Page 67 of Played

River agreed to keep their investigation secret for now. River handed over a large brown envelope that contained the pictures from the photo albums. If Mal saw what she had, then they would continue digging into people’s lives.

“When were these taken?”

“Dates are on the back.”

“These are from way before Laurel dated Cypress. And how did we not know she and Keith were friends?”

“We didn’t run their side of the track. They were Indy, we were bikes.”

“Okay, I know we dug into Laurel and found nothing. What happened at the insurance office?”

“He was sketchy. But our lawyer filed a grievance over the payout going to the wrong person.” River had no clue about the legal stuff. She left that up to the lawyer to find out the deal on the money going to Laurel Canyon. Well technically it went to River Wile, just not therealRiver Wile.

Nothing—and she meantnothing—could be found on Laurel Canyon the woman. “I started digging into Keith.”

“What did you find?”

What she had found was a lot. And it had to be real if it was on the web, right? Right. Keith had come into a lot of money seven years ago— one point five mill, to be exact. But it wasn’t the first time ol’ Keith had gotten lucky. He had been a beneficiary of his brother-in-law. Keith’s sister was a woman named Vicky Brown. So now River wanted to find Vicky Brown and see who she was.

“How did you find out about the money?”

“Come on Mal, Keith was mooching off us eight years ago. He drove that shit car and barely had money to eat. Hell, how many nights did he crash at our apartment? Too many to fucking count. And he had money, according to what I’ve dug up. Are you in or out? Do we stop, or do we keep digging?”

“I want to know why the mother fucker mooched off us when he had how much from the brother-in-law’s estate.”

“Quarter mill.”

“Something smells fishy.”

They sat for hours looking through every Vicky Brown they could find online. After hours of banging their heads on the table, Mal suggested doing it the easy way. Social media. Damn, why hadn’t River thought of that? They could troll Keith’s social media accounts with fake accounts. River and Mal got to work setting up fake accounts so they could become friends with Keith.

River expected it would take a few days for him to get around to friending them, but to her surprise, it was minutes. “Okay are they watching us through the laptop?” She laughed. Her PM dinged with a message alert. Looking at it, she cringed at the message. Keith was flirting with her. “Does your wife know you have such a dirty mouth?” she texted him back. It went back and forth for a few texts, then he asked why she friended him. River needed to be careful not to let anything slip.

She told him the truth. “I was looking for an old friend from back in the day. Her name is Vicky Brown. You looked like her brother, and you had the same name as him. Are you Vicky’s brother?” Holding her breath, she waited for a response. His response was a simple “yes” and he was gone. Okay, they could search his friends and get a lock on Vicky. Mal found her first, of course, while River had pretended to be some floozy.

Turned out he was also friends with Laurel Canyon, who looked incredibly similar to Vicky. Change the hair color back, take away some of the makeup, add simplistic clothes, and Laurel Canyon became Vicky Brown. This was going to be easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Mal copied and pasted everything she could find, saving pictures for them to view later. It was a good thing Mal had fast fingers because Keith must have thought something was up. He unfriended the fake account of Rivers and blocked her.

“I think I got it all. Now we can go dig into Vicky Brown.”

River didn’t spend much time on social media; she relied on Mal to run that part of her racing image. All she ever wanted to do had been racing and working on the bikes. Everyone needed a great personal assistant and Mal had been hers for most of her life. “Does she have accounts?”

Mal held up her hand, silently ordering River to remain silent on her side of the table. Not being in her nature to sit idly by, River did her usual: she started pacing around the pool. She wanted to have a solid case against Laurel, or Vicky, or whoever the bitch was. Every once in a while, she would look over at Mal, who looked like a maniac with her hands flying over the keys of the laptop.Fuck it, she thought. River headed to the garage, she couldn’t stand it any longer; the sitting around, the waiting on Mal to find something, or for Riot to give her permission to live her damn life. It was five damn stitches, not a broken body part.

Pushing open the garage doors, she grabbed a helmet and reached for the keys—only to realize they weren’t where they should be. “Are you fucking kidding me?” If he thought for one minute that him taking the keys would stop her, Riot was crazy. These were her bikes and she could hotwire anything. Fortunately for River, she had spare keys to everything she owned. She walked over to the toolbox and opened up a tiny hidden drawer. Moving a few papers out of her way, she retrieved the key to her dirt bike. “Ride time bitches!”

Sliding the helmet on, she jammed the key into the slot and smiled as the bike fired up. She rolled the throttle and listened to the rev of the motor. Oh yeah, this is what she needed. River glided past Mal, who looked up from her work as River flipped her off, nodding her head. Mal knew she couldn’t sit on her all day. And Riot should have known better than to take the keys.Foolish man.

***

Riot’s meetings had taken him past Carmel Valley. Instead of going all the way back to Santa Maria, he wanted to surprise River and stay at the ranch that night. He could leave early to get into the office for a meeting with the other racers. Maybe River would want to go back with him. That would make things easy. Having all the riders at D&T for a meeting would solidify what they all wanted.

Pulling up the winding driveway, he caught a flash of color through the tree line. He stopped the car and rolled the window down. He heard it before he saw it—the high pitch buzz of the dirt bike—then he saw the flash of color as the bike zipped past the opening in the trees. “Damn it to hell!”

He left the car parked right there in the driveway and took off through the trees to give River a piece of his mind. She just couldn’t listen, not for a few damn days. It had been three days, three fucking days since he had left for Santa Maria. Moving quickly, Riot stepped out of the tree line just in time to see a bike and rider catch air coming off a medium jump on the dirt track. He let loose a string of curse words as he turned towards the front of the track, only to see River holding a whiteboard with numbers on it, laughing as the bike blew past Riot, kicking up dust all over him.

Riot knew damn well River had been on a bike at some point, but he just didn’t have proof at that moment. River waved at him as Mal got off the bike and shrugged, feigning innocence. All he asked was for River to take it easy and for Mal to keep her locked down. Standing there, he saw the error of his ways. He had asked the wrong person to do him the favor. Turning from the two brats, Riot went back the way he came.

“I wonder if he saw me on that damn thing.”

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