His Town

by Ellie Danes

  I turned the knob quietly, and it moved. Lucky. I pushed, and the door opened. The scent of stale coffee lingered, so he probably hadn’t left for the day more than a couple of hours before, at most. That meant I was pretty safe to snoop.

  The first thing to look for would be hard copies, but I wasn’t too hopeful that Jacob was foolish enough to leave anything sensitive out. Then again, he never locked his door, so I couldn’t discount the notion.

  I looked through the drawers that weren’t locked in his desk? But I couldn’t find anything, and the locked drawers were impossible without the key or without making it known that someone had jimmied the locks. So that was out. The only other thing I could do was try to get into his computer. But of course, he’d locked that down—he wasn’t completely careless.

  I tried a generic password, but it didn’t work. I tried another one—no dice. I tried to think of what I could imagine Jacob setting as his own password, and put in a few options I thought might work, but none of them did. One after another, they failed. I pressed my lips together. I could leave, of course, but I wasn’t likely to have another opening like tonight, and I didn’t want to leave the office without at least confirming or denying, that there was even something to find.

  Then it occurred to me: I had an admin password. I’d gotten it from the IT team back when I’d been having problems with my own computer, because I’d pointed out that it would be easier for me to solve the problems I was having on my own than to keep pulling a tech away from maintaining servers and other projects they had. My admin password should—in theory—get me into Jacob’s computer. I just had to make sure I logged out properly and completely before I left.

  I put it in, and the computer accepted it and began loading up. I still didn’t know what I was looking for, or how to go about looking for it. Emails—his personal ones, not the official ones. I lucked out again. Jacob had set his passwords to populate automatically once he was logged in, so I was able to open up both his personal and company accounts, and start looking for things to do with Mustang Ridge.

  I scrolled and looked around, skimming things to try and get an idea of what his conversations with Dad’s client looked like. Finally, I found something. Around the time that he would have been getting ready to pitch the idea of the bigger development project, I found an email to one of the points of contact I knew from the company—a pretty high-up executive, who had always stricken me as a bit smarmy but in the old-school-guy way.

  As I read, I went from feeling suspicious to horrified to enraged. According to the back and forth between Jacob and this executive, he would let my dad have the credit for the expansion officially, but he—Jacob—would be getting a handsome “fee” for his services in not only getting my dad to agree to the bigger project, but also making the way smooth through the town council. As I read more, I realized that Jacob had to have been talking to someone on the town council, too. Maybe the rest of the council didn’t know about it, but at least one other person was getting a payoff beyond what Jacob was getting, which was on top of his commission. Money was changing hands like a mob deal, all under my dad’s nose.

  I quickly sent the emails to myself from my own email address, grabbing screenshots of the email chain as fast as I could and attaching them to my email. I found the original contracts that Evelyn had complained about in their sloppiness, and found the separate contract that Jacob had signed and sent in, confirming his cooperation in exchange for ten thousand dollars in payment from the company, separate from the fees paid to my dad’s business for the expansion of the project. I couldn’t believe how much was going on, without my own father having any clue about it.

  I logged out of everything and made sure to erase my tracks as best as I could. I didn’t think Jacob had the kind of computer savvy it would take to track me down, nor would he have any reason to suspect he’d been hacked, but I wanted to be sure he couldn’t notice anything by accident that would lead him to me.

  I had just gotten up to leave when I heard footsteps approaching the office. I stopped dead in my tracks, absolutely still. I hadn’t turned any lights on, but maybe the night watchman or the janitor had gotten suspicious for some other reason? I held my breath, hoping the footsteps would continue past Jacob’s office door.

  Instead, I heard the doorknob turn. It could still just be Maurice or Tally, or Nelson, I told myself, trying to calm down the pounding of my heart.

  But as the door opened, I realized that I was wrong; it wasn’t any of the night staff that had come to see what was going on, or to clean Jacob’s office. It was Jacob himself who walked through the door, whistling lowly in a tuneless way until he spotted me standing behind his desk.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rhett

  When Emily got up, I woke up with her, feeling the shifting of her weight in the bed next to me, hearing the faint noises of her moving around in her bedroom and then the living room. I didn’t know why she was sneaking around, but it was clear to me that she was getting ready to leave, and I couldn’t think of any reason she would want to leave in such secrecy at night that made any sense at all.

  I had to find out what she was up to. I hated to admit it, even to myself and in the depths of my mind at the time, but there was a little voice in my head that told me that she might have been faking all along, that she might be going to make some deal with her dad, or to meet up with Jacob to tell him what was going on. Maybe she’d gotten cold feet about going against her father, the more certain it became that her father intended to cut her off if she persisted. I couldn’t entirely blame her—but I wanted to know.

  I managed to follow at a distance until I was sure of where she was going, which was her dad’s office building. I pulled over into a half-abandoned street, trying to decide how to handle the situation. The fact that she’d gone to the office seemed to indicate that the suspicious voice in my head was right—why would she be there, if not to talk to her father or one of her coworkers? But just because she went there—even if it was to talk to one of them—doesn’t mean that she’s doing it to go back onto their side, I thought, contradicting myself. Otherwise, why would she have asked me to come stay with her? Nothing was making any sense.

  I shut off the engine and got out of my truck. I went into the building, looking around to make sure that I wasn’t attracting any attention. In college I’d done a few pranks with friends—never anything too major—so I knew how to sneak around. I made sure the door closed behind me quietly, and then I checked the directory on the wall.

  I took the elevator up and asked myself, yet again, what Emily was doing there in the office. Maybe she had just gone into her office to check on things, to see if she could find something that would help us make our case. That would make sense—but then, why wouldn’t she have at least told me about it, or offered to let me come along for company?

  I didn’t know. I wanted—I needed—to find out. I got out of the elevator and looked around. A janitor worked hard at cleaning something in another corner of the office, and I tried to think of where Emily’s office would be. I kept quiet, wandering around, keeping to the darker spots of the big open-plan space, looking at the tags on the doors. I turned a corner and heard talking, which gave me my first clue that I was onto something. Of course, I realized as I kept moving toward it, that something could be a completely different situation to the one I’d come to investigate.

  But after a moment or two, I started hearing better—well enough to recognize Emily’s voice, and then Jacob’s. My stomach and heart both sank as I started to suspect even more strongly that she’d flipped back over to her father’s side. I almost turned to leave, but something stopped me. I needed to know for sure, before jumping to conclusions. I needed real evidence that she was telling Jacob something that would sabotage my efforts to save my town.

  I approached the office slowly, keeping my ears open, straining to hear their low voices.

  Instead of hearing Emily talk about betraying me, I caugh
t the end of a sentence that made me certain that I wanted to hear as much as possible, even as it made me more hopeful about Emily herself.

  Emily said, “...even though I really should have figured you weren’t even loyal to my dad. The fact that you tried to extort a date out of me—knowing what you’d already done to try and make this happen?”

  “Who was the one who brought you onto this project? It was me,” Jacob said, and I scowled at the tone in his voice. “Your dad would never have let you be part of this unless I’d told him it was a good idea. Besides, I would have thought you know better than to throw yourself at some country yokel.”

  “This isn’t even about that, first of all,” Emily countered. “This is about the fact that you might have broken the law—in addition to going behind my dad’s back—to make a deal that is unethical on every level.”

  “Good luck proving it,” Jacob said.

  “I won’t need luck,” Emily told him, and I raised an eyebrow to myself, hovering outside of the office. “I know what I’m looking for—and Dad hasn’t fired me, so I know how to get to it.”

  I smiled to myself. Emily had come to the office to look for evidence of something that could help me, not feed information to her father or Jacob to hurt me. I felt bad for doubting her in the first place, although I didn’t blame myself too much. Mostly, I was proud of her, because apparently she’d found something that would make Jacob look bad indeed.

  “You need to keep your nose out of things that aren’t your business,” Jacob said, his voice a hiss.

  “You need to keep your hands clean,” Emily countered.

  “You don’t have anything on me yet, or you would have already called your dad,” he said, almost as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “I know what I’m going to tell my Dad, and I know what I’m going to use to prove what I have to tell him,” Emily said.

  I heard a movement inside the office.

  “Get out of my office, and keep your hands off my stuff,” Jacob told her, and I could hear the tension in his voice. He was pissed.

  It was as good a time as any to show myself.

  I opened the mostly-shut door and stepped through. Jacob gripped Emily’s upper arms, looking into her face until the creaking of the door hinges made them both look in my direction. I’m not a violent guy, but at just over six feet tall and a bit shy of three hundred pounds—most of that muscle—I definitely could break Jacob in two if I wanted. And seeing him like that, trying to intimidate Emily, his hands on her like that, I definitely wanted to.

  “I think you’ll be wanting to take your hands off of her right now,” I told him, keeping my voice calm.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Felt the desire for a nighttime wander,” I said. “Let her go.”

  His grip must have loosened, because Emily broke free of him and stepped away, closer to me.

  “You okay, Em?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said, barely glancing at me. “Your time is up, Jacob. Whether you want to accept it or not.”

  “You don’t have anything,” Jacob said.

  I shifted to put myself next to Emily. “If you were so confident of that, you wouldn’t be threatening her. Whatever it was that you did, I’m pretty sure she has some kind of proof, or she wouldn’t have admitted to knowing it.”

  “All I need to figure out is how to take what I know Jacob here did, and apply it to our situation,” Emily told me, sounding almost amused now that the tension between her and Jacob, the threat that he’d been making against her physically, was over.

  “Let’s get out of here, then,” I suggested. “Meet you back at your apartment?”

  “You’re staying behind?” Emily clearly didn’t think that was a good idea.

  “I want to have a private little chat with Jakey-boy,” I said with a forced smile. “Nothing too serious. Guy-to-guy stuff.”

  Emily rolled her eyes, but she took my point. She left the office, looking just as confident as ever. I turned my attention onto Jacob.

  “You’ve got nothing to say to me, Farmer Ted,” Jacob said.

  “I do, actually,” I said. “I have something very important to tell you.”

  “Fine, go on,” Jacob said.

  I waited, listening to see if Emily was far enough away that she wouldn’t hear me. I didn’t think she’d approve of what I had to say to Jacob, but it needed to be said.

  Satisfied she was out of earshot, I said in a calm, quiet voice, “The next time I find out you’ve put a single finger on Emily Lewis, I will break that finger into a million tiny pieces. And if you put a hand on her, I will shatter every bone in your goddamn hand. Get where I’m going with this?”

  Jacob looked like he was trying to be brave, but I could see the fear in his eyes. “Whatever,” he said, shrugging. “You two just stay out of my office and out of my way and we won’t need to find out if I understand you or not, right?”

  I smiled slowly. “Just so long as you understand that touching her will lose you whatever part of your body comes into contact with hers,” I said. “Good night, Jakey.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Emily

  I had to move quickly. Waking up the next morning with Rhett at my side, I was consumed with urgency. I had to talk to Dad before Jacob had a chance to tell him what I’d done last night. I’d made sure to email him as soon as I got back to the apartment with Rhett to tell him that I needed to see him as early as possible, that I had important stuff to talk about. I could only hope that it would be enough for him to put Jacob off for a bit.

  After a little bit of morning loving, Rhett went back to Mustang Ridge. Fifteen minutes after he’d left, I got a text message from my dad, asking if we could have lunch somewhere. I texted him back immediately that I would meet him at Pappadeaux at noon, and then I got to work on putting together the evidence for him.

  I’d managed to successfully get all of the stuff I’d sent to myself from Jacob’s computer, and while I was killing time before I had to get ready to meet with Dad, I printed it off and highlighted the most important things so I could make sure Dad got the point and understood what was going on. I shook my head, feeling bummed already, remembering all the times that Dad had taken me to Pappadeaux as a treat—a special extravagance for birthday dinners, or when I made Honor Roll or Dean’s List, things like that. I was glad he was willing to meet with me, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to get him to understand—or if, even after he found out what Jacob had done, he would still agree that the compromise solution would be the best one.

  I needed to look just right: professional, sharp, but not like I was going into the office. I needed to look like my father’s daughter, like someone he should take seriously and someone he would want to listen to, all at once. I kept my hair down, just smoothing it a bit. I put on a skirt and blouse, and a pair of low heels—something I might have worn in college to go out to lunch or dinner with Dad. I did my makeup, checked again to make sure that I had the evidence. Then it was time to leave.

  There are few places on earth that smell more heavenly than the inside of Pappadeaux, and I felt relieved to be in the dining room to meet with Dad. He wasn’t going to make a scene here, no matter what he thought about what I had to tell him.

  I caught sight of him waiting for me at the front, and I took a deep breath to keep my nerves from driving me crazy.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

  He looked a bit tense still, but not like he planned to cut me out of his life anytime soon. He still loved me, and more to the point, he still wanted to love me.

  “I hope you’ve got some good news for me, Em,” he said.

  One of the staff came to show us to a table. I gathered my thoughts as we walked behind her, telling myself that I was doing the right thing on multiple levels.

  “I don’t know that it’s good news, but it’s stuff you need to hear,” I told him, once we sat down with our menu
s. I didn’t need to look—I knew what I wanted—but it did give us the excuse for a few minutes to ourselves without getting interrupted by a server.

  “If you’re just here to tell me that we can compromise, I’m not sure I want to hear it,” he said.

  “I need to talk to you about Jacob.”

  “You want me to fire him just because he spread some loose talk to me about your personal life?” Dad set his menu down.

  “No. I want you to fire him because he’s a goddamn crook, Daddy. And I have proof.”

  Dad stared at me for a long moment, shocked both at my language and my accusation. “A crook? Tell me.”

  I took the papers from my purse and handed them over.

  “He made a deal with the client—a side deal—to get a bonus payment from them in return for convincing you to let him pitch the idea of a bigger project,” I said. “Him and some other guy on the town council in Mustang Ridge got tens of thousands of dollars between the two of them for pulling the wool over your eyes and letting you think you talked them into putting the shopping center there.”

  “The hell you say,” Dad protested, even as he looked down at the papers in his hand.

  I knew he couldn’t deny it—not with Jacob’s messages back and forth to the company we’d contracted with, and with the member of the town council, all that. And he definitely couldn’t deny it with the revised contracts in front of him, showing where there had been a screw-up that should have been detected by the accounting department—but that was a matter for Dad to take care of another day.

  “You see?” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him, daring him to tell me that I was wrong—or worse, that he didn’t care that one of his own employees was screwing him out of money that should rightfully be his. “What other deals do you think Jacob’s been making on his own, on the side?”