1
Richie didn't remember the last time he'd made it to the office this early. Maybe never. He beat Eddy by ten minutes. Her surprised look at his mere presence escalated to shock when she saw his bandaged face and head. He told her what he'd told the cops last night.
The last thing he'd wanted to do was call 911, but he was bleeding like a pig from the back of his head and knew he needed stitches. He'd been straight with them, told them he'd been caught from behind by a scumbag he hadn't seen coming or going. The only thing he'd held back on was the money in the stolen envelope. Even if he was an ex-cop and getting special treatment, that much cash would lead to too many questions.
The cops found what the jerk had used to open his head: a hot plate. Assaulted with a hot plate! He couldn't fucking believe it.
So they did a search while his head was being sewn up in the ER. They found his wallet—empty, of course—but not the envelope, empty or otherwise.
Not that he'd had any hope of ever seeing it again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Why'd it have to happen to him, and why when he was carrying a couple of thou? Talk about bad fucking luck.
But it was that backup disk that worried him. He didn't want anyone going through those picture files… it could screw up everything.
And having no backup at the moment was making him nervous as all hell. But he could fix that real quick.
He sent Eddy out for coffee and fired up his computer. He slipped a blank disk into the CD-R drive and ran the copy program that automatically copied everything out of certain folders.
When the program finished, he leaned back in his chair and took a deep
breath. Done. He was protected. He felt better on that score at least. His stomach felt a little queasy, though, and he had a pounding headache that four Advil hadn't touched.
He went to remove the CD from the drive and then thought, Better check the disk, just to be sure.
He opened a file from the CD and stopped breathing when he saw: