“Huh.” Hez tugged at his lower lip. “Why would Hornbrook do that?”
“That’s an excellent question. And here’s another: Why would he use an American? I’m pretty sure Hornbrook has contacts in Russia, and they have lots of good, cheap hackers. Russia also has totally corrupt cybercops, so a well-connected hacker has nothin’ to worry about. But this particular hackercame in through an American portal and downloaded the database to an American URL.”
An unnerving thought popped into Hez’s brain. “A guy like Hornbrook probably made some enemies in New York. Maybe one of them somehow heard about the database.”
Bruno groaned. “That’s what I was wondering. I think there’s another player in our little game.”
Chapter 14
With Elvis belting out “Jailhouse Rock” from an oldies playlist on Spotify, Savannah positioned a piece of tile on the cutter and turned on the saw. A perfect cut. She was getting good at this. She handed it to Hez, who was on his knees spreading thinset on the master bathroom floor.
They’d nearly finished the traditional black-and-white checkerboard pattern, and it was perfect for the house’s character. “If you decide to give up practicing law, you could be a professional tile layer.”
“My back wouldn’t take it. Or my knees.” He set the final piece into place around the doorjamb, then stood to admire it. “Though I admit there’s something to be said for working with my hands and transforming the space so dramatically.”
“I had the easy job of cutting.”
He smiled her way, and his blue eyes softened. “And you’re beautiful doing it.” Gray goop speckled his arms and coated his fingers.
Savannah wiped a glob of mortar from his hair. “I think you got as much on you as you did the floor.” She swept the mortar onto a damp towel they’d been using to clean the tiles.
He reached for her with messy hands, and she squealed as she danced back. “Don’t touch me!”
His grin widened. “I thought you loved me and would do anything for me. What a fair-weather fiancée.”
Though he was smiling, she felt a sting in her soul. What was a little mortar? It came off with water. She stepped into the circle of his arms. “Do your worst.”
He held his hands out from her green tee. “Oh no, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not falling for that. If I ruin your shirt, I’ll never live it down.” He kissed her on the nose before dipping his hands in a bucket of water by his feet. He scrubbed the mortar from his fingers, and the water turned a dirty gray.
While he got cleaned up, she put ice in plastic tumblers and poured in sweet tea from the jug she’d brought from home. She settled on the bedroom floor with her legs tucked under her and sipped her tea until he joined her on the old rug they planned on replacing. The main bedroom smelled of Lysol and paint.
The song on her phone changed to “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News, and she gasped. “Hez, that song makes me so sad. I ran across it when I was researching the feud between the Willards and the Legares after Dad said something about Michael being full of hate after what happened to his sister.”
“What’s that have to do with a song? And I don’t think I knew he had a sister.”
Men were always so literal. “I’m going at it backwards, but stay with me.” She reached for her phone and scrolled to the picture she’d taken. “This is Michael’s sister, Winona Willard.” Savannah had found the picture of the pretty girl with enormous blondehair in a late-eighties yearbook. “I found an old article from a newspaper that talked about how Winona and her baby died in childbirth a year after that picture was taken. It was heartbreaking. The article didn’t mention a grieving husband or anything, so I think she got pregnant out of wedlock.”
He rubbed his forehead. “That’s why the song makes you sad?”
“No, no. I haven’t gotten to the song yet. There was a lawsuit when Winona died, and the Willards sued the doctor, which resulted in a ten-million-dollar judgment, and the doctor lost his medical license. The article said the Willard family was donating most of the proceeds from the lawsuit to build a pregnancy and neonatology center at TGU in Winona’s memory so other young women wouldn’t suffer her fate.”
Hez frowned. “TGU doesn’t have a neonatology center.”
“I know, right? And even in the eighties it would have cost more than ten million dollars, so that didn’t make sense either. I dug through the ledgers to see what happened. The records aren’t very clear, but it appears the money was diverted into the school’s general fund, which then made a multimillion-dollar deposit into Dad’s trust fund.”
Hez winced. “If I were Michael, I’d be furious. You think that ramped up the feud?”
“I think it’s likely, don’t you?”
He took a gulp of his sweet tea and nodded. “That kind of betrayal would be hard to forgive. But what about the song?”
There was a reason Hez was such a good attorney. His mind held on to every detail. “While I was reading Dad’s journal, I came across the lyrics to that song and he said it was ‘their’ song, his and Mom’s. The chorus talks about how unimportantmoney is when compared to love—yet look what happened in their marriage. Dad’s obsession with power and money grew and grew. It was his fault Mom became Michael’s target. Dad blamed her for everything, but it was his betrayal. What happened to him?”
“Francis Bacon said, ‘Money is a great servant but a bad master.’ Your dad learned that the hard way. The more he had, the more it controlled him. With the way he pillaged TGU, he should be incredibly wealthy, but he’s squandered it all. I’m thankful you’re nothing like him.”
His gaze roved over her face. “Yeah, I’m a man, and the first thing I noticed when we met was how gorgeous you are. Your auburn hair and green eyes caught my attention immediately.” He leaned closer and wrapped one of her locks around his finger. “But it didn’t take me long to see you’re even more beautiful inside. You love people, not things. You care about what’s right and you try to take care of everyone, even me when I didn’t deserve it. I thank God you gave us a second chance.”
She cupped his face in her palms, relishing the rasp of his evening stubble against her skin. Setting her tea aside, she climbed onto his lap and vowed she would never let their love morph and die. She’d fight with everything in her to keep what they had.
