An Offer You Can't Refuse by Sal Bianchi (best beach reads .txt) 📕

All I had to do now was wait for the program to finish doing its thing, and then I could “anonymously” send the information over to the SDCT. As long as they claimed not to know who the informant was, the information should be admissible in court.

“What is this?” I jumped as I heard an unfamiliar voice yell from the living room. I tensed as I realized that Shane must have just gotten home. I glanced down at the progress bar. It was still only at thirty-seven percent. I needed more time, but if I got caught trespassing right now, not only would this information be unusable, but I’d be in legal trouble as well.

I could hear Jase saying something, but I couldn’t make out the words from this distance.

“Get out of my house, now!” Shane yelled. I checked the progress bar again. It was at fifty-two percent now, but that still wasn’t enough. Whatever pertinent information was on here could very well be in the forty-eight percent that hadn’t yet been downloaded. I gritted my teeth and looked around frantically for my escape. I needed to be ready to leave at any moment.

“Okay, I’m leaving now,” I heard Jase yell, his voice unusually stiff and tense. It must have been his attempt to warn me that my time was running out. I crept over to the window at the end of the bedroom, grateful that this was a single-story house. As I slowly inched the window open to avoid making noise, I could hear Shane and Ellie arguing in the living room.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the will, Shane?” I heard Ellie yell as I crept back to the computer. It was at eighty percent, and I silently urged it to go faster.

“What are you talking about?” Shane yelled in response.

“That agent told me that your dad was going to remove you from the will!” she yelled. “Why didn’t you tell me? How am I supposed to trust you?”

“What, you think I killed him?” Shane retorted. He sounded angry.

“I don’t know!” Ellie screamed. “I don’t know what to think! I’ve been feeling confused for the past month, and then those two show up, and… wait, there was another one with him.”

Crap. I’d run out of time. I glanced down at the computer. It was only at ninety percent, but it would have to do. I yanked the USB out of the port and put the laptop back on the nightstand where it had been before. I could hear yelling and thundering footsteps coming toward the bedroom, so I rushed toward the window I’d opened earlier.

I climbed out as quickly as I could and turned around just in time to see the door beginning to swing open. I pulled the window shut from the outside and fell into a low crouch beneath the window. My heart was pounding as I remained completely still, straining my ears for any sounds coming from inside.

“Do you see him anywhere?” Shane roared, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t managed to spot me as I was climbing out the window after all. I crept low to the ground until I was certain that I was out of view of the window, then jumped to my feet and took off toward the front of the house at a sprint.

I could see Jase already sitting in the car. He leaned over to push the door open for me, and I sped up as much as I could. I dove into the car at full speed and yanked the door shut behind me with a loud thud.

“Drive,” I huffed, out of breath after the impromptu sprint. Jase looked bewildered, but didn’t waste time asking any questions. Instead, he just started the car and took off. Once we were out of sight of the house, he slowed down again. This was a residential neighborhood, after all, and it was probably dangerous to speed around when there were kids out playing.

“Okay,” Jase sighed once we were finally out of the neighborhood and back onto the highway. “What did you do?”

“You know I can’t say,” I muttered as I fiddled with the USB drive I still had clutched in my hand. What I’d done was illegal, there were no two ways about it. I’d searched Shane’s home without a warrant, and I’d broken into his computer and stolen his information. If I told Jase, it could potentially jeopardize the case, or worse, his career. As long as he could honestly say that he had no idea what I was doing, he’d be okay. For all he knew, I was in the bathroom the whole time.

“Whatever,” Jase scoffed. “As if you haven’t told me about half the stuff you’ve pulled while you’re on the job. I literally listened in on an illegal wire with you yesterday.”

I frowned at his argument. He had a point. I wasn’t under any illusions about what my role within the SDCT was. I was here because I was willing to bend the rules to get results. I’d agreed to those terms, and I was all right with having to face whatever consequences came with that, but that didn’t mean I wanted to drag Jase down with me.

“Yeah, well, let’s just get back to the office,” I replied. “I need to talk with Stein. He can give you the details after I do.”

Jase threw me an unimpressed glare. I realized how dumb it was to do this in such a roundabout way, but at least this way, everything would be clean on paper. I almost laughed as I thought about how similar the SDCT was to the mafia in this regard. It was a pretty common tactic within the mafia to do things in a really complicated way just so that crimes couldn’t be traced back to the original source. Things like money laundering and protection rackets were all done so that, if the feds ever did come knocking, everything would look good on