Page 151 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
No, I text back.But let’s go.
He chuckles over the sounds of the warming engines.
I don’t watch the take-off. I know De Leon’s a skilled pilot from our flight to England. The turbulence on the way back wasn’t his fault, and there’s none today as we lift smoothly into the late September sky. I tap away for maybe ten minutes before Lindy gets restless.
“Maaaxxx.”
“What?”
“I’m bored.”
“Tough. I’m not talking to you.”
“Maaaxxx.”
“I’ll gag you,” I warn.
“That’s my job,” De Leon calls from the cockpit.
I roll my eyes and go back to my coding. I’m in a bad enough mood that I’m preparing a surprise for Rick-the-Dick for Monday morning. Hope he doesn’t need to charge anything on those cards.
“Maaaxxx.”
“Shut up, Lindy, I mean it.”
“Are you really mad at me?”
“Yes, I’m really mad at you. You’re a murderer and an asshole.”
“If I apologize, can we be friends again?”
“Seriously? No.”
“I really am sorry about those kids. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m not an experienced terrorist, or whatever you think. All I was trying to do was bring Orelo down. I knew you wouldn’t help me without the data snatch cover. I found a couple of mercs who were looking for tech support and it all lined up. That’s how I hooked up with Sasha and Jo and Georgios. I don’t know them outside of the jobs we’ve done. I’d never done anything like this before our first job. I’m sorry it went bad.”
I blow a breath out my nose to control my rising temper. “So, you’re just an incompetent terrorist.”
Lindy’s quiet for several minutes. I tap at my laptop in fury.
“If I said I found the family and paid them compensation for their losses, would that make it better?”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“You paid them for killing their children and that makes it right?”
“I paid them for my mistake. I couldn’t give their kids back to them. It’s all I could do.”
I want to scoff at him and call it blood money, but it’s more than I thought of doing, which makes my gut burn with shame.
“I’m glad you did that,” I say after a while.
“It helped with the guilt,” Lindy responds. “I didn’t sleep well for a long time, Max. I still don’t. I’m not as evil as you think I am. I’m just...”
“Angry? Vengeful?”
“Yes. Neal and Samantha destroyed everything I built. Ten years of my life sunk in that company. It wasmycode,myalgorithm,myinvention that let them take the company public. I lost eleven million when the stock tanked. I lost my home. My friends. All because Neal was too ashamed of me to be honest with his wife. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”
