Page 63 of Finding Love

“You don’t,” Bryan jumped in. “If you do, he’ll be onto you. I’m going to give you a guys contact. He works for the FBI. They have an ongoing case against John.”

“Can I at least tell how much he’s gotten and when it was installed?” he asked Bryan.

The man walked him through finding out when the software was installed.

To Ryder’s surprise, it had been installed on his laptop roughly a week before he had left Seattle.

After getting the FBI’s contact information from Bryan, he thought about the missing money from Mark’s department again and ran the scan on his work PC. The one Mark had been using for the past year. Sure enough, it was there. The software had been installed almost a full year earlier.

“It looks like John saw an opportunity,” Bryan added. “I’m really sorry, man. It’s taken me months to come to terms with the fact I’ll never see that money again.”

“Thanks,” he told the guy. “Are you in IT security?”

“Yeah, I work for a company called Internal Security,” Bryan told him.

“Josh Williams’s business?” he asked, surprised. What a small world.

“Yeah.” Bryan chuckled. “Best job I’ve ever had.”

“Are you out of the Pride office?” Ryder asked.

“Nope, I’m in Portland. Gotta love working from home,” he said with a chuckle.

“Bryan, I think you just helped me make up my mind to switch my firm’s security needs over to Internal Security,” he joked.

“Too bad I don’t get a commission,” the man said with a laugh.

“So why would he need to get his hands on my computer again? I mean if the software does all that on its own…” Ryder asked.

The man was quiet for a moment. “He would have installed an encryption key on it. You said you hadn’t been home for a while. If he had access to the machine last year, he might have gotten spooked for some reason and wanted to get his hands on the key to close down shop. That’s the only reason I can think of for him wanting it. Is there anything you’ve done that could have spooked him?”

Ryder thought about his return to Seattle. Thought about firing Mark. Hell, there was so much he’d done in the past month that would have someone stealing from him spooked.

After hanging up with him, he called the number for the FBI contact and spoke in great length with an Agent Blackfeather. By the time he hung up the phone, it was past ten and there were several messages from Brook.

He’d sent a few text messages to her, telling her that he’d be late. The texts were her response and an image of her and Willy snuggled up on the sofa, watching television while eating popcorn. The fact that his dog had on a T-shirt and bunny ears had him laughing the entire drive home.

They were both fast asleep when he quietly undressed and crawled into bed. Brook moaned and snuggled into his chest when he pulled her closer.

“Okay?” she asked with a mumble.

“Yes, sleep. We can talk in the morning.” He quickly shut down himself.

When he woke, it was to the smell of bacon. He opened his eyes and smiled at the plate Brook held in front of his face.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Starved,” he groaned, sitting up. “I forgot to eat dinner,” he said as she set the plate down on his lap.

“I figured.” She ran her eyes over him. “There’s no chance you’d be able to go back to sleep after eating, is there?”

He thought about everything he and the agent had discussed and shook his head.

As he ate, he filled Brook in on everything he’d learned the day before. Everything Faith had told him and what he and Bryan had found, plus what the FBI agent had planned in order to catch his brother.

She sat beside him, looking shocked, saddened, and angry. All of the emotions he felt himself.

“What does he look like?” Brook asked when he was done speaking.

“The agent?” he asked, confused. “It’s a woman.” It was obvious his mind wasn’t working due to the lack of sleep. After all, he’d only gotten a few hours.

“Your brother,” she corrected. “Did your sister send you a picture?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I… forgot to ask.”

“Maybe,” Brook said, pulling out her phone and doing a quick search. Then she frowned and looked at him. “Nothing. I couldn’t find anything on John Reginald.”

He thought about it. “Search for Faith Reginald. I know a lot of guys who don’t have social media accounts. But women… they tend to share pictures of family.”

Brook gasped, then turned her screen towards him. “He looks like you,” she said in a soft voice.

Ryder’s eyes narrowed slightly as he scanned the image of the man. The image was obviously several years old and too grainy to show many details but, sure, he could see the resemblance. It was due to the graininess that he knew why the guy looked familiar.

“Son of a bitch.” He took her phone and jumped out of bed. “Son of a bitch!” he said again and he walked to the closet to get dressed.