Page 20 of By Sin To Atone

“You didn’t even use your name.”

“Maybe I was meeting a lover.”

Her cheeks flush pink momentarily. It’s not a reaction I expect from a woman blackmailing me for a-hundred-grand. I make a mental note and bend my head to continue to the next suture.

“You lied,” she says.

I glance up at her, raising my eyebrows.

“The stitches. You’ve done this before.”

“I thought I wanted to be a surgeon once upon a time. Even went to medical school for a year before my father decided I needed to work for the family business. But we’re not talking about me. Tell me what else you have that led you to believe I would deposit a-hundred-thousand-dollars into a random, anonymous account?”

“You didn’t fly to Austria, not commercially, anyway. Everything was a secret,” she says.

“How do you know that?”

She scratches the tip of her nose, shrugs the shoulder of her free arm. “It’s not that hard to get into people’s computers if you know what you’re doing.”

“And you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m learning. Did little things like hacking into my high-school’s system to change a grade or two for a few friends.”

“A convict from the start.” The whiskey is working, loosening her tongue, relaxing her. To be fair, it’s not only whiskey.

“It was just for fun. I was bored mostly.”

“Okay so you found out about my visit to Austria from a man who wanted to make a buck selling information, saw that video footage from the hotel and decided I had something to do with my father’s accident? That’s a stretch, isn’t it?”

“The bag, remember. I saw the contents of the duffel.” She scratches her nose again and this time, I take notice of the casual act.

“Did you?” That could be a problem. “And where is the bag now?”

“I can’t tell you that, can I? Not until I have that money and my sister, and I are out of New Orleans.”

“Your sister who is in a facility that deals with brain injuries.”

She nods, her forehead wrinkling with worry.

“Why do you want to get out of New Orleans so badly?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I’d say anything I want to know is my business, considering the situation we find ourselves in.” I get the feeling the alcohol, the little drug I slipped into her cup and me taking care of her wounded hand rather than wrapping mine around her pretty little neck have given her a warm, fuzzy feeling. A false sense of security. She’s got the idea she’s gained the upper hand and she’s getting cocky, the little extortionist.

“Your brother paid a lot of money to the hotel manager to lose that video, but he should have taken better care to make sure it was deleted properly. It wasn’t. That shitty guy is a mid-level manager of a shitty hotel. He’s greedy and dishonest.”

“Sounds like someone I’m getting to know.”

“I’m neither of those things. There’s a big difference between me and him. And there’s more if you’d care to hear it.”

“I’m all ears.”

“That hotel manager recorded the conversation between your brother and himself.”

“Did he?” I will kill the bastard myself if this is true. “Here’s what I don’t understand. How would this shitty mid-level manager, to use your words, think to reach out to you with all this? Why not try to blackmail me himself?”

She shrugs a shoulder, her eyelids drooping. “Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for it.”

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