I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “Well, what the hell did you find?”
Papers shuffled in the background. “A little appreciation wouldn’t be remiss.”
I let out a growl. “Okay, thank you oh high and mighty hacker, sir. I’m so grateful for your nefarious ways. Now, will you tell me what the fuck you found?”
Cain chuckled. “That’s the spirit.” He paused for a moment. “Your boy is in deep.”
If Cain and I had been in the same room, I probably would’ve punched him. I couldn’t handle his cryptic teases. “In what sense?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Let’s start at the beginning. Cody Ailes has a weakness for gambling. It doesn’t matter what it is—cards, horses, the fucking lotto. If there’s a game of chance, he wants in.”
I rubbed a hand over the scruff on my jaw. “Well, that explains the foreclosed house and all the debt.”
“It gets worse.”
Something in Cain’s tone had my gut twisting. If Ailes had put Jensen and Noah in danger by coming to Sutter Lake, I was going to kill him.
The sound of fingers on a keyboard came over the line. “The gambling started early, before he even turned twenty-one.”
I wondered if Jensen knew anything about that. Something told me she didn’t. That had never been her scene.
“He graduated college early but didn’t walk.”
My jaw tightened. “Yeah, because he was too busy walking away from the nineteen-year-old girl he had just knocked up.”
Cain ignored my outburst. “He moved to Philadelphia.” That was just about as far away from Oregon as you could get and still stay in the continental US. “The gambling got worse, and he ended up on a loan shark’s radar.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed at my temples where my head was starting to pound.
“That’s when things got interesting. After the loan shark’s guys put Cody in the hospital, the dude gave him a job.”
My hand dropped from my head. “What?”
“I know. I guess the loan shark wanted someone familiar withallthe various gambling action in Philly, and Cody definitely was. He was the inside man at a number of establishments all over the city. That helped for a while. Cody was able to offset what he gambled away by what he raked in for the loan shark.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Something tells me things didn’t stay that way.”
“Do they ever when it comes to addiction?”
Cain’s words had my father’s face popping into my mind. I gritted my teeth. “No, they don’t.”
“Cody started losing more than he could cover. But here’s the thing about doing business with lowlifes, there’s always more of them hanging around who are happy tohelpyou out. Cody started selling for a dealer. He sold at card games and at the race track.”
My gaze went unfocused on the pile of paper in front of me. “I do not like where this is headed.”
“You shouldn’t. Yet again, the new gig kept Cody’s head above water for a bit, but he got too bigheaded. Started sitting at higher-stakes games and losing. Big. Soon, they were taking his car, his house, anything the collectors could get their hands on. Credit cards were maxed out, and the people he lost to don’t mess around.” Cain paused. “He has two weeks.”
“Two weeks for what?”
“Two weeks to deliver five hundred thousand dollars, or they come looking. And they won’t be putting him in the hospital this time.”
“Fuck!” I stood, my chair tipping back and crashing to the floor. “We’ve got to get him out of here. They can’t figure out the tie to Jensen and Noah.”
“I know, man. I’m about to email you all the leverage you need. Tell him you’ll hand it over to the cops. Or worse, his boss. That should get him gone. If Cody’s smart, he’ll turn state’s evidence and get himself into Witness Protection. Some of those guys he was working for are seriously connected.”
My laptop dinged, and I clicked on the screen. “Got it. Thank you, Cain. I mean it.”
“Always, brother. You know that. I’m going to call Walker in thirty. That gives you about an hour head start to get Cody out of town before Walker commits murder.”
