“I know the basics of the attack ten years ago, that you covered up the aftermath for her, and then tried to hunt down her attackers. She says you hit some dead ends and gave up. My guess is that you only led her to believe you gave up, but you kept on hunting. Probably still are.”
“Smart man,” Harry muttered. “She wanted to move on, so I stopped telling her what I was doing. To be fair, I never came across enough information to go on anyway.”
Harvard’s sixth sense tingled. “But you did find something.”
“Aye.”
Chapter Fifteen
Keeping one ear open for any sign that Rachel might wake, Harvard asked, “What’d you find out?”
“About a year before the attack, Rachel was doing some work at TayFor during a break from university.” Harry clunked around doing who knows what while he talked. “You have to understand that back then, Rachel was always thinking about TayFor and spent every free minute working in their offices. She had huge plans for the company and was interested in every tiny detail. It fascinated her.”
Which made Harvard wonder why her family hadn’t pushed harder to find out why she suddenly changed her career path.
“Anyway,” Harry continued, “during that particular visit, Rachel came across evidence that two guys were stealing from the company. It was just petty crap, but they’d been getting away with it for a while. They fired the guys but didn’t lay charges because the company didn’t want the public to think they had security issues.” He snorted with clear derision. “That seems to be standard practice at TayFor—cover up or avoid the problems instead of coming clean and explaining things properly to your clients.”
The hair on Harvard’s arms stood on end. “You think those two guys were the ones who attacked her?”
“I don’t know. What I do know for certain is that they spent the year before the attack bad-mouthing TayFor, Rachel in particular. But I only know what they did before the attack because they disappeared straight after. As in, completely gone. No online trail. No record of them anywhere. Nothing.”
“How soon after the attack did they disappear?”
“Following day.”
Harvard remained silent for a moment while processing this new information. “That’s a helluva big coincidence,” he said at last.
“I know. Every few months, I run a search on them, but they still haven’t popped up.”
“Can you send me all the information you have on these guys?”
“Sure. I’ll do it as soon as we’re done with this call.”
“When you were looking for them, did you contain your search to the UK?”
“They were minimum wagers. I figured they didn’t have the resources or skills to move abroad.”
Harvard had that sinking feeling in his stomach that he always got when random patterns in a mission started to make sense. “They would if someone paid them.”
Harry cursed. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that? I’ll extend my search.”
“I’ll help,” Harvard said. “I have connections you might not have the ability to tap into.”
“One more thing.” Harry sounded like he was sipping coffee between words. “Not long after the attack, it occurred to me that if the drug they used on Rachel came from TayFor, there might be a record of who took it, or of its thef
t, on the backup server.” He let out a sigh. “I never brought this up with Rachel because she was determined to keep the whole thing a secret from her family, and there was no way I could get access to the server without them knowing. But you could get access now.”
“If you tell Elle what to look for, she can do it.” Harvard took a deep breath. “You gotta know, Rachel’s been receiving old Polaroids of the attack since she returned to TayFor. Second photo arrived with a warning written on it telling her to leave the company.”
It took so long for Harry to reply that Harvard began to wonder if the call had disconnected. “Elle isn’t searching those servers,” he eventually said in a tone that was pure steel. “I am. I’ll be on the first flight down tomorrow. But I’ll need a cover story if we’re still flying her assault under the radar.”
“Elle can—”
“No,” Harry interrupted. “Rachel’s my best friend. She might not see it like that, but there are days when I wonder if the reason that we’re friends in the first place is because we’re both crap at picking up on social cues. She’s been there for me since we were in uni. I’m coming down to help her with this—whether she wants me there or not.”
“Okay.” Harvard pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was kinda hoping to keep our conversation quiet. You turning up is gonna blow that right out of the water.”
“She’d find out anyway. Trust me. In all the years we worked together, I couldn’t get anything past her.”