Page 140 of Into the Fire

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll have a quick peek. But that’s it.”

As he plugged Bedrosov’s thumb drive into his computer, he felt a pang of guilt for hanging up on Joey. Despite that, he didn’t regret cutting off her bragging about discovering the hidden files on Grant’s thumb drive.

He froze, hands a few inches above the keyboard. He looked at Bedrosov’s thumb drive, protruding from the computer tower like a stubby arrow.

Given the cascade of discoveries, he hadn’t checked it for hidden files.

He right-clicked on the icon, selected the option to run as administrator. Then he typed in “attrib-s-h-r /s /d.”

A single cloaked folder came into view.

Police and court documents with highest classification markings. Of course they’d been hidden behind one more layer of protection for Bedrosov; they pertained to his investigation alone. They had likely been fed to Grant so he could know more specifically what charges he needed to play defense against as he shell-gamed Bedrosov’s money.

The documents didn’t merely detail the case against Bedrosov. They also showed a flurry of activity surrounding the simple wire-fraud charges that had been leveled. Filed motions. Internal memos from the district attorney’s office. Annotated interview transcripts. Copies of court orders. Interview requests for the DA investigator. Demands for Lorraine Lennox to reveal her confidential sources. And a host of search- and electronic-surveillance warrants looking to expand the investigation. A few even targeted the players at the edge of Stella Hardwick’s empire—David Terzian, Alexan Petro, Detectives Ignacio Nuñez and Paul Brust.

Someone was looking to expand the case.

Evan’s muscles had locked up, his shoulders a sheet of stress pulling at the tendons of his neck. He knew in his gut who that someone was even before he found the matching signature at the bottom of each and every warrant.

In her conference room alone, gazing out at the mediocre view of downtown with her Turing Phone pressed to her ear, Stella Hardwick received the update with a ramrod spine and a stiff upper lip. She permitted no change of her expression or rise in the volume of her voice.

“So they failed,” she said. “You failed.”

There was a pause as Fitz seemingly gathered himself. “The man helping Grant’s cousin had a truck with discreet armoring.”

“An armored truck.”

“That’s right. Yes. Look—I’m sorry. We’ve been scouring the streets. We’ll get him.”

“Yes. You will. But now we can’t afford to hold off anymore.”

“On what?”

“We can’t take any risks. Clean up the rest of it.”

Another long pause, interrupted only by the crackle of static over the line. “I know we’ve taken steps before,” Fitz said. “But this is a whole other level. We’re talking about a Los Angeles County district attorney. To be clear—”

“I am being clear,” Stella said, and severed the connection.

All the signs had been there.

And Evan had missed them.

Every time he’d seen her, she’d been on the phone with her office, pushing for search warrants, forging into blowback, fighting to keep her investigation on track—the investigation he’d unknowingly collided with at every turn. She’d been up late and up early, cycling through court suits and spending most of her waking hours trying her long-cause trials downtown.

Stella Hardwick and her cabal had proved they were willing to kill to protect what they’d built. It seemed certain that with the walls closing in on them now, they’d be willing to assassinate a DA as well.

Agitated, Evan stood up. His vision filled with snow, and he reached for the desk, missed it, and fell over. He lay on the cold floor a moment, his head buzzing, and then he pulled himself back up into his chair.

He brought up the folder containing the files he maintained on every resident of Castle Heights. Mia’s was just as invasive as the rest of them, with zero-day exploits granting him access to her iPhone, her work calendar, the DA databases, and virtually everything else.

He hovered the cursor over her name.

Hesitated.

He could only imagine the ire Mia would unleash if she knew he was about to illegally pry into her life.

He recalled Max’s anguish at walking away from Violet to save her. How he’d done the one thing she would have least wanted him to do.