Dani nodded. “I know it sounds like a lot, but honestly, I think it can be done. I know I can make it so nobody can figure it out. Deep fakes are pretty easy these days.”
Mitch shook his head. “No. You know what? That’s too much.” He held up his hand as Dani opened her mouth to protest. “I know you have the ability to do it, but I think it’s too much faking. We need to stick to something simple. Something we can manage without going too far afield.”
Dani frowned. “But we’d need witnesses. You guys just said—we need a lot of witnesses. Witnesses who aren’t us.”
Alex cocked her head. “Where’s Jake Boxer?”
Mitch looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. “What are you thinking?”
“He and Gage have a similar build, and I know he’s looking after Drake. So maybe we find out where Drake was, and Dani can use her magic to turn Jake into Gage.”
“That could work,” Gage agreed. He liked the odds of this working better than the manifest idea. It was simpler. It had been his experience that it was better to keep it simple. Fewer things to go wrong.
Mitch picked up his phone. “I’ll text him now.”
Logan looked at Lacy. The two of them exchanged another look.
“Guys,” Logan said slowly, “I know we want to protect Gage, and I know he was in the park, so it’s going to be hard. But I have a bad feeling about mucking around with this. And no”—he glanced at Mitch—“it’s not just because I’m a lawyer. Lacy feels it too,” he added.
She nodded. “I agree with Logan. Faking Gage’s alibi isn’t the best move. Gage, they obtained a search warrant for yourapartment. Somebody pulled a warrant, and they sent two detectives over immediately to execute it. Those detectives had no time to dig around or build a case, which means the warrant came from someone important.
“So, if some bigwig is behind this, and they managed to get a search warrant that fast, that means there’s real interest. And if there’s interest, there will be resources. If you start faking alibis, it’s going to come out and make things worse.”
She looked at Dani. “And I know you’re super talented, but if someone finds out you faked his alibi, it just puts Gage deeper in the shit.”
Mitch dropped a piece of cheese onto a cracker and popped it into his mouth, chewed, then said, “What choice do we have? If we leave it, there is a real chance he’ll go to jail.”
“Oh, the irony,” Gage muttered with a half-hearted chuckle. “The one time I don’t do anything, and they want to put me in jail for it.”
Logan crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter behind the bar. “We all know it wasn’t actually Gage in the museum. And he didn’t steal anything. Rather than trying to fake an alibi, why don’t we try to prove his innocence?”
Alex frowned. “Because I was in the Met. And even though I didn’t steal anything, that puts me there. And it puts Gage and Mitch in the park. Dani’s van wasn’t far away either.”
Logan nodded. “I know. But I’m afraid if we start tinkering with this, it’s going to end badly for Gage.”
Lacy finished her cracker and wiped her lips. “Let’s try to figure out how to keep it from ending badly for anyone. I think Logan’s right—we need to find out exactly what they have first. Do you have any contacts at the police department, Logan? Or the D.A.’s office? Anything?”
Logan shrugged. “Not sure. But I’ll reach out.”
Mitch’s phone dinged. He glanced at it. “Jake was with Drake down in D.C. He says they left here around five and got back around midnight. They took the jet.”
Dani perked up immediately. “Well, that works. We don’t even have to fake the flight.”
Gage put his arm around the mother of his child. “Let’s keep that on the back burner,” he said to her. “To be honest, I agree with Logan and Lacy. I don’t want to set us up for something major to crash down on us.
He held Dani’s gaze as he explained. “If we can find a way to discredit whatever they think they have, I think that’s the better route. Dani, I’m not going to drag you into this. Or Alex. Or Mitch. Or anyone else. I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. If anyone has contacts who can find out what’s going on, reach out to them. Let’s see if we can make this make sense.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. This was turning into a much bigger nightmare. He wouldn’t blame Alex. Or Mitch. This was who they were. All of them. She had agreed to steal the statue. It wasn’t a big deal. It was what they did.What we all do, he told himself. But he wasn’t going to jail for it. And none of them were going to go to jail for it, either. He just had to figure out how to stop that from happening.
CHAPTER FIVE
LACY
Lacy sat behind her desk and sipped her coffee. It was past six a.m., so there was no point in going to bed, and besides, they were in crisis mode. She’d sent Logan to his office to make calls because she didn’t want him hovering. And if she were being honest, she didn’t want him to hear the next call she was going to make.
She took another sip of coffee as much to procrastinate as for the jolt of caffeine. She hadn’t spoken to Ty Bancroft in a lot of years, and they had not parted on the best of terms. She blew out a sigh as she picked up her phone. Her finger hovered over the number, but she chickened out, clenched one fist, and then pressed the button to call her father instead.
“My darling, what a nice surprise. How are you?” Armand Fontaine’s deep baritone came through the phone line instantly made her feel better.
