by Stasia Black
“So then he videoed it and is blackmailing you with footage of your own violation?” Jackson sums up, his voice a deadly quiet in the otherwise silent office.
“Yes.” After I’ve told him everything, I’m spent, emotionally and physically, so all I can manage is a whisper. I have no idea what the hell he’s going to do with this knowledge or what we’ll do about Gentry’s threats. I just know that we’ll face it together.
Jackson looks at me dead in the eye and clutches my hand so tight I wonder if I’ll have any circulation left when. “We’re going to bury that motherfucker.”
* * *
So. Fast-forward back to the present.
Right as I finish zip-tying Gentry’s wrists, he starts coming to. I give the hard plastic tie an extra hard yank and he yelps. I smile with probably too much pleasure, but a girl’s gotta get her thrills where she can.
“Look who’s decided to wakey wakey,” I sing-song to Jackson. I stand and give Gentry a nice kidney kick before stepping away. His ankles are similarly constrained, giving him a lovely hog-tied appearance. It’s a good look on the bastard.
“You two are going to pay for this,” Gentry yells, red-faced and spittle flying. “I have so much on the both of you! You’ll lose everything you ever loved, I’ll make fucking sure—”
The ball gag I shove in his mouth cuts off his rant into pure gibberish. He was so busy cussing us out he didn’t even realize I was behind him readying it. I got it in with barely any effort. He jerks back and forth trying to get the rubber ball out but I calmly secure it behind his head.
“Ah,” I smile serenely at Jackson, “that’s better, isn’t it sweetie? Silence really is golden.”
Gentry thrashes on the ground, screaming in rage against the gag, but bound and restrained like he is, he just looks like a pathetic animal.
I know you really aren’t supposed to kick things when they’re down, but I’ll make an exception in his case. I mean, I’m wearing the steel-toed boots and all… it’s just a shame to waste them when there’s rapist scum around.
I deliver another swift kick, this time to his balls. He emits a high-pitched screech, similar to the noise I imagine ten dying cats might make. I’m usually one who’s all for a quiet work environment, but hearing the song of his suffering might just make up for it.
I head over to where Jackson sits at Gentry’s console. “How’s it going?”
He smiles up at me. “Just cracked his password.”
I glance down at Gentry and see his eyes go wide.
“You thought you were so clever,” I say in my most condescending voice, like a teacher might to an especially-dense kindergartener in the nineteen-fifties, you know, back when they didn’t have to be nice to them. “You might have disabled any keystroke readers on your computer and have a super long nonsense password—how many digits is it, honey buns?”
“Twenty-four,” Jackson helpfully informs me. Gentry’s eyes ping-pong back and forth between Jackson and me.
“But guess what?” I bang on the glass wall behind Gentry’s desk. “You remember what your company is spending all it’s time attempting to develop?”
I give him a second but his blank stare tells me everything I need to know about the dude’s nonexistent powers of deduction.
“Drones.” I roll my eyes at him and then smile at the window. “Say hello to Falcon Seven.” Jackson pauses his typing on the keyboard, turns on the flashlight function on his phone, and holds it flush to the window behind Gentry’s desk. The dim illumination is enough to see a CubeThink drone hovering just on the other side of the glass. “This is one of our prototypes.” The our slips so easily off my tongue. “You know the one you’d have given your left nut to get your hands on? Well guess what? Falcon here can easily fly as high as the fifteenth story and look in the window over your shoulder to see what you typed in for your password.”
Gentry’s eyes, which were wide with confusion a moment ago, flinch again in fear. We’ve got this fucker running scared. Or well, tied up on the floor scared.
“And that’s just the beginning. Want to grab him for the rest of the biometric measures, love muppet?” I ask Jackson.
He bows his head to me. “Your wish is my command.”
Gentry starts to squirm as soon as Jackson comes his way. Jackson’s easily got a hundred pounds on him, however, so there’s little point. Jackson easily drags him over.
First is the iris scan. Gentry tries to yank his face out of Jackson’s iron grip with little success and when that fails, to look everywhere but at the eye-scanner once Jackson pries his eyes open. Ironically, however, Gentry got the top of the line equipment so it’s able to grab an image of his iris with just the briefest flash of his eye. Getting Gentry’s palm on the palm plate isn’t a big deal either. Jackson gets him on his feet, back to the computer and forces his hand on the scanner.
I think Jackson wishes Gentry struggled more so he’d have an excuse to break his wrist. Alas, it’s accomplished with little to no injury. Afterward, Jackson checks Gentry’s wrist bindings, see’s they’re secure and then adds several more zip ties, probably just because it will make Gentry that much more uncomfortable. Then he drops him back to the floor. Bound like he is, Gentry can’t catch his fall and I imagine we both enjoy his grunt of pain with probably a little too much relish.
Gentry’s eyes narrow at us and he garbles more gibberish at us through the gag.
“Do you think he’s telling us we won’t get through his last little paltry security measure?” I ask Jackson.
“I don’t know, dumpling,” Jackson says with a wry smile.
Ha, I’ve been waiting for him to call me out on my sudden use of pet names. I grin even wider.
Jackson produces the small digital device with attached speaker from his coat pocket. “What was his vocal password?”
“I do believe it was…” I hesitate just for show, then give my pageant smile at the prone Gentry. “Pandora six gorilla ten. Bet you’re regretting not sending me out of the room while you whispered that one, huh?”
Especially when Jackson types in the words and the speaker pronounces them in Gentry’s slightly nasal, overly articulated voice.
The screen clears, all security measures passed.
How, one might ask, does Jackson have all this handy dandy equipment and Gentry’s vocal pattern recorded and at the ready?
Well, it turns out Jackson’s been planning Gentry’s takedown long before I ever got involved. He already had hours upon hours of Gentry’s recorded voice (from microphones at outdoor cafes, taxis, and everywhere and anywhere public that Jackson’s team could get a mic on Gentry) and the software to scramble the syllables and make a simulation of Gentry’s voice say whatever words Jackson wanted. He just needed the specific passcode, which Gentry changes on a regular but erratic basis every few days. And of course, he needed Gentry all alone, up here in his office.
Basically, we needed Gentry in his arrogance to set his own trap. We needed him to feel absolutely secure—setting the terms of the meet, on his home turf, while at the same time making himself absolutely vulnerable.
Jackson’s fingers start flying and my teeth sink into my bottom lip. It all comes down to this. For all my Bond-villain-esque speeches, I’ve just been bluffing my way the fuck through this. If what we’re looking for isn’t on this computer’s hard drive—say if Gentry keeps all the dirt he blackmails everybody with on a hard-drive in a lockbox at home or a safety deposit box in a bank—then we’re fucked. But we’re counting on his ego. Counting on the idea that a man like Gentry would believe the safest place in the world is up here in his ivory tower with his name stamped on the side of the building. In this place where he thinks laws don’t apply to him and he can get away with—
“Shit.” Jackson’s voice is a whisper and I jerk my attention back to the screen.
“Shit good or shit bad? What? Don’t leave me hanging here!”
“Good,” Jackson starts laughing. “Good for us
at least. Very, very bad for the bastard over there on the floor.”
“What?” I ask again, my eyes searching the document on the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“Bank statements. For Colin Wharton.”
I look between Jackson’s mirthful face and the screen. “I don’t get it. Who’s Colin Wharton?”
“Oh, he’s just the government’s point man who negotiated the US defense contract with Gentry Tech. Check out the rest of the documents in this folder,” Jackson brings up several other files—pictures of a slightly overweight man in a dark, smoky room with his hand over his face, sitting at what looks like a poker table. More pictures of the same man walking down the lit-up Vegas strip at night. Then there are bank statements showing large losses throughout the past three years. Then statements from the last few months—and guess what? Suddenly Mr. Wharton goes from being over a hundred thousand dollars in debt to almost one-fifty in the black.
Holy shit. If this means what I think it means, then Gentry dropped a cool quarter million on this guy to make the DoD contract happen. Now we just need the thread connecting Gentry to Wharton’s money trail. Jackson opens all the other documents in the file, but there’s nada linking Gentry directly.
Jackson opens another folder and double clicks a file. It doesn’t open. Instead an encryption screen pops up. Jackson rubs his hands together and glances my way. “Child’s play.”
“You always thought you were such hot shit,” Jackson looks past me to Gentry on the ground behind me, “but it was my homework you always cheated off of. You would never have passed Matrix Theory if it wasn’t for me.”
Jackson’s eyes turn back to the screen. “Oh, you used a thousand-twenty-four bit encryption key. Isn’t that cute?” Again, Jackson’s fingers fly.
I sit back and watch him, alternately keeping an eye on Gentry. I might be enjoying rubbing his face in how we bested him, but I don’t plan on making the mistake of underestimating him or letting him catch us off guard. Occasionally I check the restraints, keeping my other hand on my Taser while Jackson works. But there’s no way Gentry will be able to get free from that many zip ties. He’s as immobile as a stuck pig.
“Got it,” Jackson exults just ten minutes later while I snack on a Snickers bar I popped in my purse at the last minute. I couldn’t eat anything all day, but now that we’re here and Gentry is mostly neutralized, my appetite’s come back with a vengeance.
“What is it?” I ask through a bite of nougat and caramel.
“Just a little thing called Gentry’s Cayman bank account and routing numbers. As well as the cashe of blackmail information he’s got on everybody he ever crossed.” The easy smile drops from Jackson’s face as his eyes flick back and forth over the screen. Lines strain around his mouth. “Including both of our videos.”
Gentry starts moving especially vigorously on the floor and making all kinds of noises. We both ignore him. I put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder and squeeze.
“Hey.” I lift his chin so that he’s looking at me. “We only do this if you’re completely sure.”
Jackson gives me an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? My video is nothing. You were the one who went to Natasha and made it possible for me to finally put it in the past where it belongs.”
I smile, sit on his lap and gently kiss his lips. Yesterday we took the charter jet to Idaho and I went to visit Natasha, the woman Gentry tricked Jackson into having sex with. I told her why I was there and before she slammed the door in my face told her I was also Gentry’s victim. I shared my story first, right there standing on her doorstep.
She let me in.
She has a good life now. We talked over tea. She has a boyfriend after being single for a long time. Understandably, it took her a good while before she was willing to trust any man. When I finally got around to talking about Gentry and Jackson, she was more willing to listen than I expected.
What’s more, she believed me. I was astonished. Was it because of all that I had told her? I asked.
Gravely, she took a slow sip of tea and shook her head. No, she said. She’d believed for over a decade that Jackson had indeed raped her. It wasn’t until Gentry himself came to her door and said that if the tape ever came to light, he would need her to testify against Jackson. Not in the legal system since the statute of limitations had passed and they couldn’t officially prosecute, but in the court of public opinion. Gentry said he had extensive connections to national news outlets.
When Natasha said she wouldn’t be comfortable with that, that she wanted to leave the past in the past, Gentry offered her a lot of money to do it. An obscene amount of money, she called it. She told him to leave and saw a change come over his face.
“I saw it then,” she shivered. “What I had missed all those years ago in my stupid blind freshman crush. Other girls had warned me about him.” She rubbed her arms up and down like she couldn’t get warm enough. When she looked up at me again, her eyes were haunted. “He’s a predator.”
Luckily, her boyfriend had come home and kicked Gentry out. Natasha said she’d do whatever she could to help us. If Gentry released the video and tried to pass it off as rape, Natasha said she’d tell the truth of what she now knew really happened that night.
And as for my video? The video of those animals raping me. If Gentry’s telling the truth—and I tend to believe he is in this regard—then us making this move against him will cause a chain reaction. Copies of both Jackson’s video and the video of my attack will be released to the public through a secondary relay, probably along with every other blackmail video Gentry has in his little digital vault of horrors.
I push Jackson’s hands away from the keyboard and pull up Gentry’s email program. I direct the email to the reporting department of the San Jose PD, attach the unedited video of my attack, take a deep breath, and hit send.
Hitting the send button releases a wave of relief so powerful I feel dizzy for a moment. I let out a shaky laugh and Jackson’s arms tighten around my waist where I sit in his lap.
“Callie?” he sounds concerned.
I look at him and blink. “I’m free. He has no more power over me.”
I thought in this moment I’d want to gloat over Gentry. To dance over his tied up body. To revel in the fact that he’s going to prison for a long time for blackmailing and extorting the fucking Department of Defense to get a contract that he had no means of fulfilling. Then to imagine the nightly reaming up the ass he’s likely to get by his fellow prisoners for being such a pretty boy who’s pissed off a hell of a lot of influential people over the years. Maybe to kick him in the balls again and again and shout in his face that I’m no one’s victim.
Instead, all I want to do is throw my arms around Jackson. So I do. “I’m free,” I say again. Tears course down my cheeks.
“We’re free,” he whispers in my ear, squeezing me back just as tightly.
And we are.
Together.
Chapter 21
So it turns out when you have a kick-ass legal team that’s actually working on your side and an even doubly kick-ass private investigator who can dig up all kinds of shit on your ex and his shady-ass wife, you don’t even have to go to trial.
You can sit down like civilized people with your two lawyers at a giant table and hate-stare each other down while your legal eagles do some serious shit-kicking on your behalf.
Example A:
My lawyer, Alberto, speaking to David’s lawyer: “It has become clear during the discovery process that both of your clients have committed a host of felonies for which we have ample and irrefutable evidence. This evidence is all in the packets provided and includes but is not limited to: tampering with a judge, extortion,” Alberto pauses to look over his glasses at the opposite side of the table where David and his wife Regina sit, “really, extorting her lawyer by paying for his wife to get into an experimental cancer trial, you people are despicable.” He shakes his head.
Regina has the decency to l
ook ashamed but David just stares at me, elbow indolently on the table.
Yeah. The mystery of why my lawyer dosed me with poppy seeds to make me fail my drug test is finally explained and it’s horrible. He’ll still lose his license to practice law. Which he fucking deserves because I’ve been separated from my son for four and a half months. But at the same time, I’m glad his wife is still in the experimental trial. David and his wife already paid for the whole thing.
Jackson squeezes my thigh underneath the table as Alberto flips a page. I glance over at him quickly and give a brief nod. The silent communication is enough. He told me before coming in that this was my show. He’d be here for support but wouldn’t jump in unless I indicated he should. I love that he doesn’t feel any macho need to try to run my life and trusts that between me and the lawyer, I got this.
Alberto continues on, “—conspiracy to commit fraud against the state of California, and you can see the rest listed.” Alberto steeples his fingers. “Now. There’s a possibility that we will not press charges on any of the counts. We simply require that Mr. Kinnock sign this document here,” he produces an official looking paper, “signing the termination of his parental rights.”
David sits back in his chair and stares at me like I just knocked all the breath out of him. “You can’t take away my son.” His eyebrows drop like I’ve betrayed him.
“Oh keep the kicked-puppy act for the naïve freshman and sophomore girls. That’s not me anymore.” I lean forward and stab a finger on the paper. “Sign it or get your ass dragged through the courts. Do some jail time and end up signing it in the end anyway.” My words are short and pointed. I have no patience for this overly-dramatic asshat and the show he’s trying to put on here. “No judge in a fair courtroom is going to give a child to a criminal like you—”
David opens his mouth to object and I slice a hand through the air and continue, deadly calm and controlled, “—It turns out I learned a thing or two from you and guess what? From the tail I’ve had on your ass for the last two months, I figured out that you barely spend any time at home with this son you claim to care so much about.”
