“What does that mean?” Aunt Maddy asked.

“Well, I’m not saying the guy’s Bernie Madoff, but if you’ve got money invested with him, I suggest you move it. Brian’s been known to inflate earnings statements to make his results look better than they are, then use borrowed money to make up the difference. When Jonah told me what he found, I tipped off the SEC and they opened their own investigation. But that investigation ran parallel to ours; there was no crossover. The SEC just knew not to look into any of the accounts Jonah set up for me.”

“Then how did you resolve the fee issue?” I asked.

“Jonah thought he could run Brian’s playbook on the Russians’ accounts. I told him not to, that he was playing with fire. You get caught stealing money from a rich person, you go to jail. You get caught stealing money from a mobster, you get a bullet in the head.”

“Except this time, it was a bullet in the chest that went into my daughter’s head.”

Jake’s whole body sagged. “Yes. Maybe if they’d hired a professional, it would’ve been a shot to the head and Amelia would’ve survived. But the nephew wasn’t that good of a shot. He’s lucky he hit Jonah at all.”

“Lucky?” I asked coldly.

“Unlucky,” he corrected. “The whole situation was unlucky. The person the nephew should’ve come after was me. He thought he had.”

“But why would he have been looking for you in Santa Veneta?” Aunt Maddy asked. “Didn’t the Russians know you lived in LA?”

“I never told them where I lived for obvious reasons. And the nephew wasn’t bright enough to figure out someone like me would never post a picture of himself online. That’s how they found Jonah.”

“Jonah didn’t post pictures of himself online. He hated social media.” He thought it was a huge waste of time. I didn’t disagree, but I still used Facebook to keep up with old friends. Although I never posted photos of us. Mainly I just commented on other people’s posts.

“There was a picture of him on the firm’s website. We think the nephew must’ve gotten a screen grab of me from a security camera then ran a reverse image search and found Jonah that way. It was a stupid move because what he really wanted was the missing money, and once he killed Jonah, he had no way to get it. But the nephew was not what you’d call a strategic thinker.”

I collapsed onto the chair I’d been pacing in front of. I felt depleted. Jonah and Amelia were dead all because the management firm thought putting photos of their executives on the company website would make them seem friendlier? It was hard to believe something so innocuous could have such deadly consequences.

Of course, this wasn’t a random killing. For the nephew, it was personal. Not only did he think Jake was stealing from him but usurping his power too. He probably enjoyed killing Jonah; enjoyed getting his revenge. He never knew he killed the wrong man.

“I’m so sorry, Grace,” Jake said. “I never meant for any of this to happen. You have to believe me.”

I did believe him. But that didn’t mean I could forgive him. Not yet, and maybe not ever. But I could acknowledge his pain. I’d lost a husband and a child, but Jake lost his brother, his best friend, and his only family. “What happened after the police killed the nephew?”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“I realize you couldn’t just go back undercover because the Russians thought you were dead, but what happened with the investigation? Are they all in jail now?”

“No. Once my cover was blown, the investigation ended. It had to.”

“Why? Couldn’t the FBI just send someone else in?”

“That’s not how it works, Grace. This was a multiyear effort with a lot of resources behind it.”

“Then after all that effort, why didn’t the FBI finish the job? Why didn’t they go in and arrest everyone? Surely, you had some evidence.”

“The goal was never to arrest the low-level guys. We wanted to take down the entire organization. Since we could no longer do that, the decision was made to focus our resources elsewhere.”

“Focus your resources elsewhere? What the hell does that mean?” It sounded like corporate doubletalk to me.

“Exactly what it sounds like. We shifted our focus to a different criminal organization, one that didn’t know my face. I believe you saw some of their files when you were snooping in my apartment.”

“Is that why you had a jeweler’s loop and all those articles about diamonds? I thought maybe you had a secret girlfriend and were thinking of proposing.”

Jake let out a laugh. “No, I’m not even dating anyone at the moment. But if you ever want to know anything about the four Cs, I’m your man. And that is as much information about the investigation as I’m going to give you, so don’t ask.”

“I don’t care about that investigation. I care about this one.”

“There is no active investigation of the Russians at this time, which isn’t to say there won’t be in the future.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. You may or may not investigate these people ten years from now. Not good enough, Jake. Jonah died trying to help you take these guys down. Maybe you can just walk away and move on to something else, but I can’t.”

“And what is it you think you’re going to do?” he asked.

I didn’t know. But I knew what I wasn’t going to do—and that was nothing.

Chapter 45

My meeting with Jake’s boss was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. We both had conditions. Mine was that Jake not be there. Jake’s boss’s condition was that I give the FBI the flash drive. I promised to bring it with me to our meeting, but that didn’t mean I was going to hand it over to him. I wanted something in return. I wanted them to re-open the investigation into the Russians.

I had just gotten onto the freeway on my way to LA when MJ’s school called. They requested I come to the school as soon as possible. The assistant assured me MJ wasn’t hurt, but that’s the only information I could pry out of the woman. I pulled off at the next exit and drove directly to the Winston Academy.

When I arrived in the lobby of the administrative building, I found MJ sitting on the sofa watching a video on his phone.

“What happened?” I asked. He had no visible bruises and there were no bloodstains or rips in his school uniform khakis or white button-down shirt, so I didn’t think he’d been in a fight. He just looked upset.

MJ slipped his phone into his pocket. “Sorry, Grace. I messed up.”

I sat down next to him. “Messed up how?”

Then the door to the head of school’s office opened, and Anna Cooper stepped into the hallway. “Good morning, Ms. Hughes, I’m glad you could come on such short notice. Let’s talk in my office.”

“Okay,” I said and stood up. I still had no idea what we were supposed to be talking about.

MJ stood up too, but Ms. Cooper told him she wanted to speak to me alone, so he sat back down.

I waited until Ms. Cooper had shut her office door and sat down behind her large mahogany desk before I asked, “Would you mind telling me why I’m here? All your assistant would tell me was that I needed to come to the school right away.”

“There’s been an incident,” she said calmly and with authority. I could see why the Winston Academy Board of Trustees had hired her.

“What kind of incident?” I asked.

“An altercation. MJ verbally abused his teacher and another student in class this morning.”

I assumed “verbally abused” was a private school euphemism for cursed at. “You mean he used the F-word?” I wasn’t sure even I was allowed to say the word on campus.

Ms. Cooper nodded. “Among other things. I’m not going to repeat what he said. I’ll let you discuss that with MJ directly. I asked you to come here today so we could discuss the situation and to inform you of the consequences.”

“Detention?” I asked, hopefully.

“We’re putting MJ on probation. If he has another outburst like today’s, then we will ask him to leave the school.”