41. McCarthy
MCCARTHY
T hat’s it. I’m ending it. Jenna’s mine. She loves me. I love her. We’re going to get married, and she’s going to have my children. She’s completely and totally mine, and no one touches what’s mine. I’m going to burn this whole place down.
The faces of the men on the murder wall stare back at me with dead eyes, fake smiles. I add the headshot of her father, Devin, from the HopeWorks charity, then I add Joseph, the director.
“Welcome to round two, motherfucker.”
This time, I’m not just throwing him in the fountain.
When Jenna is asleep, Truman snuggled on her chest, I mirror her phone then send texts to the numbers texting Jenna.
Sure, you can brute-force it and find someone by tracking a phone number, but social engineering is often quicker and cheaper.
Jenna (McCarthy): Stop texting me.
Jenna (McCarthy): I swear to God, you need to leave me alone.
The ones that are just burner numbers don’t text back. The ones that do?
Brock is the first one to take the bait.
Brock: Vinnie was wrong. I knew you’d text me back eventually.
Brock: He’s afraid of that meathead security guy, but I said no, I know Jenna.
Brock: She’s loyal. She won’t abandon me.
Brock: We have a meeting with the Hollywood executive tomorrow.
Brock: You better be there.
Jenna (McCarthy): Will you leave me alone if I go?
Brock: We’ll talk.
Yeah, we will.
Jenna (McCarthy): There better not be any pranks.
Brock: None.
Of course there will be. I put a check mark on Brock’s photo.
There is no Hollywood executive. I’m not in PR, but there’s no way they’re flying to Seattle to have a meeting with a third-rate YouTuber.
The phone chimes. There’s another bite on the line.
Unknown Number: Now you’re sorry, huh? You’re sorry you fucked me over???
Unknown Number: You came to my office to embarrass me.
Unknown Number: I LOST MY JOB!!!
So that one is Nathan.
Jenna (McCarthy): What the hell do you want me to do???
Jenna (McCarthy): I want you to leave me alone.
Nathan: I’m going to make sure you get what’s coming to you.
Her phone pings with a LinkedIn notification. Nathan’s got a new job at HopeWorks.
Perfect. I don’t mind killing stalkers in a barrel with a machine gun. He moves into my “public display of destruction” pile.
An unknown number texts back as I’m trying to bribe Faulkner into coming to the meeting with Brock tomorrow.
Unknown Number: You know what I want.
Jenna (McCarthy): You don’t deserve anything from me.
Unknown Number: Don’t be a tease.
Hmmm…
I stare at the wall. Which one of these men is it?
Based on the text-message log, the messages started before she met up with the stepfather/stepson duo, so that rules them out, along with the parrot weirdo.
Could it be another stepfather or…
My finger settles on the photo of Rex .
For a split second, I think of going back upstairs, shaking Jenna awake, and demanding she tell me everything about Rex.
It’s him. Process of elimination. The others don’t make sense.
I scroll through the message history. They’d been coming for a while, though not as long as the time-share psycho’s.
Crawford’s wrong. If it’s a stepfather, that would be an ongoing issue, right? A yearslong thing?
Jenna had to have met this man recently.
I send an email to Jenna’s father via her phone, CC myself on it, then delete the message from her email folder.
Devin replies immediately.
Now all I have to do is figure out where I’m supposed to get a whole entire buffalo and how to get it into Seattle.
“You don’t need it right now.”
“Payment. First.” Faulkner glares at me.
I fucking hate my little brothers.
Isaac is sighing next to me on the top of the building.
“Why can’t you just bash him on the head?”
“Salinger would kill me then leave my corpse to rot in jail. I’m on thin ice. Besides, isn’t making people suffer more satisfying?”
We’re watching the restaurant where the supposed meeting is taking place. We’ve been staking it out since the early dawn.
“Can we get Thai food after this?” Isaac rubs the back of his neck.
Faulkner scowls at me .
“I’m going home if that buffalo doesn’t walk down the sidewalk right… now.”
“It’s harder than it looks to get one. You can’t just order it off Amazon,” I hiss at him.
“Pussy.”
“Jesus, why are you so unpleasant?”
“I’m not the one fucking an employee and stalking her ex-fiancé.”
“I’m stalking her stalker, and it’s none of your business why we’re out here.”
“Yeah, it’s not going to be my business if I don’t get that buffalo.”
“It’s not coming, so you in or out?”
“I want ten buffalo, then, for the interest for the delayed payment.” Faulkner’s voice is flat.
“What the hell do you even need ten buffalo for?” Isaac asks him. “Where are you going to put them? What are you gonna feed them?”
“They’re going on Salinger’s island.” The malicious glee in his eyes? The chaotic evil personified? This is why Faulkner is here.
Isaac’s here because Salinger cussed me out yesterday for not spending more time with him, since he’s supposed to be here “learning and bonding.” Greg must have gotten up his ass about it.
Finally, we see Brock’s video-camera guys mope into the restaurant, their long hair hidden under dirty knit caps. They’re here two hours before the supposed meeting.
Our cameras have, of course, already been in place.
“Isn’t this a felony?” Isaac frowns.
“A felony of my felony is my friend,” Faulkner says .
As much as I can’t stand Faulkner, he’s the one for the job.
“Greg’s right. You guys really are pieces of shit.” Isaac goes back to his binoculars.
We watch on the camera feeds as Brock’s videographers set up. Then we wait for Brock to show up. He looks cocky and smug when he swaggers into the restaurant.
I’m going to crush him like a cockroach.
“And cue our special guest.”
The VW bus pulls up right on schedule.
“Showtime!” Faulkner is gleeful. “I love fucking people over, especially if they deserve it.”
“You stay up here,” I order Isaac. “I don’t want our brothers up my ass if something happens to you.”
“Yes, I’ll stay up here on this unstable and unprotected roof, nice and safe.”
“Attaboy.”
Granny Mavis salutes me when she sees us as Faulkner and I climb down off the roof.
“Let’s go bust some balls.”
Brock is shocked and offended when the elderly women push their way into the restaurant, noisy and chattering in their hippie clothes.
The patrons look up, stunned, as Mavis starts yelling at the top of her lungs. “That’s the one! Call the police! One of you young people, call the police.”
Brock curses as the elderly women point at him and chant, “Thief! Thief!” He tries to move around them to the door.
“Stop him!” Rainbow yells dramatically. “Someone stop that thief! ”
“I didn’t steal anything, you old bat,” Brock rails while the elderly women crowd around him.
Jenna’s ex is hopping around after taking a walker to the ankle when he sees us.
Brock sees Faulkner first, looks confused, then sees me.
I give him a toothy smile. “Going somewhere?”
“He stole my Social Security number and took my Social Security check!” Crocus says, pointing a bony finger.
“I would never. This is slander!” Brock thunders.
Rainbow whacks him with her cane, making him yelp.
“I have proof!” Granny Mavis waves paperwork around. “Where are the police?”
A couple of confused detectives, pre-called for a meeting by someone claiming to be a witness in the recent rash of painting green stripes on dogs, wander in, badges around their necks.
“Bad boys.” Rainbow bats her enormous woven bag around Brock’s and the videographers’ heads.
“Ow! What’s in there?”
“Turnips.”
“Detectives,” I say, greeting them. “I believe that this man has stolen the identities of these dear, sweet, elderly women.”
“This is the proof you were showing, right?” Faulkner asks Granny Mavis politely, holding out bank statements, transaction records, and credit card statements that have mysteriously materialized.
“Yes, that’s it. You see?”
“I don’t even know you,” Brock sputters.
“He used to date my great-granddaughter.” Mavis clacks her false teeth together. “And he stole her identity too. Took out a bunch of loans in her name. ”
“I believe you said she’s tried to make a police report about it before, but the police didn’t follow up?” I prod Granny Mavis.
“That right there, what he said.”
“We will certainly dig into that,” the older detective says, scribbling on her pad.
“You three, come with me.”
“The penalty for financial transgressions over five thousand dollars is ten years,” Faulkner says, reminding everyone.
The two videographers begin to freak out. “We didn’t do it. We had no part in it!”
“Yeah, Brock was stealing Jenna’s identity, and we can testify that we saw him.” Vinnie jams his hat on his head.
“Plea bargain! I’ll tell you everything I know!”
The detectives handcuff them.
Back out on the street, Faulkner hands Granny Mavis a manila envelope stuffed with cash. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“I like a resourceful young man.” Rainbow takes a turnip out of her bag and hands us each two of them.
Granny Mavis slaps my ass.
“Love a real man. Gonna take my ass straight to the strip club.”
“I expect those buffalo here within the week,” Faulkner says, warning me. “Or you’re next, fucko.”
Isaac’s still huffing when he follows me into the Soundview Hotel. It’s Fitz’s hotel, and he’s got a back door into his Wi-Fi big enough for me to squeeze through .
In the hotel bar, Nathan’s waiting there with Jenna’s father. Devin has that plaster smile on, arm outstretched to take my hand.
Nathan flinches when he sees me.
I hold up a hand. “I think we can act like rational men.”
“I seem to have taken his sloppy seconds when it comes to your daughter,” I tell Devin conversationally.
“Aurora?” Devin’s confused, then it dawns on him. “Jenna? You’re dating her? Well…” He recovers quickly.
“I assume she told you?” I can’t help but twist the knife. “She tells me you two are very close.”
“Yes,” he lies, “very much so. We had dinner last night. It’s hard to see her because she’s so busy, you know.”
“I’d like to change that. One day soon, you’re going to receive a visit from me…” I let the potential threat linger.
Devin visibly swallows.
“And I’m going to ask you for your permission to marry her.”
“What a lovely, fantastic piece of news.” Beads of sweat form at his temples.
“There’s the little matter of my reputation, of course.” I lean back in my chair. “People think I’m a violent psychopath.”
“Ha ha!” Devin laughs, tense.
“I’d like to show you what my intern put together for how we might interface between our two organizations. Synergy.” I repeat the word Jenna used yesterday when she tearfully recounted her conversation with her dad.
“Love to hear it.”
I hand him the USB device. He plugs it into his computer, and it gives a blinking “Virus Detected” message .
He tells the computer to ignore it and to install the onboard program so that he can view the presentation I’m trying to show him.
Idiot.
The greed glows in the man’s eyes as I start mentioning the nine-figure amounts I want to contribute to the HopeWorks foundation.
Since he’s on the hotel’s Wi-Fi, Isaac is able to access HopeWorks’s company server and start mirroring the data.
“Let’s have lunch, gentlemen, shall we?”
Three hours later, Isaac signals that he has everything copied.
Devin is drunk and happy when he and Nathan leave the Soundview.
Now Isaac and I are sitting in Fitz’s office, combing through the data, looking for anything incriminating. Hawthorne and Whitman are there, too, because I promised them I’d go to Harrogate with them in a few weeks.
Sure, I could pay Hudson Wynter’s company to do this, but fuck them in particular.
“Search for Vortex Industries,” I tell Hawthorne.
“We should fly our little brothers in and make them do it.” Hawthorne sighs.
“No, our sisters.” Whitman is gleeful. “They all have their little apps; they could totally handle this.”
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Look what washed up from the Pacific Garbage Patch,” I say to my computer screen.
“You should let me schedule you for a spa visit,” Fitz tells Salinger with a grin. “You’re looking a little tense. ”
“McCarthy’s being chivalrous,” Hawthorne tells Salinger. “We need to encourage this type of—”
“Why is there a fucking video of you and some YouTuber floating around the internet?”
“I saved senior citizens from a scammer. I’m a hero. This is good PR.”
“Was this Jenna’s idea?” he snarls.
My chair scrapes back as I stand up to face my older brother.
“He’s in love with her.” Whitman laughs.
“Our baby is growing up!” Fitz chirps.
“The fuck he is. You aren’t in love with Jenna.” Salinger gets up in my face. “You are incapable of romantic love.”
“And you’re some sort of expert?” I shoot back at him. “I know how you treated those women you used to date.”
“I wasn’t dating them,” my brother sneers. “I was using them for financial gain. Mandy’s different.”
“Cool, cool. Well, I’m not doing that to Jenna.”
“He’s ending her stalker problem.”
Salinger snatches the laptop that Isaac is working on.
“HopeWorks? Are you fucking kidding me? After all the shit I put up with, after you almost went to jail for throwing that guy in the fountain, now you’re stealing his company data?”
“They won’t find out.”
“McCarthy, you’re on thin fucking ice,” Salinger rages. “You better not fuck up again.”
“I won’t. I’m ending things.”