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Seth sat back. “Why would you think that?” Zach hadn’t spent that much time with Harper, didn’t know her nearly as well as Seth, let alone Heath.
“Gut feeling.” He held up a hand at Heath’s sigh. “I know. She’s on the video; it’s her car, the cookie shit. I get all that.” Zach stared hard at Seth. “But if you strip all that back, suspend disbelief, and look at the person, can you believe that she’s innocent?”
In a heartbeat.
Heath rolled his eyes. “Jesus, man, if I did that in my job, nobody would ever be convicted of a crime. Anyone could steal, murder and their defense would be that they’re a really great bloke and no way in hell could they be guilty.”
“You’re pissed.” Zach’s voice was low, forceful. “Someone hurt Seth, embarrassed you and Dillon, not to mention caused a heap of shit for Adam whose arse is still hanging in the breeze and open to potential threats from God knows who in his past.” He shrugged at Heath. “I get you wanting to fix this, do the job you’re trained to do. But something about this shit isn’t right.”
“Why,” Seth leaned his arms on the desk. “Pinpoint what it is that has you guessing.” Because he needed to hear what that thing was. Maybe then he could allow himself to act on the hope he’d buried last night.
“Harper wrote my kid a note.” Zach said no more, simply stared back at Seth.
A note? “I saw her write the note. At the barbecue. Milly was sleeping when we left.” It was a nice gesture, but how did that prove her innocence?
“She didn’t have to do that, Seth. But Harper took the time to make sure my kid knew she mattered enough to say a goodbye.” Zach shrugged. “Some kids, those like Milly who are around adults so much, have a fine-tuned radar. They can detect fake friendship, especially from adults who are willing to use a kid to get their goal. Milly’s had women try the friendly crap with fake smiles and bullshit as a way to impress me, but she doesn’t want to know them.” A faint smile tugged at Zach’s mouth. “But that damn letter hangs pride of place on our fridge.”
Seth’s breath locked in his chest.
Milly instinctively knew what Seth had felt the first night he’d been with Harper. That the woman had a genuineness of spirit, a freshness that was open yet left her vulnerable.
“You’re placing a lot of faith in a note, Zach,” Heath said.
“My gut feeling’s never let me down before. The same instinct told me all those years ago to follow the guard leading you to the basement at that fucking reform school.”
The man had a point.
Heath sat back, his expression thoughtful as he stared at a spot on the carpet.
Seth closed his eyes. He’d been a fool. An absolute fucking fool. He rose and walked over to and grip Zach’s shoulder. “Thank you, brother. You’ve just voiced what I’ve been feeling about Harper but was too stupid to act on.” A sense of urgency raced through Seth. He’d given in too easily. “I can’t let her go.” Seth flicked his gaze between his brothers as Heath turned in his chair to face Seth and Zach. “So now all we have to do is prove her innocence.”
Stating his plan aloud made him even more determined to achieve his goal.
Zach nodded. “I’m in.”
Heath glanced at Zach, who met his stare in silence and then to Seth. “Happy to be proved wrong, Seth. I’m in, too.”
Seth glanced out his office door. Adam was hunched over a spare desk, clicking on his laptop and still talking on his phone. “We’ll leave Adam for now. Let’s see if Dillon’s back in. Lord knows he was the one arguing last night that we had things arse over tit and Harper was innocent.” He rose from his desk and strode out of his office to Dillon’s. The door was open.
He moved closer to Dillon’s desk, making room for his brothers to follow. “I’ll call him, see how far he’s out.”
“Wait.”
Adam’s urgent command from the doorway of Dillon’s office had all three men turning to face him. The commando’s face was set in a hard mask.
“We’ve been had.”
“Look, we’re going to talk about Harper, but—”
Adam waved his hand in an impatient swipe. “No, Seth. That call I had was from a contact I’ve used before, he was checking something that didn’t make sense in the tracking of the host servers of the earlier posts.” The men remained silent as Adam let out a harsh sigh. “Seth, the Facebook attack on Harper and the chat room post about me, they came from your server here at Shazad.”
Seth shook his head. “No, Dillon already checked our servers, spent days combing through our data. We’re clean from this end.”
Adam’s voice turned glacial. “He lied.”
“You sure?” Heath asked.
“I asked my contact to triple check. This guy knows his shit. There’s no mistake. And there’s no way Dillon could have mistaken what he reported.” Adam clenched his hands, the skin going white at the knuckles. “I trusted him. Took what he said at face value.”
