Jax acted like he did know. “And you were so grateful you agreed to…what? Interview Ellayna Feathers against your better judgment?”
“The whole podcast was their idea.” He shrugged. “I’m a crime buff, but I’ve never done anything like that before. They set it all up. I just had to record the episodes, and they made sure it got a lot of downloads.”
Kenna said, “And you never once wondered why they were using you as a pawn?”
“I knew that’s what was happening.” He sniffed again. “It got the Ukrainians off my back. They were about to kill me if I didn’t come up with the fifteen thousand I owed them.”
Definitely a pawn.
They’d found a guy stuck between a rock and a hard place, owing dangerous people money he didn’t have. In came a beautiful woman with a proposition that got him out of his mess, no big deal—he didn’t have to do that much. Just talk about something he loved, true crimes.
Kenna could imagine the entire conversation. Sat across the table from a trained asset who used her looks and her powers of persuasion, Wallace had fallen for it all. Never once realizing that he was getting into a worse situation than he was previously in. At least, not until it was too late.
Kenna needed him on the defensive so he would say more than he intended, so she pressed him. “And you didn’t ask too many questions because it was a pretty sweet gig. Right? She was gorgeous and interested in you. She persuaded you that you’d been thinking about doing a podcast for a while.”
Wallace glanced to the side. “After I interviewed Ellayna, I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“But the episodes were released anyway,” Jax said. “You didn’t stop it from going live.”
“I didn’t put those together. They did.” Wallace looked down at the blanket over his lap. “I came into the office one morning, and someone had been in there.”
“Did you report a break-in to the police?” the officer asked.
Wallace said, “No, but I knew it was her. The episodes had been loaded onto the portal that publishes them, and I couldn’t delete them. I couldn’t even access it because they changed the password. They locked me out of it completely, and then yesterday, she jumps me.”
After a few seconds of quiet, the officer said, “You mentioned a secret society?” He didn’t seem to believe it was a real thing.
Too bad he was wrong. That part, at least, had been the truth. Which made it interesting that the asset had chosen to share it with him. Using the secret as part of her persuasion.
Wallace said, “That’s what she told me. At first, I thought she was crazy, right? But she had powerful people behind her, because I knew my computer had been hacked. They obviously know how to spoof a person’s voice since they added the intro and the outro to my podcast interview with Ellayna. There was a whole spiel in there that I never said.”
“Like software that mimics your voice?” Jax asked.
Both of them had seenDominatuscomputer software that could make it look like someone was on a video call, or some other kind of media, when they weren’t. As long as there was someone to say the words, the program superimposed an avatar of the person over the top. They’d fooled plenty of people that way.
Wallace shrugged. “They were watching me. I found bugs in my house, and there were weird deposits and withdrawals in my bank account. Stuff like that. When I told her I wanted out, she said the job had to be finished. But I wasn’t going to do more.”
“Do you know why they wanted the podcast to happen?” Since it was about her, Kenna figured she was at least partly connected to the reason why this had been their plan. Even if it was only a distraction.
Wallace said, “They wanted your attention. They wanted the story out.”
Maybe. Was that the truth, or simply what Wallace believed?
“They wanted me distracted,” Kenna countered. “That’s why they had you interview Ellayna. It was about throwing me off my game and making it harder for me to realize what was really going on.”
Problem with that was she still didn’t exactly know what was really going on.
At least, not more than the fact that a family had been kidnapped. “She didn’t say anything about Ellayna, Crystal, and Abe being taken and kept somewhere?”
“Of course not! I’d tell you.” Wallace flushed. “They’re really missing?”
Jax said, “Abe’s father, Crystal’s ex, was shot in his home. People are dying, and you’re in the middle of this.” After a moment’s pause, he asked, “Did you kill Marcus Neerwood?”
“What? Of course not!”
It seemed to Kenna like the conversation was going around in circles.
“If anyone did, it’s Sylvia. She’s the one who tried to kill me. Of course she killed that guy. She’s the one that’s crazy, not me.”
