Page 22 of The Hardest Hit
“Evan,” said Jackson, following him.
“You want a pee test?” demanded Evan.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” said Jackson.
“Then what are you saying? Is this why you were all nice to me at dinner?”
“What?” Jackson blinked in a way that Evan thought meant he was genuinely confused. That was nice, but it didn’t mean that they all weren’t waiting for him to screw up and he had no other way of showing them that he wouldn’t. “I show up to family dinners. I answer all the calls. I make all my therapy appointments. What more do you fucking people want?”
“Hey,” said Jackson, holding up his hands. “I’m not trying to say anything like that.”
“You obviously know how to get in and out of my building,” said Evan. “You can let yourself out.”
He turned on his heel and left Jackson standing in the parking garage.
9
Jackson – The Intelligencer
Jackson waited on the rooftop reading a book on his phone. At some point, he switched over to a video that Aiden sent him and then got lost down the rabbit hole of TikTok, but when his phone battery started to tick toward the halfway mark, he switched off and stood up. He did a couple of laps around the roof and some basic calisthenics to get warm. Waiting for the right moment was always the most boring part of breaking and entering, but now that he did it as a hobby rather than as a profession he was finding it a lot easier. Of course, having all the gear and cold-weather apparel his little law-breaking heart desired also made things a bit easier.
At 10:30 he pulled on gloves and strapped on his headlamp and set to work on the elevator shaft. In old buildings, the elevator shafts were rarely alarmed. They relied on the alarm systems on each floor and the basic premise that people interested in theft would either break a lock or attempt it during convenient daytime hours. Once inside the elevator shaft, he climbed down the service ladder to the eighth floor and popped the electrical panel outside the doors. He triggered the right little diode and the doors slid open. He stepped off the ladder and walked into the offices ofThe IntelligencerMagazine.
Jackson knew Pete was working on the photographer Monroe Harding, but the more he thought about the pictures on Harding’s camera, the more nervous Jackson had become. It wasn’t just Harding’s existence; it was the fact that the photographer was tied to a real publication. Jackson wasn’t sure what the Intelligencer would want with the Deveraux family and he didn’t feel like spending the time to sift through the clues to guess. Not when there was an easy shortcut to be had for the price of a few hours and a quick climb down an elevator shaft.
Jackson was choosing not to admit that part of his impatience was a result of his conversation with Evan. It bugged him that Evan thought Jackson was checking up on his sobriety. Not that Jackson wasn’t checking up on it, but Evan wasn’t supposed toknowthat. And Evan certainly wasn’t supposed to feel like Jackson was putting pressure on him. As far as Jackson could tell, all Evan got from anyone was pressure. Jackson wanted Evan to feel like he was safe with his own family, but the conversation in the car had only shown how little Evan trusted any of them.
The Intelligencer was tucked in a little rabbit warren of grimy offices on the eighth floor and seemed to be composed of cast-off cubicles and whiteboards so old that they no longer erased properly. Jackson started at the front desk. Front desk computers were frequently not password protected because they were considered group property. A quick cruise of the desktop gave him access to the employee calendars. The editor’s name was Marnie Perrault. She had a meeting with Monroe Harding booked for later in the week. He opened the event and saw that Marnie had added a note.
I’m getting a lot of pressure from up top. Give me something useful on the D. Storage units aren’t it.
Jackson frowned at that and made a note to have Pete look up the Intelligencer parent company. Jackson shut the computer back down and made his way through the cubicles, looking for Monroe Harding’s desk. It turned out to be easy to find. The outside was covered in photographs, mostly of celebrities on the streets of New York without makeup on. Someone had been writing ‘funny’ captions on them. Jackson wasn’t sure how calling someone a fatty for eating lunch qualified as funny, but clearly, his tastes and Monroe’s didn’t align. Inside the cubicle, more pictures papered the walls, but these were more neatly organized under taped-up banners that appeared to denote ongoing projects. He surveyed the wall behind the desk and then turned to the desk itself. Jackson froze. Evan was the entire interior wall in front of the desk.
Jackson’s fingers itched to rip down all of the photos and his heart was racing. Instead, he forced himself to take a deep breath and then another. On closer inspection, there were a few pictures of Dominique and Aiden and one or two of himself, but Monroe Harding had spent far too much time focusing on Evan. Jackson felt a surge of rage. Previously, Monroe Harding had been an irritation, but he was about to become the focus of Jackson’s attention. Jackson looked at each of the photos, trying to gauge how long Harding had been following Evan. As he looked from photo to photo, Jackson found himself frowning. In at least four pictures, Evan was visiting the Deveraux storage unit. The date stamps on the photos said the visits were only a few days apart and in the most recent photo, Evan was carrying a bag out of the storage unit—one that hadn’t been in his hands in the previous photo of him arriving. What the hell was Evan doing?
With no other clues popping out at him, Jackson rummaged through Harding’s desk but didn’t find anything else interesting. Then he moved on to the editor’s office. She had a stack of resumes in her desk drawer and was working on editing her own cover letter, but other than the stench of desperately wanting out of the Intelligencer, Marnie’s office didn’t yield anything interesting. She kept her computer locked down and her files organized, but she didn’t have anything filed under Deveraux.
Jackson shook his head, relocked Marnie’s office, and went back out to the elevator. He climbed down to the fifth floor and then crossed the hall and took the service elevator down to the loading dock. He left by the back door and walked quickly down the alley that he already knew didn’t have any security cameras. He got into his car and sat for a long moment before starting the engine. This trip was supposed to have answered questions, not raise more of them.
He dashed off a quick message to Pete to hurry him along on his report on the Intelligencer and Harding and then sent a second one to Theo. Theo had all the keys to Deveraux House and he would know what was required to get into the Deveraux storage unit. When Jackson had visited the storage unit the previous year with Evan, he’d noted the sign-in station and the passcode on the door, but Evan had taken care of it.
Jackson frowned, remembering last year’s excavation of boxes of paperwork during the lawsuit with the Zhao. The paperwork had been from Randall and Owen Deveraux and it had been an unpleasant trip down memory lane for Evan. It hadn’t bothered Jackson—he never felt particularly interested in the things his father left behind, mostly because the things Randall had left were useless trophies. Jackson was far more concerned with his current living, breathing cousins than his abusive dead relatives. But Evan took Randall and Owen’s abusive behavior much more to heart. When Evan had volunteered to take the boxes back to the storage unit, Jackson had meant to go with him but had ended up getting called away by Eleanor. Whatever Evan was doing in the storage unit, Jackson didn’t think it could be healthy for him. Jackson drummed his fingers on the wheel. He was tempted to send an email to Evan’s therapist, but the woman was obstinately closed-mouthed about Evan’s therapy. Which was good. For other people.
His phone chirped an alert and Jackson saw with surprise that it was from Theo. It contained the storage unit address, passcode, and a quick note about front desk sign-in procedures. Jackson checked his watch.
I didn’t think you’d see that until morning. Sorry if I woke you.
I was just on my way to bed. It only took a moment.
Thanks.
You’re welcome.
Jackson shook his head again. Nearly six years in and he still wasn’t used to Theo. From the first, Theo had been an ally, but Jackson wasn’t entirely sure why. The only explanation that Jackson could come up with was that Theo liked the Deveraux family and wanted them to succeed. It seemed like an unlikely motivation, but Jackson had come to rely on the butler as much as the rest of his security team.
Jackson stared again at the text and debated waiting until the morning to go to the storage unit and then decided against it. The whole point of twenty-four-hour access to the storage unit was that they could go whenever they wanted. And the whole point of inheriting millions was so he could sleep in whenever he wanted. Why else would money exist if it wasn’t to allow for periodic slothfulness?
Jackson put the car into gear and navigated toward the storage unit. The building was well lit, but he couldn’t decide if the plethora of security cameras was a good thing or not. He used the pin number to unlock the door to their unit instead of rolling up the large garage-door-like portion and stepped inside. Jackson paused and blinked in surprise.
