Page 53 of Protecting Bianca

Happy to not have to worry what the next day’s assignment would be—or who we would encounter.

Shaking my head, I dispersed the memories rising to the surface of my consciousness. It was easy to do so while I was awake. Not so easy while I slept. Which was probably why I rarely did.

I typed the name of the coffeehouse that Tagert frequented each morning. I found its address and website. That was usually all I needed to get started.

I dug deeper into the company until I had enough information to break into their system. No two companies werealike. It wasn’t like I had a system for hacking. It was sort of like an art form, I guess. I moved to wherever the trail led me.

Using some military programs I’d picked up while in special operations, I infiltrated the company’s database and about an hour later, I could see every order that was placed in the last year.

I typed in the date of the delivery. Order after order popped up on the screen. I scrolled until I found the one I was looking for, a double espresso macchiato. There was one registered at 8:40 a.m. and another at 9:20 a.m. Jeremy said he went to the coffee shop at 8:30 a.m. so the first one checked out.

However, without any video, I couldn’t be certain. Khan had texted me that the surveillance cameras were fake and that there wasn’t any footage to look at. Most people used gift cards, credit cards, or small change, so a camera seemed unnecessary.

While my search corroborated Tagert’s alibi, it wasn’t definitive.

Next, I opened a window for the Bank of Washington, where Tagert’s paycheck was deposited every two weeks. I keyed in some passwords, and I was inside the bank’s personal accounts in less than twenty minutes.

I scrolled through his transactions over the past two months, but there were no large withdrawals.

Damnit.

Wanting to be thorough, I checked three other major banks to see if Tagert had accounts in those institutions, but he didn’t.

Fuck.

I called Khan.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Find anything?”

“No. There’s nothing here that I can trace back to him and the delivery. I even found his coffee order on the company’s computer.”

“How?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Fine. I shouldn’t know, anyway.”

“Did Chaudhary have any luck with the farm?”

“I can’t discuss private police—”

“Fuck that, Khan. Don’t you get all secretive on me now. We’re on the same side.”

Khan sighed. “All right. He spoke with employees at his brother’s farm. When we showed his picture around, one woman remembers seeing him there a couple of times that week.”

“That’s something. But it doesn’t prove he did it.”

“No. But she did say something interesting, though.”

“What’s that?”

“When Chaudhary asked her if anything unusual happened that day, she told him that two pigs had died that morning. They were healthy the day prior, but then dead by morning.”

“Could it have been due to natural causes?”

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