“I know.” Shaking my head, I give her a wry smirk. “I didn’t know there were two of them.”
She snickers and we turn back to the white board where we’ve laid out our strategy. Connor and Colt are stealing the secrets we need from the inside. Once we have those, we’re bringing in the big guns. Ethan gave us his contacts, including federal investigators with a tip line. We have the incriminating email thread from ten years ago between my parents, Jacqueline Landry, and Stalenko Corp detailing their dirty plan. Plus the evidence I recorded during our stakeout of Richard accepting a bribe.
On top of that, Connor handed over his entire blackmail file on Richard Landry—which he made me pay for, the little fucker. When I told Colt, he cracked up about it and called it good business practice.
What’s important is that Richard can’t get out of this. They were idiots to keep track of their meetings and bribery over the years, and now we’ll use it against him. Maisy and I are going to nail his ass to the wall and force him to resign, or every news outlet in Ridgeview will have a juicy new scandal to rock the town’s idyllic mountainside foundation.
After I found out my parents weren’t who I thought they were, I was ready to wash my hands of all this and walk away, but Maisy was right. If we don’t do something about this, they get away with murder and continue to make money off the drugs they’re funneling into the world.
“It’s done.” Devlin Murphy moves like a shadow, creeping up behind us.
It’s unsettling he could sneak up on me. Blair pulled the same trick on me an hour ago when she showed up at my elbow and almost gave me a fucking heart attack. I think she knew it, too; she gave me this smug little smirk and I heard her husky laugh as she turned away.
He pushes fingers through his black hair and hands a legal pad to Maisy with notes from the phone call he’s been on for most of the morning. “The DEA and FDA contacts your journalist friend gave you believed I was my dad on the phone and were pretty disturbed to hear about synthetic opiates being cooked up for sale to the black market. They insinuated there was an influx of the hard stuff flooding the streets and their west coast offices haven’t been able to trace the source. They took down my number and said they’d be in touch if they needed to go over more questions.”
“Thanks, Dev,” Maisy says. “That gives this more credibility if it comes from someone as well known in the medical field as your dad is.”
Devlin grimaces, like hearing it pains him. He shrugs. “Lucas and I are writing up testimonies, too.” He motions with a nod of his head to the couch, where the guy who told me about his Jeep at the bakery sits with his girlfriend and Blair. “I paid your dad to keep Blair’s arrest off the record when I bailed her out, and Lucas is recounting the poker nights at his house where your dad accepted bribes.”
“Good,” I say.
“Love a good takedown before lunch,” Devlin says with a glint in his gaze that says everything I need to know about him. “Too bad there wasn’t a need for any casual B and E this time around.” His gaze cuts to Blair and fills with fondness. “I have missed a certain little thief’s wily ways,” he murmurs more to himself than us.
“Yes!” Connor cheers with his fists in the air while Colt makes a racket. He pulls Thea into his lap to celebrate. “Boo-fuckin’-ya, baby!”
I hope their celebration means good news. If they found the payout that has eluded the searching Maisy and I have done in the last few weeks, we’ll finally be set.
It’s strange to let this many people in, to have all this help when before it was hard enough to let Colton sniff out my secrets, to let Maisy see the full extent of the pain infecting my life. Yet somehow it feels right. I don’t know her friends very well, but they dropped everything to help us.
“Think it’ll be enough?” Maisy asks once Devlin goes back to the group on my couch.
“It’ll have to be.”
We’re more than covered with incriminating proof to take Richard out. What r
emains to be seen is how it will affect Nexus Lab to operate without one of their obedient pieces on the board while we wait for the federal investigators to make their move.
It’s sunny and bright the day Richard Landry faces the implosion of his career. The Ridgeview Police Department is quiet when I park the bike out front. The old Gold Rush era architecture makes it look like it belongs in a movie, matching many of the historic buildings in town.
Maisy gets off the back of the bike and holds her hand out for me to take. I grin as I lace our fingers together. Her and me, us against the goddamn world. She joked once about my warehouse being like the Batcave, but this is the first time I’ve felt a little like a hero.
Imagine it—me, the black shadow nightmare in this town, the hero of the story.
One thing’s for sure, I’ve got the girl and I’m not letting her go.
“Let’s do this,” she says, spine straight and head held high. She looks like a firecracker, fierce and determined, set to go to war. I can’t help pulling her into me for a kiss, sweeping my tongue into her mouth. The curve of her smile against my lips owns every beat of my heart. “Ready to fuck some shit up?”
It’s taken us a few days to coordinate the proof we’ve gathered between what we already had and what her friends helped us dig up, but now we’re ready.
“Yes. Let’s go take a swing at an ugly empire.”
Maisy pretends to fire off pistols with her fingers and winks at me, stirring a flutter in my chest. Hand in hand, we walk into the station. It’s so obvious to me now, watching her slip into the good girl mask everyone around her saw her with. That was never the real her, just the way everyone expected her to act. She takes us right up to the front desk and tilts her head with this coy smile on her face.
“Hey, Officer Dean. How’s your cat doing? I hope he adjusted to the diet.”
“Maisy,” the officer greets without suspecting anything. His gaze guts to me once with a hint of wariness, but returns to her. “Waffle is doing good, thanks for remembering.”
“I’m so glad to hear it.” She folds her arms over the high countertop. “We’re supposed to meet my dad for lunch. Is he in his office?”