Page 79 of Hard Wired

Chapter Twenty-Four

An hour after Sylvie left, Aaron Sandford called Dominic’s phone. “I’m told by our computer experts that you haven’t used that memory stick I gave you. What are you up to?”

Dominic was in the music room. He went over to close the door, glancing around the space, even though he knew there were no cameras here watching him. “We were a little busy last night.”

“I’m sure you were. But even you can’t go for that long. She was at your house over half a day.”

“She’s not stupid. She was going to notice if I started going through her things to mess with her laptop.”

“Are you fucking with me right now? Do you think this is a game?”

Dread sat in Dominic’s chest, squeezing his lungs, and making it hard to breathe. “I don’t give a shit about you, Sandford. But I’m not messing with Charles. I wouldn’t.”

He kept his voice steady and confident. Sandford was used to him being defiant. If he started acting cowed at this point, the lawyer would get suspicious. But Dominic was out on a limb right now, further from safety than he’d ever been. One wrong step and he could fall.

“I’m lucky she was willing to see me again at all, after what happened before. You’re the one who sent a gunman here and freaked her out.”

“Yet she did come back. That’s lucky.”

“You told me to make it happen, and I did! Now you’re acting like it’s a problem?”

“She brought one of her coworkers from Bennett Security. You have to see why that raised my concern.”

“The guy’s her friend. He just sat in my kitchen the whole time and ate my food. Like you said before, getting women to like me is what I’m good at. But building trust doesn’t happen in one night.” He hated playing along this way, acting like he was just as despicable as some people believed. “I’m going to get this done, but you have to be patient.”

“You don’t tell Charles Traynor to be patient. He decides on what the timing should be, not you.”

“But there’s no point in rushing if it means she’ll catch me in the act, right?”

A pause. “It’s your job to make sure you’re not caught. When exactly do you plan to get this finished? Tonight?”

He and Sylvie had already talked about this. She was going to need at least until tomorrow to finish her coding. “She can’t come back today. But I’m planning to see her again tomorrow. I’ll install the program then.”

“See that you do. You’ve already witnessed how much patience your uncle has to spare for you. It’s not much. If you don’t deliver Bennett Security like you promised, then a lot of people are going to pay for it. You’ll be wishing those thugs had finished you off when you were in jail.”

Dominic punched “end” on the screen and tossed his phone onto the coffee table. He sank onto the couch, wiping his hands over his face.

What the hell am I doing? This is insane.

Ratting out the Syndicate? Going against Charles?

Why did I ever think I could do this?

But he’d told Sylvie he would. His word had never meant much, but she did. She trusted him. And Dominic knew this was the only way forward, even if it scared him more than anything had before.

He grabbed his other phone from the cabinet where he’d hidden it. The burner he’d been using to communicate with Sylvie. He needed to talk to Raymond. But could he risk it?

His thumbs moved over the screen. Hey kid, he texted, call me at this number when you get a chance. Raymond would know it was him.

There was another person he needed to speak with today, too. Lana Marchetti. Sylvie had promised to pass along his burner number to Lana. So Dominic had to sit and wait for that call, too.

Sylvie was off doing all the work, and he was just sitting on his ass being useless.

He thought of what Maureen had said to him: that he was putting all the responsibility and power on Sylvie’s shoulders. That he should be doing something to prove he could be responsible for himself.

Was she right?

No, she couldn’t be. Testifying against the Syndicate would be doing plenty. If Lana would just call, then he could get the process in motion.

---