“You are late,” Eleanor’s inquisitive tone welcomed Brendon the next morning.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lightman,” he replied, tired. “It’s only ten minutes late.”
“Well, take me there as fast as you can. I can’t miss the appointment.”
He didn’t argue with her or fought against her demanding tone; after all, the previous night had been long and exhaustive. After receiving the tracer’s report and sending them to Carl, the two men brainstormed for hours about the finding.
“Zhenshchina svet…” Carl had said out loud once he got to Brendon’s house. “It sounds Russian.”
“I thought as much. Do you think he might be involved with the Russian mafia?”
“It’s always possible; we know that Donald Tucker had business in Russia a few months ago. It looks like Lightman is involved in whatever he did there, or maybe Tucker was the link between Lightman and the Russians.”
“What for? Money? Having a job done?”
“Maybe. We need to find this out.”
“Did you manage to find anyone named that?”
Carl sighed. “No, I am thinking… I don’t speak Russian, you know, but I will send for a linguistic specialist to give me a hand. But I have seen many Russian names, and this one sounds like one.”
“Zhenshchina?” Brendon looked skeptical; even though Russian sounded strange to his ears, that world definitely did not sound like a name.
“That would be a surname.”
“And the name of this man is Svet?”
“Woman. Usually, the Russian women add an ‘a’ to the end of their family’s name. So, this would be a woman from the Zhenshchin family.”
“Named Svet?”
“Svetlana. Svet is a nickname.”
“Svetlana Zhenshchina… Does it ring a bell to you?”
“No. I think it’s probably a fake name. Anyway, I made a research before getting here, and I didn’t find any Svetlana Zhenshchina on the files.”
“But can we assume Lightman is indeed involved with the Russian mafia?”
“I think all the evidences point that way. Also, last month, Lightman made a deposit on a Russian bank account of nearly 330,000 rubles. That’s 10,000 dollars.”
“Whose account?”
“His own.”
“Why would he want so much money in Russia?”
“Well, my friend,” Carl smiled. “This is what I need you to find out. Put a trace on his email account.”
“Can’t you ask the Cryptography to send the trace to his email and monitor him?” Brendon asked. “Because I doubt I will have a second chance alone with his computer. And the tracer can be sent via email, they just need to disguise it as a spam message.”
“Well, I suppose I can bother the mad house,” Carl frowned; he had his misunderstandings with the Head of Cryptography, and involving them so much in that case was not something he was looking forward to. “Anyway, anything unusual at the house?”
“Only in one occasion, Eleanor Lightman sneaked out of the house to go clubbing, and two men who apparently knew her approached her and surrounded her.”
“Familiar faces?”
“No, but by the looks of it, they might be just two trouble-makers without any importance. I’ll keep an eye. The girl has a mind of her own and she doesn’t care too much about what her father says.”
Carl raised his eyebrow. “What is it that I’m hearing?”
“What?”
“Your tone when you talk about the Lightman girl.”
“What? You know I check women out…”
“I know, that is the normal for you… But with her, I hear it differently. Brendon, I hear a tender tone!”
“No!” he protested. “Not at all! I just felt bad about her, without freedom to be a girl… you know it’s too close to home for me.”
“Are you even awake?!” Eleanor asked, upset, from the back seat. Brendon blinked, as if he had just woken up from a stupor.
“I’m sorry… Did you say something, Miss Lightman?”
“Yes, I did! We’ve past the building! We’re about five blocks ahead!”
“Shit!” he thought.
“What the hell is wrong with you today? I might miss this appointment.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Lightman,” he repeated. “It won’t happen again. It was only a long night for me.”
Brendon turned the car and drove the fastest he could so Eleanor would stop complaining. He saw, from the rearview, as she waved away her shiny hair, with an intense expression.
“Here we are,” he announced, reaching their destination in an impressive mark of five minutes, though this was not noted or appreciated by Eleanor. She left the car in a hurry, without saying a word to Brendon.
“Hey!” he called her from inside the car; “You could at least tell me what time you will finish there!”
But Eleanor was already too far away, walking graciously fast on her high heels into the building; Brendon sighed. “Well, she will call when she’s done…”
Frustrated, he drove to the nearest bar to drown his thoughts in the best Scotch he could get, and wait for Eleanor’s call.
YOU ARE READING
Temptation
RomanceHis task was simple: to protect the children of a wealthy politician from a possible attack by a Mafia big shot and investigate the link between both of them. But when Brendon Sullivan has to deal with the man’s impetuous daughter, Eleanor Lightman...
