Bookapy User License

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Bookapy.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Foreword

I’m afraid that, since this is part of a series, some character references will make more sense if you read the first part of Carter Security, “Tiny Tim”, first. But I did my best to write this as a stand-alone story, so it should be fine if that story’s tags don’t float your boat.

Wire-Pulling

Copyright © 2024 by Overconfident Sarcasm

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations which may be used for the purpose of creating reviews.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Introduction

After losing his father at a young age, Paul White and his mother supported each other through grief and hardships. That ended when his mother met a new man with powerful ambitions and decided to marry him. At first, his new life was okay but, the longer the marriage held, the more abusive his stepfather became. After enduring close to a decade of heavy physical abuse, the day Paul turns eighteen, his mother hands him some money and kicks him out of the house.

Years later, after Paul managed to settle into a new life for himself, in a new town, and away from all the painful memories, a lawyer shows up and asks him for help in defending his mother from accusations of corporate espionage.

Can Paul let go of all the hate and resentment he had held buried deep inside of him for so long, or will he let himself be consumed by his need for revenge?

Contents

1. Cover
2. Foreword
3. Disclaimer
4. Introduction
5. Prolog
6. Chapter One
7. Interlude 01
8. Chapter Two
9. Chapter Three
10. Interlude 02
11. Chapter Four
12. Chapter Five
13. Interlude 03
14. Chapter Six
15. Chapter Seven
16. Interlude 04
17. Chapter Eight
18. Chapter Nine
19. Interlude 05
20. Chapter Ten
21. Chapter Eleven
22. Epilogue

Prolog

April 2nd, 2020, Washington DC

“It’s unpleasantly cold, even for early April,” John Fairfield mumbled more to himself than anyone else as he flipped up the collar of his coat, before directing his attention towards his secretary. “I’m leaving for the Anderson meeting. I’ll be back in approximately three hours. Inform Dallas that I expect his proposal for the Cuomo situation, and remind the leader of surveillance team two about the packet’s arrival. I.T. just sent me a message that it is expected to be delivered this evening.”

Even though Miss Boise was in the middle of a phone call while also composing an email during his speech, he didn’t wait for any form of acknowledgment before he turned to leave. He knew she had fully understood everything he said and would carry out his instructions perfectly. After all, he had chosen her as his assistant for that very reason and had started poaching her even before her service term with the Mossad was completed.

Immediately after finishing his speech, he turned to leave the office and entered the elevator for the fifteen-floor ride down into the lobby, where his driver was already waiting for him. It really was cold. Despite it already being midday and the sun standing high without a cloud in sight, the thermometer would barely scratch the forties. Fairfield could already feel the slight effects of an oncoming cold, so he was happy that his client had booked a room in the Jefferson for their meeting. The thought of taking his usual walk through Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill while discussing his client’s needs for two hours made him shudder.

When they arrived at the Jefferson roughly twenty minutes later, he made his way directly to room 211 without stopping at the hotel’s reception desk to announce his arrival or calling his client to warn him about it. He enjoyed playing with the security personnel of these plush hotels, just as much as he enjoyed toying with his clients' personal security details. He knew his way around the preferred lodgings of the upper ten thousand. So, simply by striking up a conversation with another guest after taking a quick glance at him to take in all the hints about his personal interests, he inconspicuously managed to accompany that guest into the elevator without being questioned or checked by anyone in charge.

As he stepped out of the elevator on the second floor, he bid his short-term friend goodbye and rounded the corner, where he discovered Anderson’s bodyguard standing in front of his employer’s room.

Fairfield had to shake his head upon taking an appraising look at the guy. He was big, at least 6’5’’, with a bulky build. Approximately in his late twenties. And his eyes were fixated on a point at the wall opposing him. He was bored!

That man was meant to deter attackers with his imposing appearance, but Fairfield doubted he would have the needed speed and flexibility to fend off an actual attack. If he even reacted to it in time, since, at that moment, Fairfield wouldn’t have been surprised if the man started to drool while he used his shoe to draw patterns into the carpet. How someone like Senator Anderson, whose net worth was estimated at around four hundred million dollars, could employ someone like that to provide security for him, was beyond Fairfield’s comprehension.

Fairfield got rid of his coat and stashed it behind a big flower pot, leaving him standing in his quite expensive business suit. Then he inserted his mono-headphone into his ear, grabbed his phone, squared himself out, and started walking at an increased pace while fixing the bodyguard with an angry look. The guard raised his head to look at Fairfield when he was only three more steps away, and Fairfield instantly opened up on him.

“What in the world are you doing here!? You are supposed to guard Senator Anderson, not perform a stress test on our carpets!”

The bodyguard blinked at Fairfield in a mixture of surprise and uncertainty.

“The Senator is in the room right behind me. What are you…” he tried to reply, visibly shaken by this authoritarian stranger ripping him out of his bored daze.

“Son, where did you get your training!? The senator is in room 1-1-2, not 2-1-1! You are currently guarding Mrs. Fisher’s suite!"

“But, the senator said…” the bodyguard stuttered.

“Now you listen to me, Son,” Fairfield interrupted the confused man again, speaking in a quiet but demanding voice. “I am the Jefferson's head of security. I am fairly confident that I know which rooms our guests reside in! And I have been watching you through our security system, loitering in front of Mrs. Fisher’s suite, for the past twenty minutes. That ends now! I strongly suggest you make your way to the senator’s room promptly, or I will kick you out of our house myself before assigning my own security team to guard his room for the duration of his stay!”

“Holy Shit, this worked a lot quicker than I expected!” Fairfield thought to himself as he watched the inexperienced bodyguard start towards the elevators. Obviously, his client had, once again, misappropriated his security personnel by letting them take care of his check-in procedure, while he himself immediately went to his room. This also meant that the ‘Bodyguard’ had failed to search the senator’s room for IEDs and other unpleasant surprises before allowing his charge to enter it, or to at least talk with the real head of security before even arriving in the hotel.

“What a bungler,” Fairfield said under his breath as the man entered the elevator under Fairfield's stern watch. Then he recovered his coat and returned to Senator Anderson’s room. He produced a six-inch long spring steel wire out of his coat pocket, inserted it next to the door latch into the gap of the frame, and silently entered the senator’s room after roughly five seconds of fiddling.

Senator Richard Anderson was forty-one years old and liked to present himself as living proof of the viability of the American dream. Born into an admittedly poor family, he worked hard to make his way through the ranks of ‘Schrader Bank & Trust’, a privately owned bank, with an upper-class clientele. Thanks to Schrader’s careful investment politics, which were mainly attributed to Anderson’s foresighted assessments of economic developments, they made an absolutely obscene fortune during the 2008 real estate crisis. That was followed by yet another genius play during the Euro-crisis in 2010, which, again, earned Anderson’s bank numerous new wealthy clients and billions of dollars in profit. Now, ten years later, he exclusively surrounded himself with wealthy and influential ‘friends’ who helped him make the move into politics a few years ago.

He was generally seen as a man of integrity and family values, as he was happily married, though never blessed with children of his own. His idyllic life, however, was shaken twelve years ago, when his wife was tragically killed by a drunken driver. After an adequate grieving period, he married his new wife, Yvette, who had lost her own spouse to a workplace accident. Seeing a chance to finally fulfill his long-term dream of having a family, he adopted Paul, the ten-year-old Yvette brought into the relationship, to provide that boy with a stable home, love, and guidance.

Of course, half of that story was an utter fabrication, and Fairfield knew that the senator was anything but a loving husband and father. Behind closed doors, he was a manipulative, narcissistic, and abusive dictator to his family, who used his adopted son mainly to present himself in a certain light whenever the press was around. In fact, Fairfield had obtained copies of quite a few reports from local emergency rooms that painted a pretty clear picture of why the boy named Paul had fled his stepfather’s house the minute the clock struck midnight and announced his eighteenth birthday.

That, however, was none of Fairfield’s concerns. He only retained that kind of information in case one of his clients tried to turn on him after a job was completed. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen nonetheless, and Fairfield did not survive in this business by being unprepared.

When he finally stepped into the suite’s main room, he found his client staring at him in a mixture of shock and wonder.

“Good day, Senator. I’m afraid you’re dead,” Fairfield greeted the stunned man with a friendly smile. “Didn’t we discuss your tendency to hire cheap security during our last meeting?”

As a matter of fact, during the five years he had been working with the senator, he had wasted a good dozen different security companies the senator had hired for his protection. Each time he had offered to connect the senator with proper personnel, but he got the feeling that this was turning into a kind of game for his client.

“Seems like I’ll have to consider your people after all,” the senator sighed heavily while shaking his head. Fairfield had no doubt that it wouldn’t happen.

Anderson offered his guest a seat in his spacious suite, prepared drinks for the two of them despite knowing full well that Fairfield would politely decline, and took a seat opposing him. After taking a slow and savoring sip of his cognac, the two men sat in silence for a few seconds before Anderson finally spoke up.

“Fairfield, I need your help with a rather… delicate subject,” the senator said without taking his eyes off the dark liquid.

“That is usually the case when people hire me,” Fairfield joked lightheartedly, to which Anderson silently nodded.

“As you know, I made the bulk of my fortune during the last decade, after I married Yvette. Now, a few months ago, I got to know a delightful young woman that I can not show myself with in public, as long as I’m still married to Yvette. Long story short: I want a divorce. According to my lawyers, however, that divorce could cost me not only millions of dollars but also cause significant damage to my reputation. Therefore, my lawyers have suggested a solution. If I were able to prove my wife’s infidelity, maybe even for a long-term affair with another man, those problems would no longer exist. I need you to get me that evidence.”

Fairfield patiently listened to the senator’s explanation that, for his taste, lasted entirely too long. Though, as the senator finally reached the end of his tale, Fairfield’s brows knitted in confusion.

“Senator, I have to admit… I’m a little surprised you’d call for me in this matter. Surely you could retain the services of any private investigator in the area, and they would be able to gather that evidence for a lot less than what I would charge. I’d be happy to suggest some of the more reputable candidates.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” the senator confirmed with a grin. “There’s only the small problem that my wife would never risk having an affair. I even got that woman to chase away that useless boy she calls a son! There is no way Yvette would ever go behind my back, much less cheat on me! Nonetheless, I need to be one hundred percent sure that the evidence implicating her would stand up in any court.”

Just at that moment, the door flew open and the Bodyguard rushed into the room. As he took in the scene of the two men peacefully sitting with drinks in front of them, he regarded Fairfield with a hateful glare. Anderson raised a single eyebrow upon noticing this and addressed his guard with mirth in his voice.

“I don’t think your presence in this room is needed at the moment. Be so kind and wait for me in the lobby. We won’t stay much longer.”

As the guard tried to suppress his urge to respond to Fairfield’s sardonic grin, he reluctantly nodded toward his employer and left the room.

“I understand, Senator,” Fairfield addressed his client, trying to hide his disdain for the man. Not because of the nature of his request, but because the man would feel the need to utilize Fairfield’s organization for such a mundane task. However, gathering evidence for a non-existent affair could prove to be a welcome change of pace from his usual assignments.

“This assignment,“ Fairfield started after thinking it over for a few minutes. “could prove costly. I would calculate the expected expenses at around 500,000 dollars. In addition to that, I will need four million dollars as play money, most of which you could get back prior to the trial. And, finally, my fee of 250,000 dollars. All in all, you’re looking at 4.75 million. As usual, I will need you to pay the entire sum in advance.”

“That much?” the senator asked, surprised but in no way shocked.

“Yes. We have to assume that an affair alone will not be sufficient. This is a no-fault state, Senator, so it would still leave you open for maintenance payments. We will need to employ measures that will cause your wife more severe problems, leaving her powerless to contest the divorce in any way, but without causing her any physical harm, of course.”

As his client nodded in confirmation, Fairfield handed the senator a card with account details for a bank in Luxembourg. As usual, Anderson had to write that information down, since Fairfield would never allow someone to keep it. He was a professional. He wouldn’t allow any client to retain a specimen of his handwriting, his fingerprints, or even a scurf of his skin.

In his organization, it was also proper etiquette to use a clean bank account for each new assignment. Should the Feds ever manage to follow the money to Fairfield’s organization, he only had to clean up that one job, and didn’t have to worry about additional transactions on the account causing complications.

“Please keep in mind that this assignment will take a few months to complete,” Fairfield continued. “Setting everything up is going to take us three months, at the very least. Knowing your wife, however, you should double that timeframe. It will take some time to coerce her into starting an affair. It is also imperative that you transfer the play money from a bank account that is not associated with you personally.”

“I will arrange for the money immediately. You’ll have it by tonight,” Senator Anderson nodded.

Chapter 1

September 19th, Houston, Texas

Even though it was a Saturday, and I had another day of relaxing inactivity to look forward to, I was already moody after the thought of having to go back to work on Monday popped into my mind. With the school year starting up again, all the rich pricks we catered to were back from their ski trips in the Swiss Alps, their yacht trips to Monaco, or wherever else they go these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love my job. As a young man, I never imagined myself working in security someday, and I never even considered specializing in the investigative part of the job, but it turned out to be surprisingly rewarding. I get to actually help people, and the people I work with are all awesome. It’s the people we’re working for that make the job so taxing. If we’re providing general security in their homes, they feel spied upon despite being in danger, and, especially their younger offspring, make no effort to hide their discontent with our presence. If we’re in personal security details, it lasts maybe a week before they seemingly forget that we’re human beings working a job. A job that should not include being their packing mules on shopping trips, or errand boys for social gatherings. But, every now and then, I get to catch stalkers and reunite families, which kinda makes me happy.

I had just looked through my Netflix library for the third time, while waiting for my pizza to arrive, when the doorbell rang. When I opened the door expecting the delivery boy, however, I was confronted with the sight of a man whose face looked like he was in his mid-thirties, but with already graying hair, wearing a suit that looked half a size too big for him. He was holding a leather pilot’s case in his left hand and a picture with my face on it in his right. He studied my face, checked the picture, and then looked back at me before his expression curiously relaxed as he released a sigh.

“Paul Anderson?” he asked in a tone that communicated hope and relief.

“Name’s ‘White’. As you can see on the little plate next to my doorbell,” I answered gruffly. Somehow, while I was ready to close the door in his face, his face morphed into an expression of eagerness upon hearing my name.

“Son of Yvette Anderson, formerly White?” he continued with a nod, his eyes widened in excitement before I had a chance to follow through with my plan of shutting him out.

“...Yes. Who are you and what do you want?” I felt my wariness grow and slyly checked the hallway for waiting surprises.

“James Breston, Attorney at Law,” he beamed while handing me one of his business cards. “I’m representing your mother and would like to ask for a few minutes of your time.”

While I was moody before, that stranger mentioning my mother had my weekend ruined completely.

“What does she want?” I asked gruffly, causing his happy expression to waver as I took a quick look at his card.

“What does she…” he repeated with a questioning tone, clearly confused about my blatant disregard for the woman. “Don’t you know what happened to her?”

“Oh, I do know what happened. I just don’t care,” I shrugged. “I try to not involve myself with her and her chosen asshole, but her case was all over the news for the past six weeks and hard to avoid.”

“That is an awfully cold way to speak about your own mother, Mr. Anderson,” he said in an insecure tone. He obviously didn’t expect me to be so reluctant to help her. “I still need to speak with you.”

“We’re speaking right now, aren’t we? And I already told you, my name is White, not Anderson. Now get to the point, please. I got more fun things to do.”

“Are you sure you want to discuss this in the hallway? Maybe we should step inside first?” he offered with a fake smile. “I can’t imagine you would want your neighbors to overhear your family business.”

“Ah, you’re one of those,” I sighed, recognizing the usual tactics used by police officers and ambulance chasers alike to get a foot in the door, causing his brows to knit up in disapproval. “Fine, come in.”

I waved him into the apartment as I turned and walked into my living room, leaving him to close the door after stepping inside. Once he entered the room himself, I gestured for him to sit down on the couch from where he looked at me in anticipation as if waiting for me to offer him something. It merely took a few seconds of me staring at him with an expressionless face before he sighed again and opened his pilot’s case to place some papers on my coffee table.

“First, I’d like to point out that you were surprisingly hard to find, Mr. Ander… White,” he corrected himself as he began to arrange paperwork on my coffee table. “No forwarding address. No social media accounts. No contact with any relatives or old friends…”

“Obviously not hard enough,” was all I cared to comment, causing him to shake his head.

“Your mother warned me about the possibility of you being… less than eager to help.”

That piqued my interest.

“Really? Did she care to comment on why that would be?” I asked with a single eyebrow raised. My second eyebrow quickly joined the first one on its journey toward my hairline when I could see a look of genuine empathy on his face.

“She didn’t,” he conceded, another insecure expression creeping on his face. “Nonetheless, after working with her during her initial trial, I have a few suspicions about the reasons for your reluctance. And we need your help.”

“Well, then I’m curious how you plan on getting my help,” I replied with still-raised eyebrows, causing him to sigh before he answered.

“Five weeks ago, your mother was arrested on charges of economic espionage. Allegedly, she sold some sensitive data regarding ‘Schrader Bank & Trust’, the privately owned bank your stepfather worked for before starting his political career. And, as she got arrested, your stepfather immediately started the divorce proceedings,” he said, after fixing me with a determined look.

That actually did pique my interest.

“Huh. The divorce part didn’t make it into the news.” I mused. “Well, good for her.”

That last comment caused him to show me a mirthless grin before he continued talking.

“The moment she was arrested, a server showed up to throw the divorce papers in her face. The grounds for the divorce were listed as adultery, which could explain the curious coincidence of having her served the very minute she gets arrested. Then, however, he must have made use of some special connections, because, after only a single court date, the divorce was granted and your mother is not getting anything.”

I stared at him for a minute, trying to comprehend what I had just been told, before finding my voice.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I said, more to myself than to him.

“Indeed, it doesn’t. I don’t claim to know the woman especially well, but even to me, after spending only a few weeks as her defense attorney, it is clear that she would never dare cross that man.” When he said that last part, he gave me a portentous look. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit, despite your mother’s reluctance to involve you. I was hoping you could provide me with a… clearer picture of what we have to expect when dealing with the senator.”

“I’m sorry,” I said after realizing what he just said. “What ‘we’ have to expect? I sure as hell won’t be included in that.”

“Surely, you’re going to help? Despite whatever happened between you two, she is still your mother,” he exclaimed.

I was SO not going to discuss that part of my past with a total stranger. It didn’t matter to me whether he claimed to be my mother’s lawyer, since all I had to support that claim was his word. My apparently Ex-Stepfather was a U.S. Senator with sizable resources, and it wouldn’t be beneath him to send a fake lawyer just to record me making defamatory statements about him that he could then use against me.

The simple truth was that I hated both of them. My mother and the bastard. I hated him for destroying our little family, and I hated her for letting him. She was all I had left after my father died, and we supported each other to get through that loss. It wasn’t easy, given how my Dad lost his health insurance halfway through his chemo, and his life insurance had barely covered his piled-up medical bills, but we made it work. We still had each other, and that was enough for me. That is, until she met him.

Senator Richard Anderson. Or, how I liked to call him during my youth, the Dick.

She had always been the timid type. Emotionally needy, somewhat indecisive, and submissive. So, it wasn’t exactly shocking that she felt drawn to the powerful and rich guy who liked to take control. But I simply couldn’t understand how she could allow it to escalate that much.

When he started beating her, she just took it. When I tried to comfort her, she defended him. And it drove me crazy. I remember how powerless and desperate I felt when my pleas to leave him wouldn’t reach her. So, I tried to defend her, but that just made it so much worse. Because, after he finally lost his patience and beat me down, both of us saw the conflict in my mother's eyes. The battle between her innate submissiveness and her need to defend her child.

And her submissiveness won.

From that day onwards, he knew he could do as he pleased with the both of us. I only learned that lesson after my first trip to the ER. A consequence of him once again “disciplining” me. I told the doctors exactly what happened, who then immediately called social services… but nothing ever came of it. Next, I tried to call the cops when he started beating my mother again, but, after they showed up, they just asked him what was going on. His story of me being a jealous child, rebelling against the man who tried to replace my dead father, was taken at face value because, to my horror, my mother corroborated it as soon as she showed up with a fresh coat of makeup on her face. After that, whenever I tried to make waves, it was just shrugged off as another episode of me “throwing a fit”.

I later learned that he had already risen to a position that allowed him to make powerful friends, and they covered for him. There was shit-all I could do. I was too weak to stand up to him, too poor to offer my mother a viable alternative, and too insignificant to get help. It was a dark chapter in my life that I had thankfully left behind. At least that’s what I thought until this damn lawyer knocked on my door.

I shook the memories off and turned back to Breston.

“Listen,” I said, getting audibly annoyed with his continuous demands. “There’s only one thing you need to know. The day before I turned eighteen, my loving mother showed up in my room, handed me an envelope containing four grand in cash, and told me to get out of their house. So, I happily did. By now, I’ve made a life for myself as Paul White, and I will not risk that to help her out of the mess she created. I tried, I failed, I moved on!”

He stared at the papers in his hands for a few seconds. For an untrained person, his eyes darting around may have looked like he was searching them for a specific piece of information. For me, however, it was clear that he was frantically trying to figure out how to appease me.

“Don’t you think it is possible that your mother had been… coerced or forced into compliance?” he asked quietly.

True to my resolve, I didn’t actually say anything to answer his question. I did, however, lift a single eyebrow and gave him a look that surely answered his question regardless.

“But then, why…” his voice trailed off, but the question in it sounded genuine. That confused me. He obviously wasn’t used to this kind of situation. I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t a particularly good lawyer if he lacked that kind of experience and insight.

“I work security, Mr. Breston. I have seen my share of abusive spouses and parents. And, no matter how insensitive it may sound, at the end of the day, staying in an abusive relationship is a choice you make. She chose to stay with the man who beat her. And then, when he…” I caught myself mid-sentence. I had to remind myself again not to get caught in my anger, and not to reveal too much to this man until I knew for sure who he was. “She chose to rather send me away than to leave with me. A friend of mine, who also had to live with a set of assholes as his family, once told me that the worst punishment you can hand out to people is to simply let them suffer the consequences of their own actions.”

He thought about my words for a moment, before he nodded and spoke with newfound conviction.

“Sounds reasonable. But here’s the deal, Paul.” I noted the sudden shift to being on a first-name basis when he tried to appeal to me on an emotional level, but chose not to comment on it. “I am convinced that your mother didn’t do what she’s being accused of. So, if I’m right, you would let her suffer the consequences of someone else’s actions. Your stepfather’s actions, to be precise,” he said, and he undoubtedly saw how these words had the desired effect on me before he hurriedly pressed on. “Look at it this way. If you don’t want to do this to help your mother, then do it to hurt Senator Anderson. If we can prove that this is all a ruse to get rid of his wife for some reason, he will have to take responsibility for what he did.”

I just stood there with an expression that showed how unhappy I was with the situation, but, again, he knew he had me as soon as he mentioned the possibility of sticking it to the asshole. After a minute, I released a frustrated groan before walking into the kitchen, got two beers, and plopped myself down into my armchair.

He accepted the beer with gratitude, though I noticed that he never touched it while he informed me of my mother’s fate.

She was arrested on August 28th, and he had spent most of the month since then trying to locate me. On September 16th, after merely five hours in court, the divorce was granted. It was clear to the court that she had betrayed her husband, a widely respected political figure, in every conceivable way. Not only did she have an affair with another man, whom she apparently met multiple times per week on a regular basis, but she also stole sensitive data from her husband’s former employer and sold it to a competitor in exchange for four million dollars.

Of course, both, the “traitorous wife” as the Senator’s lawyer called her, and the competing bank, denied their involvement in these illegal activities. At the same time, however, neither of them was able to explain the money that was transferred into an account in my mother’s name, from an account registered to a former employee of the competing bank. And as if the whole thing didn’t already look bad enough, that former employee who allegedly made that transfer has been dead for over a decade, so the bank must have had a hand in this transaction.

Displaying his great suffering, the “betrayed husband” then described his disappointment upon his wife’s actions, causing the entire courtroom to feel sorry for the respectable, loving, and caring man, who even took it upon himself to care for her child as his own until I fled the nest. I had to scoff as Breston relayed that part to me. Naturally, the court did not grant my mother even a penny in maintenance, nor did she get a share of their marital assets.

Ever since her arrest, the media had dragged her name through the dirt in every way they could. Breston had brought the recording of an interview with Mom’s supposed lover, in which he maintained his story of her being a resigned housewife that barely suppressed her hatred for the man she was married to. He also claimed that she had repeatedly promised to leave her husband for him, to then spend the rest of her life by her lover’s side.

Then Loverboy said something that made me perk up.

“I truly loved the woman. But… I guess she wasn’t who I thought she was.” He sounded somewhat saddened, but the way he looked at the floor while shaking his head made it look like a scene from a soap opera. Or, maybe, like he wanted to hide his face from the cameras while reciting lines. “Selling those bank secrets… I can only guess she wanted to hurt the man as much as possible before leaving him. If I had known, I’d never ‘ve gotten involved with her.”

“You know…” I said, pointing at the TV screen. “That sounds more like an accomplice trying to save his own neck than someone who was genuinely in love and now learns that he was being played. What do you know about him?”

“Steven Carver,” Breston responded while reading from his file. “Thirty-five-year-old car mechanic who also deals with used cars he fixed up himself. Not wealthy, not very smart, not special in any way I could tell. Apart from his looks, that is.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing. He’s …what? 6’3’’? Lean, muscular build, freshly tanned…”

“Not to mention sixteen years younger than your mother,” Breston threw in.

“Yeah, he’s the embodiment of the word ‘Gigolo’. So, it’s clear he’s in this for the money, and it would seem reasonable for a woman to fall for an attractive younger guy. I still don’t believe his story,” I sighed.

“Why?” Breston questioned me, clearly hoping I would finally open up to him.

“She would NEVER betray that prick she married. Her entire life revolved around the guy! She was the pinnacle of the obedient 1950s housewife. The idea of her having an affair is just… No. Fucking. Way!”

“Well, I’m afraid her… demure nature even worsened during the four years you were gone. So, again, I fully agree with you. And yet…” Breston nodded along in a careful tone while handing me a shoe-carton-sized package from his pilot’s case. ”...the senator was able to present photographic evidence of her affair.”

When I opened the carton, I found out that it was filled with 6x8s in disturbingly high definition. There must have been around a hundred photographs documenting the development of my mother’s affair with Mr. Carver.

The pictures showed them at different leisure activities in public that, apparently, went on for months. This wasn’t just apparent because of the timestamps printed onto the pictures. Thanks to the high quality, the clearly visible surroundings supported what the timestamps told me. I could see the budding in the trees and bushes the first few photographs showed, placing those in the springtime. Then, based on the changes in the clothes the depicted couple wore, the series of pictures moved on into early summer. And, finally, it showed them in late summer, as they entered a movie theater advertising a movie that came out just a few weeks ago. That photo must have been taken mere days before her arrest.

I felt an involuntary pang of sadness as I saw how much my mother had changed since the last time I saw her. Her black hair, which had always hung down to her waist since I was a child, now reached just to her shoulders. She was still curvy but had clearly lost weight, which was emphasized by the new stylish business attire that framed her body, while I had always known her in leisure clothing. What grabbed my attention, though, were her formerly piercing and expressive blue eyes. Now, even when she was laughing in those pictures, they seemed less colorful and were surrounded by a lot of small wrinkles.

Throughout the stack, there were four pictures that made me quite uncomfortable. They were taken either in a sparsely decorated apartment or a pricey hotel room. They showed the couple from two different perspectives each, as they were entangled on the bed, in the middle of their adulterous activity. I couldn’t look too closely at those and just shook my head.

“Fine, this really does look like she had an affair,” I conceded. “What was her reaction to these pictures?”

“She admitted to having intercourse with Mr. Carver,” he responded.

“Come again!?” I deadpanned after a moment of silence, not believing my ears.

“But she insists that it only happened once. And she had planned on telling her husband about it, though she was arrested and presented with the divorce papers the very next day, only minutes after he returned from a work-related trip.”

I thought about this little piece of information for a minute and, while I couldn’t point at anything amiss, the whole development seemed just so… streamlined. Or, better yet, like it was planned out. The longer I contemplated the information I got, the more convinced I was that there was something hidden I could use against the bastard who had become my stepfather.

And I had to admit: If she really had an affair, which, given her total submission to the guy, I would’ve thought to be impossible, then maybe…

“Did you have anyone check these photos? Are they even legit?” I finally asked Breston, to which he looked at me confused.

“Uh… No? Why would I?” he stuttered. “She admitted to having intercourse with him.”

“One time, she said. These four pictures show at least two… sexual encounters on two different dates,” I pointed out, despite feeling quite uncomfortable with the topic, holding up the pictures in question. “And the encounters are apparently months apart, so why wasn’t she served after the first time?”

“Well…” Breston started in a contemplating tone. “Maybe he just… Maybe he decided to forgive her first offense.”

I felt my suspicion of Breston being a shitty lawyer immediately confirmed.

“Two things. First, if that would be the case, I’d expect him to at least confront her about it. If he had her followed, as the photographs imply, he was already doubting her. So, why would he suddenly overlook her infidelity once he got confirmation of his suspicions, and then even think her affair would just stop? Of course, it’s possible he didn’t suspect her, and he had the divorce papers drawn up after receiving these photos unexpectedly from some informant. But then again, why would someone else follow her around, silently document her affair for months, before only sending the evidence to her husband just as she’s about to be arrested for the data theft?”

I paused to let him think about that but quickly continued.

“Secondly: Since when is it the defense lawyer’s job to make up explanations for the opposing side’s suspicious behavior?” I couldn’t stop myself from pointing out his blunder. To my surprise, he actually looked a little embarrassed about that. “It also still doesn’t make sense that she would steal from him. They were married for more than a decade, Breston. Since before the senator made his fortune at Schrader, and long before he became a senator. If she finally heard the music and decided to leave him, all she had to do was file for divorce. Last time I checked, the guy was valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. She could’ve walked away with half of that! Why risk that for a measly four mill and a fleeting fuck with a car mechanic!?”

“THAT…” Brexton called out while pointing a finger at me like he was proud of having done something right. “...is exactly what I thought as well. Hence my visit to get some insight into their relationship beyond what they are willing to surrender.”

“And yet you never bothered to question the evidence,” I said under my breath before continuing in a normal voice. “Mind if I keep the pictures for a few days?”

Breston blinked at me for a moment before catching himself.

“Does that mean you’re willing to help?” he asked.

“I’m interested in the opportunity you laid out. Let’s see if there’s something to work with.” I didn’t want to commit myself to my mother’s defense, but I knew I would go All-In if it meant I could pay that bastard back.

“Then, yes! You can also keep the other files I brought with me. They’re copies I made hoping you would want to take a closer look at them,” Beston called out enthusiastically. “You have my card. Let me know what you find out.”

With that, he gathered his remaining belongings, grabbed his pilot’s case, and started towards the door. Before he could step outside, however, I stopped him.

“Breston.” I waited for him to turn towards me so I could fix him with a look. “Don’t tell anyone about my involvement. At least, not yet.”

He thought about it for a moment, but ultimately just nodded without a comment before leaving.

I stood in the hallway, looking at the closed door, for another good ten minutes before I finally decided on a course of action. Then I moved back into the living room, grabbed my phone, and made the call.

“Save it, Paul,” the gruff voice on the other end of the line said instead of a proper greeting. It instantly made me grin. “I know what you’re thinking. No, you don’t get to call in sick.”

“As much as it pains me to hear that, it’s not why I’m calling, Boss,” I finally replied to Bill’s taunt. “I need to ask you something.”

“Fire away!”

“Do we have someone who can verify the legitimacy of photographs?” I asked, a little insecure.

“Huh? What job’s that for?” he asked, confused.

“Uh… None. It’s… personal,” I clarified, trying to find a way to explain this without giving away that I intended to get involved in my mother’s trial. “I got some pictures that I… need to confirm.”

There was a notable moment of silence on the other end before he spoke casually.

“Well, that depends. If you trust him with your personal stuff, I’d say: Ask the kid.”

“Tim? Our resident basement dweller?” I chuckled. “Since when does he do photo analysis?”

“He doesn’t.” I could almost hear him shrug his shoulders as he said that. “But since he’s the only one in the office speaking the same language as those eggheads, I use him as a go-between when we need them. And…” There was another noticeable moment of silence. This time, however, it almost seemed like hesitation on the old man’s part. “...I recently learned that he does know his way around photo and video editing as well. Depending on what you need specifically, maybe he can help you out. If not, he’ll direct you to someone who could.”

I thought about that for a short moment. Tim, who happened to be my former neighbor, was also the IT guy in our small security firm. But he also programmed the firm’s web applications and apps we use to submit and process surveillance videos and photographic evidence, so maybe it wasn’t too far off that he could help. I quickly realized that I didn’t have anything to lose either way. So, after hanging up the call with Bill, I called Tim, who immediately noticed the edge in my voice and told me to just come around his place.

I packed up the photos in the shoe carton, jumped into my car, and made the hour-long drive to his family home. When I arrived, I was greeted by his mother. Because Tim, our IT guy, was still living in his mom’s house. A fact I would never forget to point out whenever I got the chance.

“Paul, Dear!” she greeted me with a slight blush on her face while seeming a little out of breath, but displaying a genuine smile on her lips. “How nice to see you again!”

“Hello, Mrs. Brown. I hope I’m not intruding?”

“Oh, heavens no! Tim told us you were on your way. But he’s helping his sister with something at the moment. Come, sit down. I’ll get you something to drink while we wait.”

After she all but dragged me into the house and maneuvered me towards their living room, she quickly made her way into the kitchen while she happily chatted away. Then she handed me a cup of coffee and joined me on the sofa, keeping me company for the few minutes it took Tim to show up.

He wasn’t alone, though. He entered the living room with his sister in tow, who, to my surprise, looked much the same as his mother did when she opened the door for me: Flushed face and a little out of breath. To my even greater surprise, after he gestured to me to follow him, she kissed him on the cheek while I could’ve sworn I saw his hand sit quite low on her back. Almost too low.

Shaking my head, I followed him into his Home Office where we both sat down at his desk.

“Sorry for the wait,” he said while opening a small fridge and gesturing toward the soda cans with a questioning look.

“No, thanks. Your Mom got me something while we waited. And the wait wasn’t bad since she kept me company. I think she likes me,” I replied with a smirk.

“Yeah, well… She appreciates that you looked out for me last year. Especially that time when that stabby psycho came after me for putting him in jail,” he explained in a casual tone. “So, what’s up? You sounded a little off on the phone.”

I hesitated for a second.

“Can I trust you?” I finally asked and saw the surprise on his face.

“Dude!” I think I offended him with that question.

“If I give you some photographs, can we determine whether they’re legit?” I asked carefully, not wanting to tell him the whole story if I could help it.

“No. Nobody can.” He sounded very sure. That surprised me.

“Seriously!?”

“Yeah. Sorry, but life is not like what CSI: Cyber claims it to be. I’d need the originals. And by ‘originals’, I mean to get me the camera they used to take the pictures, or, at the very least, the SD-Card that was inside that camera to save the original files on.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed while blinking. “I… did not expect that.”

“Well, the problem is that if you mess with photographs, it leaves… how do I explain this easily… it creates hard edges, so to speak. Clusters of pixels that differ in coloring in a specific way you can look for digitally. But once they’re printed, the printers will smooth everything over when they mix the ink to create that color. They’re not that accurate. And, even if they were, there’s honestly no way to detect it because the pictures were most likely converted from RGB to CMYK, messing everything up. Even if you have them as digital files, if you save them as anything other than the original TIF file the camera created, the compression algorithm will create clusters of similar coloring to reduce the file size and remove all hints of manipulation. If all you have are printed copies, you can only look for inconsistencies in the motives themselves.”

“What kind of inconsistencies?” I asked, feeling my hopes subside.

“Like a third arm showing up around a model that is being hugged from behind, because the editor cropped them together from multiple shots. Stuff like that.” He sounded remarkably casual as he said that.

“Well, what are the chances for that!?” I sighed.

“Surprisingly high.” He laughed upon seeing my confused face. “You have no idea how often that stuff happens because it’s VERY easy to overlook. There are entire websites dedicated to gathering pictures of underwear models missing their belly buttons… I’ve heard.”

I gave him a weak grin upon his last little joke, but what he said before made me think again.

“If I had… a lot of pictures that needed to be checked. Would you help me?” I asked, trying hard to suppress my embarrassment.

Instead of answering me verbally, he literally wiped the table clean with a wave of his hand and looked at me expectantly. I sighed again, placed the shoe carton in front of him, and braced myself as he opened the lid.

“What am I looking at?” he asked before even touching a single picture.

“My mother’s supposed affair.”

“Uh,” he started before his face took on an even more serious expression. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that face somewhere.”

“Probably. It was all over the news for the past month.” I nodded and quickly saw realization enter his eyes.

“HOLY SHIT!” he suddenly called out. “That’s your mom? Your mom is Senator Anderson’s wife? Does that mean you’re his son?”

“Stepson!” I corrected him with clear anger in my voice.

“Sure, sure… but can we stay focused on the real issue here!?” he started, causing me to brace myself once more. I wasn’t eager to discuss my circumstances yet, no matter how close we were. “Do you have ANY fucking idea how many Matrix references I missed out on, Mr. Anderson!?”

I just blinked at him for roughly five seconds, then broke out in laughter. The way he said ‘Mr. Anderson’ sounded exactly like Agent Smith, and I realized how stupid it was of me to worry about him, of all people, to mock me about anything. When I told Breston about that friend of mine, who had his own shitty family, I was talking about Tim. That was the reason we were neighbors in the past. He had moved out of his home, much like I did, though they somehow managed to work it out after about a year apart, and now they seemed closer than ever.

With the tension broken and my fears placated, we got to work after I dumped the photos on the table. Tim started to neatly lay them out in their supposed chronological order until they covered the entire table. Then he stood up as if to increase his distance, and just… looked at them. For a good five minutes, he stood there completely still, but his eyes rapidly jumped from picture to picture.

“Your Mom’s hot,” he suddenly deadpanned but continued before I could tell him off. “Also, the pictures have been messed with.”

That last part blew any thought of protest out of my brain as I just stared at him. He pointed at the picture showing my mother’s first sexual encounter with Carver.

“See that jacket on the floor?” he asked, and I noticed the plain-looking beige jacket next to the bed. It was quite hard to notice since it was almost the same color as the hardwood floor.

“Yes. So?”

“Well, according to the timestamp, that picture was taken on May 9th. But, according to this picture…” His finger moved to another picture further down the stack. “...they bought this jacket six weeks AFTER that get-together, on a shopping trip on June 22nd.”

My eyes jumped between those two pictures as I tried to compare them. He was right! That was one hundred percent the same jacket!

“Now,” he continued. “With that in mind, make a direct comparison of the pictures of their get-togethers.” He placed the four pictures next to each other. “They were taken in two different angles each, so four different angles altogether, but the bed is always at the edge of the frame. Notice how, in the pictures of their first time, you only see the room to the left of the bed, and in the pictures of their second time, you only see the room to the right side of it?”

“Holy. Shit.” I breathed out and continued to look at the two pictures.

“Yup. Doesn’t make sense, does it?” he shrugged. “We both know, installing hidden surveillance takes time. It’s a risk you take, even if you have someone watching your target to warn you if they suddenly come back. So, it doesn’t make sense to remove the cameras after the first time, just to install them again for a second time. Especially if you don’t know WHEN to have cameras ready. It makes more sense that the whole thing was premeditated, and they had four cameras recording the single time your mother cheated. The camera angles were intentionally placed like this, so it would be harder to detect similarities in how the clothes were strewn about the room and make this obvious.”

I was beyond excited. This was it! This was my ticket for payback! I got the fucker!

“Well, don’t celebrate too early,” Tim suddenly ripped me out of my thoughts. “This only proves that they messed with the timestamps. It doesn’t prove that the images themselves have been altered or forged in any way.”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as we can prove any kind of falsification, it throws doubt on the whole process,” I said, feeling quite sure of myself.

“Well, in that case… Happy to help!” Tim shrugged. “And remember: There’s absolutely no special reason why I paid so much attention to your mom’s nudes.”

That earned him a not-so-little smack over the head, but we both laughed about it. Then, he spoke again.

“You know what that means, right?” he asked in a somber tone.

“Yeah,” I sighed as I nodded in confirmation. “I’ll have to speak with her.”

There was one thing neither of us had said out loud when we discussed all the things that didn’t make sense in this case: Why go through the trouble of forging photographic evidence of a second sexual encounter?

Legally, it doesn’t matter whether you cheated on your spouse just once in a drunken one-night-stand or had a full-blown long-term affair. One time is enough to justify divorce on the grounds of adultery, anything more than that has absolutely no impact on what happens in the court room during your divorce proceedings. But, more importantly, unless Carver had taken these pictures himself, in his own apartment, they wouldn’t even have been admissible in court! Had my mother not freely admitted to the affair, the senator wouldn’t have had any grounds to divorce her on anything but irreconcilable differences and go for a 50/50 split. So, why obtain these pictures in the first place?

I thanked Tim again as we packed everything up, bid my farewell to his mother and sister on my way out, and got into my car for the drive back home.

During that drive, though, my good mood ebbed away as I realized that Tim was right. If I wanted to truly fuck that asshole’s life, I needed more than what I had now. But I was sure that, if we played our cards right, we could use this discovery to put the screws onto Carver. If he learned that his story of the long-term affair was busted, I was sure we could make him talk and expose more lies.

When I tried to call Breston and inform him of my findings, my call went directly to voicemail. He must’ve already been on the plane back to Austin, where his office was located. Looking at my watch, I also noticed that it was quite late already. I’d just have to call him the next morning to let him in on the good news.

Interlude 01

September 20th, Austin, Texas

On the inside, Fairfield was livid, but he went to great lengths to hide this from his assigned protégé, who was currently sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

About two hours earlier, Fairfield had been informed that the presumed incompetent lawyer Yvette Anderson was able to obtain, using what little funds she had managed to scrape together, somehow succeeded in locating her son. And, while the lawyer wasn’t deemed a threat to their operation, young Paul was another story. Not only would he be highly motivated to ruin his stepfather by exposing the man, but he also had access to crucial resources the lawyer himself could only dream about.

So, just to be safe, Fairfield immediately launched into a closer examination of the evidence Dallas had prepared for this case, and his trained eye spotted the screw-up with the jacket as soon as he saw the picture. Now this meant additional work he had not expected and consequently hadn’t factored into the number he gave the senator back in April. He hated working extra hours because of poor planning! It also didn’t help that he couldn’t really blame Dallas for this, since Fairfield had only given him the targeted timeline for this operation but then trusted that his protégé would be able to deal with the details himself. Lesson learned, and all that.

It was three in the morning when the both of them got out of the nondescript disposable car and walked up to Carver’s condo.

As was second nature to Fairfield, he opened the door without the need for a key, and without announcing their entry in any way. Without causing the smallest of noises, he found his way into Carver’s bedroom, with Dallas, who had to listen to the dressing-down of a lifetime on their way to this condo, directly behind him.

Carver slept peacefully in his bed as Fairfield placed the taser on his larynx. As Fairfield pressed the trigger, Carver’s eyes flew open. The precise placement of Fairfield’s weapon caused the vocal cords to be paralyzed within a fraction of a second, robbing his victim of the possibility to call for help or even alert anyone with a scream. After about five seconds, in which Fairfield had trouble maintaining the delivery of the charge over the violent convulsions of the body beneath him, Carver passed out.

“Now,” Fairfield started as he turned to Dallas with anger in his voice. “Open the bag I gave you. There is a fuse and a light bulb in it. Get to the breaker box and replace the fuse for the bedroom with the one from the bag. Then get back in here and screw the light bulb into the lamp on his bedside table. Once we turn it on, we have about two minutes before it shorts and causes a nice little fire.”

Ignoring Dallas’s shocked expression, Fairfield turned towards said bedside table and grabbed the half-full bottle of liquor Carver had placed there with an empty glass. According to the label, it was a forty-year-old Malt Whiskey.

“What a waste…” he moaned to himself as he leaned down to Carver’s face and opened his mouth. “Thank you!” he explained upon smelling the proof of where the other half of that bottle had gone. Then he filled half the glass on the nightstand with the liquor, taking care to spill most of it around the table, “accidentally” soaking even the curtains and bedsheets.

“But... why!?” Dallas finally found his voice as he stared at Fairfield with wide eyes. “Nobody noticed the jacket! Everything went smoothly, just as planned!”

“Nobody noticed your mistake, yet!” came Fairfield’s terse answer. “What do you think how long this money-grubbing idiot will keep quiet when the son shows up, most likely with a few of his friends from that security firm he works at, and demands answers? This is on you! This job was your responsibility! You wanted to prove yourself and you screwed it up! Now you’ll be the one to fix it!”

As Fairfield spoke, he slowly moved towards Dallas because he knew what would happen next. While the vast majority of his employees came from various three-letter agencies, Dallas was one of the very few who previously worked in a private institution specialized in “corporate consulting”. While Dallas was anything but innocent, he wasn’t used to the unseemly side of this business.

Fairfield had been opposed to recruiting him in the first place, but, sadly, Dallas’s father was one of the founders of his organization. And, as it turned out, he was right to protest this blatant nepotism. In the two years Dallas had been under his command, he had screwed up three of the eight assignments he received. Each time was just another small mishap, like the one with the jacket in the photo, that endangered the entire operation. And Fairfield was no longer willing to put up with it. It was time the guy learned how to fix his mistakes or took his leave! It was, after all, Fairfield's quota that suffered from these problems.

“I’m not going to KILL a man just because the job MAY be in danger!” Dallas suddenly called out. He wanted to add some more, but the words got stuck in his throat when he saw the look his superior was throwing his way.

“Then get your ass back to the car!” Fairfield hissed dangerously. “And think about your own future in this business.”

For a moment, Dallas stood in Carver’s bedroom, watching the unconscious body that, after convulsing from the electric shot, was only half covered by the sheets. His brain went into overdrive as an endless stream of thoughts and scenarios shot through his head, trying to find a less permanent solution for this problem.

He couldn’t think of one.

Fairfield was waiting for Dallas to snap, or at least to plead for the life of the man, but Dallas surprised him. After about a minute, he simply dropped the bag with the prepared items, turned toward the door, and left the condo. Not that it would’ve made a difference anyway. After all, if you taze someone and they pass out, chances are they won’t wake up again unless someone fixes their heart rhythm. So, if he wanted Carver’s lungs to show signs of smoke inhalation when his corpse was examined, Fairfield had to get to work.

About six minutes later, Fairfield joined the already waiting Dallas in their car, his clothes already impregnated with a slight burning smell. He started the car, but only drove it up to the next intersection from where they kept an eye on the condo.

Another ten minutes later, the bedroom window finally burst as yellow and blue flames shot out of it.

“Well, by now, Carver should be crispy,” Fairfield commented with a serious expression. “And you’re the only one you can blame for it! Keep this in mind the next time you try to take shortcuts or give out hastily created material.”

Just as Fairfield wanted to start the engine again, the passenger door flew open and Dallas leaned out of the car to puke all over the sidewalk.

“For crying out loud!” Fairfield exclaimed as he grabbed Dallas at the back of his jacket and pulled him back into the car. “What are you doing!? We don’t have the time to clean this up! I can already hear the fire trucks' sirens!”

As soon as the passenger door was closed, they drove off. Fairfield had looked up the positions of all the firehouses and police stations in the area and knew exactly which route they would take to reach the condo. This way, he was able to leave the area without being spotted. During the entire drive, Dallas sat next to him, not moving a muscle while his face was as white as a ghost. Obviously, Fairfield’s words had the desired effect. Now it was time to push Dallas in the right direction.

“Try to get a grip and decide what you want,” Fairfield said after he had stopped the car in front of Dallas’s home. “This isn’t the amateur league anymore. Mistakes can happen, but not as frequently as they seem to happen to you, and only if the person responsible is man enough to fix them. Now get out!”

Still not saying a word, Dallas got out of the car and walked into his house. Fairfield contemplated whether he handled the younger man too harshly. His worries did not come from a place of empathy for the man, but were rather born from concern over him. It wouldn’t be completely outside the realm of possibility that Dallas turned out to be so incompetent he surrendered himself into police custody and told them about what had happened tonight.

Before he left, Fairfield had called one of his surveillance teams to keep an eye on Dallas.

Chapter 2

I barely slept last night. I kept tossing and turning throughout the night, as memories of my past life plagued me. And, whenever I shot awake, my mind just wouldn’t stop revolving around everything Tim and I found out the day before, and the possibility of finally repaying that bastard for everything he did. But what really wouldn’t let me rest were the implications of what we had discovered.

What did we know for sure?

We knew that someone falsified evidence of my mother’s affair. We knew that someone was willing to pay a lot of money to make this happen, since surveilling someone over such a long time was not cheap.

What could I safely assume?

It simply didn’t make sense for my mother to try and steal that insider information from the Senator. As I pointed out to Breston, she could’ve walked away with A LOT more than four million dollars, had she just divorced him. So, whoever was behind this had access to the senator’s locked-away business documents. Since I didn’t deem the man capable of pulling this off himself, he probably hired someone to complete this framing job.

So, the real question was: Whose leg was I going to piss on by investigating all of this?

Realizing that it was futile to try and get any more sleep, I decided to look into that gigolo they had used to frame my mother. I got out of bed, started my computer, and, while I waited for it to finish its startup routine, looked over all the information Breston had supplied regarding Carver. When I then looked up his address, however, all the results I found were online articles from Austin’s local news agencies. When I clicked on the first result, I felt my stomach drop.

- - -

AUSTIN, Texas - Austin firefighters responded to a house fire in the 8800 block of Black Oak Street near Anderson Mill.

AFD says they completed their search and, unfortunately, one person, who is believed to be the owner of the home, was sleeping inside when the fire caused the roof to partially collapse. There was a multi-agency response. The preliminary report by AFD fire investigators indicates the cause to be a cable fire caused by a faulty fuse box, as several of the fuses had seemingly been bypassed using car parts.

- - -

It took me several minutes, during which I had to force myself to keep my breathing under control, before I could pull myself away from the monitor by leaning back in my chair. Sure, it could very well have been an actual accident. I had read in Breston’s report that Carver was indeed a car mechanic, so the car parts in the breaker box weren’t a completely outrageous claim.

It was clear to me that I had to rethink my plans. What little plans I had so far, that is. It wasn’t just Carver who was gone now. The condo’s bedroom, which was the “crime scene” of my mother’s supposed affair, was also gone. All the evidence and clues that might have pointed to the whole thing being staged were gone.

The next thing I realized was that, if Carver’s death wasn’t an accident, and I found a way to prove this, it could cast serious doubt onto the allegations against my mother. The timing of her lover’s involuntary departure, right when we found out that he had lied about the duration of their affair, was too striking. Especially since she was in custody when the fire started, so it would be hard to spin this as her trying to get rid of witnesses.

Before I could actually come to any real conclusions about which further steps would now be necessary, however, my doorbell rang. I looked at the clock and, wondering who would want to disturb me at ten a.m. on a Sunday, got up to open the door. Before I had a chance, though, I heard a key being inserted into the lock and the door open.

“YO, PAUL!” I heard Tim’s voice shout out from the hallway and instantly got an annoyed look on my face. “I know this is your apartment and all, but please don’t be naked right now. I see enough of that in the gym’s locker room.”

As he finished that sentence, he stumbled into my living room covering his eyes with one hand, while his other hand was holding a box full of electronics.

“It’s okay, Tim. You can look. Though, given how you - once again - just waltzed in here, maybe I should draw blank anyway,” I mused.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but we kinda need to talk. Though…” He paused to place the box with the electronic devices and cables on my dining table and pulled out his phone, before turning off the lights in the room and drawing the curtains shut. “...that’ll have to wait until we checked the apartment.”

“Check for what?” I asked with a raised eyebrow at his antics.

“Cameras. Pull out your company phone.” I decided not to question him. He liked to take the piss and crack weird jokes, but he’s not the type to pull pranks, and certainly not when it came to his work. “Use the front-facing camera like you’re taking a selfie to check around.”

“Tim? How’s that gonna reveal any cameras?”

“Most surveillance cameras have an infrared LED for night vision. The camera on the backside of your company phone has one as well. The one on the front doesn’t. Look.”

As he explained it, he stepped next to me and pointed his phone downwards so, looking at the display, we saw our faces as well as my smoke detector that was glued to the ceiling above us. Around the center of said smoke detector, right where the slots in the housing were, we could see a bright and almost white dot. When I looked up at the ceiling, there was no such dot visible in the smoke detector.

“You’re shitting me,” I breathed out.

“Don’t freak out, yet. Almost all modern smoke detectors have an infrared or ultraviolet LED in combination with a photodiode. That’s how they work. They detect when the particles in the smoke scatter that light. We’ll need to take them apart to be sure, but, as long as you only see one bright dot through your phone, it’s unlikely someone put a camera in there. Unless they replaced the whole thing with a fake housing that only contains a camera. But now you know what to look for.”

I nodded and got to work in my bedroom while he continued in my living room. After about half an hour of diligent search, we took off all the smoke detectors and took them apart to be absolutely sure that the LEDs we saw actually belonged to a smoke detector. That’s when I heard the doorbell again, but this time the person on the other side waited for me to open the door.

To my surprise, it was Bill!

“Boss! What’re you doing here?” I asked perplexed and a little overwhelmed by everything that was happening this morning.

“Morning Paul,” he slightly lifted a paper holder containing two cups of Starbucks coffee, as if to say ‘I bring gifts’.

I stepped aside to let him enter and led him into my kitchen area, where he stopped in his tracks upon seeing Tim tinkering with my smoke detectors. Interestingly, he just sighed before shaking his head.

“Morning, Kid. Should’ve known you’d already be here,” Bill mumbled before taking a seat at the small table.

“Mornin’ Boss,” Tim greeted him without taking his eyes off his work.

“I take it you both watched the news?” Bill commented in a resigned voice, pointing a finger at the devices Tim was putting back together.

“Hm,” was Tim’s comment, and the indifference of that sound took me aback.

“Wait. You know?” I asked, perplexed. “How!?”

“Uh… well…” For the first time since he sat down, his hands stopped working. “After you left yesterday, I set up something like a Google Alert. So, when the first report about the fire was published, my phone woke me up. And, given how we know that your mom was framed using hidden cameras…” His voice trailed off as he gestured towards his phone, telling me why he saw the need to check the apartment before we could talk.

“Neither this Vic’s name nor address has made its way to the press, though,” Bill commented, and Tim suddenly got visibly uncomfortable.

“I said ‘something like a Google Alert’, didn’t I?” he defended himself, causing Bill to shake his head in disapproval. Whatever he was talking about, Bill seemed to have an idea, and it probably wasn’t entirely legal.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Tim, but I only met with Breston for the first time yesterday. I doubt I could already have a target on my back,” I chuckled, though that stopped when I noticed Bill’s facial expression.

“Mind filling me in on what you boys found out so far?” he asked, and, after a few short seconds of contemplation, I nodded and told him everything. After all, these two people were probably the ones I trusted the most in my life.

I spent about fifteen minutes relating everything I knew, while Bill sat with a stoic face perfectly devoid of emotion. Though, it seemed like the wrinkles and crevices in his face deepened a little more the further I got in my report. When I finished, he just sighed.

“Paul… I don’t think I can talk you out of this, can I?”

That confused me.

“No,” I replied in determination. “I honestly don’t care about the woman rotting in jail. But this is just too good of a chance to finally get one over that bastard, and I’m not letting it go. Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I’d prefer someone I don’t care about to get himself killed while working this case,” Bill replied with a sad smile that almost shocked me. “Listen to me. Why do you think your mother is in jail right now?”

“Either someone wanted to get rid of her, or they were trying to paint her family in a bad light,” I responded, to which Tim nodded in approval.

“Sure,” Bill nodded just like Tim had before. “Not what I was talking about, though. I wasn’t asking about their motive, but trying to point out how far they are willing to go. Someone threw millions of dollars out the window to get this done, and now they most likely killed someone to hide evidence. What does that tell us about the people in charge of this?”

“That they’re ruthless?” I tried, but Bill slammed his hand onto the table in a sudden burst of anger, making both Tim and me jump a little.

“No! It tells you that they stand to lose something. Think, you two idiots! They didn’t even know for sure whether you and that lawyer would find anything. They didn’t have the time to bug your place. They might have followed the lawyer here and listened in on your conversation with a dish antenna or something, but he didn’t tell you anything that wasn’t already included in the case files. The actual discovery of the forged photographs was made at the Kid’s place. And I know his office, there are no outside windows since the paranoid little shit bricked them up when he basically turned the room into a Faraday cage. They couldn’t have learned what you two talked about, meaning they killed someone just in case!”

“Well… couldn’t they have done it so they won’t have to pay him?” Tim quipped, though Bill wouldn’t have any of it.

“Kid, they gave away four million dollars just to make it look like his mother was paid for the bank intel. You think they would then rather murder someone than pay the few dozen grand he was probably waiting for?” Hearing that, Tim conceded the point with a shrug. “Also, this tells you that whoever is behind this is well organized. You’re up against multiple opponents, while your stepfather is probably just the one paying them.”

“What makes you so sure he was killed in the first place, though?” I had to ask.

“AH!” Tim suddenly called out before he dug his hands into the box he showed up with and, from underneath all the electronics, produced a small binder.

“What’s this?” Bill eyed him in suspicion.

“This…” Tim said in a triumphant voice before dropping the file onto the table and opening it. “...is the AFD Chief investigator’s preliminary report about the fire that killed Carver.”

I watched Bill’s eyes grow just as big as mine.

“How the hell did you get that!?” I asked incredulously.

“What did you do?” Bill asked with an almost threat in his voice as his expression darkened.

“Calm down, I didn’t break any laws or hack into anything,” Tim smirked. “Except Betty.”

“You… what? What’s Betty?”

“Betty is the Chief Investigators secretary,” Tim shrugged. “Was on the phone with her for almost an hour. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, I have to say. The whole call, I kept imagining her as that peroxide blonde with fake fingernails just long enough to stop her from typing properly, but who got hired anyway because of her two massive…”

“Get to the point, Kid!” Bill sighed in annoyed resignation.

“Right. Sorry.” Tim paused for a second to look at the report and compose himself. “Betty is not exactly a sucker for protocol and regulations, so, using the tricks Michael taught me,..." At this point, Bill looked up at the ceiling while mumbling something unintelligible. "...it was relatively easy to talk her into mailing it to me after I claimed to work for the insurance company. According to the report, the fire pattern points to it starting in the bedroom where Carver was sleeping. They found a burst whisky bottle in the area that was burned worst, so they believe that acted as an accelerant. But… since the coroner is a little flooded at the moment, it’ll take them a few days to check whether he actually drank any of it. So, there’s no way to tell if someone helped that fire along.”

“What about the source of the fire?” Bill asked.

“The fire’s origin seems to be…” His finger ran over the lines of the paper in a searching manner. “Ah, started at the bedside table. They suspect faulty wiring in the lamp. When they checked the fuse box, they discovered that he had bridged the breaker using a faulty 450Amp safety fuse usually found in motorhomes.”

Bill looked thoughtful for a minute before shaking his head.

“So… Carver accidentally pours a bottle of whisky over the only lamp with faulty wiring, that is plugged into the only socket in the house that is secured by a faulty fuse, right when you boys find out that he lied about the details of his involvement with Paul’s mother? With this timing, I don’t buy that. I’d say, whoever is behind this scheme went over their evidence one more time because they learned about the lawyer contacting you. Then they discovered the same mistake you found and did the only sensible thing to stop anyone from following up on that lead.”

I didn’t like it, but he had a point.

“Did you just call the possible murder of an accomplice the ‘sensible thing to do’?” Tim asked, sounding almost impressed.

“Kid, I’ve been around long enough to know that most people are greedy and selfish. Everybody has their price, and the less attached they are to a potential target, the lower that price turns out to be. Nowadays, you can order a hit on someone for two hundred bucks and a bottle of booze, if you’re okay with the result being messy. So, right now, if I can’t talk you out of this, we need to talk about your safety.”

“Ah!” Tim called out again as if he remembered something, before grabbing the box he brought with him and pulling a small wireless camera out of it. “I thought, maybe, we wire up your apartment and then move you into my old one downstairs.”

After he said that, he gave Bill and me a questioning look, while the both of us blinked at him.

“You still have your own apartment?” Bill finally asked.

“Yeah. Remember how the landlord had me pay the rent six months in advance because I was still a minor when I originally signed the lease, and he was worried I’d bail on him after wrecking the place?” Tim asked him back, and I saw understanding light up in Bill’s eyes, accompanied by a small grin. “After I moved back home three months ago, I kinda neglected to look for someone to take over the lease. You know, in case things don’t work out with my mom and all. So… it’s still all paid up ‘till the end of November.”

I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility, but, now that he laid it all out, it made sense. The main reason why I connected with our IT Monkey, despite him being fifteen when he started working in our firm, was that he, too, had a shit pair of neglectful parents. I never told him the peculiarities of my own upbringing, but we still bonded when I tried to help him out and vouched for him with my/our landlord so he could get away from those people. While I don’t know the details of what happened since then, he recently somehow managed to reconnect with his family and ultimately moved back in with them. I guess he wanted to keep the apartment as a kind of insurance policy, so he knew he could always leave again should things turn sideways again.

“I like the idea, Kid.” Bill was still grinning when he said that. “Though, I seem to remember you ranting for an hour straight about how wireless cameras are crap.”

“And that statement still stands!” Tim pointed his finger at our boss. “But we only need to transmit the signal one floor down, so chances of the baddies picking it up and using it for themselves are slim. And in the unlikely event of a neighbor stumbling upon the signal, they’ll only get a feed of his apartment instead of Paul running around in the buff after one of his half-hour showers or something.”

“That… was an oddly specific example we will talk about another time,” I commented drily before turning my attention towards Bill. “What do you think?”

To my surprise, the slight grin was gone from Bill’s face as he contemplated my question. Tim and I both shared a questioning look as we watched him for a good minute before he finally sighed and spoke up.

“On one hand, I like the idea of having a surveillance station so close by. It’ll allow us to lure them in, in case they keep tabs on you. They’d see you still enter the same building as you always do, making it less likely for them to find out you moved. And, if they really were to come after you and break into your apartment, we would be close by to apprehend them.” Then he paused for a moment, before releasing another sigh. “On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of you trying to apprehend them in the first place.”

“What? Why?”

“Paul… I already told you that these people are not to be taken lightly. Yes, you don’t necessarily need a pro assassin to get a hit done on someone, but, considering everything else that has happened in this case so far,… I’m convinced these guys are professionals.”

While I appreciated him worrying for me, I somehow didn’t like the implication that I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself. Though, objectively speaking, he was right, and I knew it.

“Boss, I’m not gonna run in and try to arrest them! I understand that this is to give me a head start if they come for me.”

He looked at me as if to assess my honesty, which, at first, kinda pissed me off. Though, as I watched his expression, I noticed something else. He didn’t doubt me. He was genuinely worried about me! That, I appreciated.

“Fine,” he conceded. “Let’s get you moved downstairs then.”

And with that, he got up from the table and beckoned us to get to work.

It didn’t take too long, though. I packed up my laptop and a few clothes, but when I went into the bathroom to pack up my toiletries, Tim stopped me.

“Don’t bother with those. I have pre-packaged convenience kits in the bathrooms downstairs.”

I wanted to pack up my stuff regardless, but then I saw Bill walking past while pointing at Tim and vigorously nodding his head as if to tell me that I should listen to him. So, instead, I asked the next thing that was on my mind.

“Why do you have pre-packed convenience kits in your abandoned apartment? Why do you have them at all!?”

Hearing that, he shuffled his feed in an obvious display of embarrassment, before he simply said “Don’t ask stupid questions” and moved away as Bill reentered the room and spoke up.

“If those guys show up and go through your stuff, it shouldn’t look like you moved out. Only take what you absolutely need, like some clothes. Everything else we can get new. Even food. If someone comes looking for you and finds your fridge has been relieved of all perishables, it’ll send a clear signal that you no longer live here. Then they’ll realize they’ve been played and leave before we can do shit about it.”

With that said, I grabbed my clothes and accompanied Tim into his old apartment. Looking around, I found myself confronted with Tim’s peculiar taste. Everything was white or black, with glossy surfaces, giving it that sterile and cold feeling. Then, however, I realized with surprise that it was still fully furnished despite nobody living here, so I asked him about it.

“Well, this apartment is a lot bigger than my old room in the house,” he explained while shrugging his shoulders. “And we didn’t need any more cooking- and tableware in the house. So, we basically left most of the furniture behind. Fridge is basically empty right now, though.”

As he said that, he opened the fridge, showing nothing but a six-pack of Heineken beer, which I couldn’t help but laugh about, causing Tim to shrug his shoulders once more.

“What can I say? I figured, if things with the family went south again and I’d move back, I could use those to lure you down here and listen to me vent.”

After he showed me that his abandoned apartment held everything I would need to live in it, apart from fresh food, Tim hid the cameras in my own apartment while Bill and I set up the portable surveillance station Tim must have dropped off before walking through my door. When everything was done, Bill spoke up.

“All right. Now comes the hard part.” He took a deep breath and fixed me with a stern look. “Call that lawyer and tell him what you found out. Then… you’ll have to set up a date to accompany him when he visits your mother in jail.”

“Yeah. We kinda gathered that this would be necessary,” I nodded, though Bill shook his head.

“No,” he sighed before continuing with a grave voice. “You need to make plans to bail her out.”

I noticed Tim’s eyes widened just as much as my own.

“Why!?”

“Because she’s not safe in there anymore,” Bill explained with patience. “We can’t be certain why they killed Carver. If they just concluded that it’s time to get rid of all the potential threats and loose ends, your mother will be next. And if they succeed, this case, along with your chance for payback, will simply go away.”

“Wait!” Tim called out. “She’s in for selling insider data, right? She’s going to a white-collar prison. Minimum security. There shouldn’t be any gangs they could hire to shank her.”

“Exactly,” Bill nodded while pointing a finger at Tim. “She’s going into Club Fed. After she’s been convicted. But, right now, she’s still in Travis County, awaiting trial, since she pleaded Not Guilty. And if those guys decide that they don’t want to risk her lawyer presenting any potential evidence during said trial you two may have discovered, it’s easy to contact some asshole who’s just transitioning in there to take care of her.”

Hearing that caused a weird sensation to travel through my body. Like I just swallowed a brick, while simultaneously the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Yes, I hated the bitch for what she did to our lives. But I didn’t want her dead!

I quickly went for the files Breston left me and looked through the documents. But when I found what I was looking for, my heart sank.

“Her bail had been set to TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!?” I shouted, not believing what kind of outrageous number I just read and looked at Bill and Tim with big eyes. “For selling some data!?”

“I guess the senator called in a favor,” Bill mused, causing me to remember Breston saying something similar. “And I guess, going by the kind of lawyer she hired, that’s a little beyond her capabilities.”

I could only shake my head.

“Yeah. It’s above my capabilities as well!”

Curiously, that did elicit a peculiar reaction from the two other men in the room as they first shared a weird look between themselves, before Tim made a face as if contemplating something.

“You know,” Tim finally spoke up, still some kind of far-away look on his face. “I may be able to help you with that.”

“What!?” I laughed. “You mean to tell me you got a quarter of a million lying around?”

“Well… not in a way that could be used to post bail,” he mused, increasing my confusion even more but refusing to elaborate on what that meant. Instead, he proposed a different idea. “We happen to work for a security firm, Paul. A security firm that could act as a bail agent. And THAT I could help out with.”

“How?” I asked, though it was Bill who explained it.

“The firm would post the bail for you in cash, because I trust that you’ll make sure she’ll show up for all of her court appointments, so we’ll get it back when this is all over. To keep up appearances, we’ll ‘require’ a ten percent fee. That’s what Tim will help out with. Though we won’t actually keep that money. So, don’t worry about that.”

I considered the offer for a moment, however, it became clear to me that, while I really had no other options, I just couldn’t do it.

“I can’t ask you for that kind of money. Even if it’s ‘just’ twenty grand!” I shook my head in defeat. “Thank you for offering, but…”

That was a preview of Carter Security 2: Wire-Pulling. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «Carter Security 2: Wire-Pulling» to Cart