Chase turned to him, yawning a little. He sighed as though settling in to an unwanted task. His voice dropped to a whisper. “You remember that wall of pictures at the strip club?”
Ben had considered it a wall of horror. Pictures of clients and strippers. He tried to remember. It had been a bunch of photos of men in suits or uniforms or jeans and T-shirts, with their hands around women who weren’t their wives. It was prurient and he’d turned away, but good for Chase. He’d stared at that wall and memorized it, his brilliant brain holding on to the memory. “Yeah. I remember it was creepy as fuck.”
Chase lay back, looking more relaxed than Ben could ever remember him being. “So I studied that creepy-as-fuck wall of pictures, and I found someone who shouldn’t have been there.”
His brother was a bastard who wouldn’t just give up the information. He had to make a scene out of everything. He really would have been good on the stage. “Who? Tell me Juliet Kirkman used to be a stripper.”
Chase huffed a little. “I wish.” His voice went low. “It was Natalie’s friend. Gretchen. She was trying to hide her identity. She had a wig on and way more makeup than I’d seen her wearing before, but she has a scar on her face, just above her left eye. If I had to bet, I would say she got it from a nastily tipped flogger.”
Ben had seen that scar. “Who the hell would use a flogger on a woman’s face?”
“Well, they could have been newbie Doms trying it on her breasts and the falls went wide, but I think it was probably the psycho who kidnapped them all.”
God, he didn’t like to think about what Natalie had suffered through. Or Kitten. Gretchen had been there, too. She’d actually suffered the longest. “Okay. So Gretchen likes to strip on the side. Lots of women need the money.”
Chase huffed, his mind obviously working on the problem. “I ran her financials before I got here. She’s got plenty of money in the bank. Julian settled a ton of cash on each woman after Natalie killed the bastard. For all his chilly demeanor, the boss has a soft heart when it comes to strays.”
Ben slapped his brother’s arm. Hard. Yeah, that hurt. “Don’t call Natalie a stray.”
Chase winced a little. “Well, she isn’t a stray anymore. We domesticated her. I’ll get a collar on that little cat in the end, you’ll see. All I’m saying is that Gretchen has had a hundred grand in the bank for the last couple of years. Until two months ago, and then she started spending like crazy.”
“On what?”
“I don’t know.” Chase sat up, his whole demeanor turning vaguely sheepish.
“How can you not know? You follow every lead. You’re the one who sees a tiny rabbit hole and jumps right down it.”
Ben would almost swear his brother blushed. “I saw Natalie’s hole, and I tried really hard to jump down it. I didn’t really succeed until last night.”
How the mighty fell before one petite pink-haired cutie. “Okay. So we need to refocus that big brain of yours on the problem at hand. You got into Gretchen’s bank accounts?”
Chase shrugged like that little bit of hackery was no big deal. “Sure. I have the last couple of months’ reports on my computer, but the thing was the daily shit hadn’t changed. She bought a few groceries, though it looks like for the most part she eats out at the spa. She has an active Amazon account. The girl likes some nasty BDSM books. I’m not talking about Lexi’s little romances. Gretchen likes hard-core shit.”
“She’s spent a hundred thousand on sex books?”
“No. The money missing from her accounts has come out in seven wire transfers. All the exact same amount. Would you like to take a guess?”
Ben didn’t have to. He knew the drill. “Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine dollars.”
Anything over ten thousand and the bank was required to report it to the IRS. Gretchen was trying to quietly fuel someone cash.
“Exactly,” Chase replied. “I sent out some feelers on the account she’s shipping the money to. It looks like some kind of investment company. It’s weird because if she’s really investing, she wouldn’t care about the government knowing. Dane is supposed to get me the company info today.”
Dane was one of the resident Doms at The Club, and he also was a high-powered lawyer with lots of connections in the business world.
Chase’s phone pinged. He reached out to the small nightstand and growled a little. “Looks like he came up with something. He just texted me. He’s sending me the company records in a few. Where the hell is Natalie?”
Chase got out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom. Ben groped around for his boxers. Unlike his nudist brother, he felt better with his junk covered up. No one in the Barnes-Fleetwood clan would likely bat an eye, but their sister was still around.
“Do you think Natalie knows Gretchen is stripping?” Ben asked, letting his voice rise because it was obvious to him that she wasn’t in the guesthouse. She’d probably gone to the main house, likely in search of food. It was what he would have done.
Chase strode back into the playroom. “When I talked to Natalie, she didn’t mention anything about Gretchen working anywhere else. She said Gretchen went into town a lot, but not for a job. I have to assume she didn’t know.”
Ben felt his stomach turn. Gretchen was Natalie’s friend. They’d been through hell together, and she counted on Gretchen. “Do you think she knew Stan?”
The grimace on Chase’s face told the tale. “She was in the picture with Stan. If I had to guess, she knew him intimately.”
Fuck. It was going to hurt Natalie. “Can we investigate her without Natalie knowing about it?” He kept his voice low, hoping Natalie couldn’t hear them.
“Are you willing to let her hang out with some chick who might be a killer?”
His brother had a point. God, he didn’t want to work this morning. He wanted to wait for Natalie and then make love all morning long. He wanted to wrap himself around her and forget that there was a craptastic world waiting for all of them. But he owed her. “Okay, well, you need to check out the report Dane sent, and I need to go lean on Gretchen a little.”
He would have to be careful how he did it, but he needed to get a feel for her. If she was just in trouble, then he could quietly handle it, and Natalie wouldn’t need to know.
Chase was firing up his laptop when Ben saw the note. It was written in Natalie’s precise feminine hand.
I’ve gone out to the spa to pick up a few things I left in my locker and to hand in my two-week notice. I want to be ready to go to Dallas when the time is right. Hopefully soon. Love, Natalie.
He nearly growled because that was stupid. How could she have run off on her own?
P.S. I’m not stupid. I made Logan drive me. Unfortunately, I think that means I get Kitten and your sister, too, so maybe I am dumb. Sleep well, babes.
“Natalie’s gone. She went out to the spa to turn in her notice, but at least she had the good sense to take Logan with her.” She had an entourage. It would be all right, but there was some definite punishment coming her way. She should have woken them up. “Do you think part of Leo’s therapy with Logan is forcing him to be every female at The Club’s whipping boy until he decides sanity is better than being forced to follow around a bunch of women he can’t sleep with?”