Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Who betrayed them.
“Oh, will you?” Billy said. “Not sure you’ll do anything with that information.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Slade said. “I’m sure the cops will be interested in it.”
“So you’re not concerned about sending your own sister to jail?” Billy said to Slade.
It hit Slade like a punch to the guts.
No!
There would be no way she would do that.
“You’re lying,” Slade snarled. “Throwing Indie under the bus to save yourself.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Billy replied. “There’s no evidence that I stole anything from you.”
Meaning there was evidence that Indie had?
“There’s no reason she’d do that to us,” Quaid said quietly.
“Poor Indie.” Billy shook his head. “She had such a terrible childhood. Her mother would rip her out of one life and into another. They’d go months without money, with her fighting for scraps of food. It’s no wonder that she’d do anything to secure herself in this economy. And perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?”
That was weak reasoning.
Indie was nothing like Sylvia.
“This had to be you or someone else at Zodiac. I don’t know who, but I will find out,” Slade said. “You’ve been warned. I will get you for this, Billy.”
“No need for threats. You’re not the only ones with security and cameras.”
Slade clenched his fists and then let them relax. He could feel Quaid move up behind him, putting his hand on his shoulder in support.
Quaid knew he had to be close to the edge. His temper was something he’d always struggled with.
Turning without another word, Slade strode out of there.
“Fucking bastard!” he yelled as soon as they were in his car. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Why the fuck would he try to blame Indie?”
“She does have access to the apartment,” Quaid offered calmly as he tapped on his phone. “And you kept a back-up of the bid on a pen drive there.”
“So? She’s had access since it was built and we moved in. She’s never stolen anything from us. And the pen drive was kept in my safe. How would she even know that I kept back-ups in it?”
“Think back,” Quaid said. “Have you ever put stuff away in the safe while she was there?”
“God, probably. And my dad was always going on about keeping back-ups at home and at the office in case of fire or theft. Fuck. But that doesn’t mean she could access the safe.”
“What’s the code to get in?” Quaid asked.
Slade breathed in deep and let it out slowly. “Her birthday. There’s no way, Quaid. She’s ours.”
“No, she’s his,” Quaid replied.
“She wouldn’t do this. It could have been someone else. She’s not the only one with access to the penthouse,” Slade argued as Quaid ended the call.
“Billy could have pressured her into it,” Quaid told him.
He didn’t want to believe it. She wouldn’t.
Would she?
Slade hated that doubt was stirring. He drove back home as Quaid worked on his phone. When they reached the penthouse, he walked straight into his office, going to the safe while Quaid sat at his computer, bringing up the security footage.
There was the pen drive. He let out a sigh of relief.
“She could have copied it,” Quaid pointed out.
Rock walked in, silent as usual. His face stony.
“Billy implied it was Indie,” Slade told him.
“I’ve updated Spencer and Rock,” Quaid told him as Spencer raced in, breathless.
“She wouldn’t do this,” Spencer said.
The three of them glared at Quaid who sighed and pinched the top of his nose. Which was a big display of emotion for him.
Slade’s phone buzzed. A group message from Rock.
Rock: Why would she do this? It makes no sense. She has no reason to betray us.
“Exactly,” Spencer added. “It makes no sense.”
“Unless Billy has corrupted her,” Quaid said. “He implied she did it for money, that she’s more like her mother than we realized.”
“Nice thing to say about the woman you supposedly love.” Spencer groaned as he sat, resting his head in his hands. “I don’t want to believe it.”
None of them did.
Rock stood there, watching them all arguing over whether Indie could have done this. Whether she could have used them, stolen from them, to help Billy.
Fucking twat that he was.
Rock had always hated him. He was a smug, up-himself bastard. But mostly he hated him because he had Indie.
And you want her.
He refused to believe she’d done this.
“So she had access to the penthouse. Access to the safe. She might have known that Slade kept back-ups in there,” Quaid said. “All we have to do is put her in the penthouse without us here in the last few days.”
Spencer leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. “Fucking Billy.”
“Fuck. Here it is,” Quaid said.
They all crowded around the computer as Rock stared at the video of Indie walking toward their front door several days ago.
“What about leaving?” Slade asked.