the game, and in doing so, gain a considerable amount of prestige in certain circles.”
“I still don’t understand,” Aunt Momo said.
Carson sighed. “Mom, if he knows my real name, he knows about you, and Bob and Sammy. He knows everything Ryan knows. And Ryan would sell me out in a heartbeat without any concern for collateral damage.” I could tell from the tightness around his eyes and the thin line of his mouth that he hated saying it out loud.
Momo covered her mouth with her hand. “Did he threaten us?” she whispered. “Is it dangerous?”
Carson wanted to say no, I could feel it in the tightness of his muscles and the strong emotions pouring off of him. “Not exactly. But he said that if I don’t leave town, or do anything to interfere with his plans, he’ll sell the information to the highest bidder.”
“Fuck,” Bob swore loudly. “Jake. How could you…” He scrubbed his head with both hands.
Leo stood, pacing around the room. “It’s not the time for recriminations, Bob, I’m sorry. What we need to concentrate on is neutralizing the threat as quickly as possible,” he said.
“Are you going to kill him?” Aunt Momo asked in a horrified whisper.
Oh God, that hadn’t even occurred to me. They could absolutely do that.
Steele shook his head. “No, ma’am, we are not. We’re not assassins,” he said almost harshly. “We don’t go around killin’ people. Unless they are trying to kill us.”
“I hate that you put my family in danger with your poor choices!” my father said loudly.
“I know this doesn’t make it better,” Leo said, “but I also have to live with the fact that my job puts my family is danger, too. All it takes is some bad guy with a grudge and my name, and it would be very hard to stop them from finding my family and taking revenge on them. Every law enforcement officer has to wrestle with that.”
“You’re a cop?” my father asked incredulously.
“No,” Leo said not offering any clarification. There were some things Bob did not need to know.
“I’ve been aware of the danger my whole life,” Davis said quietly. “What to do if I was kidnapped has been drilled into me since I was a kid.”
“How do you stand it?” Momo asked both of them.
Leo shrugged and shook his head. “Faith. Hope. Taking precautions. Luckily, it rarely happens.”
“And we are going to do everything to ensure nothing happens here,” Carson said firmly.
“How?” Bob asked.
“We have a plan. It’s complicated,” Carson said. “With a lot of moving parts, most of which Wesley and a few other people we know are setting in motion even as we speak.”
“Can you put it all in a nutshell for us?” Momo said. “I want to get Sammy home, and my head is swimming. It’s a lot to absorb in one night. A lot,” she said with a pointed look at Carson.
“Basically,” Leo said. “The plan is we’re going to not only get Symanski for things he has already done, but we’re going to frame him for any outstanding crimes on Carson Grieves. Hopefully killing two birds with one stone.”
“You can do that?” Bob said sounding somewhere between horrified and impressed. I understood the feeling.
The way they had explained it to me, this plan involved Wesley doing some high-level work including deepfakes of photographs, replacing Carson with Symanski. Financial records would be changed to link to Symanski instead of Carson, and all kinds of things that I wasn’t sure were legal or possible. But Wesley, Carson, Leo, and Davis had said theoretically it could be done.
“We can,” Wesley said.
“And we’re going to have scheduled FBI raids on any of Symanski’s offices we can find. They’re also going to hit Ryan’s office here with Ryan and Symanski together,” Carson said.
“I thought you said we didn’t have enough evidence,” Bob said.
“We don’t, not to get him for the fraud he’s attempting to perpetrate. But calling in a credible bomb threat will get the feds knocking at your door for sure,” Steele said with a grin. “And when they get there, they’ll find some files incriminating them on a few different things.”
“How?” Bob asked again.
‘How’ was Wesley and Danny spending hours creating paper trails and paper files and then Ridge breaking into Ryan’s offices and planting the papers. It had taken a disconcertingly short time for him to do so. I was probably never going to feel secure anywhere ever again.
“So, an FBI raid?” Bob said.
“Multiple coordinated raids,” Carson said with an evil