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“Of course you didn’t. You were a kid too. We were just too damn smart to realize how little we knew.” One side of her pink mouth curled into a grin. “Anyway, I’m sorry Jeremiah. You were my only friend for a long time and you deserved better.”
What was I supposed to say to return the sentiment? I shrugged because it was all I could do in that moment. Maybe I did owe her some type of apology but I wasn’t ready to forget the rejection I felt at her hands. “Vivi I know you’re in trouble. If you want my help, tell me.”
She nodded around her burger. “I’m still trying to decide if I need your help.”
At least she was honest. “I don’t have time for games. Either you want my help or you don’t.” I should have known it wasn’t the right way to go about things with her. Vivi had always been prickly and I imagined her life hadn’t done much to change that.
Her demeanor changed in an instant. There was tension coiled tightly through every inch of her as she slowly nodded her head. She moved in deliberate moves as she picked up the napkin and wiped her mouth before dropping it beside the plate. “Good to know.” Her words were quiet. Deadly cool as she stood and dropped a fifty on the table. “See you around. Jag.”
I had to smile at her as she walked away and not just because of the fine ass swaying back and forth but because of the dig. She’d used my given name before because that was how she knew me. Now, she didn’t know me at all.
Or so she thought.
Vivi had showed up in my life for a reason and I would find out.
One way or another.
Chapter Four
Vivi
Lunch with Jeremiah reminded me why I kept my profile low and my life solitary for the most part. People were unreliable. Just when you thought you knew someone, they did something to betray you or, if you were lucky, just reminded you that people couldn’t be trusted. In the case of Jeremiah—now Jag—they changed altogether.
It didn’t matter. In the end he’d done me a favor by reminding me that I was much better on my own. I returned to my campsite and then moved to another one before I got back to work. Digging into the encrypted data that had started this mess was the first step to trying to end it.
I’d found a few things that I wasn’t looking for the first time around, starting with the name of the asset. Some of the file creator data called him Jonas but that was likely an alias. As I went back through the backups of backups I went back to the photos. Five in total, two were of Governor Blaise and Angela, his seventeen-year-old girlfriend. They were holding hands in one and she was straddling his hips as they made out passionately on the beach in Miami in the other. My money was on Blaise because he was deep into his second term and people were already whispering the one word that would make these photos a dream killer.
POTUS.
The other three photos were clearly of a gangster. If not because of his Italian last name then because of the leather vest he wore and the bandana around the lower half of his face. In all three photos he was with the same two men in suits, definitely federal agents. They were in a park in one, a diner in another and outside a cheap motel in the final picture. It was pretty obvious the man was an informant.
Whoever it was, I was clearly fucked six ways from Sunday because none of it made sense. Most of the data, especially the photos, were out of context, and assuming someone knew Jonas—whoever the fuck he was—they still had a lot of damn dots to connect before they got to me. That was why I figured Blaise had done it; he might have access to someone with access to the right information.
Either that—or Bob was dirty.
Digging into any politician was dangerous, simply because I never knew who else I might run into while searching. But there was also the whole criminal act part that I had to ignore because survival was my top priority. Blaise made it easy to dig into him because his work and personal devices were one and the same. One laptop. One phone. One tablet. He had a great security set-up, most government agencies thought they were invulnerable, but hacking into his shit was easy for a geek like me.
That made it easy to find everything he tried to wipe and a few things he probably thought no one would ever discover. There was a bigger skeleton than his young side piece, so I uploaded everything I had on him to several different sources because backups came in handy when dealing with shady motherfuckers.
And this lying, cheating cradle-robber was the shadiest of them all.
I hesitated for a few minutes on whether or not I should send the other photo to Peaches. She was already too involved. But identifying this guy could tell me who was after me. Maybe. Hopefully.
I decided to sit on it for now while I did more digging into Blaise. He had so much more to lose and a greater need to keep his distance from any whiff of scandal. I needed to find evidence of payments to an individual or company in the last few weeks, but financial records were a bitch to access. It was even worse with banks outside the US and in particular with those financial institutions located in places that helped the rich people hide their money.
But it was a necessary step so I put on a pot of coffee, grabbed a bag of pretzels, some mustard for dipping, and got down to work. It took me hours to find no trace of a payment to anyone or anything suspicious. Dammit.
That was the downside of my job. I could spend sixteen hours sitting in front of a computer, digging and coding and still wind up with absolutely nothing. It was frustrating as hell but it was also the nature of the beast.
A knock startled the shit out of me and instinctively, I reached for my knife. It was a six-inch blade with one serrated edge and spring-loaded hinges. Perfect for personal protection. I gripped the handle and took several deep breaths to clear my mind. If I needed to fight or defend myself, then I needed to be calm. Rational. That was hard to do when I slid open the small window on the door and caught a glimpse of my visitor. “What are you doing here?”
Jeremiah grinned like he was some adorable schoolboy instead of a grown ass man with big sexy muscles. “I was in the area and thought I’d stop by. Bad time?”
“Yep. Maybe next time pick up the phone.” I didn’t like unexpected visitors and I liked them even less when someone was out to get me.
“I tried that but you never answer and you don’t call back.”
He wore a smirk that I shouldn’t have found sexy, but I did. I so, so did. That was another very good reason to keep myself on one side of the door and Jeremiah on the other.
