He taps in the password. And the tablet clicks on. The screen divides into six squares, revealing six houses. One house in Indian Creek, one on Fisher Island, two in Silver Lake, one in Nashville, and a final home in downtown Miami. Six live camera streams, into each of those houses. The living rooms and home offices, the kitchens and sunrooms. The basements.
“What the hell is this?” Teddy says.
Because he recognizes those houses. The home in East Nashville (his brother Dominic’s home), the two houses down the street from each other on the Reservoir in Silver Lake (the houses belonging to his twin sisters), an apartment in South Miami (his baby brother Bradley’s home), the house on Fisher Island (the house belonging to Quinn).
And of course he recognizes, especially, the home streaming in the first box—the Indian Creek home, his home.
“You’ve been surveilling our fucking houses?” Quinn says.
“Did you not, seventy-two hours ago, have a man at my house?” I say. “And at my kid’s place?”
Quinn leans forward toward me—that red suit, her polished hair, all of it still somehow in place.
“All due respect, this all started a long time before you got here,” she says.
“Which is why it would have made sense to leave me out of it…”
I shoot her a look, refusing to stand down.
“Everything would have gone on exactly as it had been going on,” I say. “If you didn’t feel the need to break things. To break the seal. Because now you’ve threatened me. And far worse you threatened my kid. And Nicholas’s grandchild. So now it’s very much about us. It’s about all of us.”
“All of us?” Frank says.
“I knew that you weren’t particularly trusting of the outside world, Frank, but even I was surprised how much you moved through your children’s properties,” Nicholas says. “And we have it all. Every wire transfer. Every package coming in and out of each residence. Everything on the home computers. Which means even your younger children, who have decided to start fresh, who, if you will, have tried to stay away from the family business… they are implicated too.”
Frank’s eyes go steely.
“Racketeering. Money laundering, mail fraud. Extortion. Conspiracy. Possession with the intent to distribute. No one’s hands are clean.”
“I don’t need the list.”
“Nevertheless. It’s all in the documents.”
Nicholas turns toward Teddy and Quinn. “It’s particularly unfortunate that you chose to take that phone call at your brother’s condominium in September of last year,” Nicholas says. “Even without Bradley’s direct knowledge, conspiracy to commit happening on an ADA’s property? The Feds won’t believe he wasn’t involved if you were careless enough to use his home and phone to conduct business. Not just on that occasion. But on five others that we documented.”
“Fuck you,” Teddy says.
“Fuck me?”
“You are involving innocent people in this.”
“I think, Teddy, if anyone should understand involving innocent people, it would be you and your sister…” Nicholas says.
Nicholas turns away, but Teddy is still staring at him, confused suddenly. And I see him start to wonder if Nicholas is referring to just the organization coming for Bailey and me. Or, rather, if Nicholas is referring to something else entirely.
Frank stops Teddy. He’s heard enough. “This kind of surveillance,” he says. “This has been years of planning.”
“I guess when you leave someone with nothing,” I say. “All they’ve got is time.”
Quinn looks at me. Then she turns away as she starts to put the pieces together. The pieces that lead this all back to Owen. Everything Owen had to do—had to risk—to hack into each of their systems. Everything he was able to get away with. Because at the end of the day he is smarter. He is smarter than all of them.
“So Owen is behind this?” she says.
“One could argue that you are, Quinn,” Nicholas says.
“How do you figure that?”
“None of this was put into action until we learned what you intended to do in regard to my family.”
