“A hacker?” He sounds almost amused. “You’ve been meeting hackers out here in the world? I bet he’s fucking impressed.”
“She. And yeah, she is. I don’t know yet, but she might be able to work on this,” I say. “Give us an update or something. She has other ideas that might tie in.”
Thinking on it now, Raven might have seen the flaw when she looked at Annalise’s programming. She might have found it and not even realized.
“Okay,” Jackson says, sounding confused. “I can drop off the paperwork later. There might be details she understands. And I hope I’m wrong, Mena. But it’s best to check, right?”
I nod that it is. Although I’m worried, I’m not sure this is as urgent as Jackson thinks. No one, including Leandra, ever mentioned a seven-year shutdown. Jackson probably read the paperwork wrong or it was never initiated. But we will definitely make sure.
“Now …” Jackson looks around the bleachers. “What the hell are you doing at this prep school? Is someone here involved with the academy?”
I smile because he’s pretty smart. Jackson always has a way of cutting right to what I’m thinking. And I have no reason to hide mymission from him now. He’s already dragged himself into it again.
“We’re looking for an investor,” I say. “One of the original investors, I guess.” I pause, looking at him. “Your mom never mentioned anything about original investors, did she? In any of her papers.”
“No, not that I’ve seen. In fact, Petrov is one of the few names ever mentioned.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” I say. “This investor is apparently still a big part of the financials within the corporation. Our hope is to find him and force him to shut it all down.”
“You want him to do it willingly?” he asks.
“That would be the goal, yeah,” I say.
“What would he be doing here?” he asks. “Why some shitty prep academy across the country?”
“The investor is unnamed in the paperwork, but Leandra thinks—”
Jackson bristles at her name, but I keep talking.
“—that he’s been laundering money through this school,” I say. “Leandra said the school was mentioned in the academy’s bank documents. She figured the investor is the father of a kid here. A boy.”
I point to where the players are running down the field. Jackson trails them with his eyes, studying them a moment longer, looking as unimpressed as I feel.
“Okay. What are you going to do when you find this investor guy?” he asks. “These are terrible people. They’re not going to just … stop.”
“I realize that,” I say. “We want to shut it down without exposing ourselves to the public. So we’ll have to find a way to convince him. One option: If we find his son, we’ll use him to extract information on the father. Something truly illegal that the investor wouldn’t want exposed.”
“You’re going to blackmail him,” Jackson says.
“We don’t want to,” I say, trying to explain. “But—”
“No, I understand,” he says, waving off my explanation. “I’ve seen enough to know that bad men don’t just give up power. It has to be taken from them.”
I stare at the side of Jackson’s face. I’m reminded that he hates the academy as much as we do. He may not be perfect, but he is good.
“We’re going to stop them,” I say, watching him. “They won’t win.”
“Can I help?” Jackson asks quietly. When he turns to me, I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “You can’t put yourself in any more danger.” I motion to his leg.
Jackson sniffs a laugh. “And you can’t tell me what to do.” He smiles softly, but there is catastrophic hurt on his face.
I long to fix it. To put my palm on his cheek and make it better.
But I don’t.
“I have to go,” Jackson says, grabbing his crutches. He gets to his feet, hopping a second and looking unsteady. “I’ll drop off the paperwork to the girls, but my number’s the same if you call again.”
