Page 38 of Fall onto me

“What are you thinking?”

“Shut up.” I bump his shoulder when he gets closer. “Sharpie?”

He nods, grabbing a black marker from his desk. He doesn’t take his eyes off me or the wall when he does it, and I wonder how many times he’s reached for that marker to jot down lyrics at that desk. “Here.”

I stab the needle through the paper, putting it down in the center. ‘The Keeper’

The way he’s looking at me now, as I jot names down on the cards, is something I’ve wanted all my life. He’s taking me seriously.

It’s not a condensing glance, with narrowed eyes and ready to pounce to tell me I’m wrong. ‘Oh, she’s so adorable, look at her trying to solve something!’ It’s more of a ‘She’s smart, and I believe in her’ kind of peek into my soul.

The kind of look every woman deserves. He may tease to make me smile, but he takes me seriously.

The first suspect I jot down is Envy.

Foster quits laughing and tilts is head to examine the name. “I don’t know how I feel about her fucking name being on my wall,” he seethes, knowing what it’s going to be like to wake up and see this every day. That’s the point, to give him a simmering refuel when he opens his eyes.

He can’t become complacent; he needs to be angry.

Like me.

He brushes my shoulder with his pointer finger. “Besides, she doesn’t match the stature from the screen. It was definitely a man.”

“Everyone could be connected,” I remind him.

“Kent,” Foster adds, talking about my father. I’m glad he’s getting a little engaged in this. It’s important that we keep searching, even if it doesn’t lead anywhere.

“That’s all I’ve got right now,” I sigh. “Maybe to find out who he is, we need to find out the why of his business. So, let’s get back to my theory.

“So,”—I turn and sit on his desk for a moment—“It seems like you’ve only been tasked to target single women’s homes.”

He mulls this over for a moment. “Correct. I didn’t think of that.”

I give a proud smile before continuing. “All of them are newly divorced or separated. Laurene Hollingsworth for instance, and tax records? I don’t know what TK wants with them, but I have a suspicion it’s the husbands. That salon has been there forever, I know because it’s the one I went to get the streak out of my hair. Same woman, Pearl, did it. So, I’m wondering if she did own it with her husband …”

Foster pulls out his phone and does a quick search. “Here’s an article, from a decade ago. The ribbon cutting ceremony.” I look at his screen. It’s a picture of the smiling woman, with giant scissors cutting the ribbon with the help of her husband. Underneath their picture, it says:

Mike and Pearl Shelbyopen their new salon on Main!

I grabmy own and go to her Facebook, no images of her husband for the past three months have been posted, only pictures of her living life with a new smile and inspirational quotes about the power of women grace her wall.

“Then, the house I caught you at …” I groan as I say it. “I did a quick google search earlier, and Liam is a powerful man. His wife, Gabriella, ran away from home by the looks of it. My theory is, these rich men are going to foil with the documents, I think the husbands are hiring TK to do all of this under the radar.”

My mind is racing a mile a minute, as if I’m scared to stop in case I’m about to forget it all. I feel like every solution is at the tip of my tongue.

I continue, “The thing I can’t figure out is, these are digital records that you’re printing, right? So if they’re changing things to solely have the wife’s names attached to either put them in jail or to lose everything out of spite, how would that work?”

Foster leans over to his nightstand and pulls out a USB. “This.”

“What is it?”

“I couldn’t figure out what it was for before, but now I know. My instructions when I enter a home and business are to go to filing cabinets and get out any and all tax records and paperwork, and I leave a new folder inside. I never look at it.”

I sigh, leaning over to look in his nightstand. There are dozens of USB’s. “How many jobs have you been doing?”

He shrugs. “Not many.”

“He’s probably giving it to some tech guy and downloading it back onto their computers remotely. This is giving them full access to every corner of their computers so he can take care of the digital trail.”

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