Searching For Secrets
By
Audrey Grace
Searching For Secrets
Copyright 2012 by Audrey Grace
Smashwords Edition
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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
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Searching For Secrets
Dawn was still three hours away, but that was exactly what Nick Stevenson had planned. He was going to get this bitch. He was going to get even. He was going to see that she went down in flames.
He walked quietly past the snoozing security guard on the ground floor and slipped into an elevator, the doors sliding smoothly shut. For a moment a surge of childishness overcame him and he felt like a spy, some kind of secret agent on some sort of mission, infiltrating this building for some greater-than-thyself purpose. He grinned playfully and, fleetingly, his strong and chiseled jaw lost the look of seriousness it had been carrying.
A familiar chime sounded and the elevator doors opened, revealing the opaque glass-door entrance to Stansfield & Ford, the law firm. Nick, though still young, had risen through the ranks quickly and efficiently. He was a star, the talk of the town, the city! A young, handsome, hot shot who was handling high profile clients at just twenty three! A green-as-grass law school graduate on his first day, he had quickly caught on and by the end of his first month he was firmly in control, at the reigns of his own career that promised to be long and paved with money and fame. He was a Hollywood success story and they might even make a movie about him. At least, that was something he rather fancied.
But he had never anticipated her, that bitch Katherine Dors. She was brilliant in her own right, a prodigy herself, no doubt, with all the bells and whistles: cunning, cold and calculating. She had undermined his trust and he forced himself, jaw clenched and fists balled, to reluctantly admit that he had been far too innocent, far too trusting, far too young. He simply hadn't seen it coming and she has pulled the wool over his eyes, tricked and trodden on him, using him as a launch pad to get higher, to get further.
Now he was on the verge of losing his shot at partner, of losing what would amount to a fortune. She would make sure of that. He had often wondered why they disliked each other so intensely but never openly. It was all shrouded in vague innuendo and scorching asides, said only within the protective confines of privacy.
He violently punched in the code to the door and heard the familiar click that signaled its unlocking. He was determined to find something on her, something he could use. Navigating the sea of chest-high cubicles, he swiftly made his way to her office, and unlocked it using a copied key. He owed Mel for that little favor and if it wasn't for the fact that nobody liked Katherine, least of all Mel herself, he would never have had this opportunity.
Mel would make him repay that debt, no doubt.
Nick sat down in the seat of Katherine Dors, in the office of Katherine Dors, and powered on the computer of Katherine Dors. As the familiar logo did its fade-in-fade-out routine, he, for a moment, felt absurd, as if a breeze of doubt had blown past him and caused his resolve to shiver and shrink. He couldn’t believe that he was violating Katherine’s privacy like this!
But he gathered himself quickly for the feeling was only fleeting. He was determined to find something, anything! A thought was pulling at him, tickling the very back of his consciousness as he tried, harder with each passing moment, to suppress it: What if he didn't find anything that he could use against her? What if she was completely clean? What if there were no bodies beneath the floorboards and no loud, beating heart to direct him to them?
No! Surely she couldn't be. Nobody rose like she did without having secrets. Nobody! Even though he had it all, the looks, the charm, the talent, he had still taken on certain forms of debt that he would have to repay later when he met success, favors he owed and relationships he had exploited. She wasn't nearly as talented as him, and though she was attractive (to deny that would be foolish), pretty women were a dime a dozen and everyone was weary of them. Nobody trusted them in the courtroom. It was the one arena where a pretty girl was at a disadvantage. Attractive women have it too fucking easy, Nick thought in a flash of savage bitterness.
It was different for men in the courtroom. His strong, square jaw, piercing eyes a shade of crystal blue rarely seen, and a disarmingly boyish smile... they were his true arsenal, the weapons with which he waged legal war day in and day out. In this industry, no big-breasted, full-lipped, doe-eyed girl could ever compete against the inherent authority and sincerity that came pre-packaged with classic male good looks.
He browsed quickly through her files, rummaging through her documents, photographs and recently viewed websites. What had started off as anticipation, frantic clicking of the mouse, eyes scanning the screen, a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth, turned quickly to mashing the mouse button along with a frown and feelings of frustration.
There was nothing! Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing he could use against her!
He opened her email client, not expecting her password to be saved, already entered as small black circles, ineffectually hiding what word or combination of letters and numbers her password was. It struck him as being similar to locking your door but leaving the key in the lock. Foolish! A vigor renewed inside him, bordering on excitement as the email client loaded.
These computers really should be upgraded, he thought idly, before letting a stifled laugh escape from him. Absurd! How could he think of some mundane complaint, something so pedestrian and normal at a time like this? He was trespassing, violating the privacy of another individual, another human being! And all he could think about was how slow the computers loaded?
The email client finally filled the screen and he clicked into her inbox. It was empty, except for one email from herself. Probably some inane self-reminder! It struck him suddenly: She had deleted her emails! She did have something to hide and was covering her tracks after all.
He clicked into her outbox and there, too, stood a solitary email that was addressed to herself.
“What the fuck?”
He had said it in a half-whisper and instantly felt foolish. Nobody was here, nobody would hear him. It was the middle of the night.
He clicked into the email. The body was empty of text but there was a single attachment, a video file.
Eagerly, he opened the video and as the sluggish computer began the laborious process of actually loading the file, he found his mind racing with thoughts. What could it possibly be? Why a video? Was it a video of one of her clients? Was it surveillance footage from some unknown CCTV camera on that big Hermann case she was working? Was it…