Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
I open it and see her face, and I feel my own instantly curve into a wide smile.
“Jenna!” I exclaim, beckoning for her to come in. “You’re early again.”
“Is that a problem?” she asks. “Do you need me to go and come back?”
“No, of course not,” I say, grinning as she steps past me and I can close the door. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You’re not waiting for anyone else or anything?” she asks, looking up at me in the hall.
“No,” I say. That’s a weird question for her to ask. “No, I was only waiting for you. We can get started now that you’re here.”
“Are we going out to where my dad works?” she asks, turning back toward the door as if she’s eager to go.
“Not yet,” I say, holding up a finger and smiling. “I came up with an even better plan. Come and see.”
She follows me into my office. I can feel a kind of restless energy coming off her. I get that today is a big day for her, so I’m not surprised.
I grab my laptop from my desk and spin it around so we can both see it from the chairs, gesturing for her to sit as I log in.
“What’s this?” she asks, and she seems even more inquisitive than she has before – but I put it down to the excitement of the day again, glancing at her to see how impatient she is.
“Just wait,” I tell her, loading up the screen. When it does, I gesture to it with a flourish. “There.”
She frowns at the screen for a moment. “Is that Dad’s building?”
“Yep,” I say. “It’s a live video feed. And – watch.” I move the cursor on my screen toward the edges, and the camera turns with me. It has a full one-eighty degree of motion, taking us toward the road on either side.
“You’re controlling the camera?” Jenna says. “How?”
“I paid off the owner of the store opposite to let me set up a camera on top of his sign,” I explain. I was quite busy this morning. “It has enough range of view that we’ll be able to see not just if your dad leaves but also which direction he’s going and where he turns off the road.
It’s not quite the same as being there on the ground and being able to drive after him, but this takes care of our being confined in a small space together.”
“What will we do if he does leave?” Jenna asks. “How will we know where he’s going? After turning one way or the other, he could go just about anywhere.”
“We’ll cross that bridge if he does leave,” I say. “For all we know, he won’t leave at all. But later today, when he clocks out of work, that’s when I think we definitely need to follow him. And if he meets anyone at work instead, this camera will pick that up, too.”
“Alright.” Jenna seems to settle in, watching the camera intensely. “What do we do in the meantime? Just wait?”
“You just wait and watch,” I say. “You know what your dad looks like better than anyone, after all. If he comes out, I know you’ll spot him. It’s not like you can’t blink or look away, but don’t look away for longer than about thirty seconds or so. He could go across the parking lot with a gap longer than that, and we’d miss him.”
“Unless I saw his car pulling out, which I would recognize as well.”
I nod. “Unless you saw his car pulling out. In the meantime, I’m going to sit there at my desktop and do some tech stuff.”
“Tech stuff?” Jenna lifts an eyebrow. I get the feeling that vague explanations aren’t going to work with her today. She wants the full details, and I can’t say I blame her. I am spending her money here, after all.
She has a right to know how I’m using the time. I’m glad she seems able to separate the professional from the personal to make sure she still gets her money’s worth, even with everything going on between us.
“I’m going to try and hack some of his accounts first,” I explain. I actually managed to get into some of his social media profiles this morning, what little he had, but they weren’t actively used, and I couldn’t get any decent information.
“His emails, maybe his bank account, if I can do it without getting locked out. I don’t suppose you know any login information?”
She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t tell me that kind of thing. If I had those details, I would be able to catch him out when he’s been gambling.”
“That’s fair,” I say and shrug. “We might get lucky. He might have email confirmations or bank statements emailed to him, and I won’t need to go there. But I need to try and find any clues I can about where he’s gambling and who he borrowed money from or lost it to.”