He pulled up his email and brought up the pictures. The first was of Vanessa getting out of her car, but it wasn’t the restrained Vanessa he knew now. She was wearing vibrant colors, her hair a pretty honey blonde. She looked good either way, but this Vanessa had a secretive smile on her face, a coy look in her eyes. She was sexy as hell, and she knew it.
The second shot showed where she was. In a motel parking lot. She was walking up the stairs, and there was a man standing in the doorway. Whoever was taking the pictures had managed to get the sign on the motel’s front in the shot. It clearly stated Welcome Village Creek Golfers.
That was there to give a time. It would be easy to find out when the golf tournament occurred.
“Do we know who the guy in front of the door is?” He didn’t want to keep going, but he forced himself to. He forced himself to click through the pictures that showed Vanessa’s luscious backside as she greeted the middle-aged man wearing a suit.
Was that her stepson? His stomach rolled at the thought.
“You’re not going to like it.” Deke’s words didn’t give him hope.
“It’s her stepson.” Now he could see the man fully, and he recognized him. He also recognized that he had his hand on her ass as he kissed her and welcomed her inside. He forced down his anger. So much for her telling him the truth. He couldn’t show how fucking much seeing her like that hurt. “Is he trying to blackmail her?”
“Keep going,” Deke said with a sigh.
That was when he got to the emails. They were from Vanessa to George Jr. dated two weeks before. Vanessa demanded twenty million or she would release the photos to George Jr.’s wife.
He stared at it for a moment. “So this wasn’t on her computer until the man put it there?”
“From what I can tell, no, it wasn’t.” Deke had a grim expression on his face.
“So there’s a chance the pictures are fake, too.”
“They look real to me, but we both know all it takes is a dude with a computer and the right software to alter a photo,” Deke replied.
“Get Hutch on it.” He hated those pictures because they forced all of his doubt to creep right back in. He knew this was some kind of a setup, but the doubt was still there. He had to ask the questions. Had she lied when she’d told him she’d had no relationship with her stepson? She was so gorgeous there was no way the fucker hadn’t tried. She’d told him as much.
“You think someone’s setting her up?” Deke asked.
“I would say the stepson, but this makes him look bad.”
Deke shrugged. “Bad is relative. It might be worth it if it means he wins the appeal on his father’s estate case. The truth is even if it was real and it came out, he wouldn’t be the one held accountable, and you know it.”
Vanessa would be the one to pay the price. She would be seen as the seductress who tore a family apart. George would be able to apologize and tell the story of how she’d tricked him into bed, how she’d played on his emotions. How she’d turned to his father when she realized it wouldn’t work with him.
He would say she’d then tried to blackmail him, and look, the proof is on her computer. “He’s setting her up. Likely he’ll call the cops in right before the appeal. Those photos are fake. She’s done a ton of photo shoots. I would bet the first one is real and the others are of someone he hired to play Vanessa. You don’t see her face after the first one. It would have been easy to dress someone else up. Tell Hutch he’s looking for differences between the first photo and the others.”
A brow had risen over Deke’s eyes. “You done doubting her?”
“I am on this. I don’t know about the rest of it. I don’t think for a second that woman would blackmail someone. Even someone she hates. I don’t want to move on this. You got everything off her system, so we’ve got some time,” he replied. “There’s still the matter of the money that’s gone missing. We’ve verified it was moved from the computer she uses at work. She’s the only one who knows her password.”
“But there’s a master password on all Lodge Corp systems,” Deke pointed out.
“And it’s only known by people who are above reproach. I seriously doubt that Dani would need to hide fifty thousand dollars from Julian. Finn wouldn’t either. The only other people who know that code are Ben and Chase Dawson. Believe me. I’ve checked, and I haven’t found another explanation.” Michael wanted to believe her.