Chapter Eighteen
S eneca walked over to her window facing desk and opened her laptop.
Disappointment flooded her as she ran her hand over the cool exterior before slowly lifting the lid.
She quietly tiptoed in her room to peek in on Colton, only to find the room empty.
He was gone. And if the voicemail he’d left on her phone while she was meeting Holden was any indication, he was pissed at her disappearing act.
She’d have to figure out a way to tell him the truth later. Right now, she had a job to do, and letting herself get distracted wasn’t an option with so much riding on her keeping a level head.
She passed reverent fingers across the keys before she lightly pressed the power button. Her heart thumped in her chest and a light sheen of perspiration coated her forehead.
Come on, girl, you know you can do this. It’s not like before.
It wasn’t. Holden was an asshole for sure, but at least his reason for forcing her to do this wasn’t something as sinister as lining his own pockets the way Hastings had.
Once she did this, she’d be free, and Colton would be free too.
That’s all that mattered. That’s what she had to keep telling herself to keep her guilt from swallowing her whole.
She’d promised Colton she wouldn’t do this. She’d sworn she would let him handle it and that she’d stay clear of both Hastings and Holden. But here she was, like always, caught in the middle of a mess she didn’t make, trying to clean it up.
She typed her password and went about setting up security measures to make sure her little digital excursion couldn’t be traced.
The good thing about hacking for Hastings for the seven years she spent in lockup was that she was able to keep her skills and knowledge up.
He’d bring her whatever the latest new hotness in tech was so she could keep money pouring into his pockets.
It gave her a special kind of thrill to know she was using those same skills to finally put him where he belonged.
She continued to focus on the work before her. Whatever Hastings hid on his little tablet, she would find it in these cloned files, and he would never be the wiser of it. She placed the USB connection between her laptop and the digital cloning device and waited.
As the device did its thing, she pushed thoughts of Colton to the back of her head and focused on the data popping up on her screen. She leaned back, extended her arms out in front of her, laced her fingers together, and cracked her knuckles.
Time to get to work.
Once her fingers touched the keys, they moved across the keyboard smoothly. As much as the guilt she harbored for breaking her promise to Colton tried to intrude on her thoughts, once the familiar tune of clicking filled her head, her thoughts became lasered on her screen.
She didn’t find anything unusual at first. It seemed he used his tablet to keep the boredom away like most people. But knowing Hastings, just like Holden surmised, if he kept the tablet under lock and key, she was certain it was because he was up to no good.
She combed through the data, what limited amount there was anyway, and prayed something usable would come out of all this.
She clicked on another folder, her eyes quickly scanning the contents as her finger was poised to click the mouse hovering over the back arrow.
But when she saw a sub-folder named MVU, her breathing sped up and cold spread through her vessels.
Mountain View Unit.
Her home for seven years, three days, and eighteen hours. Her penance for taking the law into her own hands. It was the place where she’d first come in contact with that slimy son of a bitch Hastings, and tonight, if she were lucky, it would be the very thing that brought him down.
A few more clicks and she could feel the wide grin tugging on her lips until the muscles on her face began to ache.
“Gotcha!” She jumped up, clapped her hands together in celebration and did a quick dip of her hip and a shimmy of her shoulders. She grabbed her phone, but before she could tap Holden’s number on the screen, her doorbell rang.
A peek through the window and she opened the door. “Right on time, Mr. Secret Agent Man.” She waved him into the house.
“You found something?”
“I found everything. His intake and export of inmates, his travel logs, and most importantly, what looks like banking accounts and routing numbers.”
His eyebrows hitched in the air as his mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? I was only gone like forty-five minutes.”
“If I hadn’t had to comb through all his bullshit, I would’ve found it forty minutes ago. This fool saves everything. Come take a look.”
She showed him her laptop screen and let him go through the files. “Damn, Seneca, this is exactly what I was hoping for. Can you print it out and give me the cloning device?”
“Sure.” She leaned over him, tapped a couple of keys and the printer on the edge of the desk came to life, flashing red. “Looks like I need some more paper. Let me go in the back and get some.”
She went to her bedroom, looking in the bottom corner of her closet to find it. “Ah, Seneca?” Holden’s voice traveled down the hall into her bedroom. “I think you might want to come back out here.”
“Just a minute. I just found the paper.” Armed with a new ream, she made it back to the living room just in time to see the room flooded with light and the door open.
With one glance around, Colton took in the scene starting with Holden first and then letting his fiery gaze return to her.
With his hand on his waist and his sharply angled jaw locked in place, he was tall, thick, and recognizably mad as fucking hell.
“Well, shit, Seneca.” Holden smirked at her and it took every ounce of restraint she had not to launch the paper she was carrying at his head. “I can tell you from experience, you’re in trouble now.”
She narrowed her gaze as her lips pursed into a tight scowl, wishing the floor would open up and swallow Holden’s arrogant ass whole. But when she caught sight of Colton’s glare she realized that as irritating as the federal agent was, he was absolutely right. She was so in trouble.
And the only thing she could say to that was “Fuck.”
*
“What are you doing here, Holden?” Colton spoke to his childhood friend, but he kept his eyes fixed on Seneca.
“You might want to ask your lady friend that.”
Colton leaned onto his right leg as he pulled his gaze away from Seneca and let it drift onto Holden. “My love of your mama aside, if you don’t answer my question, I’m gonna put you down. What are you doing here?”
“Colton, I have a case. You knew damn well I wasn’t going to walk away when I was this close.”
“I told you I didn’t want her involved.” He took a step in Holden’s direction and Seneca stepped in between them.
“Ahh, her is right here and she can speak for herself.”
“Seneca, move.”
“No.” She stepped closer to him. “You two will not be brawling in my place like you’re in some type of dive bar. You want to pound on each other like cavemen, you do that shit outside in the grass.”
He blew out a long breath through his lips and took in another through his nose as he tried to slow the building pressure in his head.
“I am trying to protect you. Holden doesn’t care anything about you but his case. He will roll over you to get what he wants. Why would you break your promise to me to help him?”
She dropped her eyes, staring down at the floor as she spoke. “Trust me, Colton. It’s for a good reason. And you don’t have to worry, because it’s over. I got him all the information he needs and now I’m done. Right, Holden?”
When Holden didn’t respond immediately, Colton tore his eyes from Seneca and glared at his so-called friend. “Go ahead, Holden. Tell her. Tell her she’s not done until you say she is. Tell her the same bullshit you’ve told any other C.I. you’ve fucked over in the past.”
Seneca turned to Holden, worry and despair muddying the brown of her eyes.
“What is he talking about, Holden?”
When he didn’t respond, Colton stood next to Seneca as they both faced Holden. “Go ’head and tell her what I mean.”
“Holden?”
Heat flared up the back of his neck and if he wasn’t worried about Seneca getting hurt, he’d definitely take a swing at his friend.
“Since he’s too chicken shit, I’ll tell it for him.” He looked down into Seneca’s eyes. They were alight with fear as they moved back and forth rapidly between her and Holden.
“You got him enough information to lock Hastings up. But that’s not all he’s after.
” He ran a rough hand through his hair, needing to do something with it other than ball it into an angry fist. “But the FBI is after something way bigger than that. His case isn’t against Hastings.
It’s against the people Hastings is working for.
And the only way he can find that out is to follow the money. ”
She pulled her gaze away from him and looked at Holden with pleading eyes. “But I found you his banking codes. That’s all you need, right?”
“Seneca.” Colton’s throat was thick with anger as he fought to keep the bark out of his voice as he spoke to her.
“Even if you could tell him where Hastings is stashing his cash, he still needs to see where the money is going in order to trap the big fish. And there’s only way he can make that happen. ”