STEP AWAY FROM the computer,” Cal said. There was a gun tucked in the front of his pants. He had a Taser in one hand; he gestured with it.
“Don’t you point that at us,” Perri said. “Explain yourself.”
Cal pulled a cheap, orange phone from his pocket. Orange. Like the one missing from the crash, the one Brenda had knelt on when she went to help David. Cal pressed a button, listened, said, “It’s OK. We have a situation, but it can be handled. But I need you to be ready.” Then he hung up and put the orange phone in his jacket.
Jane stared at him, and it was as if shards and slices of memory cut into the here and now, pierced her brain. This room. This terrible room. David sliding the hacker drive into the computer, finding a password, discovering the distant server, entering the username and the passcode. And then the terrible truth of the dark market.
“David went through the logs, the data records on the little hacker flash drive. He found the traces that my dad found. My dad was just looking for proof of e-mails or texts or something on my mother’s computer to prove you two were having an affair. What he found was the spreadsheets with far more money than anyone would expect moving through my mother’s charity accounts. So, being an accountant, he went looking for the source…”
“He found Babylon. I had no idea how he had done it…I thought the leak was Laurel. I didn’t realize he must have had a hacker drive until it was too late. She told me she’d tossed all his stuff. I didn’t know she’d given some of it to David. She didn’t realize the harm she’d done.”
“Our son. You let our son see this? Why would you do this, Cal, why?” Perri demanded.
“I don’t ‘do’ anything,” he said. “I help move money. That’s all. I don’t…I don’t touch anything illegal.”
“No, you just make it possible…” Jane said. She staggered back from him and it was as if the walls holding the hell at bay fell in her mind. “You. Oh. You. It was a chain reaction. David found the hacker kit. Maybe there is something on there that points to your affair with my mom. Then he found the money trail on your computer, too? This is what had to do with my dad. Both our parents breaking the law. What do we do? Talk about running to Canada. So we wouldn’t have to face you all. Then we think, where would this be? We’ve found the locked doors in the lake house, maybe already when we’re there being together sometime before; maybe there’s proof behind them. Something we can use to protect us. Protect me, David, and Perri from you. We buy the crowbar. We break in. We find this. It’s so much worse than simple money laundering. Then…”
“Then what, Jane?”
Jane shook her head, staring at Cal. “You put us into my car. You made me drive. You had the gun on me. To my head. You…you were in the car with us. You were there.” Her voice rose into a shriek.
Cal fired the Taser. The needles slammed into Jane Norton and she screamed and collapsed. For a few moments Perri stood frozen in shock as Jane writhed on the floor. She threw herself at Cal, who shoved her to the floor and yanked the crowbar from her grip. When she came at him again, he hit her.
It was unimaginable. The father of her son, the man who had said “I do” to her.