CeCe
As we leave the garage, several cameras start flashing around us. The guys drive all over the city, trying to lose our tail of reporters. They call ahead and drive into a closed parking garage, and two of Jim’s men step behind the vehicle, preventing anyone from following us into the garage. What a mess.
When we exit the car and call the elevator, a security guard uses a key card to give us access to Marci’s office. “Mr. Adelson, we’ve got this place buckled up tight,” he says to Jim.
“You have the list of those who can join us?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jim goes from being our front man to blending into the background as we exit the elevator.
Marci gives me a big hug when she sees us. “How did you sleep last night?”
“Not very well.”
“I totally get it.” She escorts us to a large conference room with a beautiful view of the financial district and the bay. “There are coffee and donuts—I thought the sugar would give us energy.”
A woman after my own heart. “That’s perfect. Thank you.”
“The plan for this morning is that our friends from Cybercrimes, White-Collar, and SFPD will be here in about thirty minutes. They want to go through everything with you. You’ll make a statement that my legal assistant will type up and you’ll sign, and then we’ll messenger it down to the San Jose police department. How does that sound?”
“That’s fine.” I take a deep breath and pull up the courage to admit that I may be the cause of all of this. “I should tell you before they get here. It occurred to me last night that Dillon and I did something initially that may have provoked Adam.”
“What happened?”
I walk her through Emerson’s assault and her refusal to go to the police.
“I understand,” Marci says. “The police are brutal, and it’s unfortunate that they tend to blame the victim and not the perpetrator.”
“Dillon and I weren’t going to let him get away with it. Adam mentioned he had photographed everything. We couldn’t take the chance that he’d use the pictures to blackmail her at a later date or post them to the internet to live forever.” I look over at Mason, and I can see the disappointment in my actions start to take over his neutral expression. I whisper, “This entire mess may be my fault.”
“What did you do?” Marci prods.
“Dillon knew some black hat hackers, and we knew some less-than-savory people, so we pickpocketed Adam’s phone, broke into his apartment, loaded his bathtub with saltwater and a bottle of bleach, and then dumped all of his electronics into the water. We then had someone break into his cloud server and delete everything.”
I hang my head in shame. I’m ready for Mason to unleash his anger at me, but he looks at me curiously. “You did that after Dillon returned from his forced break from the company?”
I nod.
“The hacking had been going on long before Dillon went on his break. That’s part of the reason he went in the first place. We thought he was falling down on the job, so we forced the issue.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this. I’ve been so worried that this was all my fault.”
Mason pulls me into his arms. “Is this why you got up so early and went on the treadmill?”
“Yes,” I whimper into his shoulder.
“CeCe, Adam has been upset with us since long before all of this happened. He targeted Emerson as part of this mess, not the other way around.”
“Well, I haven’t finished telling you what we did.”
Marci sits back in her chair. “I’m listening.”
“Dillon’s black hat friends were upset at what Adam had done, and they destroyed his credit, even going so far as to delete his mortgage payments, putting his condo into foreclosure.”
“When did this happen?”
“About five years ago.”
“Well, you’re past the statute of limitations. I think for our statement to the San Jose PD, we can ignore this, but we should probably bring it up with Cora Perry, just in case.”
I look at Mason. “Do you hate me?”
“Why?”
“Because I was so upset that I broke the law.”
“You were protecting your best friend. I understand. I only wished I’d known. I would’ve helped or at the very least thrown a party.”
The weight lifts from my shoulders in relief. “I love you,” I tell him.
Marci looks at us with a smile as big as the Amazon. “I see you two have made some progress.”
“Maybe just a little.” I giggle.
Jim steps into the conference room. “The FBI and SFPD have arrived.”
Marci looks at me. “Let’s not go into the black hats today. I’ll approach Cora about it without the others here.”
“No problem,” I assure her.
Suddenly the three of us are outnumbered as Cora Perry and three members of her team enter, followed by Agents Greene and Winters. Detective Lenning arrives behind them with a young detective who he introduces as his partner, Detective Anna Montoya.
I’m asked to go through everything from last night. Detective Lenning shares my 911 call with the group. “You were pretty smart to tell her all the things you did.”
“I knew it would be recorded, and I knew it would be played at his trial one day.”
“As I said, pretty smart.”
“They’ve cast a wide net looking for Adam Reeves,” Cora shares. “We’ve pulled his information from the rideshare company, and the address he uses is a PO Box that’s disguised as a street address. SFPD and Oakland PD have the box staked out, but we’re not optimistic that he’ll return there any time soon. Currently, he doesn’t have any credit cards or bank accounts in his name. He’s pretty much off the grid. The cell phone he used with the rideshare company is a burner.”
My stomach drops. “Does that mean we’re back to square one?”
“Absolutely not. We know who Adam is. Now we have to figure out his sister Eve, which we’re working on. Tina, can you share what you’ve learned with the group.”
A tiny woman with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail sits up in her chair. She’s part of Cora’s team. I want to peek under the table and see if her legs touch the ground, but I know that would be tacky. I still consider it.
“We pulled Adam Reeves’s information. He was in foster homes growing up in Southern California. He spent his last two years of high school with a family in Santa Ana. It looks like there were other children coming and going, but the father died during his senior year and the foster kids scattered. He went up to Stanford, where he played football. He was a defensive end—I’m not sure what that is exactly—and he never played first string, but he was good enough to be there on scholarship.”
“Thank you, Tina. So, we’re looking for Eve?”
“Yes, we have a thread we’re pulling. The Los Angeles field office has delivered a court order for the records of the kids who were with him in the final foster home,” Tina says.
“Why do you think it was the final foster home where he met his ‘sister’?” Mason asks.
“The profiler in our office believes the final home where he lived the longest had the biggest impact. If we don’t find anything, we’ll work backward from there,” Cora shares.
Cora turns to me. “Last night, you mentioned that he and his merry band of thieves call themselves the Robin Hood Party. Tell us what you remember.”
I walk them through his rambling. “As he talked about it, I found he contradicted himself. One minute they’re out to screw the 1 percent, and the next he was upset with the founders of SHN because they didn’t invite him to join them.”
Cora leans back in her chair, making everyone lean in. “This doesn’t make sense compared to what they’re trying to do. Of course, since when do criminals make sense? This does fill in a lot of holes for us. They’re robbing from the rich to supposedly give to the poor.”
“They really ar
en’t robbing the rich, only the almost rich or the rich on paper, and they’re making a lot of people poor in the process. And they really aren’t doing much to give to anyone but themselves. They’re more out to destroy than anything else,” one of the FBI team interjects.
“You’re right. Posting confidential information on the internet isn’t getting anyone rich, but it is robbing them of their hard work.” She’s silent a few moments. Tapping her pen on the table a few times, she looks at the timeline. “So why call themselves the Robin Hood Party?”
“There were so many reasons I didn’t feel he was a good fit for us. Now he’s validated my opinion, of course, but at the same time, I wonder if we’d still be in a mess had we hired him. We talked about it, and I was the one who put my foot down. He was the reason we said it had to be unanimous for us to agree on these issues, not just the majority,” Mason explains.
“I think your instincts were right on. You would’ve been in trouble regardless.”
The room is quiet a moment.
“Have you remembered anything else since then?” Detective Lenning presses.
“No. I don’t think so.” I’m really glad he’s asking and not Cora, because lying to the FBI is a federal offense while lying to the SFPD is not.
“Why do you think Adam went after you?”
“I’ve been part of the group since the beginning. Emerson came to my father and me when they offered to buy her company. We went through the contract together and agreed it was a good idea. I was added as an advisor less than a year later. And I’m involved with Mason, the founding partner who Adam sees was the reason he wasn’t asked to join the company.”
“Did he know you were involved with Mason?”
“He didn’t say as much, but since Mason was released from the hospital, he’s been staying at my house. If Adam’s been stalking me, then he most likely would’ve seen Mason there at some point.”
“Did he mention Metro Composition?” Agent Greene asks.
“No, unfortunately, he didn’t.”
“All right.” Cora bounces her pen on the table a few times, then looks at her watch. “We’ve been here for over two hours. It’s lunchtime. Why don’t we call it a day, and then we can circle back in the few days?”
Cora, Mason, Marci, and I make polite conversation until the room empties. “I didn’t want to ask in front of all the men, but tell me more about Emerson’s assault. How did it happen?”
I walk her through what I know and the link between the bartender and Adam.
“You guys didn’t do anything to get back at Adam?”
“My clients will stipulate that they may have commissioned a crime, but it’s past the statute of limitations, and this supposed crime happened after the espionage began at SHN,” Marci interjects.
“So stipulated. What did you do?” Cora looks at Mason.
He steps back and holds his hands up. “I didn’t know anything about it until today.”
“I did it,” I admit. “Adam assaulted my best friend. She was sure it was her fault because she trusted him enough that after ordering a drink for herself, she went to the bathroom.”
“We know that, since the bartender was implicated, her drink would’ve been drugged regardless of her going to the bathroom,” Marci adds.
“We know that now, but she really did a number on herself because of what happened.”
I tell Cora the sequence of events, leaving out the most important detail of Dillon being involved.
Cora sits for a moment. “I’m not happy that you felt you had to resort to that level of crime, but between us, I’m not sure I would’ve done much different. These cases are awful in the justice system, and it always seems to come down to a ‘he said, she said’ situation. And we know that in this case, the bartender would’ve lied.”
“Exactly.” I nod vigorously.
“Who helped you?”
“I don’t want to lie to you, but I’d rather not say,” I tell her honestly.
“My bet was it was Cameron,” she says. “He has some mad computer skills and is typically a white hat hacker, but I would bet under the right circumstances, he could be swayed to the dark side.”
“I promise you it wasn’t Cameron.”
“He has those skills.”
“Yes he does, but I promise you it wasn’t him,” I repeat.
“Well, then you and Dillon make a joint statement. We’ll put it in the file. It’s beyond the statute of limitations, yes, but I don’t want his defense to come back at us for not having documented the activity.”
“How did you know it was Dillon?” I ask, shocked.
“Process of elimination.”
“We’ll put together a joint statement from Dillon and Caroline,” Marci assures her.
“Any news about the problems at Metro?” I ask.
“These two cases kept me up last night. I didn’t sleep well myself,” Marci shares.
“I have an update on Metro and what happened so far,” Cora says.
“Great, we’d all love to hear it,” Mason says.
“We got you all set.” She pulls out a sheet of paper from her folio. “Here are the dates when everything kind of started showing up in the Metro Composition user groups and on the internet. We were able to deploy the Trojan horses and mirror software on your teams’ work, home, and personal phones and computers. We’ve been watching what everyone is emailing, trying to be very aware of what’s personal and what’s not.”
“Anything interesting yet?” Mason asks.
“We’ve seen a few things that are a little off, but nothing that really rises to a level of concern.” She turns to me. “After you spoke to everyone yesterday, we saw a few emails go out talking about the situation, but it was nothing concrete. If possible, we’d like you to send out another round of emails that will further cement your decision and the next steps.”
“Do you think it’s necessary?” I ask.
“We do. We want to watch and see if anything escalates to the point of being actionable.”
“What about their privacy?”
“We are reading all of their email, both personal and business. They don’t have much privacy, but we aren’t being intrusive and sharing it, even with you.”
That makes me feel a little better. I guess I really don’t want to hear if they don’t like me.
“Caroline, we’re close. I promise,” Cora assures me.
I nod.
“You’re headed to New York next week for Fashion Week, correct?” she confirms.
“Yes. We’re not really doing any named shows, but my makeup artists will do the Gap show. They want their focus on their clothes, so we aren’t really headlined for that one. We’re not doing any displays like we’ve done in the past, and we’ve given up our suite at the Four Seasons.”
“Wow. What does that mean?”
“We’re not doing anything to promote the brand this time around.”
“I’m sure that must be very difficult, and for that, I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Mason reaches for my hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze.
“I also want to assure you that we’re continuing to chase several avenues to broaden our scope so that we’re not only focused on your team. I’ll keep you posted,” Cora tells me before we all head out.
Chapter twenty-one
CeCe
Sitting in the lounge area waiting for my flight, we’re flanked by two of Jim’s men who are traveling with us.
“They’re scaring all the cute guys away,” Evelyn whines.
“After the kidnapping, I don’t have a choice these days. I’m sorry.”
Evelyn is wearing a very short skirt, and when she sees one of the guards is watching her carefully, she inches it up. Internally, I roll my eyes. He doesn’t even smile. She arches her back, pushing her breasts out, and looks seductively at him, hoping it’ll get at least a small smile, but nothing. “Apparently they’re grumpy bodyguards, to
o.”
“You’re too much.” I look across the lounge, cranky from the two weeks of little to no movement on the SHN case and the issue at Metro. I hope this trip to New York for Fashion Week isn’t too disappointing.
“They’re here to look after us, not serve as your date.”
She pouts.
“What happened to your boyfriend?” I ask.
“We broke up ages ago. I think that’s why I’m on the prowl.”
“We’re meeting Vanessa this evening for dinner, and she always has a habit of bringing guys who work for her husband along.”
“That’s great! I can’t wait. I think my vagina is going to seal up if I don’t find some action soon.”
I smile. If it was one of my friends, I’d pull out my famous retort: “Who needs a man? If you want companionship, buy a dog. If you want sex, buy a toy. You’ll be happier in the long run.” But it isn’t work appropriate, and despite having a close relationship with Evelyn, I do want to keep it somewhat professional.
We wait until final boarding call is announced, and then we make our way to the plane. It’s the one perk I have for being a little bit well known when I fly commercially.
Jim’s men board the plane and check to make sure all is well, then bring us on, leading us each to a window seat across the aisle from one another. Jim’s men sit in the adjoining seats.
“Why are we going commercial?” Evelyn grumbles as we sit down.
I know she likes going by private plane, but we’re flying first class. It’s not like we’re sitting next to the bathroom in the last row with crying babies. I try not to let it get to me. I know she’s equally stressed about everything going on.
After we’ve leveled off and the seat belt sign goes off, I ask the guard sitting next to me, “Would it be possible for Evelyn and me to sit together? I’d like to have a conversation with her that the entire plane doesn’t want or need to hear.”
When Evelyn trades places with the guard, she murmurs, “These guys are super hardcore.”
“After what happened, Mason and Jim are making sure they keep me on a very short leash.”
Fascination: (Billionaire Venture Capitalist #9): A Friends to Lovers Romance Page 19