility. A few of the managers and supervisors looked at her curiously, picking up on the hostility between them.

  Aiden too had a shocked look on his face. His mouth fell open as he tried to answer but no words came. She stepped closer to him and quietly repeated her question. “What are you doing here?” she asked again, making certain he could hear the coldness in her voice.

  Finally finding his voice he responded, “I work here.”

  “What?” she was dumbfounded. Is this coincidence or punishment? she asked herself.

  “Accounts. Steve – that is, Mr. Dunmore – your father, asked me to sit in on the meeting,” he added.

  Though still flustered, Zoe managed to get through the meeting making great efforts to conceal how agitated she was. She was convinced she could hear the smaller clusters whispering about her as she moved from group to group making the formal introductions, fielding unexpected requests, and laughing hollowly at far too many bad puns. Alone once more, she spent the remainder of the afternoon scanning the books she’d started to go through the evening before and every now and then, Aiden popped unbidden into her mind. She was sure it was loathing she felt for him but flushed at the memory of her attraction to him the night before.

  The next two days were busy for her as she personally visited each department, attended board meetings, and had business lunches with outside representatives her father had aligned his business with. By Friday she realized just how much her father had put into the company and vowed to make it bigger and better for his sake. He had a vision of where he wanted it to go and with Zoe at the helm, he believed his dreams for the company would be realized.

  She picked up Mason at the airport on Saturday afternoon. Anxious for him to get started on the books, she had Lizzie prepare lunch while they talked. She told him that she wanted a second opinion on what exactly she was looking at because she had a hunch but it was a hunch she hoped very much was wrong. He would go through the books now and if he found anything untow
ard, an official audit from a private contractor would have to be ordered. Mason was delighted to help and volunteered to start that afternoon. It gave him something productive to do and took his mind off the current strain in his relationship with his own father.

  Zoe told him she had errands to run and left Mason in her study with the boxes of files and ledgers. She knew better than to sit there peering over his shoulder while he worked. She spent most of the afternoon shopping for new office-appropriate outfits. She would have liked for Mason to join her but couldn’t exactly complain since he was doing her a favor and she did desperately want to learn what he thought. He advised her it was important for her mind to be at ease in order for her to take the reins from her father and one thing that would help was knowing exactly what was going on with the company finances. She returned home and found him buried beneath the files in the study.

  “Hey, did you take a break?”

  “Who is your main accountant?” he asked without replying to her question.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  An apologetic look crossed his face as he stood to face her. “I’m not sure what’s going on but you definitely need an audit and you need it yesterday!”

  “You found something?” she asked, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

  “I’ve only scanned them,” he said with a note of caution but Zoe knew about Mason’s attention to – or as she jokingly referred to it, his obsession with – detail. “But I noticed some of the figures don’t add up. So I took a look back a few more quarters and noticed that the sales have been increasing steadily as the demand for technology increased but the actual accounts show a decline in profits.”

  “Are you saying the Accounts department is making huge mistakes? Or is someone stealing from the company?” She could not help asking what had been on her own mind.

  “We can’t be certain until I go through everything in detail. I need more information though -- for at least the last couple of years. A company such as yours cannot afford to make such big mistakes.”

  “How do we find out who’s behind this?” she queried.

  The files she’d had sent home only covered the last four quarters. Zoe hadn’t thought to go farther back because her intent had been to get acquainted with the status of things at present. There was a larger archive for everything pertaining to Dunmore Corp but it was on-site. All she had to do was take Mason there. However, she did not want to alarm her father or let anyone else at the company know she was having an independent accountant examining the books. She would have to move the files without arousing suspicion.

  “Take a look at this,” Mason said, beckoning her over. He pointed to a name on the page.

  “What about it?” she asked. Nothing about it seemed strange to her.

  “This company shows up everywhere. Every time sales report an increase, this company shows up on the accounts. Have you ever heard of Globex Corporation?”

  ****

  In order to get the files to Mason, she would need to move them from the archive to the house. She wasn’t sure what she would tell her father but she knew he had to suspect something was going on after he found Mason in the study with piles of files in front of him.

  They’d taken a break on Sunday and relaxed while her father went golfing with friends at the Blackberry Farm Golf Course. Spending a nice day at the pool, listening to music, and chatting about college days was relaxing but Zoe could not get Aiden out of her head. She wondered about the nature of his connection to Globex. Her instincts told her something bigger was going on, but at the moment he was the only suspect they had.

  Uncle David headed the Accounts department and she’d known him most of her life; she couldn’t think of any reason not to trust him and the thought of mentioning such a suspicion about his best friend to her father made her shudder. The department’s other employees were Mrs. Henry, the Senior Supervisor, and a number of auxiliary workers who each might have access to the accounts they were assigned, but not to the master accounts and they certainly didn’t have the authority to move the increasingly larger sums she and Mason were discovering missing – not without some serious help, that is. Uncle David liked to have a personal assistant selected and employed directly by him but he’d had someone else in the position the last time she was home. She still remembered the conversation with her father on the subject; he informed her that executive members could have their own private staff. On Wednesday, she had learned it was Aiden who was Uncle David’ latest PA.

  Zoe had left the house early to arrange to have the documents packed and sent home before too many observant eyes and whispering mouths had arrived at the office. Mason decided to get an early start to his investigations as well. He was compiling a detailed listing of what he had found when Steve walked in.

  “Hello, son. I see you’re hard at work,” he greeted.

  Mason remembered Zoe asking him not to say anything about what they were looking into to her father so he tried to keep his cool as he gazed upon the distinguished-looking man before him. He was a bit intimidating but Mason managed. There was something about Steve that Mason’s own father did not possess. Steve was tall and had an aristocratic air about him. His tone was rich and deep and his grey eyes saw into your soul when he looked at you. Mason respected the man and wished he could tell him what was going on.

  “Yes, sir. I’m just helping Zoe settle in,” he responded. “Helping get her acquainted with everything.”

  “Found everything in order?” Steve asked.

  Mason’s response to that was, “Well, I’ve just started looking, so it is too early to know, sir. But I’m sure it will be.”

  “I’m sure my daughter knows what she’s doing. Never mind me. I’m just an old man,” Steve chuckled as he left for the office.

  Steve was a prudent man. He trusted his daughter would do the right thing when the time came. He decided not to interfere with what she was doing even though he knew exactly what it was. Eventually she would find what she sought and everything would fall into place. She would make a great President and he couldn’t wait to see how she would handle the company.

  As he sat in the back passenger seat of his sedan, he looked through the window but saw past what was outside. He saw a time when his wife was alive. She would stand in the driveway and wave until the car disappeared down the street, Zoe in her arms as a young child and when she was older, with her school bag slung across her shoulders waiting for the bus. Their red masses of hair would each glow like fire in the morning sun. He missed those times.

  Now he had only one redhead, a constant but pleasant reminder of the one he lost. A spitfire like her mother and beautiful as well, she was coming into her own. Now she had a difficult task ahead of her and he had to let her handle it the way she saw fit. It was the only way for her to build the confidence she needed to take over. He had to sit back, watch, and wait.

  After Steve left, Mason set about finding more about Globex Corporation and their connection to Dunmore Corp. He met a few roadblocks and had to call in several favors. What he succeeded in uncovering was that Globex was the parent company for a number of companies and charitable organizations. There were more than fifty organizations registered under the name Globex Corporation. He still had a nagging suspicion that Globex was not what it appeared to be.

  With a little digging he found there was no office space or verifiable employees for Globex; they had no mailing address, only a post office box. A red flag if Mason ever saw one. He instantly knew something strange was taking place. He wanted to be sure of his findings before telling Zoe so he compiled the information and continued his investigation. With the help of another college buddy, he found out which companies were real and which were fakes. Of the more than fifty companies registered through Globex, more than forty were phantoms. The next dozen or so were predominantly small-time charities.

  Mason focused on the charities and found extensive donations made to them by
Dunmore Corp. During the last quarter alone, there were six payments totaling more than eight million dollars. He scanned the previous quarter and found four more payments at close to four million dollars each.

  It was surprisingly easy to find the same man at the head of these charities. Was it carelessness or stupidity? In any case, Mason couldn’t ignore it. He knew there needed to be more evidence in order to call in the authorities, but Dunmore Corp could not ignore what was going on with these disappearing funds.

  It took two days to put all he found into a comprehensive report, so by the time he was ready to tell Zoe it was Tuesday. They had dinner first, just the two of them, and then went into the study to talk.

  “You are not going to like this,” he warned her.

  “Sounds serious. You found something!” she exclaimed. Zoe wasn’t sure she wanted to know the gritty details, but she had to know whether someone was stealing from her father.

  “The head accountant, is his name Butler by any chance?” Mason asked.

  Zoe’s pulse quickened as she remembered the staff meeting on her first day and Aiden apologizing for being late. He had introduced himself as Aiden Butler. “Yes. Well, Butler’s the personal assistant to the head accountant. He does a great deal of the accounts himself, from what I understand. My father’s best friend, David Warner is the formal head of Accounts and has been for the last fifteen years or so. He is more of an accounts liaison to major customers and suppliers. Why do you ask?”

  Mason needed to find out more. “I’ve only gone back a little ways. I’m going to need to go back further to see how long this…whatever it is…has been going on.” He requested the files for the last ten years to find out if the head accountant was truly oblivious to what Aiden was doing. He gave Zoe the information he had about Globex, the bogus charities, and Dunmore Corp’s donations, but he also advised her against firing Aiden until she had concrete proof he was the one embezzling from the company.