Sometimes red lights wind up happening at the right time.
At ten forty, smoke alarms start going nuts here and it doesn’t take long for the building to get evacuated because there’s a grease fire in the kitchen. It’s quickly going out of control. And Stephanie was just in the kitchen a moment earlier.
We wind up having to evacuate and the kitchen manager tells me out front that all the fire extinguishers in the kitchen were empty. Someone emptied them intentionally. In the middle of the mayhem, the cops and guys from Jag’s team assigned to watch Stephanie catch her and another employee sneaking out the back door with two backpacks filled with money, a decoy debit machine, and two tablets with stickers that make them look like they’re my branded tablets. It’s obvious they’ve been used tonight to divert more money.
At ten fifty, I get an email notification from my webhost that my online casino has been hacked and redirected. The redirect is to a site with what looks from the landing page like pornography. And not the average kind. The extra-taboo kind.
Not only is someone trying to rob me blind, they’re also trying to fuck my reputation.
Jag gets confirmation by ten fifty-two that Guy Tremblay is really named Trey Ricci.
“I know that name,” I say, realization dawning, but I’m having trouble matching up faces.
Trey’s sister Gina is the girl who helped out with Willie when we were teenagers. The girl whose cherry I took. The girl who took a wrong turn and wound up dead of a drug overdose just a couple years ago.
I hadn’t paid attention to her siblings. Trey’s between me and Willie in age, closer to Willie. Willie hung out with his younger siblings more than him, but they did hang out. And I kicked Trey in the ass once for dragging his little sister and Will into some mischief shoplifting candy at the local convenience store just before Mom got killed.
When Guy Tremblay came here to work for me, he did not seem remotely familiar.
As a kid, Trey wore glasses. He was overweight. He certainly wasn’t looking like he’d grow up to be a lady-killer with swagger. What the fuck kind of grudge does this guy have with me? And where is he right now? I need to get my hands on him.
I grab my phone, wanting to touch base with Violet. I haven’t talked to her for hours, since she was getting ready to head to her folks’ place. She doesn’t answer.
I check her location, a cold rod of anxiety spiking up my spine when the location shows our building. What the fuck?
I login to check the camera view of the apartment. The guest bedroom is the first one on the list. Lights off. My thumb moves to check the kitchen. Lights on. Nobody. I see Violet’s bag on the counter.
I scroll to the next on the list. Living room.
Guy Tremblay, scratch that, Trey Ricci on my fucking couch, a gun in his hand, a phone to his ear, rage on his face.
My blood turns to acid.
Violet’s sitting on another couch beside Heidi, the chick that works in the office at Genesis. The one who was a fumbling waitress with a photographic memory who we figured might work better with spreadsheets, payroll, and shit. Shit, shit, fuck.
Violet’s phone sits in the middle of the coffee table beside her grandmother’s snow globes.
I frown as my blood runs cold. Heidi.
She saw Heidi at the mall the other day and swore the chick got into a car with a Guy lookalike.
Three times I was ready to fire Heidi, but “Guy” kept talking us into giving her a bit longer, thinking maybe she’d be better in another role beyond server. Got into Alana’s ear about it, too, dropping hints about putting her in the office. Alana didn’t bite, neither did I. But when Violet also dropped the comment about maybe putting her in the office, it made sense to me and that’s why it happened. Photographic memory. Good with numbers. Computer science degree. I’m guessing she’s maybe got something to do with the hack to the casino website, too.
In hindsight, she’s really fucking knowledgeable about my business for someone who started off as a waitress.
Fuck that, Fuck all of that. I give no shits about the business or the money; I need Violet out of there.
I taste bile in the back of my throat as I call Abe from Zack Jacobs Investigations, who is watching Violet tonight, gesturing for Jag to come over.
Abe says she sent him a text that she’s staying in tonight. He’s parked in the underground garage.
Carlson is on the phone probably getting updates about the other shit happening. His partner is in the basement security room with the rest of the team.
All this shit is happening at once. Diversions. Money going out the doors. Website redirects. The plan that obviously included me being fucked up on bad drugs but that backfired by happening before today, thank God.