Law stifled a laugh. When he'd been California Mike, Kinley had texted him many times. She ended every single message with a flurry of smiley faces and thumbs-up symbols. He'd kept every single one.
"Since that's a readily available app, your emoticons should be safe. So Jansen loaded the photos?" Riley asked.
"He loaded everything. I gave him a list of the books I wanted. After I'd read those, I figured out how to buy more, but the last time I tried, the device gave me a message that I didn't have room, so I had someone in my office teach me how to archive my books. Do I have a virus?"
Law sent his brother a long look. He had a feeling Riley was on the right track. He wasn't the technophile Riley was, but even he knew that it was damn hard to fill up a tablet with nothing but forty books, a couple of games, and some photos. There should be tons of space left. She didn't have any video on the system to eat up her memory. No audio, either.
"You don't have a virus, but you do have a rat fink bastard," Law growled. He hated Jansen more and more every single minute.
Riley nodded at him, then turned to Kinley, reaching out for her. She took his hand, and he tugged lightly, pulling her into his lap.
Yeah, something had definitely happened. Kinley seemed awfully comfortable naked in Riley's lap, and he wrapped his arms around their bare bundle of femininity with an air of familiarity. Law might not have to worry about losing his brother after all.
He glanced over at Dominic, who looked both as surprised and pleased as he was.
"Pet, you amaze me."
She shrugged. "I didn't do anything."
Dominic nodded at her perched on Riley's lap. "Are you sure?"
Kinley blushed, and Riley utterly ignored him, though he tightened his arm around Kinley's waist, pulling her closer.
Then Riley was all business again, pointing at the screen with his free hand. "It's all about these photographs. Everything we need is in here. It's called steganography."
Kinley frowned. "Like stegosaurus?"
Dominic shook his head, his affection for Kinley visible. "No, pet, it's not a dinosaur. Quite the contrary, this is on the cutting edge of criminal practices."
"I'm going to kill that fucker," Law snarled.
Jansen was willing to let Kinley carry his fucking criminal banking information? He was going to die and slowly. Technology might be Riley's forte. Dominic might be the money behind their operation. But Law was the muscle, and that meant he got to kill Greg Jansen. He knew just how he'd do it, too. He was going to eviscerate the son of a bitch, but not so much that he died immediately. Oh, no. He wanted to make sure Jansen suffered for a nice long time.
"Killing aside," Riley interrupted Law's vivid fantasy, "steganography is the act of hiding secret messages in seemingly innocent data. You see this picture as a whole, but the computer sees it as a series of data bytes. What criminals do is imbed their information in the very fabric of whatever they're corrupting. In this instance, Jansen is hiding his financials in these photos."
Kinley frowned at Riley. "All I see is a picture."
Riley clicked a few keys and an entirely different screen came up. "That's because you have to know how to extract the code. And there it is."
Kinley gasped. "That looks like an accounting report. Like one of my accounting reports."
Dominic cursed. "Well, now we know where he put the second set of books to Kinley's charity. What does it say, Riley?"
"That Hope House is doing just fine. He's had a mole in your organization for about a year as far as I can tell. He's the one who made you think your charity was going under. You have an employee named Fred Buck who sent through these records." Riley scrolled through the files with a scowl.
"Yes. He was in charge of my donations. Are you saying I have more than I thought I had?" Kinley put a hand to her mouth. "I feel so stupid."
Law reached for her. "You aren't stupid. Baby, they played you. You couldn't have known. He sent this guy in before you had even met him. He selected you as his target, and you didn't have a chance. I bet Jansen swept you off your feet, then arranged one distraction after another from the charity."
He knew how Jansen worked. He'd seen a ploy like that before. The last thing he wanted was for Kinley to beat herself up with guilt.
"He absolutely swept me off my feet. Two days after I met him, he took me on a date to Paris. We spent a week there. In separate rooms, but I'd never been. I'd never taken the time before. It was so different."
"He knew how to dazzle you," Dominic said. "I understand that Alaska isn't Paris, but we brought you with us for the right reasons. I want you to think about that when the tabloids start gossiping about us."