Page 66 of Grift

Patrick

Lila texts that we need to meet. Today. She says it’s urgent.

I don’t want to risk meeting at the casino, so she proposes a conference room at MIT.

She’s dressed differently today. Gone is the easygoing nerd girl, and she’s all business and efficiency in a dark dress and spiky heels. But it’s the hard look on her face that leaves me concerned.

Wordlessly, I take the chair at the end of the small meeting table and wait. I can’t suppress a tic as my fingers hammer the table. Second go by, as she just stares at a computer screen, shaking her head.

Finally, she closes the laptop she’s staring at and looks up at me.

“Patrick, this is seriously fucked up,” she starts.

I’m already bouncing my legs under the table to drive off energy.

I nod.

“No, I don’t even think you get it,” her eyes blaze. A sense of horror, that disconnection when I brace for emotional impact, and some inkling of what’s coming mingle. My jaw’s clenched so tight it cracks when I speak.

“Tell me, Lila.”

Whatever she’s going to tell me is bad, and when she sees something flash across my face it’s like a mask slides into place. She’s going into professional mode, separating her personal reaction from her business response. Good. Better to just get through it.

“Patrick, when you came to me, I went into this investigation with a certain set of assumptions,” she smooths back her hair, eyes shifting between my face and a point on the wall behind my head in a practiced manner. “Usually, it’s an old boyfriend or maybe a roommate where there’s bad blood.”

Makes sense. Jessica didn’t mention any ex, but who even knows. It was just college, after all.

“But that’s not the situation here. There’s nothing like that, nothing at all. Some casual dating, her roommates loved her, and the trail runs cold. When that happens, I immediately work a second hypothesis. Given who her father is, maybe it’s an enemy that’s looking for leverage or someone on the take.”

Leverage. A little too close to home, and that also sounds completely plausible. Kensington is a man that pushes an agenda, hard. Not always the popular one, but almost always the self-serving one. There’s probably enough wreckage in his wake to compete with the Carney legacy.

“But at a certain point, theories are just theories. My job is to follow the data and that’s what I did. What I found was deeply disturbing,” she says. I’m growing impatient, balling my fist. Just give me a fucking name. “Before we go on, I want to assure you that not only did I validate this information through normal channels, but I ran it down to the point that I can tell you with absolute certainty that it’s correct.”

“Just tell me,” I grit out.

“Patrick, I need you to hear what I’m saying right now. Because once we get into the details…” and then I understand. Whatever she’s going to tell me is so bad, so twisted, she’s afraid I’m going to lose control.

No matter how bad this is, I will hold it together; it’s the only way to protect Jessica and to get this solved. That’s all that matters. “I hear you Lila, and I trust the information you’re giving me.”

“Good enough. How well do you know Jessica’s family?”

Her words take me by surprise and when I give a half-shrug, she gestures toward the computer screen. “So the older brother, Camden. He’s the one they say is going to go after the Senate seat. I dug pretty deep, and he’s actually pretty clean, for a guy with a father like the Senator and political aspirations.”

She opens the laptop and rotates the computer in my direction. There’s a picture of two men, both familiar.

“The middle brother Jared is a completely different story.” She points at the other man in the photo. “This guy is Carter Desmarais. They’ve been friends since high school, college roommates, and now they both live in a building down on the waterfront that’s owned by the Senator.

The first face is familiar because I’d beat it half to death. The second is from the security tapes of the card counters. This is Jared’s partner in the card counting.

He’s slipped out that night, and then with everything happening, it had been let go.

“Carter and Jessica went to the same college,” she says shortly, running a hand through her hair. “The video was taken in his fraternity house. In his room.”

Ice drives itself into my veins.

“It gets worse.”

I’m going to slaughter this little fucker.

---