Page 60 of Operation: Sharp Angel

Becca typed it in. All the icons and files her mom had created populated the screen. “Yes!” she exclaimed.

“Okay, let me in to search the files,” Brielle said.

Becca rose from the chair, but stayed beside her, leaning in to watch the screen in anticipation. It didn’t take long for Brielle to find the last few files that had been saved on the laptop. There were seven of them, saved after the date of her parents’ deaths. The very last was a video, saved just three days before Nicole’s family had been murdered.

Tessman laid his hand on Becca’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Becca gave him an emotional grin. “No, but I have to see it.”

Brielle hit play on the video. Becca’s sister Nicole displayed. She was clearly in the master bathroom at her house. “I hope it’s you watching this Becca, and if you are, that means Nick and I are no longer alive.”

Nicole became upset as she spoke. Becca clutched her hand to her chest as tears filled her eyes. So many emotions swept over her.

“I am so sorry I couldn’t tell you what was happening. It was too dangerous, and I didn’t want to put you in danger.” She nervously glanced behind herself. Then she turned back, facing the camera. “Nick doesn’t even know I’m leaving you this message. Please know I didn’t know the world was going to crash in on us this soon the last night you were at our house for dinner. I don’t want you to feel I lied to you or deceived you. It wasn’t like that.”

Tessman watched Nicole swipe at her eyes to brush away the tears the same way Becca did. He tightened his grasp on Becca’s shoulder.

“We are all sick. Nick accidentally poisoned himself in the lab and somehow, it was transmitted to me and the girls. The firstsymptom was the headaches,” she said. “We had dull headaches on and off for weeks.”

Becca gasped. She reached down to the laptop and hit pause on the recording. “I remember the week before I went over for dinner, the whole family had what they thought was a case of the flu. They all had horrible headaches. Nicole said they’d all been plagued with headaches for weeks. She even took Riley to the eye doctor, who said her headaches were due to eye strain.” Then she un-paused the recording.

“But when he reported it to Neil, his boss at Well-Life, something really suspicious happened. The matter was referred to the partners, and they insisted it be handled in-house with their new in-house medical staff. Even the girls, they insisted we bring them to see their doctors and implied we’d both be fired if we didn’t comply. I went to see James Standish myself and he insisted it was nothing sinister, just trying to keep a lid on it so no one from the FDA or OSHA came in to investigate. We saw their doctors, and they insisted a vitamin cocktail would nullify the poison in our bodies. And we felt better. But Nick ran his own tests, and they lied to us. I have a bunch of documents as proof loaded up in Mom’s Dropbox. The password is the name of our favorite vacation as kids. I hope you remember.”

The recording abruptly stopped.

“That’s it,” Brielle said.

“This is bigger than we thought,” Tessman said. “I’m sending Shepherd a message to let him know what we’ve found. I’m sure he’ll loop in his federal contacts.” He tapped out a text message.

Brielle brought up the Dropbox account. “What do you think the password is, Becca?”

Becca shook her head. “I’m not sure what Nicole was going for with this. We went on a combination Disney Cruise and Walt Disney World park vacation one summer. That was my favorite, but Nicole got seasick and then the heat got to her in the park.It wasn’t her favorite by far and we never went again as a family until a few years ago to bring her kids. And one winter we went skiing in Vale. That was her favorite. The altitude gave me headaches and I really don’t like winter. I hated skiing, and we never went again.”

“Anything else?” Tessman pressed. His phone buzzed with a new message. He viewed it. A text from Jackson.

“No, just several long weekend trips to the Dells. Mom called them mini-vacations. We always had a good time.”

“The Wisconsin Dells?” Brielle clarified.

Becca nodded.

Brielle typed in several variations of the words. Nothing unlocked the account.

“Try WiscDells, all one word,” Becca suggested.

The second attempt, capitalizing the W and the D, did it and the drive opened up. Everyone leaned in close to examine the many files that displayed.

“It’s going to take me some time to go through these files and find the proof your sister uploaded and anything else that may be of value,” Brielle said. “I’d really prefer to go through them alone, without all of you leaning over my shoulder.”

“That’s fine. Jackson just messaged. Briana, Becca, and I need to go have a conference call with him and Smith,” Tessman said.

They went down the hall to Tessman’s office. He dialed Jackson and hit the speaker. “Hey, you’re on speaker. It’s me, Briana, and Becca on the line,” he said after Jackson answered.

“Mister Wonderful is still primed to blow. I talked to Shepherd. He’s sending Flores and Robinson to take over so Smith and I can get back to HQ.”

“I should be on scene,” Briana argued.

“Negative. Hoch has already seen you. If anything goes down and they go in to intervene, they’ll call you to come in after the local LEOs have carted him away. It’s going to happentoday; there’s no doubt in my mind. So stay available, Woods,” Jackson said. “You’ll need to help your client obtain the order of protection as soon as her husband is arrested.

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