a way out.
I walk around the house, carefully looking over my shoulder to make sure no one is around. On the back porch, I see that the screen has already been removed.
It's not something that the homeowner would ever notice unless they were specifically looking for it. But who's looking for a down screen in a 3,000-square-foot house with more than fifteen windows?
I try the window next, again hoping that it's locked. It's not.
Lincoln really wants this to happen. I wish I had a way out, but I don't.
I am backed up into a corner and there are few options left.
I climb into the house, closing the window only slightly behind me.
I listen for the sound of the alarm, but it was deactivated a long time ago without the owners' knowledge.
I tiptoe quietly, making sure that I don't step on any creaking floorboards. My shoes have thin soles specifically made for gripping the road, but also ideal for breaking and entering.
As I head upstairs, I see the pictures of the family lining the wall. There are three kids, all various ages of teenage-hood, and a wife in a Chanel suit with a Tiffany’s necklace, and the mark himself. He is tall, broad-shouldered, heavyset with the casual, relaxed smile of a person who has committed millions of dollars’ worth of fraud.
19
Dante
I think about all of the pensions and the retirement savings that this guy stole as I walk up the stairs to try to convince myself that what I'm doing is actually fine. The truth is it's not.
I want him to go to prison. I want him to be tried and convicted and every last penny of his fraud repaid.
The problem is that he already closed up that company and opened up another one with a different name and a different shell and a different offshore account.
He's going to get away with it. I know this because I have been through the paperwork. I have seen the extent of his fraud.
Donald Delinsky is a liar and a thief and everything in this house is bought with money that didn’t belong to him. The family has gone visiting the wife's sister at their lake house about two hours away. I made sure of this myself as well. There's no way that I would ever be here if anyone innocent would suffer. I don't know the extent of what his wife knows or doesn't know, but I know that the children deserve to have at least one parent around.
When I head upstairs, I find Delinsky in his office working with his headphones on. He has three monitors in front of him with a stock market ticker as if he ever tried to invest a dime the legitimate way. The problem is that he's much better at raising money for fraudulent schemes than he is at making it through investing in stocks, options, or even futures.
The job is almost too easy.
He's sitting facing away from me riding his DeskCycle. He had purchased it a month ago. I saw it in the bank statements and he has been riding it religiously every day.
Just to be safe, I slip on the ski mask because I can't have the blood splatter getting on me. I approach him quietly from behind and put the gun to his head.
This is where I make the mistake.
I hesitate, briefly, but it's enough. He turns around, grabbing a weapon from underneath the table and shooting it in my general direction. I barely move out of the way. The bullet hits somewhere behind me, an inch or maybe less from where I used to be.
I discharge my weapon just in time to put him down. With my heart pounding out of my chest, I take a quick look around. My gun has a silencer on it, so the bullet would have been hard to hear.
But his didn’t.
The discharge reverberates in my head like a loud firework. Suddenly, I become very concerned over the fact that his neighbors or anyone right outside his house could have heard us.
I hadn't expected him to have a gun or to be so quick in his response and that's Lincoln's fault. He should have known something as important as this.
But I've made a mistake, too. I shouldn't have hesitated.
I should have shot him in the back of the head while he was just sitting there instead of approaching closer and giving him a chance.
Whatever mistakes I made, I made because it has been two years since the last