Page 89 of Jameson’s Salvation

“Anything that will incriminate him. We need him to admit he sent Peyton to your house to intimidate or hurt you, or that he damaged your mom’s AC, damaged your crops, burned down your hives, anything. Jonny needs something to present to a judge for a search warrant. For once the small town, good ol boys’ shit is going to work in our favor. Judge Price is an old man with five daughters, I can’t see him takin’ kindly to a man threatening a woman or causing her harm. He is also adamantly against the development of Kent County. He comes from generations of farmers. But we still need something to present him.”

“All right,” I agreed.

“You understand we can’t show or even tell Jonny about the pictures. I obtained them by illegally hacking his phone. If we present them now, they’ll be thrown out of court and I’ll have to explain how I came to find them,” McKenna added.

“I understand. I won’t mention the pictures. And I won’t say anything about Gary Earle, either. We’re not supposed to know about him, right?”

“Smart, girl,” Chasin praised. “You’re correct. Keep on the topic of him harassing you and using Peyton to do it,” he coached.

“Got it.”

“Hold on, Reggie’s just texted Gary a picture of Kennedy and Jameson. We’ll let this play out, then you can call.” McKenna nodded to her screen, and thankfully it was a picture of both of us fully dressed and standing in my living room.

“Why is Reggie sending Gary a picture of me and Jameson?” I asked.

“He thinks I’m Jameson,” Chasin answered. “Jameson confronted him but didn’t give his name.”

“The camera has to be on the fireplace mantel,” Jameson noted. “That’s the only place it could be to get that angle.”

He was right. I didn’t have any other shelving on that side of the room. I quickly thought about what knick-knacks I had on the mantel and couldn’t for the life of me remember. Damn, why wasn’t I a better housekeeper? If I had dusted every once in a while, maybe I would’ve found the fucking camera.

“Gary texted back,” McKenna announced, and I read what was on the screen.

Gary: What did I say about sending pictures, idiot.

“This oughta be good,” Nix mumbled. “Reggie doesn’t look happy Gary called him an idiot.”

McKenna’s screen had three applications running. One box was the cloud service with the pictures. One box looked like a messenger service displaying the text string Reggie had started. And the third was live-streaming Reggie. And he indeed looked irate.

“Is it just me, or is it totally creepy that it looks like Reggie is watching us?” I shuddered.

“It is,” McKenna agreed. “He’s looking at his screen, scrolling through the images. Look at the other box, you can watch what he’s doing.”

Thankfully Reggie was no longer in the folder with the pictures of me. He was now scrolling through images of an older man with gray streaking his dark hair.

“That’s Gary Earle,” McKenna told the room.

Reggie stopped on an image and my heart thudded in my chest.

“Gross.” I diverted my eyes.

I didn’t need to see Gary Earle getting a blow job from a girl who appeared to be very young. Not that I could see the girl’s face clearly with it buried in his crotch.

“How much you wanna bet that is not Gary’s wife?” Jameson snarled.

Oh, boy. He was pissed.

“Reggie’s about to make a bad play,” Nixon warned as the image of Gary and the girl popped up on the message string.

“Fuck. This is not good,” Chasin said.

“Maybe it is.” Nix stood back and crossed his arms over his chest. “After that, Gary just might do the dirty work for us.”

The room fell silent as we waited for Gary’s response.

Gary: Wrong move.

“What does that mean?” I asked.