A representative from his business banking account.
And then, she delivers news that I just know is going to bite me in the ass.
“Due to the most recent transaction, Mr. Wolfe’s savings account is currently overdrawn by 1,347 dollars. Would you like to transfer money from one of his other accounts to cover the overdraft?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“It’s going to be alright,” Heidi reassures me twenty minutes later as we hurry through the door of the room she and Cal are sharing. She’s been telling me the same thing since I sat back down for breakfast, in a soothing voice that I’m sure she uses on her phone sex customers. Still, I only managed to down half of my western omelet before my stomach pitched violently.
All I can think about is how Lucas will react once I break the news to him that Shiner Bock had somehow managed to break into his bank account before I cancelled my cards.
“Kylie, I swear it’s fine.” Heidi puts her small bag in a compartment in the closet.
I sit down on the floor by the mini-fridge and start pulling up the website for the bank. “He’s going to flip the f**k out.”
She kneels down in front of me, taking my chin in her hands. “Relax. Banks fix this kind of thing all the time. Just take a deep breath and get it figured out.”
I start to nod, but then my phone beeps three times. I drop my gaze, letting out a curse when I see the low battery indicator flashing across the screen. “Do you have a charger I can use?”
“I think Cal does.” I watch as she goes to the queen bed on the right side of the room. She glances around until she finally spots what she’s searching for on the side closest to the wall. As she brings me Cal’s phone charger, I realize that both beds look slept in.
When I’m not freaking out about my job, I’ll mention that to her.
Plugging my phone into the wall outlet, I log in to Lucas’s bank account using the username and password he set up for me a few years ago. Almost immediately, I receive an error message: Incorrect Username or Password.
“Calm down,” I tell myself. The last thing I want is to fumble with the keyboard so many times that I’m locked out for the next 24 hours.
“Yes, keep calm, babe,” Heidi says as she fishes a cigarette out of her luggage. She hasn’t smoked in days, and I feel bad for stressing her out to the point where she needs to temporarily pick up the habit again.
As she darts out the balcony door to smoke, I try to get into the account again, typing each letter and number slowly. Once more, I’m denied access. “Shit.”
I close the Internet and open the Notes app, sorting through rows of reminders until I find the one I’m looking for. Lucas’s personal login. After I commit the details to my memory, I retry logging into the bank account.
“Thank God,” I whisper when I’m not kicked out.
There are a few different accounts listed on this page, and I click on the one the bank representative mentioned when I talked to her. I scroll through the recent transactions, studying them.
And I feel absolutely sick to my stomach.
There are several recent transfers that have come into this particular account, each one from Lucas’s accounts at other banks, equaling more than 200,000 dollars in all. And at the top of the screen under pending transactions there are two purchases—one for the flight I secured for him the other day and the other for an outbound wire transfer in the amount of 250,000 dollars.
It’s a ridiculously insane amount of money.
And it’s something that Shiner Bock definitely has nothing to do with.
Money like this has Samantha Wolfe written all over it.
“Heidi,” I call out, and she peeks her head back inside the room.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to go back to my room to call Lucas, okay?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to talk to him?” Frowning, she steps inside. Her cigarette is still in her hand, and even though it’s one of my vices too, I cough when the smoke curls around my face. “Sorry,” she says, stretching her hand out the door as she waits for me to respond.
Gripping the mini-fridge, I push myself to my feet. “I’m sure I’m ready.” Just to reassure her, I muster a confident smile. “I think I figured things out, and we’ll probably be able to fix it fast.”
She releases a deep breath. “Thank God.”
As I take the stairs back to my room, I try to call Lucas. I’m not surprised that I’m redirected to his voicemail. Over the next hour, which I spend anxiously watching a horror movie on HBO, I attempt to get in touch with my brother three additional times. I’m debating whether or not I should call the one person Lucas will answer for—our mom—when my phone rings, and I see his name on the ID.
He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say anything, and I take it upon myself to initiate the conversation.
“Lucas,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, “why is there a huge chunk of money missing out of your business account?”
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars isn’t just a huge chunk of money, though. It’s several years of my income, and it’s gone from an account that I’m supposed to be monitoring.
The man who answers me a few seconds later doesn’t sound like my older brother at all. He sounds broken, like a wounded animal. “It’s nothing. Mind your own f**king business, Kylie.”
The fear that has seized my chest for the last hour and a half suddenly shifts and now it feels like poison rippling through my body, wrapping around my bones and slithering through my veins. “Not on your life, Lucas. It’s Sam, isn’t it? Are you paying that bitch off again? Where’s Sienna? What the—”