by Vivi Barnes
I slip the bracelet into my jacket pocket. “Let me take this by the store and see if I can track down more details on who bought it. In the meantime, if you get anything else in the mail or see anything suspicious, you should tell your grandfather.”
She smiles a little. “If I did that, he’d think it was you. Considering all the evidence, I should think that myself.”
“Why don’t you?” I know I would.
“I did. I mean, just for like five minutes until I realized that it didn’t make any sense. I know you, Jack.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, neither of us saying anything. I’m glad I can’t read minds. If there were any part of her that still wanted me, even a little, I’d never be able to let her go. But I couldn’t do that to her. She deserves better than a criminal like me.
My phone buzzes, and I glance down to see a text from Sam. Have you checked your bank account lately?
My bank account? I stare at the text, the words sinking into my brain like quicksand.
“What’s wrong?” Liv asks as my fingers fly over my phone.
“Huh. Nothing, I guess.” The balance is the same as it was yesterday, minus the gas I put in my bike last night. I text Sam that it’s fine, but she doesn’t respond. Did Sam misunderstand the whole stolen debit card thing and think my bank account got hacked? “I probably should get back, though. Sounds like there’s something else going on at home.”
Neither of us are hungry, so I leave a tip for the chips and salsa and Liv and I head back to her grandfather’s. I go as slowly as I can. Having her behind me, even for a short time, is like stealing back a piece of the happiness I’ve missed being away from her. The anger that’s been my constant companion since forever fizzles when I’m around her, replaced by a pressure in my heart that’s suffocating. I’m not sure which is worse.
Regardless, saying good-bye this time—maybe for the last time—is going to be a bitch.
She asks me to stop outside the gate, out of sight from the windows of her house. I cut the engine, and for a moment, she doesn’t get off the bike. I keep my grip on the handles, my face forward. I hate good-byes. It’s too easy to let things slip that you want to keep silent.
She slides off the bike, shaking out her long dark, windblown hair. It reminds me of the way it used to fall wildly over her shoulders.
Stay focused.
“Thanks for bringing me home,” she says, handing me the helmet. I start to pull it down over my head but she touches my arm with her hand, frowning. “Jack, wait—”
“Thanks for coming with me today,” I say quickly. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
She nods. “Trust me, I’ve been keeping my balcony door closed.”
“And locked.”
“Definitely.”
“If anything else happens, tell your grandfather or call the police. Please.”
She strokes her bottom lip with a finger. I stare at it, fighting the urge to pull her to me and kiss her. There is no scenario in my head where that’d be okay.
Her gaze moves to my bike, her eyebrows pinching slightly like she recognizes how I’m sitting, frozen in place. Ready to flee. “Will I see you again?” she asks.
“I think it’s better if I stay in Richmond and figure things out from that end. I’ll let you know if I learn anything. Just be sure to go to the police if anything else happens. And let me know, too.”
A long pause. She’s staring at me and I’m staring directly ahead at the quiet street, focusing on the white line in the middle. I rev the engine slightly, trying to hint that I’m leaving. I need her to back away and let me go.
“Jack.”
She takes a step forward. I lock eyes with her.
And as fast as that, she’s in my arms. I drop the helmet, pulling her to my lap. Her lips still taste like strawberries, her body so warm. My senses reel as I hold her, kiss her.
“Jack, I…I can’t,” she says, pulling back slightly, though she doesn’t slide off my lap. “I know you’re going to disappear again, and it’ll be another eight months before I see you. I can’t go through that again.”
I rest my head against hers, wishing more than anything that I could tell her it won’t happen. But nothing in my life is sure anymore, if it ever was.
“I have to go,” she murmurs, kissing my cheek softly. Then she’s gone.
Weirdly, the scenario is too much like the time I left her, that last night on her balcony. But this time it’s Liv running as fast as she can away from me. And just like that, the aching void in my heart returns with a vengeance.
“Deal with it,” I mutter to myself, pulling the helmet over my head. I pull out of her neighborhood and away from Norfolk as fast as I can.
The ride back to Richmond is long and chilly, giving me a chance to cool down. By the time I’m walking up the steps and opening the door to the Briarcreek house, I almost feel normal again.
As soon as I step inside the house, Sam finds me, trailed by Jen, Cameron, and a few others. “Where have you been?” she asks.
“What’s up?” I ask.
Jen puts her hands on her hips. “He’s a little too unconcerned, don’t you think?”
“So what’s the problem?” I ask Sam, ignoring Jen. “Does this have to do with the text you sent me earlier?”
She nods. “A lot of us are missing money from our bank accounts. You said yours is the same?”
“Yeah. Are you telling me—”
“We’ve been hacked,” Nancy says, stepping out from the office. “All of us. Except, apparently, you.”
Chapter Thirteen
LIV
Grandfather’s in the study when I walk into the house. He’s on the phone, smiling slightly and lifting a hand to wave as I move past the doorway. No indication at all that he thinks something might be up. I take a deep breath when I get to my room, then fall back on my bed, my fingers trailing over my lips.
What the hell was that?
A mistake, that’s what. I shouldn’t have kissed him. It sends all the wrong signals. Just when my life started to make sense, when I finally stopped trying to decode my past and move forward, Jack has to show up and send my common sense whirling into another dimension. The look on his face when I told him I hacked into the security camera—
I press my hand against my chest, breathing slowly to keep my heart from pounding its way out. I can’t let my emotions get the best of me. Not this time.
I sit up then. This guy Frank who worked with Bill Sykes—I know him only from the eyes in the rearview mirror of Bill’s car. He did get out at Bill’s apartment and handed him the keys, but I can’t remember anything other than him wearing a black uniform and black hat.
I sit at my computer and look up a variety of word combinations.
Frank + Bill Sykes + Richmond
Frank + hacking + Richmond
Frank + theft + Richmond
Frank + crime ring + Richmond
Nothing comes up. I do find articles on Bill Sykes, though. They’re mostly focused on his death, though a couple do hint at his questionable past. Nothing really links him to any crimes. Nothing about the prostitution and hacking rings. He was a man who locked himself down pretty well. I’m glad to see nothing about Monroe Street or kids included in the articles.
In one article about his death, though, I see a chilling black-and-white image I’ve never seen. The picture is of his car being raised from the James River with a crane. From this view, I can zoom in on the picture to see what looks like a crack in the back window on the passenger side. It’s the side where Bill was sitting—the one he busted his head on when he died. I remember seeing blood smeared on the glass as the car sank into the river water. And I caused it all by driving over the bridge railing. The memory always lingers at the edges of my mind, waiting to catch me unaware, reminding me that I’ve actually killed someone. Long hours with the therapist helped me come to grips with what I already knew—I had no choice. It was do that or die at Bill’s
hands. I could’ve just as easily killed myself or Jack by doing it. I try not to think too hard about that.
I move the mouse to close out of that window, then obliterate my computer history. I don’t want that search to show up in my browser again. Ever.
Put your past behind you. Move on.
Easier said than done.
Chapter Fourteen
JACK
“Who’d hack our accounts?” I ask. We’re standing in the office, staring over Sam’s shoulder at her laptop as she shows us the wire transfer to a person named Donald Smith. The others confirmed the same name on their accounts. Sam’s missing a thousand, the others more or less the same amount. In all, a few grand was stolen.
And nobody touched mine, an observation I can’t sweep under the carpet.
“What do you mean, our accounts? You didn’t lose any money,” Jen snaps. She looks at Nancy, her hands on her hips. “Pretty suspicious, don’t you think?”
“My account’s normal, too,” Micah speaks up. “Why are you all assuming it was Z who did it?”
“Good point,” Sunny tells him. “So it was you, then.”
“Really?” He rolls his eyes.
“Did you shut them all down?” I ask Nancy.
“Of course. And Patty at the bank is working with the wireless rep on it. Apparently, that Donald Smith account was closed yesterday, the money already wired to an account in the Cayman Islands.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I doubt we’ll find him.”
“Was the emergency house account touched?”
She shakes her head. “I know what you’re thinking, but I doubt the two instances would be linked. One any fool could do. This one—I don’t know.”
“Isn’t anyone listening to me?” Jen whines.
“No,” Sam tells her. She looks at me. “You might want to close your account, too, just in case.”
“Good idea.”
“Have any of you interacted with someone who might’ve stolen a checkbook from you, your debit card, or anything?” Nancy asks. We all shake our heads. “Check your past transactions, anything that could give us a clue.”
“I still say it’s an inside job,” Jen says, staring pointedly at me. I ignore her, though I don’t blame her. It is weird that nobody hacked my account. I’d doubt me, too.
“Have you looked into the guys who used to work with Bill?” I ask Nancy.
I watch her carefully as she thinks about that. Her eyebrows twitch just slightly, and I wonder if she’s thinking of Frank, too. But she shakes her head. “I haven’t the faintest idea how to find those guys. Bill dealt with them, not me, and they completely disappeared when he died.”
“What about that Frank guy?” Sam asks. So I’m not the only one who’s been paying attention. Interesting. “I’ve seen him here before.”
“Oh, no. He wasn’t one of Bill’s—I mean, not like that. Just a driver. Besides, I managed our bank accounts—Bill didn’t have access to your personal accounts. Now,” she says briskly, “if any of you need cash until we get this cleared up, I do have some in our safe here.” She’s acting a little too stern. And too quick to tell us Frank’s not involved. I try to catch her eye but she avoids looking at me.
“Try to keep it to things you absolutely need, not new cell phones,” Nancy says, looking pointedly at Jen.
After the meeting, Nancy takes Dutch and a couple others to the kitchen, in deep discussion about dinner. Obviously, she doesn’t want to be left alone where I can ask her my questions. Nancy should be worried about this Frank guy as much as me. She’s too quick to blow him off. And as much as I would never admit it to Jen, she’s right. Why would my account not be hacked as well? I probably have more money than most, if not all, of the kids in the house.
I reach into my jacket pocket and feel the box with the bracelet. The best thing I can do now is head to Abbott & Peterson’s and try to find out who really bought this. It’ll probably take some schmoozing, and I’m going to need someone who’s a skilled schmoozer.
Which leaves the obvious choice: Sam.
It takes me all of two seconds to convince her to help me. I swear, the girl loves a mystery. I won’t be surprised if she ends up being a detective one day.
“You know,” she says as she turns in to the jewelry store parking lot the next morning, “if Nancy finds out you’ve got this thing, you’re going to have a hard time convincing her it wasn’t you who bought it in the first place.”
“Trust me, I know. But like I said, it’s probably a coincidence.” I hand her the box with the bracelet. “Find out as much as you can, and try to get a description of the man who bought them. And see if you can get a scoop on whoever might’ve been with him.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve told me a hundred times.” She opens the box, whistling through her teeth. “I could look at this all day and not get bored. Hey, do you think Liv would give it to me, since she doesn’t want it?”
I level a look at her. She rolls her eyes and gets out of the car, assuming her brightest smile. “Be back in a jiffy, sweets.”
Ten minutes later, Sam comes back to the car, a grin on her face. She tosses the box on my lap.
“That was way too easy,” she says. “I pretended I wanted to find out who my secret admirer was so I could give back the bracelet. You wouldn’t believe how fast he gave me the information.”
“Just for telling him you wanted to return the bracelet?”
“Well, for that and the fact that I said I wanted to keep my options open for dating rather than getting serious with one guy. Then I did this…” She leans forward slightly and pouts her lips, batting her eyes. “He caved pretty quickly then. Guys are so one-dimensional.”
I decide to ignore that. “What did he tell you?”
Her smile falters. “Well…the bracelets did come from this store, but he said it was a couple who came in to buy them.”
“A couple?”
She nods. “A blond guy wearing a hoodie and a woman. Said they were all lovey-dovey with each other. Said he remembers because the lady was over at the other counter shopping for earrings, and she was all happy when he walked over to wrap one of the bracelets around her wrist.” She shrugs. “He couldn’t remember anything else. Oh, except that the guy had a weird name that was an initial.” She tsks, shaking her head at me. “Really, why didn’t you go with a name like Zack instead of Z?”
I stare at the box with the bracelet, my stomach churning. Someone wearing a hoodie came into the store with a woman but knew enough about the store security to keep the woman pretty much out of the picture. Then intentionally signed my name to set me up. And what about the second bracelet that was on the receipt? Liv said there were no other camera angles that caught them. What jewelry store doesn’t have a lot of cameras? I stare at it, then the store next door.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” I tell Sam, getting out of her car. I walk toward the shop next to A&P. A pawn shop has bars on the window—surely it’ll have an outdoor camera. Trying to look casual, I peer up at the overhang and find a camera pointing at an angle that not only captures people leaving its store, but possibly Abbott & Peterson’s, too. I open the door and walk inside the shop.
“Excuse me,” I say to the burly man at the counter. “I’m with Littleton Security. We’re new here and would love the opportunity to give you a demonstration of our security cameras.” Littleton Security is the name of the company that covers Briarcreek House.
The guy grunts. “We’ve already got a system with ABC.”
“That’s perfectly fine. We’re running a special this month, and I bet I can undercut your current system by thirty percent. And get you out of your existing contract with absolutely no fees.”
The guy’s eyebrows lift at that. He hands me a business card and tells me to send him the information via email. Which I will—via a link to my “amazing sale,” which will allow Micah to hack in through his system.
I head back to the car with his card in hand. Sam g
rins when I tell her what I did.
“Maybe you can get a look at the chick he’s with,” she says as I text Micah the information. “Do you think this guy’s the same person who stole from our accounts?”
“No idea. Maybe.”
“What about that Frank guy?” Sam asks. “He looks kind of shady and shows up at the house a lot.”
“He’s already at the top of my list. He’s the one who drove us around when Bill kidnapped Liv. Drove her straight to her grandfather’s house, so he knows where she lives. Problem is, all we have is his first name, and Nancy won’t give me anything on him.”
She nods. “Then we need to get the information from her when she’s not looking.”
Sam and I decide to wait until everyone’s asleep. Around three a.m., she opens her door, yawning, after I tap on it. She sneaks into Nancy’s bedroom to get her phone, pressing the button with Nancy’s thumb while she’s asleep to unlock it. Sam definitely likes to live on the edge. She brings it out to me and we search the phone contacts. I’m actually surprised to see Frank listed in her contacts. So she is keeping up with the guy—or maybe she’s screening his calls. I capture the number in my phone. There are no texts between the two. There is a phone call, though, two days ago. I go into location services to check out the list of most recent places she’s visited. I’m surprised that she left that function running. It was the first thing I turned off when I got my phone.
Nancy doesn’t go out much, so the only items listed were the grocery store and home. Except for a visit two days ago to State Avenue.
“Who do we know on State Avenue?” I mumble. Sam shrugs. I hand her the phone and she returns it to Nancy’s room.
We don’t speak until we’re in the office downstairs. I sit at Nancy’s PC and boot it up in safe mode while Sam searches on the second computer for the phone number, owned by a Frank Jones. She finds an age—47—and several addresses as well as an associated name: Elizabeth Jones, age 38. Wife, maybe. Or sister. Maybe she’s the woman who went to the jewelry store.
