Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What the fuck were you even thinking?!” Roan yelled at me.
My friend had been waiting outside my house when I got there this morning. I’d never seen him pissed before, let alone furious. I opened the door and waved for him to go inside. I closed the door and headed for the kitchen.
“I thought I would scare the shit out of the pissant and he’d stop.”
“You threatened to kill Sid, and I have it on tape!”
I gave a fierce grin. “You have his apartment wired?” I took two mugs down from the cabinet and set them on the counter, then grabbed the carafe of coffee and pushed the sugar bowl toward Roan.
“Yeah. We do. But so far, besides listening to The Wheel of Fortune, Judge Judy, him whacking off, we heard you threatening to kill him.”
“Do you think I convinced him to leave town?” I asked Roan hopefully.
“Nope,” he said as he doctored up the mug of coffee I had just poured for him.
“You know that much sugar isn’t good for you.”
“Neither is threatening to kill someone. Shit, Michael, he could have recorded you.”
“He’s not that bright. I might look like him, but the brains must have come from my mom’s side of the family. Or it all comes down to nurture.” I took a sip of my black coffee. “I could see it in his eyes. He was happy I was there. He liked that I was mad at him. He wanted me quaking in my boots that he would hurt someone I loved.”
“Which is another reason I’m pissed at you. You played right into his hands. I’m thinking that it’s not nurture, it’s nature, and you’re not as smart as I always thought you were.”
I stared out my sliding glass door to my back yard. Harley was running around, chasing something.
“I had to do it, Roan. I hadn’t seen him since the day he’d killed my mom. I needed to meet the man he was today. Get a measure of him, eye-to-eye.”
“Okay. What did you find out? Anything new?”
“He has no soul. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He just wants to punish me.”
“And the bad part of what you just said?” Roan prompted as he took another sip of his sugared coffee.
“That he’s willing to be a martyr to the cause. He’s willing to die for it. I ran across enough of those in Afghanistan. But I saw something else. He doesn’t want to just shoot anyone from a distance. He wants to toy with them. That’s why he wanted to be the one who was in the van trying to run Fallon over.”
“What about the snakes?”
“Shit!
“Fuck!!
“Shit! Fuck!”
“Stop swearing and tell me what you’re thinking,” Roan demanded.
“Tell me, did Sid have a computer?”
“Yeah, kind of pricey, too,” Roan admitted.
“We need to get over to Fallon’s house. I’m betting he had cameras in the shed to feed video when the door opened.”
“Shit, fuck, piss,” Roan yelled. He stalked across the kitchen and poured out the coffee into the sink. I did the same. We left the house, me re-arming the alarm, and we headed over to the Vickers.
Simon was already at the house when we got there. Fallon and he were in the shed, and he was doing a FaceTime with someone as he pointed his phone along the inside of the shed.
“Stop,” the voice on the phone said. “There. Do you see the black electrician’s tape?”
I don’t know how the person caught that, but there it was.
“I’m betting they had a wireless HDMI transmitter on their camera. They had it set up so that it had a motion sensor detector.”
My blood ran cold. Sid would have seen every moment where Fallon was close to death. He would have fed off my second-by-second agony as I tried the best I could to keep her alive. No wonder there was such glee in his eyes. No wonder he made another attempt on Fallon; he knew she was my Achille’s heel.
“Is there enough to get a warrant to search his place and confiscate his computer?” I asked.
Simon snorted. “Not hardly.” He looked over at Roan. “So, when you were planting the wire, you didn’t notice any surveillance equipment at his place?”
Roan shook his head. “Just the desktop computer. If he’s smart, he has all the other equipment stored off-site.”
“He can’t afford a storage unit on the wages he’s making,” I interrupted. “The stuff’s probably in the trunk of his car.”
“I still haven’t been able to tap any of our usual IT folks from the teams,” Simon said with frustration. “Too much going on in this big bad world. I’d like to get a look-see into Sid’s computer.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Fallon said.
Roan, Simon, and I turned to look at her.
“One of my projects was for the government. It’s not something I can brag about on my company website, but we did some work in cyber-security.”
“You’re a hacker?” I asked.
“Hacker is a word with such a bad reputation, I like to think of myself as a digital locksmith, unlocking doors that were never meant to stay locked,” Fallon said as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.
Simon let out a big laugh. “I can see how you fit in with all the Avery sisters.”
Sid’s apartment smelled like cheap beer, burnt coffee, moldy pizza, and crusty gym socks. Even worse than it did two nights ago. The three of us stood just inside the door, reluctant to go in and be contaminated by the stench.
Simon was the first to move, his sharp eyes scanning every corner of the dingy one-bedroom like he was clearing a breach. Roan lingered by the entrance, his hand resting casually on his hip, but I knew better—he was ready to draw if something went sideways.
Me? I headed for the desk and stared down at the computer that had been where my sick fuck of a father had probably watched Fallon’s agony with glee.
“He’s gone,” Simon muttered, striding toward the desk. “Packed up and skipped town.”
Roan exhaled sharply. “Damn. I was hoping for at least a little more drama.”
Simon shot him a look. “Speak for yourself. I prefer my psychos exactly where I can see ’em.”
The computer was dark, and I pressed a key on the keyboard, but it didn’t come to life. I looked around back to see if it was plugged in. I shouted out a laugh when I saw the bolt cutters laying behind the desk, and the computer cord cut. Really? This is how this genius decided to wipe the computer?
When I showed Simon and Roan the cut cord, they both laughed. I pulled the other end of the plug from the back of the tower.
Simon’s phone rang, and he stepped away, while Roan and I looted through the desk drawers. Candy wrappers, pens, and two notepads with the names and numbers of restaurants that delivered.
Before I could answer, Simon let out a low whistle. “Well, this just got interesting.”
I turned as he pocketed his phone.
“Sid’s former cellmate? His kid is a hacker. A good one.”
I crossed my arms. “How good?”
“Good enough to get himself arrested for breaking into a government database when he was sixteen,” Simon said. “Roan, your guy just confirmed that Sid’s been in contact with him.”
Roan’s expression darkened. “So that’s who’s been helping him with all this tech bullshit.”
“Looks like it.” Simon shook his head. “This kid could have given Sid the tools to wipe this thing remotely. Hell, for all we know, he’s still watching us through a backdoor feed.”
I felt my jaw tighten. “That little bastard could be watching Fallon right now.”
Roan swore. “We need to get this piece of junk back to your place, stat.” He motioned to the computer tower. “If Fallon’s as good as she says, maybe she can find something on here, even if it’s just a trail of breadcrumbs.”
“Do, you think he ran for good, or just laying low?” Simon asked me.
I studied the apartment again, searching for signs of finality. The fridge was still plugged in, though mostly empty except for an expired carton of milk and a half-drunk bottle of something that might’ve been whiskey. The closet door was open, a few wire hangers swinging gently from the rail.
“He didn’t take everything,” I mused. “But he took enough.”
Roan hummed in agreement. “Bet he left in a hurry. Maybe the weasel got spooked.”
Simon nodded. “Agreed. Let’s get the comp out of here.”
I bent down to pick up the computer, but Roan stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“You sure you wanna be the one to carry Sid’s junk?” he asked, smirking. “What if his bad juju rubs off?”
I scowled. “I’ll risk it.”
Roan snorted. “Worst case scenario, you start writing unhinged letters in all caps with even worse grammar than you already have.”
I shot him a glare. “I don’t write in all caps.”
“You do when you text.”
“That’s for emphasis, asshole.”
Simon chuckled as he picked up the monitor, tucking it under one arm like it was a football. “Man, you two bicker like an old married couple.”
“And yet, you still tag along on dates with us.”
Simon flipped him off as we made our way out of Sid’s apartment, hauling the potentially compromised hardware with us.
By the time we pulled up to my place, Fallon was already waiting on the porch, arms crossed.
“That was fast,” she said, eyeing the computer tower as I carried it inside.
“Sid might have wiped it,” I said. “Or some hacker wiped it remotely, or it’s in fine running order and it’ll be spying on you, so keep your clothes on while you’re working on it.”
Her lips twitched. “You boys really know how to bring me gifts.”
Roan grinned. “What can we say? We’re thoughtful.”
Roan dropped the monitor onto the dining table with a thud. “You think you can get anything off of this?”
Fallon stepped forward, placing a hand on top of the tower like she was sizing it up. “Depends. If he wiped it the lazy way, maybe. If he used a secure erase program with multiple overwrites, it’s gonna be a lot harder.”
I clapped my hands together. “Great. Now, in terms I can understand?”
Fallon smirked. “If he just hit delete, I can recover stuff. If he did it right, we might be out of luck.”
Simon rubbed his chin. “You said you had government contracts before, right?”
Fallon nodded. “Yeah. And some of those included recovering wiped drives.”
Simon let out a low whistle. “Now that’s promising.”
I watched as Fallon pulled her laptop from her bag and hooked it up to the computer tower with a few cables. She moved with quiet confidence, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she powered it up.
“Let’s see what Sid tried to hide,” she murmured.
We all watched as the screen flickered to life, the cursor blinking like it held all the secrets we needed.
Roan leaned against my kitchen counter, arms crossed. “Anyone else feel like they’re in one of those heist movies where the hacker works their magic while the team stands around looking pretty?”
I smirked. “Speak for yourself, Thatcher. Some of us are just naturally pretty.”
Fallon looked up at me and gave me a secret smile. Then she turned her attention back to the computer and was soon biting her lip in concentration, eyes flicking across the screen as she worked.
Then she stilled.
“Well?” I asked.
She exhaled. “It’s wiped, but…” She pointed at something on the screen. “There are fragments. If I can reconstruct them, I might be able to see what he was working on before he cleared the system.”
Simon grinned. “And how long will that take, Ms. Digital Locksmith?”
Fallon’s lips curled into a smirk. “Buy me dinner, and I might have it done by dessert.”
I chuckled. “Fair enough. But first? Let’s make sure Sid doesn’t have any more surprises waiting for us.”
Because something told me this was only the beginning.