“But why our family? Erika was threatened.” Clint’s jaw turns to granite.
“We know. Any way we can help, we will.” Lucas nudges Candace, who is pecking out something on her phone. “We’re on your side. Both of us. We thought we had the chance to start new with our relationships and our careers.” Lucas puts down his fork and knife on the side of his plate. “But he found out about Candace’s trouble in Arizona. She hadn’t disclosed the arrest, and even though she was completely cleared, it was a fireable offense. Instead of letting her go, she wasencouragedto take side jobs. Nothing illegal. Nothing like that.”
Candace jumps in. “Some scouting jobs, private security. Occasionally an interesting character that needed to be picked up or dropped off. I was always paid through this app—off-the-books, of course.” I stop chewing. Suddenly I know who. Of course he foundout. His expertise is reading people. He made up the story of my office trashing at the perfect time to make me sign the restraining order. When Betsey showed up at our house desperate on Sunday, he must have unleashed his hounds on Erika. My heart slams against my ribs.
“The only thing is—right now, we don’t have anything concrete tying anyone criminally to the things that have happened to your family.” Lucas’s cheeks grow round as he blows air out. “I just wonder if there might be another way.”
“No.” Clint’s voice is raised, his body rigid. “We aren’t getting sucked into your messed-up schemes.”
The older guys in the booth behind Lucas and Candace peer over at us. They wait a few beats before continuing their conversation, probably now lending one ear to ours.
Lucas’s eyes, so blue, so reminiscent of Erika’s, blink a few times. “Just hear me out. We probably have enough for the SEC to show how our firm was misled into leveraging those securities against the prospectus, but we don’t know if there are other firms involved.”
While they chat about how much we still don’t know, I pick up Clint’s phone and text Rob a question for Erika, asking him to wake her up.
“That’s enough. We’re going to the police, and we’ll let the SEC investigate the rest. I’m protecting my family,” Clint growls.
Lucas shakes his head. “We need more.”
Clint starts to argue.
But I talk over him. “Clint is right—we need to protect our family—but hear me out. I might have an idea.”
56
“I WAS THINKING ABOUTsomething Erika told me yesterday,” I say, glancing up from Erika’s response to the question I texted.
Over the next few minutes, I explain about the social networking connection of payment apps. If you use one of these services, you can let your friends or even the whole world know you’ve gifted or paid someone. If you get your nails done with your girlfriends, you can put a little polish bottle in the transaction feed. I go on to explain how Erika’s tutoring partner has been able to track the trends in the notifications and see the details. “If we knew how everyone was being paid, we might be able to track it.”
“Actually, I think I have someone who could help.” Candace scrolls on her phone. “If we knew Hippa would be used again—”
“That’s the same app,” I say. “Can we track it even if the user has turned off the social announcement setting?”
“Yes. I think we can.” Candace continues to explain about a friend of hers who’s a genius at these kinds of things.
Clint makes a noise that sounds like a growl. “I don’t like this. I don’t like using anyone’s shady friends to hack into apps. We need to get back to our kids and then meet up with the police. None of this is convincing me to delay.”
“Sorry,” Candace says in a small voice, having gotten quite animated in her description.
Her apology hits me. She hasn’t actually apologized for getting herself embedded in all this. Instead, she’s said a lot about how it wasn’t her fault.
As if she also recognizes her lack of accountability, she doubles down. “I am truly sorry. Each time I was paid for a security task, I was paid using the same app by the same username. I think Meredith is onto something.”
“Honey.” I shift toward Clint. “If someone was paid to harass our daughter online and spray-paint our garage and car, we can trap them.”
“Ifthe same app was used to pay everyone,” Clint says.
“Candace. Can your friend put a tickler on the account that was used? If it’s used again, we can get a ping on the account.” I glance at Clint.
“A lot of what-ifs you’re relying on,” he says.
“True,” says Lucas. “But we could get evidence.”
“Evidence of criminal payoffs to the people who went after our family.” I squeeze Clint’s hand again.
“But we can’t just wait around for him to come up with another way to harass us.” Clint leans forward, the gears ticking in his head.
“We could set up a fake meet at our house. Maybe I make it known that I’m going to try to talk to Betsey.” A sick feeling crawls up my chest. “But maybe not. What if this is bigger? What if she’s in trouble? The SEC said they didn’t know where she was.”
