Page 19 of Crash Course
Nah.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Theoretically, Dad kept her, an attorney bound to confidentiality, in the loop on plenty of matters.
He trusted her. So maybe . . .
No.
Way out of bounds.
Butthere was that one time he gave her his password and had her log in as him to find a document she didn’t have access to under her own login. If he’d allowed it then . . .
Too much thinking. That never served her. She sat up, tapped her father’s e-mail address into the username field.
As savvy as her father was, he kept things simple with his passwords. His personal e-mail password was his birthday, for crying out loud. She’d often warned him about that, but his response was that if people cared about his country club dinner invitations, they were welcome to look.
She couldn’t remember which password she’d used last time, but tried his birthday.Denied.
Now she needed to be careful because after three failed attempts, she’d lock her dad out of his own database.
She tried her birthday. Another one of his go-to passwords. Denied.
Hmmm . . . one more try. Rolling it over in her mind, she considered things he’d have a password for. Computer, phone, laptop.
Alarm system.
The Charlotte, Palm Beach, and Nashville houses all had the same security system passwords. Maybe . . .
Taking a deep breath, she went for it. Tapped in the digits and . . . voilà!
Dad, Dad, Dad.
Grabbing the farm’s address from her browser, she typed it into the DOC search bar. A list of files popped up. Land surveys, images, and pdfs of varying reports. She clicked on one of the land surveys. Just the farm. She clicked another file and was gifted with a rendering of the manufacturing plant and the surrounding area. Two farms neighbored to the east on one side of the two-lane road leading to the plant. On the opposite side of the street, two miles down, according to the drawing, sat the daycare and then the farm.
Cilla shook her head. Not only was Dad buying a contaminated farm next to a childcare facility, it was two miles away and across the street from the existing landfill.
Clearly, her father wasn’t up to speed on this purchase.
A knock sounded and Cilla looked up to find Layla in the doorway.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "Would you like me to order you dinner?"
Cilla checked her watch; 5:10. Wow. As usual, she’d gotten sucked into the details and lost track of time. "Nah. It’s too early for me. I’ll take care of it. Go on home. Have a good weekend. And thank you for holding down the fort today."
"That’s what you pay me for."
Layla disappeared and Cilla went back to her laptop where nothing made sense. When Dad got back, she’d have to press him on this. Owning toxic property would bring nothing but headaches with the EPA.
Before logging out, she printed the land surveys and a few other files she’d read later. One thing she didn’t want to do was linger in Dad’s files, just in case he tried to login remotely.That’dbe awkward.
To say the least.
On Saturday morningCruz rolled out of bed at 7:30, put his feet on the floor, and eyed the empty rock glass sitting on his bedside table.
While watching a movie in bed the night before, he’d gotten a hankering for a shot of whiskey, went as far as pouring a double, and wound up dumping it in the bathroom sink. First of all, it didn’t seem normal to be drinking in bed. Second of all, the stuff had already gotten him in trouble with Zeke. He might as well try to lay off it.
