Page 86 of The Five Year Lie

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says in a low voice that doesn’t betray his rage. This fucking cop is taking home a hundred grand a year in drug money. And he wants to take his ball and go home?

“It’s time. I promised the wife.”

Poor wife.She has no idea that her husband likes handcuffing teenage girls on their knees and then shoving his dick down their throats. “Won’t you go stir-crazy? A man of action like yourself?”

Ward smirks. “I’ve got some new plans. Going in with some buddies to start our own private security firm. I’ll get my pension, and now I also got a nice nest egg, thanks to you.”

That’s just plain infuriating. Even if it’s basically the same plan that Brainz has—using ill-gotten resources to buy even more freedom.

The problem is that Ward is a dirty cop already, and he’ll be an even dirtier PI. And if the guy ever decides to brag about their little business arrangement, he’ll be a huge liability.

But that’s a problem for another day. “I’ll toast you on your retirement day,” he says. “Better yet—I can get you some cheap cameras for your start-up.”

“Sweet deal,” Ward says, and Brainz smiles.They’ll be hacked, motherfucker. Keep your nose clean.

“Hey, one more thing?” he says as Ward collects his actual tackle box. Fishing isn’t just a ruse for him.

“Yeah?” The cop waits.

“You know this guy?” On his phone, he pulls up a photo of Drew Miller and enlarges it on the screen.

Ward snorts. “Sure I do. That’s Jay Marker. Punk-ass foster kid who grew up in Lowden. Thinks his shit don’t stink.”

Jay Marker. Now I’ve got you.“Cool. Thanks. Have a good day on the water.”

“I always do.”

He shakes that asshole’s hand and gets back into his ride. On the highway, he mentally counts his cash. This arrangement has been lucrative, but he’d been counting on another year’s earnings.

It was low-risk, too—picking up product whenever Ward could skim it from a bust and passing it on to someone close to him who deals.

Easy money. And he needs it. Server time doesn’t come cheaply. They’ll need a lot of horsepower to scale LiveMatch up from its beta program to a thriving business.

Then the real payoff happens—he’ll own half of a start-up in the fastest-growing tech on the planet.

28

ARIEL

When Zain shakes me awake, my eyes spring open. I sit up fast but I’m utterly disoriented.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “But I found it.”

“What?” I rub my eyes. I’m on my sofa, where I seem to have fallen asleep after writing and rewriting my letter several times.

“I found it,” he repeats. “The warrant Drew was after.”

“How do you know?”

Zain launches into an explanation, and I do my best to follow. “The second week of July, he downloaded every Chime Co. warrant request—with their video files—between two dates in 2016. He saved hundreds of documents to an external drive. And yet nobody flagged him. It should have triggered a notification to the security account at the very least.”

As he talks, my gaze swims over to the clock on the TV. It reads 4:14. There’s an empty coffee cup on the table in front of Zain, and the wrappers from several granola bars.

He’s been pulling an all-nighter and watching me sleep.

I am a terrible friend.

“... After that, he stopped logging in as other people, presumably because he didn’t need to anymore. He was busy reviewing all these files on his own time. So I went in and downloaded the same set of files.”