He sucked in his breath, and I knew what he was looking for as he began twisting around, his eyes not lifting up enough to see me. He was scanning the tables set around the pool.
I was sitting in a chair, far corner, in the shadowed area of the building, and I leaned forward.
He heard the squeaking of the chair and froze. His gaze went right to me, but he frowned because he couldn’t quite see who I was.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me? My feelings are hurt.” I half laughed, sighing at the end because it wasn’t funny. Not at all.
“Allen?” He scowled, starting to stomp around to where I was, one hand holding his towel together. “I’ll have you—”
I raised his phone up and pressed play.
Moans filled the room, echoing.
He paused, his head rearing back. “You’re really messed up. Playing porn for me—”
His own groan sounded next. “Yeah, yeah. Do that, baby. Turn over. Let me see you—”
And her groan.
He had frozen by now.
Not me. I turned that recording off and played another.
His own voice came out, “Benny, my man. How are you? Listen, I need you to—”
He growled to me, “What the fuck is this? What are you doing?”
I smirked, though he couldn’t see me. “Don’t you want to hear what you ask the chief of police to do for you? Or don’t you need to hear it to remember?” I smiled. “Because I know what you asked him to do. I don’t need the reminder.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Allen? You need to tread real carefully here because you’re a pup playing among—”
“Shut up.” I said it casually because that’s how I was feeling. He wasn’t getting it. I played another.
“Felicia, I need you to call me. This isn’t a smart thing you’re doing, not returning my calls—” That one I ended because he didn’t seem capable of talking.
I rose from the chair, holding his phone up. “These were recordings I found on your cloud. They were recordings you kept. One of you on a sexting call with another woman. Another where you asked an officer of the law to look the other way when your boy got caught with drugs. The last one, where you blackmailed one of your employees into sleeping with you. These alone will land you in a pile of trouble.”
The blood was draining from his face, but me, I was starting to have fun.
“I found these the first ten minutes.”
His eyes narrowed. “Wha—”
“Can you imagine what I found after three hours?” I stepped forward, letting him see just how much fun I was having.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t seem capable of standing anymore either.
“I found enough where I could send a nice file, all put together with a pretty bow on top, to the FBI and they’d be interested in it. You have companies in other states. Fraud. More recordings. More blackmail. Recordings of conversations you’ve had with other people, other very powerful people. I’ve no doubt you were keeping those as evidence that you’d have against others, not thinking if they fell into the wrong hands how it’d look for you to have them.”
“You are way out of your league, little boy.”
“Maybe. And you’re probably right because I just showed my hand, that I’m capable of getting all this information on you, whereas you’re the one who has such dirty and bloody hands. Am I right?” I chuckled. “I know I’m right. I’ve done shit, but you’re right. I’m in no league that you are, but this is what I’m going to tell you that I do have. I have access. I have skills to get access even when you try to hide it all again, because we both know you will. What else do I have? I have connections. Granted, they aren’t my connections, but it wouldn’t take much to reach out. There’s a motorcycle club not far from here, and I know they have ties to people I know. It wouldn’t be hard to put the word out, asking for a meet and I think they’d take it. I think they’d be interested in a deal where you withheld money that was owed to them. Course, that’s in the past so maybe they’re the forgiving kind? Between you and me, I doubt it. And what else do I have? I have people across the ocean who are aware of this very conversation happening, so if you get the bright idea to try and graduate from the shithole you’re in to, say, a more murderous shithole, well, there’s witnesses listening in.” I pulled my phone out and let him see that it was active and someone else was there.
He stared long and hard at me. “What do you want?”
“First, I want you to call your bud Benny and tell him to drop the charges against me.”
“He won’t—”
“Be persuasive,” I cut him off, going through his phone and hitting play on another recording.
The chief of police’s voice played from it, “Goddammit. That kid is bleeding us dry. Plant shit on him, if need be. I want him gone. Do you hear me?”
“But Ben—”
I was smirking again. “We know what the rest of that said, and I know what the rest of the recording said, but I bet the kid he’s talking about would be very interested in hearing it. Should I send it? He’s probably out of prison by now.”
He was gritting his teeth. “You’ve made yourself more than heard. I’ll call and get your charges dropped.”
“Great!” I beamed at him before tossing a third phone his way. “Do it now.”
He frowned, catching it, and staring in confusion at the phone. “This is—”
“Yeah. That’s your phone too.” I raised the one I was holding, the one that was also his. “This is a clone of your phone, and by the way, good luck figuring out how to de-clone it. Also, just letting you know that if you try to get a new phone, everything you have on there will be transferred to your new one, including the cloning program. The only way you can start new is a new phone and all new accounts. Which you won’t do because that’s exhausting. Am I right?”
“That’s too much evidence you have on me.”
“You’re right. It is, and I get that. So, here’s what I’ll do: as soon as you get the charges dropped against me, I’ll turn the cloning program off. I’ll even show you how I do it.”
He was looking between his phone and the one in my hand, his eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t get it. There has to be a catch.”
“There’s no catch. I’m going to be honest, when I decided to hack you, I had no idea what I would find. I figured there’d be some things there, but not the landfill I found. I’m only here for two reasons, to make you drop the charges against me and to let you know that if you think about coming after me, everything I found was sent to five other people. So, if something happens to me, they’ll release the information, and I’m talking about anything, like an accident. Or if I end up in a coma, anything like that where I can’t tell them that you weren’t behind it. They’ll make the assumption that it’s from your hands. I have no plans on getting into a pissing contest with you. That’s not who I am. I’m usually a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. My friends, not so much, but we can’t all be blessed with my amazing genes. So, are we good? Have you pissed your speedo enough?”