Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
“True.” Nessa pulled her lips to the side and nodded. “Why risk the loss of your benefactor—”
“Affiliate,” Sebastian corrected her.
“—affiliate cairn when you could just cut him loose and hope he crashes and burns?”
“The only problem would be if he failed but then used that face and his charm to get another job,” Sebastian told Nessa, pacing. “That would be annoying. He could take that information to anyone.”
“Like us?” she replied.
“Maybe not us, no. Nikken is probably really annoyed about their secrets being stolen. We wouldn’t risk striking up animosity with them so early in the game. But…someone else, maybe…”
“Who in their right mind would touch him with that kind of track record?” Niamh asked, playing up her disgust. “Not a hope. The second people know what he’s really about, he won’t get a job anywhere.”
“Well, what if he finds someone to smooth out his operation?” I asked. All of this for show, carefully rehearsed at the last minute. We wanted it on record.
“But what sort of affiliation could he get?” Niamh asked. “None. He’s done. Sure, he’s basically admitted that all the rumors are true.”
“Who cares about rumors?” Pierce sat back, stubborn to the last. “That’s just bored garhettes chattering. It doesn’t mean anything. No one listens to it.”
“They were just rumors.” Nessa’s smile stretched wide. “It was surprisingly hard to connect the dots. No one had quite pieced it together until our pal Niamh here had our associate ask the right questions to the right people. This is the first time the story has been told in its entirety, and you’ve confirmed every aspect.”
He stared at Nessa with a slack face. “What do you want? Do you want the information? I can give it to you. I—”
“No, no.” I held up my hand, standing. “We already have it. You scanned all the documents and uploaded them to the cloud. Turns out, our hackers are better than your security team. We’ve gone ahead and downloaded all that…and then corrupted the files for you. You’re welcome. I hope you have a good memory.”
“No!” Pierce shot up to standing.
Austin clamped a hand onto his shoulder and slammed him back down into his seat.
“No! You can’t do that,” Pierce wailed. “I need those files. We don’t have the process perfected yet.”
“You’ll have to ask Nikken for them,” I said, tipping my head to study him. “They’ll be going into their care package for when they arrive, along with a record of this meeting. Edited, of course. It’s always nice to start a new friendship with the other party owing you a favor. As for your employment, we’ll make sure everyone knows what you did, don’t you worry. No one will want to touch you. And why would they? You no longer know anything. Enjoy your new Dick life. It’s not so bad. I should know, after all.”
Austin reached down and grabbed him. Broken Sue strutted to his other side, and they literally carried him out. Pierce kicked and screamed the whole way, turning back to beg forgiveness and ask for leniency.
I stared at nothing for a moment in the aftermath.
“That was, like, incredibly easy.” I frowned at the others. “You ruin lives as easily as that? Just—here’s some info, good luck creating your own witness protection setup!”
“Easy? Do ye hear her?” Niamh groused. “Do ye know how long it took me to get to the bottom of all that? And then I had to get that chatterbox Patty to plant the right seeds. She had to go to some people two or three times. It was absolute bollocks. Easy? Pfft.”
“We don’t ruin lives, Jessie,” Sebastian said seriously. “We expose people’s bad deeds. They ruin themselves—they just sometimes need a bullhorn to complete the work.”
I sat down again, tired. “Fine. Well, that’s him out of our hair, and also payback for being a dick. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
From the side, Anthott slowly raised his hand. “If you’ve found something on me, can I just confess? I don’t think I have the nerve for your teamwork interrogation process.”
Laughter burst out of me, unbidden. “It’s fine, Anthott. Sorry about that. He had it coming.”
Nessa helped him up again and brought him back over. Sebastian re-dressed the table.
“You mentioned blood…” Anthott checked the table before the tablecloth glided over it.
“Sometimes words create a scarier picture than physical violence.” Nessa patted him and moved away. “Why didn’t you bring any guardians, by the way?”
Anthott straightened the settings in front of him. “I don’t have any.”
She furrowed her brow. “Your database lists them, though. It says that you have some, I mean.”
He craned his neck to look up at her in surprise. “That is a breach of privacy.”
“Yup.”
“Did you look in on all the cairns, or just the production cairns?”
“All the cairns. We have more information than you would believe, my friend. We know some secrets the big dogs will wish we didn’t. Think of this as Dick politics—when you run for office, you open up your closets and show off your skeletons. You’re pretty clean, though, except for the guardian discrepancy.”