Gray Matter: Deep Six Security, Book 5 by Becky McGraw
Date of Publication: August 28, 2022
Blurb
Can Gray help his new office manager clean her dirty laundry? Or will the mafia princess hang him out to dry?
Since leaving the FBI Grayson Jennings has found peace in his life with his job as a forensic accountant with Deep Six Security and he treasures it. It remains that way until Michaela Girabaldi is hired as the new office manager for their east coast office.
The smart-mouthed Jersey girl strolls into the office in red high heels with her bags packed with enough dirty laundry to last them both a lifetime. In Prison. Her dirtiest laundry is the 1.2 million dollars she insists she didn't steal from the mob and Gray is wrangled into helping her find it.
Well, this was not Gray's first rodeo with a beautiful criminal and he had the bruises to prove it. He was not going to blindly trust a woman ever again, especially one suspected of murder and many other nasty crimes. He would help her, but he wouldn't be getting into bed with the mafia princess or falling for her or her games.
Mickie says only her cousin knows where the loot is located, so Gray sets out to find her. To do that, he'll have to follow the money, but he is afraid at the end of that trail he'll find a lot more than he bargained for.
But will he find the money before the mob finds Mickie? Or will she distract him with her Nonna's Magic Massage Oil and cannolis at the beach house where they're hiding out and get them both killed?
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Becky McGraw
Gray Matter
Exclusive Prolouge
Hiring this woman might be a settled subject for Lou Ellen, but it certainly wasn’t settled for Gray. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the hiring packet then slid it across the table to Michaela Girabaldi.
Before she was hired, he would have liked answers to the million questions fighting for pole position in his mind at the moment. Gray saved his breath, however, because he knew asking them now would be futile. Lou Ellen had hired her, and that, was evidently that.
Logan would just have to deal with the manifestations of those unasked questions as they presented. And Gray would have to deal with Logan’s wrath. The one question he’d defer to Lou Ellen, though, was why they hadn’t performed the mandated pre-hire background check, which could’ve identified those problems, because he was stymied himself.
That was protocol, Deep Six’s established hiring procedure, which was written by Lou Ellen, herself. It appeared she wasn’t handcuffed by her own process, though. Gray just hoped they didn’t all three end up handcuffed for helping her when they got back to Dallas.
They’d been interviewing all week. He had a stack of resumes in his briefcase for people he would’ve liked to hire on the spot too, but hadn’t, because he needed Mac to run their background checks first.
If that check had been done, the problems, which Michaela obviously hadn’t told Lou Ellen about, would have surfaced. The bigger issues, which were right now making her squirm like she was sitting on hot coals in the seat across the table from him while she filled out her forms.
Something was very off here, and he was shocked that Lou Ellen didn’t see it. She was just about as perceptive as a person could be, much more intuitive than him. Gray didn’t trust his instincts about people and for good reason, but Lou Ellen lived by hers. Nobody bullshitted her, but it looked like Michaela Girabaldi just had.
While she continued to labor over her employment forms, Gray booked her ticket to Dallas, then waited impatiently for her to finish. He didn’t miss the tremor in her hand when she finished the last one and handed the stack back to him.
He thumbed through the papers and pulled out her income tax declaration, then studied it for a second. She was born in Jersey according to her social security number, which was really no surprise. That number could be his key to finding out if they’d just hired Dirty Mary. There were quick surface checks he could run online tonight.
If anything turned up, he’d just cancel her ticket and tell Lou Ellen he couldn’t agree with hiring her. As it stood, there was nothing in these forms that served as reason to not hire her. He also had her bank account information on the direct deposit form she’d filled out, which would allow him to check out her finances if he were so inclined.
He set her tax form aside to review her official application. His eyes tracked down her application to the background section and he saw she checked the box that said she’d never been convicted of a crime. Because Lou Ellen didn’t do their due diligence in hiring this woman, it was all he had to hang his hat on that she could get clearance.
If she had a record, Michaela Girabaldi would be as useless as a paperweight in this office. The east coast location would be handling government and military contracts, so she would need clearance. Even private security details for dignitaries and politicians would require clearance by the Secret Service. If she couldn’t get that clearance, she couldn’t handle classified documents, or even emails. None of their clients could, or would, talk to her.
His eyes zipped up the form to the marital status line and he saw she’d checked single, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t divorced. A lot of woman declared single after they divorced. He needed to know if Girabaldi was her maiden name.
“So, you’re single?” Gray asked, and she nodded. “Ever been married before?”
“Uh, no,” she replied, her face flushing. “Didn’t I check the single with no dependents box on the tax form?”
She pursed her plump lips as she leaned forward to glance at the tax form and Gray couldn’t stop his eyes from dropping to the pillowy flesh spilling over the vee where her lapels met. He forced them back up, because he was not going to let her distract him.
“Yes, but I’m, ah, just making sure we get the withholding right on your check.” And that I can do a thorough background check on you. If you’ve got skeletons, baby, I want to know about them.
About Becky McGraw
A Jill of many trades, NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author Becky McGraw has been an optician, a beautician, a legal secretary, a real estate broker, web designer, graphic artist, and romance writer. She knows just enough to make her dangerous, and her humor-laced contemporary western cowboy, and military, police procedural romantic suspense novels varied and interesting. Becky resides in Florida with her husband of thirty-three years and her dog Abby. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America Published Authors Network.
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