Page 109 of The Five Year Lie

First things first. He opens up the warrant archive and downloads every single warrant from 2010 onward. If there’s anything more illegal in there, he can study it later. That takes fifteen minutes, and most of the free space on his thumb drive.

Then he finds the LiveMatch directory, but he can’t open it. This terminal has no access.

Okay, that’s a disappointment. But not much of a surprise. Edward’s terminal is the only access point he’s found so far.

Ray’s machine will also have it, of course. He’d expected it to be either one brother or the other. Not both. That’s where he really fucked up.

But he can’t worry about that now. He’s running out of time, with one more important task to complete.

Luckily, he finds the in-house security system in the first place he looks. He skims the directory for the camera feed that’s trained on the warrant desk. Hopefully the videos are archived by date, or he could be here all day.

It takes a stress-inducing amount of time, but he locates the feeds from 2015.

Another glance at Jed. The kid is on the phone.

Shit.He has to get out of here. On the off chance that Jed called Ray just to check things out, it won’t be long before the cops show up.

The moment he spots the file for November sixth, he copies it onto his thumb drive. There’s no time to watch it now.

Later he’ll put it all together in one incriminating package, wrapped up in a fucking bow. Ray is a fool to think he’d give up after one single threat.

As soon as the file is saved, he ejects the drive. Then he walks out of the server center without a word to Jed. The sun is shining. It’s a glorious midmorning in Maine.

Yet everything about this moment is disorienting. He’s unemployed, and a fugitive. He’s standing on an unfamiliar block in Westbrook, Maine, his mission in tatters. Time to leave town and regroup.

He crosses a bridge over the river and turns onto Main Street.He’s uncertain of the direction he’s headed, but he has to get away from the company property, in case Ray knows where he’s gone.

He pulls out his phone and gets his bearings. His product manager—Declan—has peppered him with texts wondering where he is. The last one was only ten minutes ago.

That’s odd, actually. You’d think Ray would have pulled him aside and made up a story explaining his sudden disappearance. Embezzlement. Security violations. Something that would make Declan blanch.

But Ray hasn’t done that yet.

Head down, he trudges toward town, counting up all the different ways that Ray kept their meeting quiet. He’d called him over to the HR Center, for starters. It makes sense, though, to fire someone off-site if you’d like to prevent a scene in front of the other employees.

But maybe there’s a better reason.

Maybe Edward doesn’t know anything about this.

That stops him in his tracks for a second, literally. Because the idea requires another adjustment to his thinking. He’s assumed that Edward—Mr. Law and Order—had been the one to give the Lowden cops their illegal advantage. And he found the LiveMatch gateway onEdward’scomputer.

But what if Edward isn’t in this thing at all?

Walking again, he tries on that idea. The two brothers seem to genuinely hate each other. And LiveMatch was so buttoned down that most employees can’t even see it. Crouching in a corner of the network like a dirty secret.

Ray is the programmer, though, not Edward. Edward probably never touches the majority of the network. He wouldn’t even see it on his machine.

Yeah, okay.Wow.The whole damn thing might be Ray’s doing. That might even be the point—to undermine his brother.

Oh my God. That is totally the point.

He might have even said that out loud. But every time he thinks he’s seen the worst of the Cafferty brothers, there’s always farther to fall. One of them is a giant asshole. And the other one is a pathological liar and a cheat.

That’s beyond twisted. But it means that Drew has one more chance to set things right.

He pulls out his phone again and pulls up Edward’s personal cell phone number. It’s the only piece of data he ever took from Ariel, and now he’s finally going to use it.

The phone rings only twice before a gruff voice answers. “Yes? Who is this?”