Coastal Empire by Rocky Leonard

Author:Rocky Leonard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective crime mystery supernatural award winning procedural police historical, tybee island, coastal empire savannah, supernatural bonaventure cemetery, robert mercer, detective murder mystery, detective and mystery
Publisher: Each Voice Publishing

Chapter 17

DeVaughn verified that the last of the wire transfers for the Elkins job had been deposited into his offshore accounts. He picked up the new packet and started his homework with no intention of doing the next job until paid for the last one. He didn’t offer credit terms or easy financing options when it came to murder-for-hire.

New federal regulations were specifically designed to detect people doing business as he was. This forced DeVaughn to alter his method of accepting payment. The days of large wire transfers going undetected were pretty much a thing of the past thanks to anti-terrorism banking legislation. He now required a series of transactions, each under ten thousand dollars to avoid detection, in order to complete the deal.

He opened the latest manila envelope and reviewed its contents again. The target’s photograph was on top. A sharp black and white photo of a face he recognized caused DeVaughn to drawn a sharp breath.

# # #

His meeting with Sarah Reid was awkward. Mercer wanted to keep working the case and he was afraid that once she knew Barry wasn’t cheating on her, her interest would not be strong for getting to the bottom of a case of identity theft when the thief didn’t steal anything.

When Sarah heard that Barry didn’t buy the necklace that inspired the thank you note, her loss of interest was palpable, obvious from the reaction on her face. When he explained what happened at the construction company office that morning, she got mad at him for pulling his gun in order to protect himself and his dog from three men threatening him with weapons.

The mysterious thank you note nagged at Mercer. Something was wrong with the picture. He did his best to rationalize an explanation why she should continue to pay him to investigate the connections.

“Look—for whatever reason Steve Yarborough is using your husband’s name, it can’t be good. You need me to dig up Walter Danielson or corner this guy Yarborough. If we don’t get to the bottom of this, it’s going to bite you in the butt. No offense, but these are not good people you’re dealing with here. You can’t just ignore them and hope they go away. Whatever they’re up to is eventually going to come back and haunt you unless you go on the offensive. You can’t just sit back and wait for whatever the plan is to happen and then react. You’ve got to be proactive or it’s too late.”

“Why do you think it’s so important that I continue to pay you when you’ve already answered the question I asked, whether my husband is cheating?” she asked him.

“Three things--first, the salesman who wrote the note you received disappeared shortly before I arrived in Atlanta. He bolted without giving his boss an explanation. He just vanished off the face of the earth. That’s one big red flag. Second, the credit card used to make the purchase was issued to someone using your husband’s name and your home address, but they changed the billing address on the new card.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.