Chapter 9
Exhausted after a full day of pretending everything was normal while Diane ran circles around her, Cara descended the stairs at seven PM sharp.
She’d managed a call to the third victim they identified, the lawyer, Whitmore, in Atlanta, but he’d hung up before she’d gotten halfway through her explanation.
They were back to zero.
The bakery had never looked better. The display cases were perfectly stocked. The customers were happy. The books were balanced.
Down here, the team was gathering for war. She couldn’t wait to get some actionable intel, something she could do instead of sit on her hands and worry.
Wade was already at the table, laptop open, surveillance photos spread out in front of him.
Reagan stood behind him, coffee in hand, studying the images with serious focus.
Piper sat cross-legged on the floor, her own laptop balanced on her knees, scrolling through what looked like endless Instagram data.
And Tom. Tom sat at his workstation like he'd been there for hours, which he probably had. Multiple monitors glowed in the dim light, code and data streaming across screens faster than Cara could track.
He didn't look up when she entered. Just kept typing, muttering something under his breath about encryption protocols.
"Cara." Reagan gestured to a chair. "Good. We're all here. Tom's been digging all day. Says he found something big."
Tom's fingers finally stilled. He spun his chair around, and Cara saw the exhaustion in his face. The kind that came from staring at screens for too long, chasing digital ghosts through layers of code. "Blaire Mitchell isn't just a blackmailer. She's got a serious operation going."
He pulled up his main monitor, displayed it on the larger screen Wade had mounted on the wall last month. "Here's what I found."
The screen showed Blaire's Instagram profile. The perfectly curated feed. The inspirational quotes. The success stories.
"Surface level, she looks exactly like what she claims to be.
Lifestyle influencer. Identity investigator.
Helping people reunite with lost loved ones.
All photogenic moments with happy tears.
" Tom clicked through to her highlights.
"She's got forty-seven thousand followers.
Posts regularly. Engagement rates are decent for her follower count—about three to four percent, which is actually pretty good. "
"But?" Wade prompted.
"But her financial records don't match her public persona.
" Tom pulled up what looked like bank statements.
"I got into her email first—phishing attack, she clicked a fake Instagram verification link I sent yesterday.
Once I had her email, I could reset passwords on her cloud storage, her financial apps, everything. "
"That was fast," Reagan said.
"She uses the same password structure for everything.” He shook his head sadly. “It took me about twenty minutes to figure out the pattern." Tom's smile was sharp. "Anyway. Her business checking account shows deposits ranging from five to twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Reagan paused, coffee mug to her lips. “So people hire her to find friends or family? That’s not illegal.”
“Neither is posting about her successes on social,” Piper added.
Tom snorted. “It should be. The interesting thing is, most of these payments aren’t from people hiring her. They’re from the missing targets.”
"Blackmail payments," Cara said quietly.
"Bingo. And here's where it gets interesting." Tom pulled up a spreadsheet. "I cross-referenced the account holders with her Instagram posts. None of them match."
Cara’s stomach clenched. “So she uses her legit business as a cover for finding people she can blackmail.”
Cara moved to Tom’s station to look over his shoulder. “Can we prove this?”
“Already have,” Tom responded. “But not legally.”
He splashed a driver’s license photo of a tired-looking guy in his 40s on the big screen.
“Like this guy, Jeffrey Latimer. Portland. There’s no record of anyone paying her to find him that I can see, and no mention of her search on social media.
Totally unlike the media storm she creates around her legit searches.
But he paid her fifteen thousand dollars last August. Three months after that, another five thousand. "
Another click. "And then there’s this one. Tanner White. Seattle. His mother wrote Blaire a six thousand dollar check and signed a contract. Three months later, Blaire posted this update.”
Another Instagram post, this time with a sad-faced Blaire in front of a house with a for rent sign.
So close, but William remains a mystery. #nevergiveup
A muscle in Tom’s cheek jumped. “The only thing is? Two days after this post, Tanner White withdrew twelve thousand dollars from his bank account. Two months later, another eight thousand. A few days after each withdrawal, Blaire recorded identical deposits."
The room was silent.
"So Blaire sometimes gets hired legitimately," Wade said. "Finds her target. Then squeezes them for money by threatening to expose whatever they're hiding."
“Other times, she goes after her own targets.” Cara tapped a finger to her lips. But why? How did she decide who to hunt?
"That's the pattern. And those are just the ones I found in ten minutes of looking.
" Tom rubbed his eyes. "Given Blaire’s eight-figure net worth, there are a ton more.
Some of her Instagram posts don't have matching financial records—could be cash payments, crypto, offshore accounts I haven't found yet. "
Tom leaned back in his chair, the glow of multiple monitors casting shadows across his exhausted face. "This is who Blaire is. She won't stop with one payment. Even if Cara came up with fifty thousand, Blaire would just come back for more. And more. Until there's nothing left."
The weight of that settled over the room.
"So we can't pay her off. Not that we would," Wade said.
"We have to take her down completely." Tom gestured to the screens showing Blaire's financial records, her victim list, her Instagram empire. "Destroy her business. Make it so she can't operate anymore."
"How?" Cara's voice was small. "She's got millions of dollars, a huge public presence and a whole system built around this."
"We find her pressure points," Reagan insisted. "Everyone has them."
"Except Blaire's pressure points aren't obvious," Tom said. "She's careful. Everything she does is technically legal on the surface. Even if we went to the police with what I found—"
"Which we can't," Wade interjected.
"—they'd need proof of blackmail. Victims willing to testify. Evidence that would hold up in court." Tom shook his head. "We're not going to beat her legally."
"Then we beat her illegally," Piper said. Everyone turned to look at her. She shrugged. "What?”
"Piper—" Tom started.
"Reagan’s right, Dad." Piper met his eyes. "Blaire's destroying people. And she's going to keep doing it because the system can't touch her."
"But we can," Wade said. "We find her vulnerabilities and we exploit them."
"We run a con," Cara said quietly. Everyone looked at her. "We're going to con a con artist. Make her think she's winning right up until she loses."
Reagan’s eyes sparkled. "I’m liking this. What kind of con?"
"I don't know yet." Cara stood and started pacing. "But Blaire's weakness is her confidence. She thinks she's untouchable. She's been doing this long enough that she's gotten sloppy."
"Has she?" Tom pulled up surveillance footage Wade had captured.
"Except for her obvious money deposits, which is totally stupid, she’s pretty slick.
Look at this. She doesn't use her phone for blackmail—probably has a burner.
Doesn't put anything incriminating in writing that I can find.
Always films in public places where there's no expectation of privacy. "
"But she's overconfident," Wade said. "She approached Gabe. That was a mistake. She was trying to rattle Cara, but she exposed herself to law enforcement scrutiny."
"And she underestimated us," Reagan added. "She thinks Cara's alone. She has no idea there's a team investigating her."
"So we use that." Cara stopped pacing. "We make her think she's winning. That I'm desperate and scrambling. Meanwhile, we're actually—" She looked at Tom. "What would hurt her most? What would destroy her business?"
Tom thought for a moment. "We can’t count on getting any of her victims to testify, but we should at least contact them. Some of them might be willing to help behind the scenes. Give us insight.”
"But first, we need her distracted. We need to make her think she's safe," Cara said. "Make her think I'm broken. That I'll pay. That I'm not a threat."
"And while she's relaxed, we figure out how to expose her," Tom finished. "Maybe we can bait her into being explicit about the blackmail."
"That's the con," Reagan said. "We play the desperate victim while we're actually setting a trap."
"Multiple traps," Wade corrected. "We hit her from different angles. Financial, legal, social. Make it so she can't recover."
Tom pulled up a new screen, started typing. "I can keep digging into her background. Find other victims. Maybe get some of them to talk once they know they're not alone. Build a case that law enforcement can't ignore, though I think that’s a long shot."
"I'll handle surveillance," Wade said. "Track her movements. See who she meets with. Find out if she's got backup or if she's operating solo."
"I'll work social media," Piper offered. "Analyze her followers. Find the most influential ones. Figure out how to flip public opinion when the time comes."
"And I'll coordinate," Reagan said. "Make sure all our pieces move together."
"For now, I’ll play the distraught victim," Cara announced. "I keep Blaire focused on me. Make her think she's winning. String her along until we're ready to spring the trap."
"And the endgame?" Wade asked.
"Ideally? We get her on camera admitting to blackmail," Cara said. "We expose her to her followers. We destroy her reputation. And we make sure she can't come back."
Probably not going to happen, but a girl could dream. Besides, there would be other ways to incinerate Blaire Mitchell.
"And if she has backup we don't know about?" Tom asked. "If there's someone bigger behind her?"
"Then we deal with that when we find it," Cara said. "But first we take her down. One predator at a time."
She capped the marker, turned to face them. "This is going to be dangerous. We're going after someone who's very good at destroying lives. If she figures out what we're doing before we're ready, she could burn us all."
"Then we don't let her figure it out," Wade said.
"We're going to need to be perfect," Tom added. "No mistakes. No traces. Nothing that leads back to us."
"Can we do that?" Piper asked quietly.
The team looked at each other. Exhausted. Scared. But determined.
"We saved David Sawyer from corrupt cops and kidnappers," Reagan said. "We can handle one overly-made up blackmailer with an Instagram addiction."
Tom closed his laptop. "I’ll dig deeper into her files and find us a couple local victims to start with. But the bigger piece is figuring out how she decides on her targets. How did she even find Cara? Something tells me that’s going to be huge.”
Piper’s face lit up. “You’re talking about software. You think she’s got some way of zeroing in on targets like Cara.”
“Exactly.” Her father grinned at her. “It’s just a hunch, but how else could she find records that don’t match? It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Super inefficient at best, almost impossible at worst.”
Cara’s confidence rose. Ever little string helped. “Shut that down and we shut down half her income stream.”
“More, likely,” Wade added.
The team started to disperse. Piper packing up her laptop. Tom saving files and shutting down monitors. Wade collecting his surveillance equipment.
Reagan pulled Cara aside. "You okay?"
"I don't know. This is—it's bigger than I thought. More complicated. I don’t want you all in danger."
Reagan squeezed her shoulder. "Not your choice to make." Her smile widened. "Fake it till you make it, sister."
Cara laughed. She couldn’t help it. Fake it had been her mantra her entire life.
For the first time since Blaire had walked into her bakery, Cara felt like maybe—just maybe—she could win this.
Not by running. Not by hiding. Not by facing it alone.
But by trusting the family she'd found in Haven Cove.