Just Evil (35 page)

“Who are those guys?”

Jake let out a sigh, “Two not-so-bright former employees who
worked in testing for about six months more than two years ago.”

“So it doesn’t have anything to do with Alana’s place.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Who’s Alana?” Dylan asked casually, turning his attention
from the monitor to watch with interest the interaction between Kit and his
friend.

Kit looked at Jake for help, until finally he said, “It’s a
long story.”

Dylan leaned back in his chair. “I’ve got nothing better to
do while we wait for the cops to show up. How about you?”

Kit didn’t want to listen, so she excused herself with the
offer to make some much-needed coffee and headed to the break room.

In the meantime, Jake told Dylan the short version of what
Kit had been going through since Mother’s Day, minus all the personal aspects,
until Dylan finally wanted to know, “Why would Auslo and Taft ransack Kit’s
mother’s house? Why would you think the two incidents are related?”

“Good question. But here’s an even better one: why would two
former employees wait two years after their termination to break into our
offices? Why now?”

Dylan’s eyebrows went up. “Excellent point. So you don’t
think it’s just maybe a coincidence?”

“No way.”

When Kit reappeared with the coffee, she had two uniformed
officers in tow.

While Jake and Dylan dealt with the police, Kit wandered off
to assess the damage to the rest of the offices. Looking around at the
destruction, taking mental inventory of the damage, it started to sink in.

For the first time in days, she went through a mental
checklist. First, the boat had blown up. Their trip had been a spur-of-the-moment
decision made immediately after the funeral ended, unplanned. Yet, someone had
known they were on the water that day and what their precise location was. 

That same day someone had put Jake’s company at risk by
hacking the network. The company hadn’t just lost valuable data, but their
security had been breached, client information compromised. The company Jake
had worked so hard to make successful was in jeopardy. And now today, someone
had ransacked his offices. All because of her. This was all her fault. If he
hadn’t gotten involved in her problems, his business wouldn’t be at risk now.

For the next two hours Jake and Dylan were busy with the
police, reviewing the surveillance tape. The police took the tape as evidence
and pretty much assured they’d have no problem getting an arrest warrant for
Auslo and Taft.

After filing the lengthy and detailed report, Jake set out
to find Kit, who seemed to have disappeared while he’d been occupied with the
police. He found her in his office cleaning up the mess. She’d put his desk
back in order, picked up all the papers littering the floor, and straightened
out most of the files.

He dropped into one of the two chairs facing his desk, and
conveyed, “You didn’t have to do that, Kit.”

She didn’t say anything, but continued alphabetizing the
rest of his files. One thing he knew about her without a doubt was when the
woman wasn’t talking it meant she was upset about something. When she finally
looked up at him, he saw her moist eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Jake.”

“About what? There’s nothing to be sorry about. None of this
is your fault.” Distracted, he joined his fingers like a steeple and leaned
back in his chair, as if deep in thought.

She couldn’t believe he wasn’t upset. She’d seen him as a
young programmer just starting out in business, a very intense man who could
lose his temper when the slightest thing went wrong with the software. Now his
entire company was at risk because of her.

Didn’t he understand it was her fault? Finally she said, “Of
course it is. If you weren’t involved in my problems, your offices wouldn’t
have been broken into, your system wouldn’t have been hacked. And your boat
wouldn’t have been almost blown up, and you with it.” She noticed he wasn’t
really listening to her and wasn’t surprised when his change of subject came
out of the blue.

“Kit, if Alana wanted to hide something, something she
didn’t want anyone—not even dear old Jessica—to find, where would she hide it? Was
she the safe-deposit-box kind of woman or the under-the-mattress kind?”

Tears started now and her voice broke. “Didn’t you just hear
what I said? If we’d gotten closer to that old boat that blew up…you might
be…dead. I…I just realized…today looking at this mess…all of this is happening
because of me. Someone wants to hurt you, your business, and the company you
worked so hard for because of me.”

 Calmly, Jake got out of the chair and walked around the
desk to put his arms around her. He put a hand under her chin and turned her
face up to his. With a thumb he wiped away the tears running down her cheek.
“Honey, none of this is your fault. It’s you I’m worried about. I’m not sure
why someone wanted us dead that day on the water, but I think it’s you they
want to hurt, not me. I’m just in the way. What we have to do is figure out
why. Now, if Alana wanted to secure something valuable, hide it away so that no
one would find it, what’s the most likely place she’d use to stash something?”

“I have no idea. We weren’t exactly close, Jake.”

“I know, but did she have any weird habits?” When he saw her
blink as if she hadn’t heard him correctly, he laughed at himself. “Okay, the
woman had weird habits out the ying-yang, not exactly Mother Teresa. Let me
start over. Did she have any secret places she’d put things, hide stuff, a
place she didn’t like to share?”

Kit thought for a moment, bit her lip. “Well, I remember she
always spent a lot of time up in the attic. She’d spend hours up there with all
of her old stuff. She liked to reminiscent about the days when she was an
actress, when she was younger.”

“Doing what?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Who cared? Not me. If she wasn’t
hassling me that was all I cared about. I lived for the times when she was out
of the house or busy with whatever, as long as she left me alone.” She sighed.
“Look, most of the house was off-limits, including the attic. Even when I was
young I knew better than to wander around the house. I never ventured up there,
never wanted to. But she spent a lot of time there. Why?”

“Because someone is seriously looking for something they
think Alana had. They can’t find it, and now they’ve brought their search to my
door. That makes it personal, just pisses me off. I want to go back to Beverly
Hills, take a look around, and see what I can find.”

“Knock yourself out; just don’t expect me to go with you.”

“It’s okay. I’ll drop you off at the store. I want you to do
something for me, though. Promise me you won’t be alone this afternoon. If I’m
not back by the time you close up, go home with Baylee or over to Gloria’s,
wait there until I get back.”

At the idea of being treated like a child, her temper
flared.  He saw the flicker of anger in her eyes and added, “Just until I
figure out what’s going on and why. Okay?”

She wanted to argue, she really did, but when she looked at
his face, looked into the depth of his blue eyes and…well shit…why did he
always get to her with that look, those eyes?

“Okay,” she said weakly.
So I’m not the rock of
Gibraltar, for chrissakes. Sue me
.

A couple of hours later Jake had recruited Dylan and Reese
to spend their Saturday afternoon going through Alana’s musty attic, helping
him look for what he didn’t know exactly. All Jake knew for sure was that the three
of them could cover more ground, do more digging than one person ever could.
That is, if someone hadn’t already beaten them to the punch. But they wouldn’t
know that until they’d checked the place out for themselves.

When the three of them walked up the back staircase from the
kitchen to the second floor landing, Jake realized something that he’d missed
yesterday, probably because he’d been so caught up in finding that damn closet.
But once he got past the landing and veered to the left, this part of the
second floor was like a labyrinth.

Following Kit’s precise directions, Jake led the way down
the narrow hallway, past the alcove, past Kit’s Closet, to a remote passage
leading to yet another corridor and realized that someone would have to know
the attic’s exact location in order to get to this spot. Based on that, there
was a good chance no one had bothered searching it.

Sure enough, as soon as he got the door open and flipped on
the light, it became apparent that the people who’d ransacked the house hadn’t
made it this far.

Larger than it looked from the second floor, the attic
covered a minimum forty feet by forty feet of space. The mess here wasn’t due
to an intruder, but rather because Alana had been a major pack rat. It soon
became clear that this room held what was important to her: possessions left
from her past, stacks of boxes containing souvenirs from her days as an
actress, memorabilia from a bygone Hollywood era, as well as stacks and stacks
of out-of-date clothing and costumes packed away from floor to ceiling. No
wonder she had spent so much time up here.

Reese groaned when he saw the condition of the place. “You
can’t be serious. How the hell are we supposed to find anything in this mess?
Look at all this crap. There must be at least sixty cartons to go through and
not all of them are marked as to what’s inside.”

He sneezed several times in rapid succession in response to
the layers of dust and sent Jake a go-to-hell look that said “You owe me big
time for this, pal.”

“Look, I have no idea what’s going on or what I’m dealing
with. If you have any ideas, now would be a good time to let me in on it. I’m
not exactly crazy about spending my Saturday afternoon up here either. If you
can come up with a reasonable explanation as to why Auslo and Taft waited two
years to hit our offices in retaliation for getting fired, I’ll be more than
happy to listen, fold my hand, buy the beer, and get the hell out of here.”

Reese didn’t have a reasonable explanation, but he wanted
Jake to know, “I followed up with the police and there’s already a warrant out
for both of them. It’s only a matter of time before they’re sitting in a cell.
Maybe then they’ll feel like talking.”

But if Dylan was correct, Reese had a more pressing problem
to flesh out. It was time to run interference. “Let’s talk about this woman,
this Kit that Dylan’s been telling me about, the one with the great body. What
kind of a woman has a name like Kit, anyway? Sounds more like a stripper.”

Jake shot Dylan a lethal glance, but Reese was on a roll.
“You’re entitled to a distraction now and again even if this one’s a little on
the young side. And Dylan says she’s hot, which tells me you’re finally moving
on past Claire. But you need to start thinking with the head on your shoulders,
not your dick…”

Out of frustration, to shut him up, Jake shoved Reese with
such force he went flying into a stack of boxes. He fell back into the cartons
before bouncing off and hitting the floor, busting his lip.

Calmly, Dylan walked over and helped Reese to his feet,
dusting off his shirt. “Guess I should have warned you Jake’s kind of touchy
when you try to talk to him about Kit. Personally, I think her name’s kinda
cute, sort of goes with the woman. Doesn’t look much like a stripper though,
too classy.”

Reese wiped at his already-swelling lip, saw the blood.
“Jesus, Jake, I have a date tonight. What the fuck am I supposed to tell her
happened to my mouth?”

“Like I give a shit. If both of you would stop needling me
for five fucking seconds I might not get so pissed. Just because I fucked up
once, and it was major, I’ll give you that, doesn’t mean I have to spend the
rest of my life listening to the two of you preach at me about every goddamn
relationship. I know what I’m doing with Kit. She isn’t Claire, for chrissakes.
Now back off.” 

Reese pulled his T-shirt up and used it to blot the blood
from his lip, exchanged a look with Dylan, who just shrugged and said, “Jake
and I already had our little run-in about her. It just didn’t come to pushing
and shoving.”

“As your friend and attorney, I was merely trying to point
out you’re entitled to a little fun. But…”

“Gee, thanks.”

Reese gritted his teeth. “Just don’t do anything stupid like
you did the last time. Just because she’s Gloria’s niece, just because you knew
her when she was what, fourteen, doesn’t mean you know that much about her now.
For fuck’s sake, people change.”

Dylan tried to mend fences. “Jake’s had a rough couple of
days. Let’s not forget someone tried to make toast out of him and Kit earlier
in the week; somebody hacked our network, and now this morning two former
employees hit our offices. I’m with Jake on this. I think everything that’s
happened is connected.”

Disgusted now, Reese grumbled, “Let’s just get this over
with. I’d like to get out of here sometime today.”

Dylan wanted to know, “What exactly are we looking for,
Jake?”

Looking around the packed attic, trying to figure out where
to start, Jake scratched at his chin. “That’s the tricky part; I’m not sure.
Just look for anything that might be valuable, anything that looks important
enough that someone would risk the hunt. Or anything that jumps out at you and
just doesn’t look right. I don’t know. But you saw the rest of the house.
Someone tore the place up, didn’t find what they were looking for, and then
came looking in my direction. Until I find out why, I won’t rest easy.”

Anxious to get started, Jake took out his pocket knife and
slit the tape on the first box that wasn’t labeled. The dust flew off the
carton. Tiny dust particles filled the space and filtered down through the air
onto his jeans. He dug into the contents of the box as if on a mission and
directed Reese and Dylan to do the same with the others. “Just pick a box and
dig in.”