Law yawned, looking generally bored. "If you guys are done with the huggy portion of the evening, we could move on."
Riley frowned at his brother. "Sorry, he's the emotional equivalent of a lobotomized pit bull. Now for the bad news. There is no indication that Khalil had anything to do with the kidnapping. In fact, we talked to the private investigators he hired to look for the princess."
"What?" Tal asked, nearly coming out of his seat.
Coop was confused, too. Khalil had been a violent asswipe bent on destroying the whole family. "He hated his cousins."
"He hated everyone in line for the throne. Alea isn't. And there's no doubt he hired a small firm in California to search for her. It was actually a smart play. Those particular investigators have deep ties in South America."
"It had to be a ruse," Tal shot back.
"I don't think so. Yes, he could have used it to point suspicion away from him if you'd thought he had something to do with the kidnapping. But it makes more sense to me that he would look for her so he could get his hands on her before you. That leverage might have been very interesting to a man like Khalil. Unfortunately for him, your investigators got there first," Riley explained. "And the firm he hired doesn't know anything we don't."
So if Khalil hadn't been guilty, and the act hadn't been random, where did that leave them? Screwed. Everything inside Coop tightened. Knowing that the asshole behind Alea's torment was still free to plot against her again would feed his nightmares. Random, they could deal with. It sucked, but the Lennox brothers had taken vengeance out on the men who had actually grabbed Alea from her university. He, Dane, and Lan found comfort in that. Even Khalil as the mastermind made him feel better. That fucker was dead, and Coop knew that he and his buddies would watch over her and make sure nothing ever happened to her again.
But neither of the above wasn't what he wanted to hear.
"So you believe that Khalil was in the dark, too." Tal's fingers splayed across the table as he leaned forward and cursed in Arabic.
Riley continued. "We've made a careful study of the flow of money of the abductors and the brothel where your cousin was held. It's all a bit of a nightmare. The brothel was owned by a man who had close ties to the Delgado Cartel. The money filtered through there, but when the Lennox brothers took down that cartel and killed the Delgados, it splintered into three different groups. Getting any kind of financials on a criminal organization is difficult. Scraping figures together on one in disarray is nearly impossible."
"So you're saying you've reached a dead end?" Coop was already planning a trip to Colombia in his head. He would cut through all that red tape and just kill a bunch of fuckers until one told him what he needed to know.
"No. I'm saying I'm a genius and the world should really bow at my feet," Riley quipped with an arrogant smile.
Law made a vomiting sound. "He likes to build it all up so he looks good. All he did was play around with his computer."
"Luddite. I can cause more trouble with a few keystrokes than you can with all the guns in your arsenal. Now, I don't have it all figured out, but I do have a very interesting pattern of deposits and withdrawals. If you look on page sixteen, I've documented what I've got." Pages shuffled, and Riley went on. "I've managed to discern that the brothel's business transactions were handled by the owner's wife. It's all routine and in cash until two weeks after Alea's kidnapping. A wire transfer of twenty-five thousand hit a bank account the cartel used strictly for the brothels. Now, we all know they were selling women, but the same account then wires five thousand every ten days until two days before Alea was rescued."
Dane shook his head. "Like … someone was paying for her upkeep?"
"If that's the case, they definitely overpaid. According to Cole, she was kept in horrible conditions," Tal muttered.
"I think someone was paying them simply to keep her alive, Tal," Coop said darkly.
This twisted plot was far worse than he'd imagined. Someone out there had paid to keep Alea tied up and drug addicted. Someone had wanted her held captive. But why?
"Where did that money come from?" he demanded of Riley.
The PI paused. "Directly from a Cayman account, which was closed shortly after Alea was rescued. I'm still looking for the records that indicate where and how the account was funded, but as you can imagine, the banking laws in the Caymans are beyond liberal."
"So what you're saying is that we might never know." Dane scrubbed a hand over his hair. He'd let it grow after he'd left the Navy. Coop kept his in a military cut because it was easy, but that hair of Dane's seemed one way he distanced himself from his past.