9. Hunter #2
She pocketed it when she found it, waiting for a moment when the boys weren’t around to ask Piper about the card.
It burned a hole in her pocket all afternoon and while she sat at the dinner table with Josh, Andrew and Piper that night, all Hunter could think about was, Is Piper running scams on her own? Is my sister a con artist?
She knew Jed was manipulative, that he tugged on Piper’s emotions to get her to do whatever he wanted, but Hunter hated the thought that Piper was capable of doing those things without him standing there, pulling the strings. It made her stomach hurt and she barely touched her dinner that night.
Then when the boys finally went upstairs to do their homework, Hunter confronted Piper. She was standing at the sink, her back to Hunter as she washed the dishes, and Hunter asked, “Hey, Pipes, where did the money for the hospital bills come from?”
She paused, then said, “I found a beneficiary.”
“What does that mean?” Hunter asked.
“I met someone who wanted to help,” Piper said, picking up another dish and running it beneath the water. “It’s no big deal.”
“Jason Dawes?” Hunter asked. The plate slipped out of Piper’s hand and rattled in the sink but didn’t break. Hunter pulled the credit card out of her pocket and set it on the counter next to the sink, then she asked, “How did you get this?”
Piper’s strong facade cracked pretty quickly after that and she told Hunter everything.
She’d gone to the prison and told Jed about their financial problems. He’d walked her through the entire con – from what kind of person to target to the perfect moment to execute the plan.
It was a simple trick – find a rich asshole in a hotel bar, preferably one who’s traveling so he can’t come back and cause trouble later.
Get him drunk, flirt with him to lower his guard so you can get into his personal space, then lift his wallet and excuse yourself to the powder room.
Piper had gotten over a thousand dollars from Jason Dawes’s wallet, as well as the credit card.
The whole time Piper was telling the story, Hunter listened with her mouth hanging open, horrified as her sister turned into Jed before her eyes.
It was one thing to watch him manipulate her in person, but it was quite another to know he could do it even while he was behind bars.
After a minute or two of stunned silence in which Hunter decided that she was not going to vomit after all, Hunter asked, “So what happens now?”
“Nothing,” Piper said, picking up the credit card and slipping it into her own pocket. “Our medical debts are paid and Jason Dawes has already moved on. He was wearing designer clothes and walking around with a thousand dollars in his wallet – it was a drop in the bucket to him.”
“Do you think he reported you?” Hunter asked.
“Doubtful,” Piper said. “He doesn’t even know my name.”
“What about the credit card?”
“I haven’t used it yet,” Piper said. “But Jed told me how to do it so that it can’t be traced-”
Hunter reached into Piper’s pocket and snatched the card, brandishing it at her as she said, “You’re not using this. Stealing his cash is bad enough, but I guess there’s nothing we can do about that now.”
Her stomach was tying itself in knots. She took a pair of scissors out of a nearby drawer and cut the credit card into pieces, then threw it in the trash.
Hunter had a hard time looking Piper in the eyes after that, and she’d made her swear not to visit Jed anymore.
No matter how dire things got, they could dig themselves out without his help. No good ever came of contacting him.
Once she had a chance to digest all of that information, Hunter had also tried to convince Piper to give the money back. It would take them a while to earn an extra thousand dollars, but it wasn’t totally out of the question.
“There’s no way,” Piper had said. “The only reason I know his name is from the credit card, and he’s not from Grimm Falls. He was traveling through on business. Besides, if we contact him, we’re risking him finding out our identity and calling the cops.”
Hunter reluctantly dropped the notion after that, although it was hard to forget about Jason Dawes entirely. It had never occurred to her to look him up on Facebook before, but boredom, exhaustion and a little bit of suspicion turned out to be just the right mix to put the idea into her head today.
It turned out to be easy. There was only one Jason Dawes on Facebook, so Hunter opened his profile, her stomach turning over as she prepared to look into the life of the man her sister conned.
In his profile picture, he sat in the driver’s seat of a fancy car with black leather interior, smiling at the camera.
He looked about forty with an expensive haircut, the type of guy who could easily afford designer clothes.
Hunter figured it must be him, and she thought uneasily of how much he reminded her of Rhiannon and Abby. The term old money came to mind.
Hunter scrolled through Jason’s status updates, of which there were not many.
He appeared to have kids – a boy and a girl a little younger than Josh.
From the timestamps on the photos, it looked like Jason only got to see them on the weekends, but that he made the most of their time together.
There were pictures of him and the kids at an amusement park, the zoo, and a few different restaurants that were nicer than any that Hunter had ever been to.
Hunter kept scrolling until she came to the older ones, noting that the status updates became more frequent once she got past the point at which Piper had interfered with his life.
There were a lot more pictures back then, and there was a woman in a lot of them, along with the kids.
She was pretty, smiling warmly at Jason, probably in love. His wife?
Hunter felt a lump forming in her throat – there was only so much she could tell from a series of status updates, but she couldn’t shake the fear that Piper’s actions had a long-lasting effect on Jason Dawes and his family.
Had his wife found out about the theft, and maybe the circumstances surrounding it?
The bar, the drinks, the flirtation? Obviously the fact that Jason was willing to flirt with a strange woman while he was married wasn’t Piper’s fault, but maybe his life would have turned out different if she’d never gone to that bar looking for someone to con.
The idea made Hunter feel even worse about the whole situation and she clicked away from Jason’s profile page. She glanced over Josh’s shoulder. He was completely absorbed in his assignment – he’d reached the first Thanksgiving, but he still had a long way to go before the end of his timeline.
Hunter turned back to the computer and typed another name into the search bar.
Kiera Murphy .
That name made Hunter’s stomach feel funny in a completely different way, and a guilty grin played over her lips when she found Kiera smiling back at her from her profile picture.
Hunter really shouldn’t be snooping on her client’s granddaughter’s Facebook page, but there was something about Kiera that captured Hunter’s attention.
She’d found herself thinking a lot about Kiera in the quiet moments of this past week, and she wanted to know more about her.
As Hunter looked through the public parts of Kiera’s profile, one thing became obvious. Kiera was far outside of her league.
She was gorgeous – Hunter already knew that – and in almost every one of her photos, she was surrounded by girls just as beautiful, young and energetic as she was.
Her sorority sisters hugged her, threw their arms over her shoulders for group photos, and pressed their cheeks against hers in that universal selfie pose, their lips pursed seductively for the camera.
Kiera could have her pick of women, if that was what she wanted.
Hunter shouldn’t have been looking at Kiera’s profile, but she was in it now. She shamelessly studied every picture, read every status update, and scoured the page for clues about this girl she’d only encountered a handful of times but who never failed to put butterflies in Hunter’s stomach.
My Kappa sisters are the best.
Car wash this weekend at the teen center – help us raise money for some great kids.
Dinner and drinks with my girl, Lauren.
‘My girl’… Hunter lingered over this status update, coupled with a selfie of Kiera with her arms around a girl who had pin-straight blonde hair and meticulous makeup, her brows sculpted and her lips perfectly lined in pink.
The post was a couple of weeks old and Hunter wondered if this could be Kiera’s girlfriend.
What the hell did ‘my girl’ mean, anyway? It could be romantic, or it could be nothing but conversational sorority slang. Either way, the odds were good that Kiera was not available, and even if she was , there was no way Kiera even knew Hunter existed except as her grandmother’s caretaker.
Hunter was just studying the sensual plumpness of Kiera’s lips in one particularly flirtatious selfie when Andrew came up behind her and put his hands over her eyes, saying, “Guess who?”
Hunter practically jumped out of her skin, guiltily closing the browser window, then whispered harshly, “Someone who’s talking too loud in the library.”
“Sorry,” Andrew said, lowering his voice. He plopped down in the seat next to hers, oblivious to her disproportionate reaction, and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said. “What about you?”
“I read an entire graphic novel,” he said. “Now I’m bored.”
Hunter looked over Josh’s shoulder and said, “Looks like your brother’s almost done. Why don’t you go find a movie for us to watch tonight?”
More like one that I can sleep through, she thought as Andrew got up and went over to the row of DVD carousels near the reference desk.