Undercover Genius Read Online Free Page A

had to
roll out the big guns. “And if your thieves discover you still have evidence,
will they come burn us down too? Or just put a period to your existence?”
    Instead of moping, Patra sat up straight, donned her best
Magda superficial smile, and tapped her pretty chin. “What, little ol’ me? How
could anyone think I’m dangerous? I’m too dumb to use a smart phone.”

Three
    We both stayed up too late. Patra made copies of her audio
file, then started researching the names of every VIP who might have been in
the vicinity when her father died. Back then, Patrick had apparently been
slipping in and out of Mideast war zones by way of any country he could bribe
his way through. With no date or location for his tape, Patra had her work cut
out for her, but she was like a pit bull on her quest.
    Our best guess was that the power moguls on the recording wouldn’t
have done the shooting. Our only real clue was that one spoke English with a
hoity Brit accent, two others were American, and one was a general.
    Neither of us had spent much time in the States. We couldn’t
identify regional inflections, but one of the American accents sounded
professionally blended by a good speech therapist. My bet was on a politician,
but I was prejudiced that way.
    I spent the evening researching our options on the voice analysis.
Even though I could buy software and save money, I concluded if we wanted a
professional job, we would have to pay professional prices. But we might be
able to sort out the unlikely suspects and narrow the speakers to be analyzed,
thus reducing cost. Patra emailed her friend Bill with the go-ahead for
spectrum analysis on the voices we already had and told him we’d give him
comparisons as soon as we could.
    I sent him a down payment out of the family account we’d
established a few weeks ago with Nick’s gambling winnings. There are only so
many casinos on the eastern seaboard, and he’d be banned from them all if he
took any more hauls like the last. I doled those funds carefully. Our family
had learned at an early age about the dark undersides of life. Even if we had
to eat peanuts for dinner, we always kept an emergency stash.
    I was accustomed to long hours with no sleep. Patra had jet
lag. She eventually dragged off to bed and left me to arrange an automatic fund
transfer emptying Reggie’s offshore account into the fake business account I’d
set up a few weeks ago to catch a money launderer. Ah, the irony! I now knew
how to launder my own money.
    Since it was legally inherited, I wasn’t hiding anything from
the feds. I had to hide it from Reggie’s creditors, of whom there were many,
most of them unsavory.
    I’d darned well let the lawyers work out inheritance taxes
on embezzled funds. We now had half a mil at our disposal, although
technically, it needed to be divided among all of us. I was still thinking of
it as the house fund, since the house had been left to all of us, too.
    I was up in the morning in time to see EG off to the
alternative school we’d found for her. The school encouraged the use of iPads
instead of ancient encyclopedias for research, provided a variety of resources,
and satisfied EG’s genius level of world knowledge. No more complaints about
right-wing propaganda and textbooks that ignored Darwin. That didn’t mean she
didn’t complain, but we’d eliminated her legitimate problem with her other
schools and now merely dealt with her conjured ones.
    Since Nick still hadn’t put in an appearance, I refrained
from mentioning his arrival before school. EG would want to stay home and have
one of our celebration parties. I figured Nick would prefer to crash first.
    The intercom in my office sat ominously silent when I
returned to my office. As careful as I was, I had little hope of hiding
anything from Graham for long.
    I loved this house with its connection to a time when I’d
felt secure. If Graham already knew we’d found our lawyer, he could be plotting
our imminent