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Matt ignored him, and Colton looked at Kara as if to say, See? All feds are pricks.
Kara said, “I trust Matt.”
Colton stared at her. She didn’t avert her gaze as Lex picked up speed as they headed to the freeway.
Colton looked away first.
41
Peter gave Violet strict guidelines about what to say and not say when they went into the data center. She obeyed him. Fear did that to people, and Peter knew how to use it. He wouldn’t have brought her at all except the warrant was specific: that Violet would verify that the backup was uncorrupted. He had to bring her or the manager might get suspicious.
Everything had fallen apart in the last two days, but Peter had an escape plan.
That included retrieving the backup drive and using it to extract a whole lot of money from Lydia Zarian and Dorothy Duncan. Rebecca Chavez didn’t have access to her money yet—trying to stay clean because of her job. It was layered in shell corps and trust funds so deep that she couldn’t get to it quickly. But Zarian and Duncan? They were made of money, and they would pay handily to protect their children.
And themselves.
He had his brother’s passport—they looked enough alike that no one would think twice—just in case the FBI caught wind before he could get out of the airport. He was flying to Mexico City tonight, then tomorrow to Brazil, then he would lie low in a house he’d bought when he first started working for Zarian on the side. With the money he’d get from Lydia, he could buy a new identity and use that to move anywhere he wanted. Maybe Australia. If he liked Brazil enough—he spoke Spanish well and could pick up on Portuguese with a little practice—he might stay there.
But first things first: get the backup drive, exchange it for money wired to his offshore account, and disappear.
“Ms. Halliday stated that the drive was undamaged and from the correct day,” the manager said. “I don’t know how a virus could have gotten into our system—we have the best cybersecurity out there.”
“Your security is good,” Violet said. “It was on our end.”
Peter didn’t want her talking too much. “Here’s your copy of the warrant, and a receipt for the drive. I think we’re good?”
The manager glanced at Violet. He was assessing her, and Peter couldn’t have him paying too much attention—not until they were gone.
“Violet is our computer guru. She’ll get to the bottom of the problem,” Peter said with a smile. “Is this it?” He gestured to a silver box the size of a large briefcase.
“Yes, we secured the drive in the case to protect it.”
“Great. Thank you for your cooperation.”
And the manager walked them out.
“You could have been friendlier,” Peter said as they walked to his car.
She didn’t say anything.
“You’ve been a pain in my ass since you started talking to Craig.”
“You killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You might as well have.”
“I didn’t want it to happen. I told Duncan he was being paranoid. But when you figured out how to locate the deleted files, we had no other choice.”
“Craig was doing the right thing and he died because of it.”
“Oh, please. You can’t be that much of a Pollyanna. People are making money. If not Zarian and her lackeys, someone else. The system is fucked, it’s never going to work the way people think, and I’ll take my slice of the pie, thank you very much.”
Peter stopped when he reached his car. He didn’t believe this.
Conrad James got out of the SUV next to his. “Why are you here?” Peter asked. “We’re meeting in an hour.”
