Page 122 of Undeniably Corrupt
“Hazel.”
“That motherfucker,” slips past my lips with a bitter laugh. “She’s two and a half. Is he really threatening me with that?” I’m ready to kill this asshole where he stands. My father really knows no bounds. Then again, he did have his own child murdered. I always wondered what Cass knew that tipped my father over the edge. “You’re going to do that? You’re going tomurdermy child?”
“If I must. If you’re telling people things you shouldn’t, you’re essentially doing the same.”
“Wow. You’re a real hero. And here I was hoping you were actually FBI.” My heart rate starts to spike. “I was hoping I could talk to you and you’d help me after I told you everything.I was hoping you’d take my father into custody, and that would finally fucking be that.”
“That’s not how it works, Liora.”
“Then tell me how it works!” I yell, my hands flying about as frustration bleeds into anger and sarcasm. “Tell me how it’s done. Tell me how short of driving up to Maine and burying my father alive so he dies slowly while knowing he’s dying and has no way out, that I can get rid of him and make my child, my boyfriend, and my mother safe.”
His eyebrows bounce. “Burying him alive?”
I shift my weight and stare down at the cracked asphalt, sweaty and a bit wild. “I’ve had years of fantasies, and being buried alive sounds awful, so yeah.”
He makes a noise that almost sounds amused. “You opened your mouth. You told people things you shouldn’t have. You set these wheels in motion.”
This is where the key comes in if I need it. I lift my chin and meet his eyes. “Meaning what?”
My phone rings in my pocket. Crap. “Check it.”
“No.”
“Check it.”
I sigh, and when I see it’s Vander, I send it to voicemail. He’s going to be supersonically mad, but right now, I don’t have a choice.
He smirks and cocks an eyebrow at my pocket, where I just returned my phone. “Meaning Vander knows too much, and the wheels for that are already in motion, so stabbing me with your key is futile.”
That’s what I thought he was going to say. That’s why I’m here. This is what I have to do.
“He doesn’t, though. I haven’t told him anything. Not one thing. The texts to my mother weren’t about that. And stabbing you with anything could never be futile.” I shake my head. “I digress. This is because my father’s paranoid I’ll be stupid andopen my mouth, which I never would. I was hoping you were FBI. I was hoping that my father was reading my mother’s texts and that he’d send you to me with a threat, but you’d actually be FBI and would help. Clearly, I was wrong.” I swallow, my insides being ripped from me as I ask, “If I walk away and never see or speak to Vander again, will he be allowed to live?”
36
The wild thing about saving everyone else is that you never expect to be in the line of fire yourself. Word buzzes around the office that I’m a dick of a boss. That I’m the reason Liora was crying in the first place, and then that I had at her again in the conference room. The latter part is true, though, not the way they assume.
But because of that, I get a series of glares, and people leave me the fuck alone for once. Even Champagne does, and that’s fine. I need time alone to work. And work I do. I create a worm and insert it using a vulnerability in the operating system on Liora’s father’s computer. He has five folders that are heavily password-protected, including a fail-safe feature where if the wrong password is inputted three times in a row, the folder is erased.
But with the worm, I have ultimate access and carefully transfer everything in each folder over to a safe drive I have that isn’t tied to any of my systems. I’ll sort through all of this tonight. I was going to do all of that now, but after Vega showed up this morning, I don’t want Liora home alone for long.
Speaking of that…
I pull up my cameras and frown when I realize Liora’s car isn’t in the driveway. She told me she was going straight home after work. I check my watch. She left forty-five minutes ago. Even if traffic is a total nightmare, she should still be home by now.
A wave of uneasiness hits me, and I go to the app I have on my phone for the Porsche. I don’t track her phone. I know that’s an invasion, and I am trying not to do my usual… ways. But the car I can track, and when it shows me it’s six blocks away in a parking lot at the university, I know something is very wrong.
I call her phone, and it rings and rings before her voicemail picks up, and fuck this. The security I set up on her doesn’t start until tomorrow. I get out of my chair, grab my Leatherman from my desk drawer, and shoot for the exit, checking the status of her phone as I go. My fist slams into the elevator button, and I step on the moment the doors open.
Her phone is on, but she’s intentionally not picking up.
Why the motherfuck is she not picking up? Goddammit!
I pace the elevator, growing more restless by the second. Something isn’t right. And where’s Hazel? Is she with her?
Her father is in his house in Maine. Their cars are in the garage, and his phones are there. No one has come or gone all afternoon. But that doesn’t mean Vega isn’t with her, and I don’t know because I haven’t gotten access to his phone yet. He’s good. He’s smart. He knows not to click on anything, and I haven’t gotten close enough to him again to bypass that.
The moment my feet hit the lobby, I take off at a sprint, following the tracking on the car and dodging people on the sidewalk left and right. If someone hurt my girl, either of my girls, they’re dead.
