But they couldn’t be sure they had sent a clear enough message to the asshole, so they tracked Brian down to where he was visiting his parents in South Carolina.
At first, everything went perfectly. They waited until the family left one evening, then they broke into the rural home and found Brian’s laptop. Destroyed it. They searched his room and found an extensive amount of pornography—some of it clearly underage. They grabbed it to burn. The guy was an asshole, and neither Sean nor Colton cared what happened to him.
It was Colton’s idea to take one of the photos and leave it in the mother’s drawer with a note.
Do you know that your son is a pervert?
Sean didn’t know if that was a good idea, but he let Colton do it.
They were leaving when they saw lights coming down the road. They didn’t know if the Bean family was already home—only an hour after they left—or if it was someone else. They’d parked down the street—smart, considering—but now their car was too far for an easy escape. They ran across a small field to a barn. They hadn’t spent time to do recon because they didn’t know how long Brian would be here.
But they should have. If they had checked things out first, they would never have entered the barn.
The structure was falling apart, not used for much of anything except storing junk. It reeked of rotting wood, animal feces, and stale, cold air.
The car turned down the drive. Sean and Colton watched from a crack in the door. They didn’t want to wait in here longer than necessary—it really stunk—but as soon as the family went inside, they could cut across the lawn and head to the road. They weren’t parked that far away, and it was dark, so minimized their chances of being seen.
Someone went up to the door, but it wasn’t the Bean family. It was a delivery. The individual dropped two packages at the door and left.
Sean breathed easier.
“Let’s go, C. We did what we came to do.”
“I hate that he’s going to get away with this,” Colton said.
“What can we do? The police did shit because Bean was good enough to cover his tracks and the cops don’t have anyone good in cybercrimes. We destroyed everything he saved. He’ll think twice before doing it again, especially on campus.”
“So we protect the dorm, what’s to say he doesn’t go after the girls in the gym? Maybe finds a way to get into the high school?”
“I don’t know.” Sean had hoped that fear would keep Bean in line.
“We have to do something, Sean.”
He thought about it, came up with an idea. “He’s going to have to get a new computer, but I can plant a virus. He records anyone in the dorm and I’ll know. I’ll monitor his cloud account. If he steps out of line once, I’ll send an anonymous feed to the dean, the police, to whoever can do something about him.” He had to do it anonymously. He didn’t want to go through what he went through at Stanford, where doing the right thing had resulted in him being expelled.
Of course, he had made a big production out of exposing his pedophile professor. And knowing how the police handled a pervert like Brian Bean told Sean that maybe it was worth it.
“Can you do that?” Colton asked, surprised.
“Yes.” Sean wasn’t positive, but he would figure it out. He’d never encountered a computer problem that he couldn’t solve. “Let’s go, okay? I don’t want to be here when…”
As Sean pushed on the barn door something scurried across his foot, startling him. He jumped to the right. The floor cracked, and suddenly he was falling …
He landed ten feet down into a root cellar of some sort, except that it was small. Dark. He brushed it aside and heard rodents running in the small space.
“Sean!”
“Step back or you’ll fall, too.”
“How far?”
“Ten, twelve feet.”
“I can’t see anything.”
Neither could Sean. He stood up and groaned. He’d fallen on his wrist. He didn’t think it was broken but it hurt. He shook it, but the pain only got worse.
“Go back to the car. Get the flashlight.” Why hadn’t he brought it with him in the first place?
Because if you were caught you didn’t want the cops thinking you were a burglar.
Idiot.
“Okay. I’ll be back, ten minutes tops.”
“Drive back, I don’t care if we’re caught, we need the car to help pull me out. Be careful