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Seeing and hearing her determination, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed his number before holding it up to my ear.
Relaying it all to him and telling him where to meet us, I hung up and bit out, “Once you’ve told him everything and he has what he needs, your involvement in this ends, Eva. I will not have you putting yourself in danger.”
Her smile was sweet but strained. “You don’t have the right to tell me what to do, remember?”
Closing the distance between us, I looked into her eyes, letting her see my determination. “If you think there’s a chance in hell this is over, you’re very mistaken. We need to sit down and have a discussion, one where I tell you where I’m at and where you let your heart guide you, instead of your brain.”
She began shaking her head almost immediately, but I continued, “You’ve spent so many years not allowing your brain and heart to trust people that throwing up those defenses comes easy to you, but not this time. I’m not going to do it while all of this is going on because you’ll convince yourself it’s for the money and not because I care more for you than I’ve ever cared for anyone.”
“And how will I know I can trust you after it all? What’s the difference going to be?” Her expression was smug, like she knew there wasn’t one thing that’d make that happen, making my own turn equally smug.
Leaning down, so our noses were barely an inch apart, I said seriously, “There’ll be nothing between us, not one damn thing that you can convince yourself is an excuse why we can’t be together.”
Her smile faltered. “And if I can’t trust you?”
“You will,” I assured her confidently.
Whatever she was about to reply was cut off by the door opening and a voice calling, “I’m here and armed with my laptop. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Eva’s eyes widened. “That’s Laura.”
“Good. It’s about time we fucked with Tyson Randall’s life and got Connie out of prison.”
When Harry reached us thirty minutes later, we’d already found a ton of shit that hadn’t been visible when his guys had done their searches. In fact, we’d found accounts with over fifty million dollars spread across them.
Pacing back and forth, Harry rubbed the back of his neck while Laura tapped away on the keyboard of her laptop, stopping to read the screen and mutter periodically.
“Part of me wants just to take it all and hide it from him so he freaks out, but a bigger part of me wants him to pay for his crimes.”
Laura looked up from her screen. “Why can’t we do both?”
Eva peered over her sister’s shoulder and looked at what was on her laptop, squinting and shaking her head. “I don’t understand what any of that means, but I’m intrigued about how we can make both happen to him.”
“Well,” Laura said slowly, cracking her knuckles and stretching her neck from side to side, “I can remove James’ money from Tyson’s accounts and make the transactions disappear like the money had never been there. That’ll leave thirty million for the authorities to work with.”
“Yeah, but how do we get that information to them? The accounts are in fake names, and it’s not like we can admit how we found them,” Harry ground out as he finally took a seat.
“Jeez, are you an amateur? We put the accounts into his name, erase the changes on them and make it look like that’s the name they were opened with, then we send an anonymous tip-off to the IRS and FBI.”
Harry looked unimpressed. “They can track even anonymous tip-offs, smart ass. This is the government we’re talking about, not a housewife sitting reading an email.”
“Well, smartass,” she shot back acerbically. “I can make my location and IP address completely untraceable, exactly like I’ll do as I go into these banks’ records to find this money for your ungrateful ass.”
Eva looked like she wanted to laugh while her sister looked like she wanted to gut Harry.
Seeing my best friend narrowing his eyes and knowing his personality, I stepped in before it could get more heated. “Okay, let’s do it. Skim from the accounts until James has his money back, then we’ll submit the whistleblowing tips to them. If they do manage to trace them, I’ll explain that I found and submitted the details to them after I got a call from someone who knew him. We’ll send the tip-offs from my office.”
Laura considered this and then reached into her bag and pulled out a small white box. “No need, I’ll just use this portable router. It’s a prepaid one, so if they do manage to achieve the impossible and find out where they came from, it’ll come from this.”
“Isn’t that in your name, though?” Harry asked.
“Nope. I bought it from an auction with stuff from a pawn store whose owner was charged with selling stolen goods. When I checked the details on it, his were on there, so maybe it’ll serve as karma for being a dick?”
Not looking convinced, Harry rolled his eyes. “Bit much for just selling stolen goods, isn’t it?”
Laura looked at him coolly. “Not when he was paying assholes to rob vulnerable and old people to get him shit to sell, it’s not.”
I saw Harry back down for the first time and had to hold back my smile. “Fair enough.”
