Ryker had been right—it took him barely any time to break into the nail salon using his lock-picking equipment. This was a small Cotswold town with low crime rates, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the security was so lax. Even so, I was on edge with my heart pounding out of my chest, constantly checking for any signs of movement in the darkness.
Once we were inside, we had another stressful fewminutes while Ry attempted to disable the alarm with the help of a little electronic gadget, and the red light on the keypad flashed in warning for the duration, but eventually, the gadget did its job. Then there was nothing to stop the three of us from creeping up to the first floor, our phone torches lighting the way.
The internal door that opened into the part of the building the accountant used had an electronic keypad as well as a standard lock, but Dan and Ryker made easy work of it. “Fucking hell,” I mumbled. “My best mates are criminals.”
“Yeah, I told you that earlier,” Dan said. “This isn’t new information. How many years have you known us?”
“It’s one thing to know it and another to see you two in action.”
“You’re one too, now. You’re our accomplice. We’ll have a ceremony later to celebrate.”
“Keep it down,” Ryker hissed as we entered the office. “Dan, stay by the door and keep a lookout. Jay, you’re with me.”
We moved deeper into the office. Ryker headed for a tall filing cabinet on the back wall, while I went for one of the two computers in the room. As I waited for it to boot up, I checked the desk drawers. People weren’t always security-conscious, especially in a place they considered a safe space, and did things like leave their passwords written down and lying around for anyone to find. Yes, my dad had done this, repeatedly, until I’d set him up with a password manager to use instead.
“I fucking knew it,” I whispered, fishing out a green Post-it with a string of letters and numbers scrawled on it. My gloved hands tapped out the passcode, and I was in. Just like that.
I knew the accountancy system was protected by heavy security, which was why I’d needed the assistance of a hacker in the first place, but I was hoping I could find something on the computer itself. I set up a search of the files for any results containing the mystery account number and sat back to wait.
Zero results.
Fuck. I knew it couldn’t be that easy, but a small, optimistic part of me had been hoping. I input another search, this time using the transaction names and codes.
Zero results. Again.
Ryker appeared at my side. “Anything?” When I shook my head, he growled under his breath. “Me neither. These fucking filing cabinets are sorted alphabetically by client, but we don’t know who the client is.”
I exhaled harshly as his previous words about my dad came to mind. “Attwood,” I ground out. “Try Attwood.”
He nodded, and he headed back over to the filing cabinet. There was a tremor in my hands as I typed my surname into the search bar.
Sixty-four results.
Steeling myself, I clicked on the first result on the list.
Twenty minutes later, and I hadn’t come up with anything. The results were all copies of letters and paperwork that had been sent to my dad regarding the end-of-year accounts and miscellaneous queries. While I was glad that I hadn’t found any evidence to suggest my dad was involved in this, I also hadn’t found any evidence to implicate anyone else.
Opening the search function up again, I typed six letters into the bar.
V O L K O V.
Zero results.
“Fuck.” Dropping my head into my hands, the hard plastic of my mask rubbing against the leather of my gloves, I groaned. Everything I tried led to another dead end. We’d broken into this office for nothing.
“Jay.”
The urgency in Ryker’s tone was like a shot of caffeine to my system. I jerked upright, my eyes going straight to the piece of paper he was sliding across the table.
“What the fuck? Is this an email? Where did you get this?”
“It was in an unmarked file right at the back of the bottom cabinet. It doesn’t go with anything else, and I almost dismissed it, but look. Try searching the emails for this address.” He tapped the top printed line.
I was already on it, pulling up the email client on the computer and searching for the address. A list appeared on the screen, and I clicked the first result.
“Fucking jackpot,” Ryker murmured, crowding in next to me.
Fucking jackpot, indeed.
