“Who was the other guy?” I asked, not really caring.
“There were no other guys. At all,” Karla said, looking down. “My parents find out about that, and I’m done. My dad, he’s a minister, you know that?”
I didn’t. “So you told him after we talked. What was the benefit to you?”
“He said he’d give me two months of no payments,” she said. “Ten thousand to betray the one girl I actually like in this fucking industry. Ten thousand to be Judas. God, I’m a pathetic bitch.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t know. You certainly weren’t the one who stabbed Kade.”
Karla’s head jerked up, and she looked at me intently. “What?”
I nodded. “He stabbed Kade. He had surgery yesterday afternoon before Derek’s death. Now Kade’s in the hospital, Derek’s dead, and my Mom hates me. All because of Sydney Hale.”
“And me,” Karla said, dropping her head and crying. She wiped at her face and clenched her fist. “What the fuck have I become?”
“A woman with a mistake in her past,” I said. As I did, I realized I wasn’t angry with Karla, not like I had thought I would be on the way over. Instead, in a voice that I barely recognized in terms of the strength it contained, I continued. “We’ve all made mistakes. I mean, I spent nearly sixteen years hating my mother for saving me from a man who abused her. I dated Sydney, not recognizing him for what he was, and then didn’t come clean with my Mom or Derek about falling in love with Kade. But I’m going to keep moving forward.”
Karla nodded. “But you want Sydney.”
“Damn right. He nearly killed Kade, and now I find out he’s blackmailing more than one girl? This man needs to be put away. Karla, I don’t know if we could ever be friends again. I liked you a lot too, so maybe there’s hope. But we need to put this son of a bitch in prison. Can you help?”
Karla looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that. How?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go to the hospital and find out.”
Chapter 26
Kade
I felt strange, sitting in a hospital room with four people surrounding me, looking to me for leadership and guidance.
It wasn’t like at my law office. First of all, except for Vince, none of the people in the room worked for me. Secondly, of course, was that I was wearing a hospital robe and had a blanket pulled to my waist to cover my crotch. Finally, what we were planning was far beyond what I had ever done in the legal profession.
“All right, with what Karla has said, we’re really going to have to nail this guy. Karla, based off of what you know, do you agree with Alix that Sydney could hide out for a long time if he wanted to?”
Karla, who had spent ten minutes begging my forgiveness and crying when she arrived, sniffled and wiped at her nose with her tissue. “Probably. He’s got to have other girls and guys he’s blackmailing, and as long as he’s got a spot with Web access, he can upload that crap from anywhere.”
“All he needs is one or two to keep paying, and he could drop out for a very long time,” Vince said. “He was milking you for what, five thousand a month, you said?”
“Reckon. And if I knocked back, he’d go on to the next, I’m sure.”
“If you what?” Rita asked, confused. “Sorry, I never have gotten the Aussie language down.”
“If she said no,” Vince informed her. When we all looked at him in surprise, he shrugged. “Sorry. I like Master Chef Australia. You kind of pick it up, if you give it a fair go.”
Karla brightened, and I had to hide a smirk at the foul look Rita shot Karla. Vince didn’t know it, but he was being scouted by my former sub, although from the look Karla gave, I didn’t think Vince was on her radar. Karla nodded. “Good telly. Anyway, yeah, he’s got more than me and Alix on the hook, I’m sure.”
“But there’s a weakness,” Rita said, completing a thought that was already forming in my mind. “He’s got to contact the targets at some point.”
“Does he though?” Alix asked. “I mean, he could certainly threaten over a phone line or email just as effectively.”
“But then how does he get his money?” Karla asked.
Before Rita could answer, I spoke up. “There’s quite a few ways, Karla. Classically, he could do a bank wire transfer, or Western Union money orders, or through quite a few Internet-based systems. But he’s still got the same challenge. At some point he needs to turn numbers in a bank account into real goods and services.”
“How can we track that?” Alix asked. I looked over at Rita, who grinned.
“That, my six-foot-tall sis, is where my skills and community come into play. While you three were out packing bags and seeing koalas and all that, I was able to use my connections. Uh, Vince, is the door locked?”