Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
That made me smile. “Thanks.”
“We can talk later, but it’d be awesome if you and Zeke could come over sometime. I know Blaise really misses him.”
She was right. That would be awesome.
But first, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator.
23
ZEKE
He liked to swim in the mornings, and he swam alone. They had their own pool, set back, in a building all by itself. I parked behind their wooded lot and made my way over their land. The door wasn’t even locked, which made my task easier.
He was in the pool, swimming, with his head down. Front crawl. He had goggles. A hair cap. He wore a speedo, so as he kept swimming because according to his schedule, he had five more minutes to go, I went about getting everything ready.
The doors were locked.
The windows were shut.
I made sure the security cameras were off, or when he’d look back, he’d see they had been paused. No alarm.
He had the side wall pulled back with the screen still shielding against animals, bugs, but I moved to start sliding that closed. I had moved to a back chair before he stopped, resting a bit at the end, before heaving himself up and to the edge. He sat there, feet and legs still in the pool and taking deep breaths, his head slightly folded over his stomach. Then, as if deciding it was time to go, he swung his head up and back, climbing the rest of the way.
He was padding halfway to the table where his towels were before he noticed the side wall had been closed. His hand closing around one of the towels, he began looking around, and he started to wrap it around his waist, the ends not quite together when alarm finally settled over him. He jerked around, seeing that each window was closed. The smaller doors were as well.
He sucked in his breath, and I knew what he was looking for as he began twisting around, his eyes not lifting up enough to see me. He was scanning the tables set around the pool.
I was sitting in a chair, far corner, in the shadowed area of the building, and I leaned forward.
He heard the squeaking of the chair and froze. His gaze went right to me, but he frowned because he couldn’t quite see who I was.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me? My feelings are hurt.” I half laughed, sighing at the end because it wasn’t funny. Not at all.
“Allen?” He scowled, starting to stomp around to where I was, one hand holding his towel together. “I’ll have you—”
I raised his phone up and pressed play.
Moans filled the room, echoing.
He paused, his head rearing back. “You’re really messed up. Playing porn for me—”
His own groan sounded next. “Yeah, yeah. Do that, baby. Turn over. Let me see you—”
And her groan.
He had frozen by now.
Not me. I turned that recording off and played another.
His own voice came out, “Benny, my man. How are you? Listen, I need you to—”
He growled to me, “What the fuck is this? What are you doing?”
I smirked, though he couldn’t see me. “Don’t you want to hear what you ask the chief of police to do for you? Or don’t you need to hear it to remember?” I smiled. “Because I know what you asked him to do. I don’t need the reminder.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Allen? You need to tread real carefully here because you’re a pup playing among—”
“Shut up.” I said it casually because that’s how I was feeling. He wasn’t getting it. I played another.
“Felicia, I need you to call me. This isn’t a smart thing you’re doing, not returning my calls—” That one I ended because he didn’t seem capable of talking.
I rose from the chair, holding his phone up. “These were recordings I found on your cloud. They were recordings you kept. One of you on a sexting call with another woman. Another where you asked an officer of the law to look the other way when your boy got caught with drugs. The last one, where you blackmailed one of your employees into sleeping with you. These alone will land you in a pile of trouble.”
The blood was draining from his face, but me, I was starting to have fun.
“I found these the first ten minutes.”
His eyes narrowed. “Wha—”
“Can you imagine what I found after three hours?” I stepped forward, letting him see just how much fun I was having.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t seem capable of standing anymore either.
“I found enough where I could send a nice file, all put together with a pretty bow on top, to the FBI and they’d be interested in it. You have companies in other states. Fraud. More recordings. More blackmail. Recordings of conversations you’ve had with other people, other very powerful people. I’ve no doubt you were keeping those as evidence that you’d have against others, not thinking if they fell into the wrong hands how it’d look for you to have them.”