He smelled so good that she could forgive his disapproving frown. She kissed his newly shaven jaw. “I don’t know how Roark is planning on stopping... miscreants.” She savored the lovely word. “But I’m all in for it.”
Reuben took his usual seat across from Loretta. “He’s writing a program that will hack phones, if we can persuade the scammers to download it. Then we can freeze their devices, which will obliterate their contact lists, force them to buy new phones. and slow down their depredations—unless they have backup. We need something more complex, but there isn’t enough time.”
“Roark hopes to add a phone locater to the app eventually. For right now, he assumes he only has contact numbers from his father’s operation. Locating their hang-out shouldn’t be difficult.” Jax accepted the oatmeal Evie handed him and stirred in milk and honey. “Having them arrested is another story. People need to press charges.”
“I take it you wish to catch a criminal consortium?” Rossi toasted his bread in the frying pan as Reuben had.
“Scammers,” Reuben replied, with his mouth full. “Plain and simple.”
Evie left them to discuss Roark’s sting. She’d help tomorrow where she could, but she didn’t understand much of it. She couldn’tseepeople over a phone any more than she could understand them by reading Reuben’s documents. It was becoming increasingly apparent that her services were useless in providing evidence so justice could be done.
Discouraged, she left the others to clean up and picked up her doggie customers for their walk. It had felt really good helping bring down Mayor Blockhead and his attempt to steal her family’s land. And she was glad she’d been able to help Jax uncover the voting machinemiscreants.But she was fooling herself to think they could stop anything apparently as pervasive as scammers. These were organized gangs!
She couldn’t imagine Bill Bibb and Ursula carrying automatic weapons, but they wielded their power well without guns. Of course, she didn’t think they were the common garden variety scammer like Roark’s dad. They might have similar victims, but Sunshine gave new meaning to organized crime.
Happily imagining barging in on a Sunshine board of director’s meeting with a dozen poltergeists and hexing them all, Evie walked the dogs up Witch Hill and let them loose to sniff and chase to their doggie delight.
To her amazement, Ariel appeared over the hill, wobbling on a wide-tire bike down the woodland path.
She halted at sight of Evie. Her normally blank expression slowly opened to a revealing grin. “I practiced all night.”
“Pretty good, but you can break your neck riding over those tree roots. Where’s Roark?” Evie knew better than to approach Jax’s younger sister. Ariel had issues and had to be left to make her own decision to advance.
“Plotting.” She seemed prepared to retreat, but Mavis’s golden lab ran over to sniff her, and she hesitated.
“Honey is friendly. You can pet her. She’s too dumb for Iddy to teach communication, but she knows better than to lick you to death.” Evie rubbed the ears of an old beagle and kept her distance while Ariel and Honey got to know each other. She didn’t think Ariel any better at communication than the dog, but petting and licking worked on some level.
She’d like to know more about Roark’s plotting, but she figured Ariel couldn’t explain. Instead, she nodded at a place near Ariel. “You’re almost at the cemetery wall. I like to go through and look up the names of my ancestors. There are some really old plants in there, too, if you’re interested.”
Ariel nodded uncertainly. “Thank you.” Apparently having as much stimulation as she could endure, she tugged the bike around. “See you.” And she pedaled off.
Evie whistled to bring Honey back. Whatever magic Roark was wreaking on Ariel was working to drag the hermit out like this. Maybe he had a little of his voodoo grandma in him.
Maybe he should bring in his grandma on his sting. Hex the miscreants!
Would hexing work on Sunshine’s board of directors? How superstitious were they? Wouldn’t a gaggle of gangsters be paranoid already?
How far could a good hex go?
* * *
Roark pacedthe whole time Ariel was out of sight of her game cameras.
They’d been up all night while she learned to balance on her new bike, practicing on the relatively flat road. She’d even allowed him to hold her up, which hadn’t helped his frustration at all. Her waist was tiny, but she had breasts under those stiff shirts. He was thinking he should go back to sleeping in the woods.
And then, instead of going to bed as usual, the damned female had taken off on her own!
Jax would chop him into sushi if anything happened to his kid sister.
Roark breathed a sigh of relief when she returned into view of the camera. Now he could work again—if only he’d quit watching Ariel. She was too slender, but in that tailored red shirt with all that long black hair...
Stop it, stupid.
She didn’t even bother to check on him when she came inside. She went directly to her room to shower, leaving him with boring code and a cockstand that wouldn’t go away.
He needed to use her computers while she slept. He couldn’t waste time on a ten-mile hike to work off steam.
Cursing, he sent a copy of his telephone-hack program to Reuben to test and started writing scripts for his phone bank helpers. Pris was rounding up victims willing to have their phone calls forwarded. She was probably using mental hoodoo to convince them.