Restrained Under His Duty (Dirty Little Secrets 3)

“I was contacted digitally,” he replies, shifting in his seat, obviously trying to get more comfortable with the cuffs. “There were never any names exchanged.”

A disappointing answer, but I’m not ready to give up just yet. I want this cleaned up nice and neatly for Hadley. She’s the only thing on my mind right now. “But you were contacted through your email?”

Caleb nods. “Yeah.”

I glance at Lee, who’s behind me again. “Get Jeff.” He accepts my order, immediately leaving the cabin, and I turn to Caleb again. “And you weren’t curious enough to look into who sent you the job yourself?”

He half shrugs. “They paid. A lot. And on time. I didn’t care.”

Another sign of his inexperience. To not know who you work for is beyond foolish.

Footsteps bang against the boat’s deck before Jeff’s chipper voice fills the cabin, “Whatcha need, chief?”

Jeff’s a lean and lanky, baby-faced hard worker, and he’s also the hacker who always joins me on scene. While Alex is my sidekick on most cases, she also wisely runs from danger, not straight into it. “Check Caleb’s email and see if you can find out who hired him.”

“On it,” Jeff says.

Though before he can move toward Caleb’s command center, with six monitors stacked in three rows on the desk, all plugged into his laptop, Caleb interjects, “I doubt you’ll find anything.”

Jeff grins at him, giving Caleb the type of smile that bares teeth. “Sorry, kid, but I’m not you. I can find anyone.”

He’s right—he usually could, but even I had some skepticism. So far I’d seen we were dealing with a pro. I doubted they’d slip up now.

It’s a thought I keep to myself as Jeff grabs Caleb, removing him from his chair and sitting in his place. When his fingers begin flying across the keyboard, I turn back to Caleb, finding his eyes focused on his monitors. “Where’s the video?”

“There’s a copy of it on my hard drive,” Caleb says, finally looking at me. “But it’s encrypted and I doubt…”

“It’s now deleted,” Jeff interjects, fingers still rapidly typing. “I don’t see a trace of the video anywhere else.”

Caleb dares to look offended. “How in the hell did you find—”

I interrupt him before he gets himself in more trouble than he’s already in. “Do you have a hard copy?”

His glare shifts onto me. “In the drawer there, but it’s locked—”

I move to the filing cabinet next to the desk. “This drawer?” I ask, pointing to the middle one.

“Yeah. I could get you the key—”

Using all my strength, I kick the drawer twice, until it opens. There, I see a single disc resting in the empty dark gray metal drawer. “Lee, mind grabbing an evidence bag?” Then I glance at Caleb, and his glare is now an outright scowl. “Is this the only other copy you have in your possession?”

“Yes,” he snaps.

Jeff chuckles. “Lose the attitude, kid. Believe me, if you like your pretty face, you don’t want to piss this guy off.”

Caleb stares at me a moment, then, obviously taking Jeff’s advice, he exhales slowly, hanging his head.

I scoff at Jeff, who gives me one of his classic big-ass smiles, before I return us to the task at hand. “Could you tell when you first looked at the video if it was the original?” I ask Caleb.

Caleb glances up and shrugs. “I highly doubt anyone could be so stupid as to give me the one and only copy of the video.”

At least this kid was right about one thing. “All right…” I ponder through the hundreds of questions I want to ask, sticking to only the most important. “How did you receive the disc in the first place?”

It’s then Lee returns, handing me the evidence bag. I maneuver the disc into the bag, careful not to get my fingerprints on it. There’s a good chance the blackmailer has touched this disc, and at this point, regardless of the fact that we’ve stopped the video from getting out, I still need to find him.

Which suddenly worries me. While it did take some time to find Caleb, it wasn’t necessarily that difficult either. Any good hacker could have found him, which left me to wonder: Why was it so easy?

That’s never a good question to need to answer.