We reached the office, and I expected the door to be locked. But as I turned the knob, it twisted easily. Amateur, I thought to myself. It was clear to me that even though Jim talked big about having dangerous people at his back, he didn’t have the first clue about running a criminal enterprise. He was simply a man who thought he knew what he was doing, and who had screwed over the wrong person this time.
Entering the office, my heart was racing as I headed to his computer. I moved the mouse and the screen lit up, prompting me to enter a password.
Shit. What would a man like King use as a password?
“Needs a password.”
Eli had programs to guess passwords. “Scoot over,” he whispered, getting in front of the computer. “See if you can find anything on his desk. Guys like him aren’t too tech savvy usually.”
Some files sat on one side. A picture of him with his son, no sign of the mother. A cell phone. A pile of post-its caught my eye, and I picked it up off the desk. A series of random letters and numbers were written on the top.
“Try this,” I said, handing him the post-it.
Eli typed it into the password box, and just like that, the computer came to life. I was right - he really was a fucking amateur, and he made this almost too easy. I took Eli’s place at the computer and pulled up Outlook.
King didn’t even sign out of his e-mail. He liked to act all big and professional and shit, but we’d worked with real pros before and he definitely wasn't one of them. I was grateful to him for making our job easier.
I scrolled through his e-mail and moved to his sent folder. That’s where I found the real gold. An e-mail from Greg. The door of the office opened, and for a second, my heart skipped a beat until I saw who it was.
“Shit, Graham,” I grumbled, listening to his quiet laugh.
“Find anything?” he whispered as he stepped closer.
“Yep, look at this.”
I pointed to a string of e-mails between Greg and Jim. Greg had asked about the debt with Danielle, and he told him that it was his hope that Jim would get the property because if Danielle were homeless, he could seek full custody. Jim wanted the property to develop it for commercial purposes. It would be a win-win for them if Danielle failed to make her payments. The two men talked about ways to get Greg custody of his daughter and to get Danielle out of the picture, though no mention of a fire or anything illegal.
We heard a sound above us. Someone was moving around upstairs. We all held our breath.
“We need to go,” Graham mouthed.
Though he was right, we had nothing really. Nothing except for a motive. No proof that either one did anything illegal to get Danielle out of the house.
My eyes fell on Jim’s cell phone on the desk.
“Let’s go, now,” Eli ordered.
I closed out of everything on the computer, and as my brothers headed for the door to make sure the coast was clear, I grabbed the cell phone off the desk and stuffed it into my pocket. I quickly wiped down everything to get rid of our fingerprints as Graham motioned for me to hurry up.
We slipped into the hall, quietly as possible except our hearts thundering in our chests. The sound of a toilet flushing above us caused us to freeze, then we heard more footsteps. Hopefully, whoever it was went back to bed.
Graham looked around the corner and the coast was clear. Eli pointed toward the front door, and in one quick movement, the three of us rushed toward it. Graham opened it quietly and we slipped out the front, closing it behind us. We made a beeline for the street and then to our truck. We didn’t stop running until we were locked tightly in the vehicle.
“Doors are locked, alarms back in place. Cameras operating as usual,” Eli announced.
“Can you see inside, by chance?”
“Hold on, one second… I might be able to hack into the cameras.”
Eli tapped away at the screen, and sure enough, he got in. He handed the tablet to me. Every room was dark and quiet. No movement whatsoever. Whoever had been moving around upstairs had likely gone back to bed, no wiser to the fact that we’d been inside the house. I let out a relieved breath as I started the truck.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find much,” Graham said quietly from the passenger’s seat. “But at least it’s a start. We know Greg and Jim are talking, and they both have the same goal in mind - to get Danielle off that property.”
The cell phone was burning a hole in my pocket. I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret for long. I’d need Eli’s tech expertise to hack into it.
“We may find something on this.” I handed the phone to Eli.
Graham stared at me. “What is that?”
“It’s King’s phone. I grabbed it off his desk when we left.”
“Shit, man. Don’t you think he’s gonna miss his damned phone?”
I shrugged. “He’ll have no proof anyone has been in the house. We’re good.”
Eli and Graham shared a look, but I kept my eyes on the road.
“Can you hack into it, Eli?”
“It’s a Samsung,” he mumbled, looking at it. “I believe I have everything we need at home.”
“Good, thank you,” I said. “Hopefully we find something on it before the bastard realizes it’s missing.”
As soon as we reached the rental, Eli went to work. He managed to hack into the phone easily, as it simply required a password - which was actually the last four digits of the password on Jim’s computer.
“He makes our job way too easy,” Eli said, almost sounding disappointed.
He returned the phone to me, and I went straight for the text messages. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I opened one from a number not saved into Jim’s phone.
It simply said, It’s done. The text included a photo of Danielle’s house up in flames.
Jim texted back, Was she there?
My blood ran cold as I wondered if she was supposed to be there.
The other person responded, I don’t know.
“Call Teddy,” I muttered. “I think we’ve got all the proof we need.”
Ooo000ooo
Teddy frowned as he looked over the messages. “And how did you get this?”
“We found it,” Graham answered, shooting me a look. He’d told me it would be difficult to explain this and that Teddy might not be able to do much with it since it was stolen.
Teddy shook his head, and my heart dropped. I feared the worst.
“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this in court. We need more,” he said. “But it’s a start. I’ll do what I can to find something we can use.”
“Thanks, Teddy,” I said.
Teddy sighed and slipped the phone into his pocket. Because the evidence was obtained illegally, regardless of the lie I’d told, the evidence wouldn’t hold up. But I also knew that Teddy was a man who believed in what he did - he wanted the guilty to pay, and while he would always follow the law himself, he wouldn’t overlook clear proof of arson just because the evidence came about in a questionable manner.
I trusted Teddy would find some way to spin this, to get more evidence now that he had the proof staring at him.
I had to believe he’d take that bastard down.
Danielle
I watched as Greg’s car pulled away with my daughter. A whole week. She was going with him for an entire week. It wasn’t the first time she’d spent a week with him, sometimes even longer in the summer, but since he’d taken her and lied about it months before, I didn’t feel comfortable with him keeping her for long.
It probably didn’t help that I was hugely pregnant, and my hormones were getting the best of me. I was in my third trimester, finally, and the doctors had told me to do my best to be stress free. Easier said than done when you were dealing with everything I had going on.
Thanks to the evidence Mason handed over to Teddy, they were able to link Jim to the fire. Mason didn’t tell me exactly how he came about getting it, and even Teddy didn’t really know. But there was a text message, and once Teddy was able to trace the other number, he found the person Jim had hired to take care of the fire. The man came clean in exchange for a lighter sentence, and just like that - the debt with Jim was cancelled because Jim was arrested for conspiracy and would most likely go to prison.
Everything had happened so fast, but it was nice knowing that my debt couldn’t come back to haunt me now. And at least I could feel better thinking Greg had nothing to do with it. He had talked to Jim, according to Mason, but there was absolutely nothing linking him to the fire. The fire was all Jim’s idea, from the sound of it, but even knowing this, there was a gnawing suspicion in my mind that Greg might still be involved.
Without proof, however, there was little I could do.
I sighed and wiped the tears from my eyes. My cheeks were burning from the frigid wind. I placed a hand on my belly, comforting myself with the thought that sometime after Christmas, my babies would be here.
Mason took my other hand and led me back to his truck.
“Come on, I have a surprise for you,” he said.
“A surprise? What kind of surprise?”
“It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you, now would it?” He gave me an adorably cheeky grin as he helped me into his truck. He hurried around to the driver’s side and started the engine. The warmth from the heater felt nice on my cold face.