Chapter 2

I barely slept last night. I kept tossing and turning throughout the night, as memories of my past life plagued me. And, whenever I shot awake, my mind just wouldn’t stop revolving around everything Tim and I found out the day before, and the possibility of finally repaying that bastard for everything he did. But what really wouldn’t let me rest were the implications of what we had discovered.

What did we know for sure?

We knew that someone falsified evidence of my mother’s affair. We knew that someone was willing to pay a lot of money to make this happen, since surveilling someone over such a long time was not cheap.

What could I safely assume?

It simply didn’t make sense for my mother to try and steal that insider information from the Senator. As I pointed out to Breston, she could’ve walked away with A LOT more than four million dollars, had she just divorced him. So, whoever was behind this had access to the senator’s locked-away business documents. Since I didn’t deem the man capable of pulling this off himself, he probably hired someone to complete this framing job.

So, the real question was: Whose leg was I going to piss on by investigating all of this?

Realizing that it was futile to try and get any more sleep, I decided to look into that gigolo they had used to frame my mother. I got out of bed, started my computer, and, while I waited for it to finish its startup routine, looked over all the information Breston had supplied regarding Carver. When I then looked up his address, however, all the results I found were online articles from Austin’s local news agencies. When I clicked on the first result, I felt my stomach drop.

AUSTIN, Texas - Austin firefighters responded to a house fire in the 8800 block of Black Oak Street near Anderson Mill.

AFD says they completed their search and, unfortunately, one person, who is believed to be the owner of the home, was sleeping inside when the fire caused the roof to partially collapse. There was a multi-agency response. The preliminary report by AFD fire investigators indicates the cause to be a cable fire caused by a faulty fuse box, as several of the fuses had seemingly been bypassed using car parts.

It took me several minutes, during which I had to force myself to keep my breathing under control, before I could pull myself away from the monitor by leaning back in my chair. Sure, it could very well have been an actual accident. I had read in Breston’s report that Carver was indeed a car mechanic, so the car parts in the breaker box weren’t a completely outrageous claim.

It was clear to me that I had to rethink my plans. What little plans I had so far, that is. It wasn’t just Carver who was gone now. The condo’s bedroom, which was the “crime scene” of my mother’s supposed affair, was also gone. All the evidence and clues that might have pointed to the whole thing being staged were gone.

The next thing I realized was that, if Carver’s death wasn’t an accident, and I found a way to prove this, it could cast serious doubt onto the allegations against my mother. The timing of her lover’s involuntary departure, right when we found out that he had lied about the duration of their affair, was too striking. Especially since she was in custody when the fire started, so it would be hard to spin this as her trying to get rid of witnesses.

Before I could actually come to any real conclusions about which further steps would now be necessary, however, my doorbell rang. I looked at the clock and, wondering who would want to disturb me at ten a.m. on a Sunday, got up to open the door. Before I had a chance, though, I heard a key being inserted into the lock and the door open.

“YO, PAUL!” I heard Tim’s voice shout out from the hallway and instantly got an annoyed look on my face. “I know this is your apartment and all, but please don’t be naked right now. I see enough of that in the gym’s locker room.”

As he finished that sentence, he stumbled into my living room covering his eyes with one hand, while his other hand was holding a box full of electronics.

“It’s okay, Tim. You can look. Though, given how you - once again - just waltzed in here, maybe I should draw blank anyway,” I mused.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but we kinda need to talk. Though...” He paused to place the box with the electronic devices and cables on my dining table and pulled out his phone, before turning off the lights in the room and drawing the curtains shut. “ ... that’ll have to wait until we checked the apartment.”

“Check for what?” I asked with a raised eyebrow at his antics.

“Cameras. Pull out your company phone.” I decided not to question him. He liked to take the piss and crack weird jokes, but he’s not the type to pull pranks, and certainly not when it came to his work. “Use the front-facing camera like you’re taking a selfie to check around.”

“Tim? How’s that gonna reveal any cameras?”

“Most surveillance cameras have an infrared LED for night vision. The camera on the backside of your company phone has one as well. The one on the front doesn’t. Look.”

As he explained it, he stepped next to me and pointed his phone downwards so, looking at the display, we saw our faces as well as my smoke detector that was glued to the ceiling above us. Around the center of said smoke detector, right where the slots in the housing were, we could see a bright and almost white dot. When I looked up at the ceiling, there was no such dot visible in the smoke detector.

“You’re shitting me,” I breathed out.

“Don’t freak out, yet. Almost all modern smoke detectors have an infrared or ultraviolet LED in combination with a photodiode. That’s how they work. They detect when the particles in the smoke scatter that light. We’ll need to take them apart to be sure, but, as long as you only see one bright dot through your phone, it’s unlikely someone put a camera in there. Unless they replaced the whole thing with a fake housing that only contains a camera. But now you know what to look for.”

I nodded and got to work in my bedroom while he continued in my living room. After about half an hour of diligent search, we took off all the smoke detectors and took them apart to be absolutely sure that the LEDs we saw actually belonged to a smoke detector. That’s when I heard the doorbell again, but this time the person on the other side waited for me to open the door.

To my surprise, it was Bill!

“Boss! What’re you doing here?” I asked perplexed and a little overwhelmed by everything that was happening this morning.

“Morning Paul,” he slightly lifted a paper holder containing two cups of Starbucks coffee, as if to say ‘I bring gifts’.

I stepped aside to let him enter and led him into my kitchen area, where he stopped in his tracks upon seeing Tim tinkering with my smoke detectors. Interestingly, he just sighed before shaking his head.

“Morning, Kid. Should’ve known you’d already be here,” Bill mumbled before taking a seat at the small table.

“Mornin’ Boss,” Tim greeted him without taking his eyes off his work.

“I take it you both watched the news?” Bill commented in a resigned voice, pointing a finger at the devices Tim was putting back together.

“Hm,” was Tim’s comment, and the indifference of that sound took me aback.

“Wait. You know?” I asked, perplexed. “How!?”

“Uh ... well...” For the first time since he sat down, his hands stopped working. “After you left yesterday, I set up something like a Google Alert. So, when the first report about the fire was published, my phone woke me up. And, given how we know that your mom was framed using hidden cameras...” His voice trailed off as he gestured towards his phone, telling me why he saw the need to check the apartment before we could talk.

“Neither this Vic’s name nor address has made its way to the press, though,” Bill commented, and Tim suddenly got visibly uncomfortable.

“I said ‘something like a Google Alert’, didn’t I?” he defended himself, causing Bill to shake his head in disapproval. Whatever he was talking about, Bill seemed to have an idea, and it probably wasn’t entirely legal.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Tim, but I only met with Breston for the first time yesterday. I doubt I could already have a target on my back,” I chuckled, though that stopped when I noticed Bill’s facial expression.

“Mind filling me in on what you boys found out so far?” he asked, and, after a few short seconds of contemplation, I nodded and told him everything. After all, these two people were probably the ones I trusted the most in my life.

I spent about fifteen minutes relating everything I knew, while Bill sat with a stoic face perfectly devoid of emotion. Though, it seemed like the wrinkles and crevices in his face deepened a little more the further I got in my report. When I finished, he just sighed.

“Paul ... I don’t think I can talk you out of this, can I?”

That confused me.

“No,” I replied in determination. “I honestly don’t care about the woman rotting in jail. But this is just too good of a chance to finally get one over that bastard, and I’m not letting it go. Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I’d prefer someone I don’t care about to get himself killed while working this case,” Bill replied with a sad smile that almost shocked me. “Listen to me. Why do you think your mother is in jail right now?”

“Either someone wanted to get rid of her, or they were trying to paint her family in a bad light,” I responded, to which Tim nodded in approval.

“Sure,” Bill nodded just like Tim had before. “Not what I was talking about, though. I wasn’t asking about their motive, but trying to point out how far they are willing to go. Someone threw millions of dollars out the window to get this done, and now they most likely killed someone to hide evidence. What does that tell us about the people in charge of this?”

“That they’re ruthless?” I tried, but Bill slammed his hand onto the table in a sudden burst of anger, making both Tim and me jump a little.

“No! It tells you that they stand to lose something. Think, you two idiots! They didn’t even know for sure whether you and that lawyer would find anything. They didn’t have the time to bug your place. They might have followed the lawyer here and listened in on your conversation with a dish antenna or something, but he didn’t tell you anything that wasn’t already included in the case files. The actual discovery of the forged photographs was made at the Kid’s place. And I know his office, there are no outside windows since the paranoid little shit bricked them up when he basically turned the room into a Faraday cage. They couldn’t have learned what you two talked about, meaning they killed someone just in case!”

“Well ... couldn’t they have done it so they won’t have to pay him?” Tim quipped, though Bill wouldn’t have any of it.

“Kid, they gave away four million dollars just to make it look like his mother was paid for the bank intel. You think they would then rather murder someone than pay the few dozen grand he was probably waiting for?” Hearing that, Tim conceded the point with a shrug. “Also, this tells you that whoever is behind this is well organized. You’re up against multiple opponents, while your stepfather is probably just the one paying them.”

“What makes you so sure he was killed in the first place, though?” I had to ask.

“AH!” Tim suddenly called out before he dug his hands into the box he showed up with and, from underneath all the electronics, produced a small binder.

“What’s this?” Bill eyed him in suspicion.

“This...” Tim said in a triumphant voice before dropping the file onto the table and opening it. “ ... is the AFD Chief investigator’s preliminary report about the fire that killed Carver.”

I watched Bill’s eyes grow just as big as mine.

“How the hell did you get that!?” I asked incredulously.

“What did you do?” Bill asked with an almost threat in his voice as his expression darkened.

“Calm down, I didn’t break any laws or hack into anything,” Tim smirked. “Except Betty.”

“You ... what? What’s Betty?”

“Betty is the Chief Investigators secretary,” Tim shrugged. “Was on the phone with her for almost an hour. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, I have to say. The whole call, I kept imagining her as that peroxide blonde with fake fingernails just long enough to stop her from typing properly, but who got hired anyway because of her two massive...”

“Get to the point, Kid!” Bill sighed in annoyed resignation.

“Right. Sorry.” Tim paused for a second to look at the report and compose himself. “Betty is not exactly a sucker for protocol and regulations, so, using the tricks Micheal taught me,...” At this point, Bill looked up at the ceiling while mumbling something unintelligible. “ ... it was relatively easy to talk her into mailing it to me after I claimed to work for the insurance company. According to the report, the fire pattern points to it starting in the bedroom where Carver was sleeping. They found a burst whisky bottle in the area that was burned worst, so they believe that acted as an accelerant. But ... since the coroner is a little flooded at the moment, it’ll take them a few days to check whether he actually drank any of it. So, there’s no way to tell if someone helped that fire along.”

“What about the source of the fire?” Bill asked.

“The fire’s origin seems to be...” His finger ran over the lines of the paper in a searching manner. “Ah, started at the bedside table. They suspect faulty wiring in the lamp. When they checked the fuse box, they discovered that he had bridged the breaker using a faulty 450Amp safety fuse usually found in motorhomes.”

Bill looked thoughtful for a minute before shaking his head.

“So ... Carver accidentally pours a bottle of whisky over the only lamp with faulty wiring, that is plugged into the only socket in the house that is secured by a faulty fuse, right when you boys find out that he lied about the details of his involvement with Paul’s mother? With this timing, I don’t buy that. I’d say, whoever is behind this scheme went over their evidence one more time because they learned about the lawyer contacting you. Then they discovered the same mistake you found and did the only sensible thing to stop anyone from following up on that lead.”

I didn’t like it, but he had a point.

“Did you just call the possible murder of an accomplice the ‘sensible thing to do’?” Tim asked, sounding almost impressed.

“Kid, I’ve been around long enough to know that most people are greedy and selfish. Everybody has their price, and the less attached they are to a potential target, the lower that price turns out to be. Nowadays, you can order a hit on someone for two hundred bucks and a bottle of booze, if you’re okay with the result being messy. So, right now, if I can’t talk you out of this, we need to talk about your safety.”

“Ah!” Tim called out again as if he remembered something, before grabbing the box he brought with him and pulling a small wireless camera out of it. “I thought, maybe, we wire up your apartment and then move you into my old one downstairs.”

After he said that, he gave Bill and me a questioning look, while the both of us blinked at him.

“You still have your own apartment?” Bill finally asked.

“Yeah. Remember how the landlord had me pay the rent six months in advance because I was still a minor when I originally signed the lease, and he was worried I’d bail on him after wrecking the place?” Tim asked him back, and I saw understanding light up in Bill’s eyes, accompanied by a small grin. “After I moved back home three months ago, I kinda neglected to look for someone to take over the lease. You know, in case things don’t work out with my mom and all. So ... it’s still all paid up ‘till the end of November.”

I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility, but, now that he laid it all out, it made sense. The main reason why I connected with our IT Monkey, despite him being fifteen when he started working in our firm, was that he, too, had a shit pair of neglectful parents. I never told him the peculiarities of my own upbringing, but we still bonded when I tried to help him out and vouched for him with my/our landlord so he could get away from those people. While I don’t know the details of what happened since then, he recently somehow managed to reconnect with his family and ultimately moved back in with them. I guess he wanted to keep the apartment as a kind of insurance policy, so he knew he could always leave again should things turn sideways again.

“I like the idea, Kid.” Bill was still grinning when he said that. “Though, I seem to remember you ranting for an hour straight about how wireless cameras are crap.”

“And that statement still stands!” Tim pointed his finger at our boss. “But we only need to transmit the signal one floor down, so chances of the baddies picking it up and using it for themselves are slim. And in the unlikely event of a neighbor stumbling upon the signal, they’ll only get a feed of his apartment instead of Paul running around in the buff after one of his half-hour showers or something.”

“That ... was an oddly specific example we will talk about another time,” I commented drily before turning my attention towards Bill. “What do you think?”

To my surprise, the slight grin was gone from Bill’s face as he contemplated my question. Tim and I both shared a questioning look as we watched him for a good minute before he finally sighed and spoke up.

“On one hand, I like the idea of having a surveillance station so close by. It’ll allow us to lure them in, in case they keep tabs on you. They’d see you still enter the same building as you always do, making it less likely for them to find out you moved. And, if they really were to come after you and break into your apartment, we would be close by to apprehend them.” Then he paused for a moment, before releasing another sigh. “On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of you trying to apprehend them in the first place.”

“What? Why?”

“Paul ... I already told you that these people are not to be taken lightly. Yes, you don’t necessarily need a pro assassin to get a hit done on someone, but, considering everything else that has happened in this case so far, ... I’m convinced these guys are professionals.”

While I appreciated him worrying for me, I somehow didn’t like the implication that I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself. Though, objectively speaking, he was right, and I knew it.

“Boss, I’m not gonna run in and try to arrest them! I understand that this is to give me a head start if they come for me.”

He looked at me as if to assess my honesty, which, at first, kinda pissed me off. Though, as I watched his expression, I noticed something else. He didn’t doubt me. He was genuinely worried about me! That, I appreciated.

“Fine,” he conceded. “Let’s get you moved downstairs then.”

And with that, he got up from the table and beckoned us to get to work.

It didn’t take too long, though. I packed up my laptop and a few clothes, but when I went into the bathroom to pack up my toiletries, Tim stopped me.

“Don’t bother with those. I have pre-packaged convenience kits in the bathrooms downstairs.”

I wanted to pack up my stuff regardless, but then I saw Bill walking past while pointing at Tim and vigorously nodding his head as if to tell me that I should listen to him. So, instead, I asked the next thing that was on my mind.

“Why do you have pre-packed convenience kits in your abandoned apartment? Why do you have them at all!?”

Hearing that, he shuffled his feed in an obvious display of embarrassment, before he simply said “Don’t ask stupid questions” and moved away as Bill reentered the room and spoke up.

“If those guys show up and go through your stuff, it shouldn’t look like you moved out. Only take what you absolutely need, like some clothes. Everything else we can get new. Even food. If someone comes looking for you and finds your fridge has been relieved of all perishables, it’ll send a clear signal that you no longer live here. Then they’ll realize they’ve been played and leave before we can do shit about it.”

With that said, I grabbed my clothes and accompanied Tim into his old apartment. Looking around, I found myself confronted with Tim’s peculiar taste. Everything was white or black, with glossy surfaces, giving it that sterile and cold feeling. Then, however, I realized with surprise that it was still fully furnished despite nobody living here, so I asked him about it.

“Well, this apartment is a lot bigger than my old room in the house,” he explained while shrugging his shoulders. “And we didn’t need any more cooking- and tableware in the house. So, we basically left most of the furniture behind. Fridge is basically empty right now, though.”

As he said that, he opened the fridge, showing nothing but a six-pack of Heineken beer, which I couldn’t help but laugh about, causing Tim to shrug his shoulders once more.

“What can I say? I figured, if things with the family went south again and I’d move back, I could use those to lure you down here and listen to me vent.”

After he showed me that his abandoned apartment held everything I would need to live in it, apart from fresh food, Tim hid the cameras in my own apartment while Bill and I set up the portable surveillance station Tim must have dropped off before walking through my door. When everything was done, Bill spoke up.

“All right. Now comes the hard part.” He took a deep breath and fixed me with a stern look. “Call that lawyer and tell him what you found out. Then ... you’ll have to set up a date to accompany him when he visits your mother in jail.”

“Yeah. We kinda gathered that this would be necessary,” I nodded, though Bill shook his head.

“No,” he sighed before continuing with a grave voice. “You need to make plans to bail her out.”

I noticed Tim’s eyes widened just as much as my own.

“Why!?”

“Because she’s not safe in there anymore,” Bill explained with patience. “We can’t be certain why they killed Carver. If they just concluded that it’s time to get rid of all the potential threats and loose ends, your mother will be next. And if they succeed, this case, along with your chance for payback, will simply go away.”

“Wait!” Tim called out. “She’s in for selling insider data, right? She’s going to a white-collar prison. Minimum security. There shouldn’t be any gangs they could hire to shank her.”

“Exactly,” Bill nodded while pointing a finger at Tim. “She’s going into Club Fed. After she’s been convicted. But, right now, she’s still in Travis County, awaiting trial, since she pleaded Not Guilty. And if those guys decide that they don’t want to risk her lawyer presenting any potential evidence during said trial you two may have discovered, it’s easy to contact some asshole who’s just transitioning in there to take care of her.”

Hearing that caused a weird sensation to travel through my body. Like I just swallowed a brick, while simultaneously the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Yes, I hated the bitch for what she did to our lives. But I didn’t want her dead!

I quickly went for the files Breston left me and looked through the documents. But when I found what I was looking for, my heart sank.

“Her bail had been set to TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!?” I shouted, not believing what kind of outrageous number I just read and looked at Bill and Tim with big eyes. “For selling some data!?”

“I guess the senator called in a favor,” Bill mused, causing me to remember Breston saying something similar. “And I guess, going by the kind of lawyer she hired, that’s a little beyond her capabilities.”

I could only shake my head.

“Yeah. It’s above my capabilities as well!”

Curiously, that did elicit a peculiar reaction from the two other men in the room as they first shared a weird look between themselves, before Tim made a face as if contemplating something.

“You know,” Tim finally spoke up, still some kind of far-away look on his face. “I may be able to help you with that.”

“What!?” I laughed. “You mean to tell me you got a quarter of a million lying around?”

“Well ... not in a way that could be used to post bail,” he mused, increasing my confusion even more but refusing to elaborate on what that meant. Instead, he proposed a different idea. “We happen to work for a security firm, Paul. A security firm that could act as a bail agent. And THAT I could help out with.”

“How?” I asked, though it was Bill who explained it.

“The firm would post the bail for you in cash, because I trust that you’ll make sure she’ll show up for all of her court appointments, so we’ll get it back when this is all over. To keep up appearances, we’ll ‘require’ a ten percent fee. That’s what Tim will help out with. Though we won’t actually keep that money. So, don’t worry about that.”

I considered the offer for a moment, however, it became clear to me that, while I really had no other options, I just couldn’t do it.

“I can’t ask you for that kind of money. Even if it’s ‘just’ twenty grand!” I shook my head in defeat. “Thank you for offering, but...”

“Oh, shut up, Paul!” Bill suddenly called out in a remarkably annoyed tone, stunning both Tim and me. “You won’t let us talk you out of this case, fine! But then you’ll have to accept our help. Because, in case you haven’t realized it yet, if they come for your mother to kill her case and stop you from presenting evidence, chances are they’re coming for you next to stop you from investigating her death!”

Now I was doubly stunned. I hadn’t considered that possibility yet. Though, in my defense, the last twenty hours were a little overwhelming. As I stared into nothingness while registering the gravity of this situation, I heard Bill let out another one of his signature sighs before he continued.

“Now, I’ll need to make some calls. There are some things I have to check on. You do what you have to do. Don’t bother coming into the office for the time being. Concentrate on the case, and if you need any help, you ask for it!”

He delivered that last part of his speech while jamming his finger into my chest and fixing me with a look as if daring me to challenge him. Instead, I just nodded while suppressing the feeling of slight guilt over dragging him into this.

After he left the apartment, Tim walked over to the fridge, took out the six-pack of beer to place it on his coffee table, and beckoned me to sit next to him on the couch.

“Cheers!” he said after handing me a bottle.

Yeah,” I responded with decidedly less enthusiasm than Tim had used, as I still felt uncomfortable about this whole mess.

“What?” he asked while giving me a look.

“I didn’t think of having to bail her out.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know where she could stay.”

“Well...” he drew that word out, and it gave me the weird feeling of him treading a thin line between something he wanted to tell me and what he was allowed to tell me. “We DO have options. I kinda have a condo we don’t use.”

“You ... what!?” I laughed. “First money, now real estate? How do you ‘kinda have’ a condo?”

“My uncle John bought it for my sister and his daughter to live in when they started college. Turns out, though, neither of those pampered bitches was particularly eager to do house chores. I know, massive surprise to everyone. So, it’s empty for now but, like this apartment, fully furnished and ready.”

I thought about his proposal for a moment, however, I didn’t feel comfortable with him getting involved in this case, given how he still lived with his mother and sister. It would put the two of them in danger by association.

“No. I don’t want you connected with this. If something went sideways, especially in the way Bill is afraid of, I want you as far removed from this whole mess as possible.”

Surprisingly, this caused him to grin at me before he spoke up again.

“Well, worst case scenario, we’ll put her up in the Shelter,” he snickered. ‘The Shelter’ was our codeword for a kind of halfway house the company used for ... let’s just call them layovers. “After all, I don’t think having her use the second bedroom here will be an option.”

“Aw, hell no! You bet your ass that’s not an option!” I immediately protested heatedly.

This, again, caused him to keep quiet for a while as I tried to keep my thoughts away from what that kind of living arrangement would look like.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he suddenly ripped me out of my funk.

“I think we’re past the point where you have to ask for permission, Dude.”

“You know...” He stopped to take a sip of his beer, and I felt like he was weighing his words. “ ... I never saw the boss angry. I mean, he’s famous for being that grumpy old man, with the always present annoyance on his face, but I never saw him really angry. Until that explosion upstairs happened.”

“Yeah. That surprised me too,” I responded before taking a sip of the beer as well, wondering what he was playing at.