“That’s bullshit.”
“I know.” Ryan’s voice hardened. “But that’s the legal system we have to work with.”
Pinto drew a deep, cleansing breath and clamped down on his anger. Taking his frustrations out on any of the people who’d come here to help him was not only stupid, it was counterproductive. “So what you’re saying is that we need more to make sure he gets put away.”
“A few extra nails in the coffin wouldn’t hurt. Larissa, you got anything that might help with that?”
The sound of typing stopped as Larissa glanced up from her laptop. “The SD card was encrypted.”
“How long did it take you to break it?” Austin asked. “An hour?”
“Don’t insult the woman,” Ryan said. “I bet she got it in thirty minutes or less.”
“No way,” Ty said. “Twenty, tops. Navarre?”
“I’ll play the role of eternal pessimist and say one hour and two minutes.”
Pinto bit back a laugh. “What is this,The Price Is Right?”
Not seeming offended in the least, Larissa snorted. “Care to take a guess before I satisfy their curiosity?”
Pinto paused to mull it over and realized he had absolutely no idea how long that kind of thing took. “Five minutes.”
“Suck-up,” Austin said.
“Damn straight.” It never hurt to kiss the ass of the woman who might save your bacon. Larissa’s skills behind a keyboard were the stuff of legend at Six Points. He wasn’t about to tempt fate by intentionally getting on her bad side.
Larissa’s chin tilted up, looking as dignified as one could muster while wearing a Captain Marvel T-shirt. “If you really must know, it took ninety-seven minutes.”
“Wow, you’re slipping in your old age.”
“I’ve got your slipping right here.” She flipped Austin off. “Cracking an encryption is like guessing a password. Guess enough times, and you’ll eventually get it right. Lucky for me, the encryption key was relatively short and simple. If he’d invested in a half-decent program, I’d still be trying to break it.”
Larissa’s gaze went back to the laptop; the sound of typing resumed.
Austin leaned forward. “Well?”
“Oh, you want to know what’s on the card?” Larissa smiled sweetly. “I thought you just wanted to jerk my chain.”
“Is this the part where we have to suck up like Pinto?” Ryan asked.
“No, it’s the part where I show just how awesome I am.”
With the press of a key on her laptop, the lights in the room dimmed. Another click and the wall-mounted television came to life, displaying what appeared to be the screen of Larissa’s laptop.
And just like that, Larissa transformed from a sister giving her big brothers crap to a hard-edged professional who took no prisoners. It made Pinto happy that she was in his corner. “There was only one file on the card, which made my job a lot easier.”
She selected one of the tabs on her task bar, and a video filled the screen and began to play.
It was police body cam footage, taken at night. With the camera lens facing forward, the officer’s face wasn’t visible, but the voice unmistakably belonged to Officer Dennis Heckler. As he approached the door of a hotel room, he noted that he was responding to a domestic disturbance call. He knocked on the door with the backs of his knuckles, identifying himself as a law enforcement officer. Knocked again when nobody answered. He raised his fist to knock a third time when the door cracked open and a white man in his sixties demanded to know what he wanted.
Nina Flint straightened in her seat. “That’s Benjamin Trask.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’d recognize that sleazy son of a bitch anywhere.”
If Pinto remembered correctly, the senior senator from Florida had recently cruised to re-election, despite allegations of having business ties with a Russian oligarch who owned a ton of real estate in south Florida.
