A slow smile tugged on his mouth. “Go on.”
I gave him a mischievous grin. “What do you think about doing a little undercover work?”
He looked amused. “What do you have in mind?”
“We go as a couple looking to have him develop our commercial space.”
“It would get us in the door.” He nodded. “Sounds good, but he’s still not gonna give us the answers we’re after. Not unless we use force or intimidation.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “We know Knox is keeping girls at one or more of his houses. We need a paper trail.”
“You want access to his files.”
I nodded. “Which he likely keeps on his computer.”
“Were you gonna steal it? We’ll break cover once he realizes it’s gone, which makes going undercover pointless.”
“No,” I said, holding his gaze. “You’re gonna distract him while I copy his files to an external hard drive.”
He studied me for a moment, then laughed. “You do realize it’s not gonna be that easy.”
“Of course it’s not going to be easy, but I’ve met this guy before. He likes to impress. We’ll have him take us to his office, get him to sign into his computer, then you’ll find a way to get him out of the room so I can make the transfer. If we’ve got some big project he really wants, he’ll do anything to impress you.”
He rubbed his jaw, focusing on the wall behind me. “It might work.”
“It could definitely work.”
“One small problem,” he said. “His sensitive files likely have passwords. If they’re complicated, then they’ll be hard to crack.”
I considered it. “Not if he was sent the passwords via email.”
“You’re gonna copy his emails too?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. I can search the files and open a few to see if they have passwords. If they do, then I’ll look for emails that could have them. Like from attorneys or accountants.”
He considered it for several seconds. “Even if we find out who he uses for an accountant, we can’t assume it’ll help us discover Knox’s.”
“I’m not delusional,” I said. “But there might be some kind of paper trail tying Harlan to Knox. Right now, all we know is that girls were kept at a house he owned.” I grimaced. “And I used past tense, because we both know they’ll probably move them as soon as they realize Buddy’s not coming back.”
He nodded.
Then I asked what I’d been wanting to know but was hesitant to ask. “Where is Buddy right now?”
He eyed me cautiously. “You mean, is he dead?”
“If he is, I suppose that would partially answer my question.”
He gave me a forced smile. “He’s currently alive. In case I need more from him.”
“You think he held back information?”
“No, I think he told me everything he knows, but when we learn something new, I might want to run it by him to verify.”
“And then you’ll…”
His face went blank. “He may have other purposes.”
“Such as?”
