Page 82 of Dreadful

“Maybe.”

I pick up my iced coffee and turn it slowly between my hands. “Ryder was just telling us all about off-books funds that are ripe for misappropriating.”

Cruz’s hand leaves my thigh only to settle at the back of my neck. His fingertips work into the tension gathered at the base of my skull, and my shoulders loosen almost immediately.

Ryder glances around once more before leaning closer to the table. “There are operational funds that move between facilities.”

“You’re proposing stealing from black ops? Are you fucking joking?” Cruz doesn’t stop working his fingers into the tight muscles at the back of my neck.

“Not,” Ryder hisses, lowering his voice even further, “from them directly. It’s a fucking gray area with specific windows of time where the cash is untraceable and unaccounted for.”

“Tell us what your friend did.”

Ryder’s eyes flick toward the front of the café. “Last year, this friend of mine was part of the team escorting the leftover black cash from a recent op to wherever the fuck it goes—some undisclosed location in the Midwest. And the guys on the team, right, they’ve done this shit before. So they knew they could skim off the top. They walked out with like a hundred grand each.”

“How is that possible?” I ask.

“There’s no record of it on any manifest or document. Not the amount being sent out—or what comes back. Sometimes nothing even comes back. And I’m fucking sure those guys in the field take some for themselves.” Ryder sits back, palms pressing the edge of the table. “Whatever’s left from an op gets funneled into the next one. It’s an endless cycle.”

“How much are we talking?”

I set my iced coffee down between my palms.

“The next one?” His brows rise. “Five, maybe more. Could even be ten.”

“Million?” Lola chokes out the whisper.

Ryder nods and drums his fingers along the edge of the table.

Shock renders me speechless as my brain tries to formulate an appropriate response.

Lola’s wide eyes find mine across the table once more. Holy fucking shit.

I know. I widen my eyes at her.

Can we trust him?

I bite the inside of my cheek and hesitate. Maybe.

“How’d your friend pull it off?” Cruz asks. “A hundred grand is more than you can stuff in your pockets.”

“He never gave me all the details. All I know is it happened during the transfer on a cargo plane.”

“And they just walked off with all that money?” I ask.

“Basically.”

Cruz’s attention sharpens on Ryder. “If your friend already pulled this off once, why bring the next one to us instead of going back to him?”

Ryder drags his hand along his jaw, slow, like he’s buying time. He shakes his head a few times but doesn’t answer.

And I understand it immediately.

“Because then you’d have to take more of a risk,” I say quietly, watching him over the rim of my cup. “Right, Ryder?”

He glances at me. “I know the money is moving. I know when it’s supposed to happen, within a few weeks. And I know there’s enough overlap with what I’ve heard before that I think it’s worth figuring out the rest.”

“So you don’t actually know how to get it,” Lola says.