Page 39 of Sam's Salvation

Dean walked over and started with the first statement. Sam typed in the numbers and watched as the total climbed ever higher. When Dean read the last one, he sat back and stared at the final tally.

“What did you get?” Max asked.

“Three hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Wait,” Audra said. “Exactly three hundred and fifty thousand? Not three hundred fifty thousand and ten dollars? Or two hundred and forty-two?”

He looked over. She had sat up and stared at him with an intense look. “Yes. It’s exactly that.” He held up his phone to show her. “Why? Does that matter?”

“It might. Can one of you pull up the images I took of Liam’s ledger?”

Sam turned his phone around and logged into the server where she’d stored everything. “What am I looking for?”

“The final entry. What does it say?”

“350G TS DTC.” He looked at her with a frown. She had her lip between her teeth as she stared off into space. Something was going on in her head. That was her ‘puzzle it out’ face.

Suddenly, her expression cleared, and she looked at him with wide eyes. “Liam paid off Theo.”

“What?” Max said. “How do you figure?”

“Three hundred fifty grand to ‘TS.’ The ‘TS’ is Ted Sanders. Theo’s alias.”

Dean cursed. “Then what or who is ‘DTC?’”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But why would Liam pay Theo? Wouldn’t it be the other way around? If Liam knew who Theo was—who I was—why wouldn’t Theo be the one paying to keep us both alive?”

“Unless Liam didn’t know who Theo was and Theo was threatening to take something he had on Liam to the police to extort money out of him,” Max said.

The room fell silent as they digested that. Sam stared at his phone, reading the other ledger entries. “There are other entries here that end with ‘DTC.’” He looked at Audra again. “Do you know what it could be?”

“No. Are there other repeating initials?”

“Some, yes.” He read them off. “Do you recognize any of those?”

“No. I don’t know what they could be. It’s possible they’re someone’s initials. Or it’s code for places.”

“I think you need to sit down and get that list together that Asher wants,” Dean said. “We’ll send him that and what we’ve discovered from this.” He pointed at the statements. “Maybe he and his algorithm can figure it out.”

Seventeen

Hot water beat down on Sam’s back. He needed to get out of the shower and go to bed. But that meant returning to the same room as Audra and pretending she wasn’t sleeping just feet away. When they were together in Spain, they’d never slept apart. He hadn’t known what it was like to be in the same room at night, but not have her in his arms. He did now, and he didn’t like it.

Their first night in Vegas, they’d both been exhausted, so it hadn’t been a problem. He’d fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. But last night? He’d been well-rested and his brain had had a chance to catch up to the fact that she was real. Not some memory he’d conjured up to distract himself. It was a torture he didn’t care to repeat. His body remembered holding her all night, and it wanted to do it again.

He reached for the water and shut it off. He couldn’t stay in here all night.

After toweling off, he put on a t-shirt and running shorts and exited the bathroom. Audra sat much where he’d left her. Cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She was staring at the ledger photos.

“You need to get some sleep. And how does sitting like that not bother your hip?”

She glanced at him and lifted a shoulder. “It’s fine. Mostly, it’s only when I tip too far to that side.”

“Well, that’s good. How’s your head?”

“Better since I rested earlier. I’m fine, Sam. Stop worrying about me.”

He sat down on her bed and pushed the laptop closed with one finger. “I will always worry about you, Aud.”