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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: LOOKING DEEPER
Max yawned. It’d been more than twelve hours since she’d had a break that lasted longer than a trip to the ladies’ room or a coffee refill. She’d been fielding phone calls and emails all day. There’d been some hate messages, sure, but the majority of them were incredibly supportive, volunteering time and donating money. Which made all the work and effort and trouble and risk worth it.
She clicked back onto the email message that the insistent lawyer left her. The last of five that he’d sent throughout the day. Warning her that Wayne would retaliate. Against her. Against him. Against Hallie. And now Kat and Peter and anyone else who volunteered.
Max sighed and shook her head, a worried hand running over her face. She didn’t doubt him—Wayne was certainly capable of it. The question was whether or not it was worth it.
A knock sounded. Max looked up to see Diane in her doorway. “I didn’t know anyone was still here.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” Her boss stepped into the office, taking a seat across from Max’s desk. “I just wanted to congratulate you on the Hannings campaign. It’s marvelous, a great cause that’s creating better PR for us than we could have ever expected.”
“Thank you,” Max said. “That means so much coming from you.” Diane really was her hero, and praise from her was a welcome balm to her frazzled, frayed mind.
“There’s only one concern that we have.” She sighed. “We’re really happy with the connections you’ve made with the community. Building Dream Houses. Pip Jones and her podcast. The career-building center for single mothers—Stepping Stones. Even Hallie herself; you could not have made a better argument for her shop than you did on the news this morning. We absolutely love her for the first community outreach project for Elysia. Those are all great contacts for us.” Her perfect, painted mouth frowned. “But we need you to distance the campaign—the company—from Donovan’s.”
Max frowned and sat back in her chair. “Why?” she asked even though she already knew.
Diane shot her a knowing glance. “You know why,” she said. “It doesn’t represent the ideals of Elysia Publishing, particularly in connection to our outreach program. Owned and run by men. Unapologetically promotes gender-reinforcing, sexist roles. Has a reputation of violence, aggression, and degradation against women.” She shook her head. “We can’t have that kind of connection and you know it.”
“Donovan’s and the people who work there have been the biggest contributors to our cause. We would not have been able to pull this off without them,” Max pointed out. “How can we spit on that by abandoning and disavowing them now that we’re just gaining momentum?”
Diane shrugged and stood. “I don’t know.” She stepped just outside the door. “I don’t know, but you’d better figure it out fast. The board has discussed it and we all agree that we cannot be connected to them.”
Max watched the door close with finality, opening on a crossroads. A choice. The job and life that she’d worked so hard for—the dream that had sustained her for her entire life. Or the principles and people she’d come to believe in.
“Call on line two,” Jeri’s voice buzzed in through the intercom.
Max picked up the transfer. “Max Wells.”
“Did you get my email?”
Max paused, the voice on the other line unfamiliar, sending a cold shiver down her spine. “Who is this?”
The caller hung up.
Max listened to the dial tone, staring at her computer screen as dread drenched her senses.
Swallowing hard, she gripped her mouse and opened her email again.
Still filled with yet unanswered messages about the campaign, Max almost missed the strange email from Unknown. She looked at the email’s subject. “Neighborhood Watch.”
She let her mouse hover over it for a moment, sure that, while she did not want to open that email, she should. It was always better to face the oncoming threat than hide from the attack.
She inhaled deeply and clicked on the message.
Her brow wrinkled.
It was empty.
Almost.
All it had was a single zip file.
Worried, her mouse stayed over the attachment. She ought to open it. She needed to know what it was. She needed to know what kind of new blackmail Wayne and his buddies might have to hold over their heads. She needed to know if this was just one more thing he could hurt them with.
She blew out an indecisive breath. But what if it was a virus? What if it wiped out all her information? What if it stole it? Not just all her information, but all the donor and volunteer information she’d gathered.
Max bit her lip, about to click.
“Another call,” Jeri announced, interrupting her thoughts. “Line one.”
Max paused. “Take a message and tell them I’ll call them back in the morning.” It was late and she needed to think about this. This was already more than she could deal with right now.
“He says,” she said, as if quoting the caller, “ ‘you want to take this call, Max.’ ”
Max stifled a chuckle, her earlier tension relieving. Even for just a moment. “Put him through.”
“Hello, Max,” the lawyer said, his voice smooth and dark as chocolate after a really hard day.
“Sir,” she greeted, smirking.
“How’s the crusade coming?” he asked. “I caught your call to arms on the news today. You were brilliant.”
She smiled, sitting back in her chair, spinning it so she could look out her window and the florescent stars of the city at night. “Thank you.” She sighed. “It’s been,” she said as she smiled, “busy. In the best of ways.”
“No pitchforks and torches?”
“Psh.” She sneered. “Toothpicks and matches; nothing I can’t handle.” She hesitated before turning back to her computer, and sighed.
“What is it?” he asked, obviously hearing the wary weariness in her voice.
Her lips thinned. “I got a weird email from an unknown source.”
He made a disgruntled noise. “What did it say?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It just has an attachment.” She thought about it. “And I got a weird phone call right before it.”
“A weird phone call?”
She shrugged. “Telling me to check my email.” She frowned and shook her head. “That’s when I saw the message.”
“Don’t open it,” he ordered. “I’ll be right there. Don’t open it. Wait for me.”
Max nodded, but her hand reached for her mouse.
“I mean it, Max,” she heard him say sternly before he hung up.
———
Max stood over Peter’s shoulder, alternating between glaring at her screen and all the extra equipment now cluttering her desk and the tall, arrogant man leaning over Peter’s other shoulder.
“So?” the lawyer asked.
“It doesn’t seem to have a virus attached to it, but I’d still rather open it on my computer than on Max’s,” he murmured as he typed furiously. “Especially since this is your work computer.” He turned to his laptop on the desk and brought up the attachment.
They all jolted when the pictures popped up.
“Oh.” Max stared at the grainy, black-and-white photos that exploded like a firecracker all over the screen. Peter sat back when Max pushed past him, clicking through them hurriedly. Huge, full-page, unavoidable, unmistakable photos of herself. Of both men beside her. Of Kat. Of Hallie and of Pip. Of several of the volunteers that she’d met on site. All were at skewed, awkward angles. Zoomed and cropped to showcase the very worst. All were nude or mostly nude. Contorted into lewd positions. While many body parts had been blurred for the sake of decency, their faces were kept clear, the orgiastic expressions twisting their features, hiding nothing.
Max took a closer look at the photos. There was a picture of her with the lawyer in Hallie’s dressing room, his face buried between her thighs. Of her with him in his car, her hand on his cock.
There were pictures of Kat over Peter’s lap, her bared ass bruised and marked and his hand reared with a crop poised to strike.
Pictures of Rachel burying a large, thick dildo deep inside of Hallie.
Max gasped and focused on the last set of pictures before turning to glare at the bleach-blond bastard beside her.
Pictures of him with Pip. With his hands covering her pert breasts. Pictures of him with Sara, also from the fashion show, while he tied her body with rope. With a blond woman—whom she remembered meeting while repainting the shop—as he slapped cuffs on her blindfolded, bound body. Sixteen. Sixteen different pictures of him with more than twenty different women.
Five regular partners and six randoms, my ass! She growled.
She turned to glare at him and the placid, completely non-guilty look on his lying face. “Most of those were from before we met,” he clarified. “And aren’t breaking any actual rules.”
She shook her head and gritted her teeth. He could be such a litigator sometimes.
She turned back to the screen, trying to divorce herself from the people in the pictures and just look at the images themselves. Each photo had the words “Pillars of the city” printed in bold letters over the top.
She stifled a shriek, her eyes widening. She leaned in close to the screen. Shocked, horrified, she saw herself, hands and feet spread like a criminal while Rand’s hand slammed her against the dungeon wall. The slapper in his hand held at his hip, a ludicrously hard and intimidating phallic symbol.
She whimpered in shame as she saw the hungry, hot look on her face. At the want that sparked in her eyes.
Fuck!
“Damn,” the lawyer said, “look at the date.”
Max’s gaze narrowed on the top of the digital flyer filling the screen. Dear God. She clicked through them. All of them had the date of Hallie’s grand opening printed in its corner.
“What,” Peter asked, “does that mean?”
“It means we’re screwed.” Max hid her face in her hands.
The ever-observant counselor scrolled to the end of the file. The last page was filled with a mess of email addresses. “That’s a list of all the emails for the mayor, the governor, the chief of police, and every paper and news station in the local area.”
“So we have until then to back off,” Max continued ominously. “If Hallie’s store opens, Wayne will send this out to everyone on that list.”
Max backed away from the tacit but overt threat on the screen, her hand covering her mouth. If that email went out...
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
She was going to lose her job. She was going to have to move. She’d have to explain this to her parents, her family.
She had to call everyone on her volunteer and donor list. She had to tell them about this. She had to warn them.
Max slumped down into the chair across from her desk. This was all her fault. In trying to help out Hallie, she was going to take down a lot of good people. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
The livid lawyer leaned closer to the screen, his icy glare hard. “How did he get these?” his voice was a harsh grate, an uncharacteristic grumbling growl.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “Most of these are from inside Donovan’s. How could anyone get these?”
“It’d have to be someone who belongs to Donovan’s,” Max concluded, “right?” A mole in the group. “That’s the only way, isn’t it?”
The two men—the two long-term members of the exclusive, private club—looked at each other, betrayed anger simmering in their eyes as a furious silence swirled dangerously around them.
———
He gritted his teeth before running his hand over his tired, dry eyes. He’d been staring at his computer, sifting through member profiles—past, present, and petitioning—for three days now.
But he just didn’t see anyone in Donovan’s doing this.
There was something about the people in this scene, in this community. They were outliers. Outlaws. They lived by their own code of honor. They had to create their own sense of morality. Because the ones the rest of the world played by didn’t apply to them. They banded together because, so often, no one else—not family, not friends, not coworkers or neighbors—would take them in. They were each other’s family.
Who betrayed their family like that?
He pounded his desk.
“Sir?” Elin asked, poking her head into his office.
He flexed his throbbing hand. “I’m fine, Elin,” he told her, though the lie grated at him. “Any word from Marcus.”
“Not yet,” she said. “But Mr. Richards is heading up.”
“Send him in when he gets here,” he told her. “Then you can leave for the night. Go home. Get some sleep.” He wasn’t the only one who’d been working long days.
“Sir,” she said before leaving.
He shook his head and turned back to his screen.
They’d been so careful. Had always been so sure that they’d protected themselves. But they’d been violated.
And by one of their own.
A knock sounded before Elin led Peter into his office, carrying a tray of coffee that she laid on the table before nodding respectfully and leaving.
“I think I know how Wayne and his goons got the photos.” Peter took a seat across from his desk. “Donovan’s had its security cameras installed by Lock Stock on my recommendation when you remodeled,” he said, regret weighing heavy in his voice. “Who also, thanks to the relationship you now have with them, did the security system at a discounted rate in Bits ‘n’ Pieces. And, who by a complete stroke of bad coincidence, provided the cameras for most of the block of office buildings that Max works at. They also have three employees who go to Anointed Assumption, Wayne’s church, and at least one of those three are active in Wayne’s protest group.”
Bastards. “I want their names.” His fists clenched tight.
“I sent them to you, along with basic profiles,” Peter told him. “None of them were high-ranking, peons with just enough clearance and know-how to make a mess of things. I already called the president of the company. He’s a friend and as pissed about this as we are. The three are under investigation—quietly, of course. And he’s already promised that, if any one of them should be found culpable, they’ll be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Peter crossed his arms over his chest, the Clark Kent-ish looking man looking meaner and more dangerous than he had any right to. “I told him that the law was the least of their worries.”
“Peter?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“They fucked with Kat,” Peter said. “They went after her.” He shook his head. “Should I find out that they so much as breathed a bad word about Hallie, her store, or the people giving everything they can to help a friend in need, they’ll find themselves in more trouble than they can imagine. Two have grounds for tax fraud. Another has a hidden drug habit. And that’s just on my first pass. I find one, any, or all of these guys guilty, there won’t be an inch of their lives I don’t know about.” He grunted. “No one fucks with Kat.”
He nodded, completely understanding the feeling. “I assume you’ve looked into Wayne.”
“Yeah,” Peter said with a sigh. “Other than his regular sex worker visits, he’s clean. Spotless financials. Eerily perfect tax records. A few minor citations on his restaurant from the health department, but nothing serious and always promptly addressed.”
The attorney shook his head. “Hiring a sex worker looks hypocritically bad for him. It does. But it’s nothing in the face of all those photos. Ours is still the splashier story. They’re going to make us the boogiemen of the business district. They’re going to target each and every one of us, dragging us through the mud.”
“So let’s give them a better story.”
Both men turned.
Max stood in the doorway with Elin and another older, glamorous, regal-looking woman. “Mr. Hayato, Mr. Richards, this is my boss and president of Elysia Publishing, Diane Withewood. I think I have an answer to all our collective problems.”
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