The outer office was empty, leaving the file cabinets unguarded. Evie was lousy at reading stacks of material, but where opportunity beckoned—her camera led the way.
* * *
Still exhilarated,terrified, and on edge by her daring break from routine the prior night, Ariel woke up Friday afternoon uncertain how to proceed.
Roark hadheldher on the bike.Touchedher. And she’d liked it, sort of. It had been tremendously over stimulating. She’d needed the solitary bike ride to soothe her rattled nerves—far preferable to head banging, she decided.
Oddly, meeting Evie and her dog had helped. Maybe she should get a dog. Or start simple, with a kitten. Would Mitch Turtle mind?
Those thoughts as she showered didn’t help her past the fact that Roark was out there, waiting for her.
She didn’t like this man/woman thing. It was nerve wracking—because parts of her liked it too well. And while Roark seemed interested, he wasn’t the kind of man who’d hang around forever playing babysitter for a nutcase.
Routine was necessary or she’d need more medication. She’d wasted most of her work hours yesterday. She didn’t have time for crawling in a hole and soothing herself.
go awayshe texted Roark while she dressed. She hoped he understood. He’d been extraordinarily patient last night in teaching her to ride.
Determined to help him in return, she sipped her tea in the blessedly empty kitchen, checked her game cameras, and returned to her desk early, bearing a piece of toast. She had wipes to keep her keyboard clean. She could change, just at her own pace.
Roark had been in her files.Once, she might have been angry, but she was learning to work with him. Her therapist would be proud.
He’d sent her an email flagging the bank account that seemed to be receiving some portion of his father’s ill-gotten gains with the message,We can reset the automatic transfer.
He could... uh.She emailed back:to what?
To go to our account. Victim’s account. Scammers Anonymous. Anywhere.
Theft, she retorted. But her mind whirled as she used a hack she’d developed to open the account labeled Whitesville Fishing. She could change the transfer information on any account in this bank—but eventually, someone would notice, and she’d get caught. She didn’t want to lower herself to the same levels as the criminals she investigated.
Right before her eyes, she watched a few hundred transferred from Whitesville Fishing’s checking account to a related savings account named Whitesville Phone Bank. Had his father really opened a savings account? Not if he was unfamiliar with how banks operated, as Roark claimed.
What did that accomplish?she emailed back.He still owns it.
Nothing. Yet. Let’s get paid.
That almost sounded suggestive. She watched as half the small sum vanished from the new account through a bank transfer to an email address that Ariel recognized as Pris’s.
Stealing from thieves. Cute.
Reparations. Fun.He included a link.More Fun.
This silly game wasn’t accomplishing anything, unless she reported the hack to her bank clients. She checked the link anyway.
A video of an old crone draped in black shawls appeared, accompanied by eerie drumming. The woman was creating a hexagram in multi-colored powders on a stone surface in what appeared to be a cavern. Unlit black candles adorned each angle of the pattern. Shouldn’t that be a pentagram?
A voice-over in sepulchral tones whispered, “A hex upon you, upon your cohorts, upon your gonads, upon your evil ways.”
The crone looked up directly into the camera through sunken dark eyes and heavy wrinkles. “Thy will be done.” She cackled, snapped her fingers, and the candles flamed on.
He was planning a costume party?
Dramatic,Ariel typed back, adding a sarcasm emoji.
My granny, the voodoo queen. We filmed her one Halloween.
And?
She was almost starting to enjoy this... not quite a conversation. She didn’t converse well, but typing gave her time to think and didn’t require that she read expressions or body language.