[Katerina Carter 01.0] Exit Strategy Read online

  Exit Strategy

  A Katerina Carter Fraud Thriller

  Colleen Cross

  Slice Publishing

  Contents

  Also by Colleen Cross

  Exit Strategy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Author’s Note

  Also by Colleen Cross

  Exit Strategy - A Katerina Carter Fraud Thriller

  Colleen Tompkins writing as Colleen Cross

  Copyright © 2012, 2017 by Colleen Cross, Colleen Tompkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written consent of the copyright holder and publisher. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9780987883575 Paperback

  ISBN: 9780983750284 Ebook

  Published by Slice Publishing

  For more information see: http://www.ColleenCross.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9837502-8-4

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Colleen Cross

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  Nonfiction

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  Exit Strategy

  A Katerina Carter Fraud Legal Thriller

  Out of work and running out of money, private investigator and fraud expert Katerina Carter desperately needs more clients or she’ll be forced to go crawling back to a cubicle at her previous firm, a fate worse than debt.

  So when Liberty Diamond Mines CEO Susan Sullivan hires Kat to find Liberty’s missing CFO and a large sum of embezzled money, she’s eager to accept the job. But her excitement soon turns to terror when two company employees are brutally murdered.

  Kat realizes that this investigation is much more dangerous than she had ever imagined when she uncovers a sinister connection between blood diamonds and organized crime. She races against time to expose the crime, but can she stay alive long enough to expose the real criminals? Her first case just might just be her last.

  1

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  The bedroom light flashed on and Clara’s world exploded. Three men in masques luchadores burst into the room and surrounded the bed like a tag team in a wrestling ring. She turned her head to look at Vicente, but saw only her husband’s back.

  Carnaval dance troupes paraded in the street below, all Buenos Aires oblivious to the theatre unfolding in her bedroom. Sounds of snare drums and cymbals drifted upwards as murga porteños beat out the final notes of the Despidida, the exit song.

  The stocky one charged Vicente with a baseball bat, driving it down across his legs with a thud. Clara shuddered as the mattress imploded from the impact. Vicente grunted but remained still. A million images raced through her head—her mother, her father’s cronies, his competitors. All those disappearances would have started like this.

  Turn around.

  Vicente tensed beside her. He slid his hand towards hers and clasped it under the bed sheet without looking at her. She squeezed it back as she fought to calm her racing thoughts. Their detailed plans hadn’t included getting caught.

  Then the man turned to Clara. He wore a garish green mask with thick red borders around his eyes and mouth. His eyes bored into hers, challenging her. She clutched at the mulberry silk coverlet with her exposed hand, pulling it upwards. The fabric reverberated with every beat of her racing heart.

  The diamonds. Her father knew about the plan.

  “Name your price. I’ll pay you.” Her words came in a whisper.

  They’d delayed their escape by two days, waiting for payment on the last diamond shipment. Vicente objected, insisting a year of preparation shouldn’t be undone in one day. But Clara needed to wrench every last peso from her father, to ruin him, to make him pay. She would prove she could outsmart him, just like she had for the last two years. Now their escape was in jeopardy. How had he found out?

  “You can’t buy me, Clara.” Rodriguez didn’t bother disguising his voice, either too stupid or too cocky to worry about it.

  “Why not? My father did. How much do you want?” She kept her voice even as bile rose in her throat. Her father had sent Rodriguez on purpose, knowing she despised him.

  Vicente squeezed her hand; now it was damp with sweat. The two other men remained at the foot of the bed, AK47s trained on them both.

  “It’s not money I want.” He pulled off the mask, the overhead light glinting off his gold tooth. “You can still choose me. At least I’ve got a future.”

  The tall, rangy one in the Wolfman mask laughed and shifted his gun.

  Bastard. She wasn’t a prize to be married off. And Rodriguez might think he was in her father’s inner circle, but Clara knew better. It could just as easily be Rodriguez in the gun sights instead. Like a tank of lobsters, sooner or later it would be his turn.

  Vicente shot up in bed. “Leave her out of this.”

  Clara pulled at Vicente’s forearm. Even she knew not to anger Rodriguez. He wasn’t known as the executioner for nothing.

  “Shut up.” Rodriguez shoved Vicente back down on the bed with the rifle butt.

  “Call my father. It’s a misunderstanding.” She could explain a
way the diamonds and convince him of even greater profits. Her idea of trading guns and munitions for blood diamonds had been a cash cow for the organization, but her father couldn’t even spare a thank you. So Clara and Vicente had helped themselves to a cut off the top. They deserved it.

  “Too late. He’s out of the country. Out of contact.”

  “Liar. Call him, Rodriguez. I’m ordering you to—right now!”

  Rodriguez was little more than a glorified thug, having risen through the ranks of her father’s organization by being willing to do anything, kill anyone. How could he know her father planned to transfer the day-to-day running of the cartel to Vicente. Or so he said. They had dined with him at Resto, her favorite restaurant, just hours ago. Was her father dispatching his thugs while they ate? No, he likely choreographed both the dinner and punishment days before, waiting for the ultimate moment of revenge. The irony would have thrilled him.

  “I don’t take instruction from spoiled brats.”

  “Call him right now!” Clara almost sat up, forgetting her nakedness under the sheets.

  “No. It’s time I got a little of what I want.” Rodriguez moved slowly over to her side of the bed. Wolfman and el Diablo remained by the wall, guns trained at their heads. Vicente shifted on the mattress beside her and squeezed her hand under the sheets.

  Clara tried a softer tone.

  “Please—I need to talk to my father.”

  “Talk to him at Vicente’s funeral.” Rodriguez turned and strode back towards the other men. He motioned to them with a flick of the wrist and disappeared into the bathroom.

  The men lowered their guns slightly as first one then the other scanned the covers, starting at her feet and moving up slowly to meet her stare. She didn’t need to see their faces to know what they were thinking. She felt it.

  Clara shuddered as she tugged on the coverlet. Wolfman laughed at her and moved closer. Obviously one of her father’s henchmen, but one she didn’t recognize.

  He hooked the barrel of his gun under the comforter edge and pulled it off. Not once did he take his eyes off hers. Clara shivered but didn’t dare move.

  Vicente tensed beside her.

  The sheer curtains fluttered as a soft breeze blew into the bedroom. The revelers had gone and it was almost dawn. Already she could hear the faint sounds of traffic on nearby Avenida Libertador as more law abiding porteños began their predictable workdays. What she wouldn’t give for such tedium right now.

  “Get the door,” Wolfman said to el Diablo, motioning towards the hallway while keeping his eyes locked on hers.

  Then he moved closer, still pointing the gun at her head and reeking of stale cigars. He sat down on the side of the bed, blocking the open window. Suddenly the room felt stifling and claustrophobic.

  Rodriguez emerged from the bathroom and the man stood up quickly.

  “Not now,” Rodriguez said as he motioned Wolfman back against the wall. He turned back to Vicente. “Get up, asshole.”

  Vicente let go of her hand. She felt it slide upwards towards the pillow where he kept his gun.

  “None of that shit. Turn around. Hands out or I’ll cut them off.”

  Rodriguez relished his command over Vicente.

  Vicente did as he was told.

  “Get up. Slowly.”

  Still with his back to her—she couldn’t see his eyes.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “I’m not giving you anything, moron. Do it now.”

  Vicente stumbled to his feet, nude. He held his arms up in surrender.

  “In the bathroom. Now.” Rodriguez shoved him with the gun barrel hard against Vicente’s back, pushing him forward.

  “No!” Clara grabbed her water glass from the bedside table and hurled it at Rodriguez. It missed and shattered against the wall.

  Vicente turned to steal a look at her.

  “Mi amor, nuestro sueño. Nunca olvides.”

  He stumbled as Rodriguez rammed the rifle butt into his back.

  His face was etched in her mind when the shooting started.

  Our dream. Never forget.

  Never.

  Her last thought was drowned out by the staccato of gunfire.

  Then everything went black.

  2

  Vancouver, Canada

  There are two kinds of thieves. The first rob you at gunpoint and sometimes kill you. Forensic accountants like Katerina Carter dealt with the second kind. They carried no weapon, uttered no threats, and demanded nothing but your trust. They were good at getting it too. Chief Financial Officer Paul Bryant fit easily into the second category. He stole everything in broad daylight.

  “Damn it! I always had a bad feeling about Bryant. But five billion dollars? Impossible.”

  Susan Sullivan, CEO of Liberty Diamond Mines, sat on the edge of Bryant’s desk and glared down at Kat from her vantage point. She wore chocolate brown Prada and a hostile expression.

  Kat tugged at her skirt, trying to camouflage the eight-inch run in her nylons. Her toes searched under the desk for her half-size too small Jimmy Choos, wishing she’d worn flats instead.

  “It’s right here.” Kat pulled the loan documents from the file. Why had Susan hired a bottom fisher like her instead of a bigger firm? Her biggest case to date, a half million-dollar bingo fraud, paled in comparison to Liberty. Mostly she trolled for hidden assets in acrimonious divorce cases or helped insurance companies avoid fraud claim payouts. Even that work had dried up with the recession. She wasn’t even sure her calculator had enough zeros to do the math.

  Kat leaned back in Paul Bryant’s chair and traced her fingertips across the armrest’s soft calf leather. She needed to keep both her cool and a safe distance from Susan. She had arrived at Liberty early this morning after a panicked call from Susan. Now it was after five on a rainy Friday night. They’d been having the same five minute conversation for over an hour, and Liberty’s CEO was still in denial.

  “Liberty doesn’t have that kind of cash. How could he even steal that much in the first place?” Susan stabbed her Mont Blanc pen into the desk blotter, splitting the nib.

  Kat recoiled as the gemstone-encrusted pen ripped into the felt, spewing ink across the desk. The splatters narrowly missed the wire transfers and loan documents, the only evidence of Bryant’s deceit. She snatched them from the line of fire.

  “With these.” Kat held up the papers as she eyed her PaperMate, thankful for her simpler tastes. “Cash from the loan.”

  How could it take two whole days to discover such a massive fraud? It was like overlooking a midday art heist at the Louvre. She wasn’t going to get a straight answer from Susan. Narcissistic CEOs always blamed someone else.

  No one had thought for a moment it was real. After all, the debits and credits netted out to zero, and Liberty wasn’t big enough to deal in billions for a single transaction. The accountant who discovered the fraud was waiting to inform Paul Bryant, who was away on a business trip. When the CFO didn’t come back, it became painfully obvious why.

  “What loan? There’s got to be a mistake.”

  Paul Bryant had leveraged Liberty to the hilt with subprime credit, the corporate equivalent of payday loans. Then he vanished, along with the money. Kat had found crumpled copies of the three wire transfers in Bryant’s desk less than an hour ago.

  “Here.” Kat pointed to the bottom of the document. “You and Bryant both signed the loan papers.”

  “Give me that.”

  Susan snatched the papers from Kat’s hand, blinding her with a monstrous solitaire that glinted off the halogen office lights. It had to be at least three karats, probably from one of Liberty’s mines.

  “Forged, obviously. Do you honestly think I would call you if I was involved?”

  “No.” Kat kept her voice even. “I just need to verify whether you—”

  “Katerina, every second we spend discussing minutiae gives Paul Bryant more time to get away.”

  Susan stood and tossed her pen towards
the wastebasket in a javelin throw. It fell just short and Kat had to restrain herself from retrieving it. The two thousand-dollar pen would just about cover the minimum payments on her credit cards.

  Kat tried a different tack. “When did you last see Bryant?”

  Susan walked towards the window, her back to Kat.

  “Last week maybe? I don’t remember.” Susan turned to face Kat and crossed her arms. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  Kat’s BlackBerry buzzed. She checked the call display and let it go to voicemail. Her landlord was calling about the overdue rent again.

  “Every detail helps, and you worked with him every day for two years. Didn’t you notice anything suspicious?”

  “If I did, would we be having this discussion?” Susan unfolded her arms and looked down at her hands. “I never dreamed he would ruin the company like this.”

  “Does he have any addictions? Gambling, drugs? Money problems?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  As Susan became more agitated Kat thought she heard a slight accent, though she couldn’t place from where. “Was he resentful about something? Passed over for a promotion or anything like that?”

  “No. And psychoanalysis isn’t going to get the money back.”

  Most white-collar criminals needed to feed something: either an addiction or their ego. But according to Susan, Bryant had no issues.

  “I can probably track down the money in a few days.” Actually getting it back was another issue, but she couldn’t afford to waste more time arguing with Susan. “Do the police have any leads?”

  “They’re not involved. I hired you instead.”

  Kat’s mouth dropped.

  “You haven’t reported him missing?”

  “No way. If this gets out the stock price will plummet.”

  “But Liberty’s a public company—you have to at least issue a press release before the markets reopen on Monday. It’s the law. And I trace money, not people. Even if the money trail leads to him, that’s a job for the police. I can’t—”