Page 80 of Prey

The flash drive weighed heavily in my palm, and I squeezed it, feeling the sharp edge digging into my skin.

I had a feeling whatever was on here would have the power to hurt Ryleigh, and fuck, I didn’t know how to handle that.

* * *

The room was bathedin darkness, saved for the small lamp on my side of the bed.

I had my laptop nearby, and Ryleigh was asleep next to me.

If she thought there was something off about tonight, she didn’t say, nor did she ask.

I hadn’t expected her to.

Ryleigh was very good at turning her head the other way, and it was only that one time when she guessed I was hiding something major from her, that she started to dig around for information.

This time was different.

She knew all that there was to know about me, she just didn’t want to know the details.

And this would be one of those details I was sure she wouldn’t want to know about because I was looking at the contents of the flash drive now, and it was as we expected.

Mayor Gallagher did keep insurance on his associates.

There were properties they owned that weren't under their name but a corporation. I bet if I looked into those corporations, I would find nothing but a shell.

Why did they need these properties, and why did they need these properties to be hidden from the public eye?

I was willing to bet my fucking fortune that the fucking Mansen brothers were hiding out in one of them, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

What was more, it seemed they were taking a page from the King’s Men’s book, because these properties weren’t just used to hide rats.

They were going to use it to take over our drug distribution ring.

There was also a list of all the known associates of Mayor Gallagher.

And Judge Bennett Hudson was on top of the list.

The information had all sorts of blackmail material on important figures in California, and even in Washington, D.C.

It also implicated Mayor Gallagher, which told me the others in his circle had the same shit stored somewhere in their computers.

They kept insurance on each other to make sure no one would turn.

I shook my head in disgust.

There was no loyalty in this group.

It made it easy to go against each other. It also meant the group was highly unorganized. What if we weren’t the only ones watching them?

What if there were government officials as well?

If we put ourselves in the middle of this, it might be how we unintentionally put ourselves directly under the FBI’s radar—even more so than we already had.

Ryleigh shifted slightly on the bed, and I closed out of the screen just as she opened her eyes and looked at me softly.

Fuck, but this kind of softness was something I would kill to protect.

I knew that, and I wondered if she knew it too.

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