guard.
“Thanks for your cooperation,” Logan said while flexing his knuckles. “This won’t take long.”
Pierce tilted his head up to face us. He snickered. “You broke into my house. Burglary is a felony, you know.”
“Technically this is just criminal trespassing,” Logan said casually. “Burglary requires us to break in with the intention of committing a crime inside. You work down at the courthouse, right? You should know this.”
Pierce winced as he sat upright in the chair. “You’re not going to commit a crime?”
“Depends how this conversation goes,” Logan replied. “You stole from Christie. From her non-profit. We’re here to make that right.”
Pierce had an annoying laugh. It was dismissive and smug. Like he was laughing at something that was beneath him. “I haven’t stolen anything.”
“I’m happy to hear that.” Logan pointed at the laptop on the desk in front of Pierce. The screen was already unlocked. “Go ahead and login to the account for us so we can verify it for ourselves. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Pierce slowly shook his head. “I don’t have to do anything.”
Logan cracked the knuckles on his right hand. “That’s the wrong answer, Pierce.”
“Sounds like a threat to me,” he replied. “So it’s burglary after all.”
“Whatever it takes,” Logan growled.
Before they could come to blows, I reached forward and snatched the laptop from the desk. “I bet his account info is saved in the browser. Let’s see, Alliance Bank…”
Pierce started to get up, but Logan gave him a warning stare. Christie’s ex casually leaned back in the chair instead.
“Look at that. The credentials are cached after all.” I hit login. “What, no two-factor authentication? It let me right into the bank page.”
Harper whirled to face Logan. “You’ve been telling Christie you can’t give her access because of two-factor authentication. But you don’t even have it enabled.”
Pierce gawked, caught in the lie. “I’m… It’s not that simple. What I’ve been trying to do is…”
I clicked on the bank account listed. The balance was listed at the top in bold.
$4.07
“There’s four bucks in the account,” I said.
“Scroll down. Look at the recent transactions,” Harper suggested.
To verify that this was the right account, I scrolled until I saw a list of deposits. There they were: the fundraising deposits we had made. I recognized one of the ones I had made myself.
Then I scrolled back to the most recent transactions.
“The account balance was over thirty-two thousand dollars. Until…” I pointed. “There’s a big withdrawal yesterday. Almost all of it was transferred to another account.”
Harper looked at the screen. “An account with Flagstaff Bank. How much you want to bet he has a login there?”
“Only one way to find out!” I opened another tab and typed in the bank name. It auto-filled after two letters.
Pierce gave us that same laugh again. “You have no idea what’s going on.”
“Feel free to enlighten,” Logan growled.
“Yep—here’s the account,” I said. “No two-factor on this one, either. This account has almost no history. It was created a week ago. The only transaction is the deposit yesterday.”
“Transfer it back,” Logan told me.
“That would be a mistake,” Pierce said smugly.
Logan rounded on him. “Why? You stole it.”
Pierce shook his head slowly. “I didn’t steal it. It’s mine.”
“This guy’s a jackass,” Logan said. “Transfer the thirty-two grand back, then take some photos for evidence. That’s everything Christie needs.”
“Wait a minute.” Harper stepped up with a frown on his face. “What do you mean, it’s yours? The account we’ve been depositing money to is registered to Happy Bones. We just saw it.”
For a sickening moment, I thought he was going to tell us that it was never registered to Happy Bones. That we had been depositing money into his personal account all this time. I didn’t know what the legal ramifications of that would be, but it felt like the kind of loophole that might screw us over.
But that wasn’t what Pierce said. Instead, he pointed at his desk.
“There’s a document there. The stapled one. It explains everything.”
Harper took the papers and began reading. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” Logan demanded.
“He’s claiming he worked at Happy Bones for twenty hours a week, for two years,” Harper said. “He’s suing Happy Bones for unpaid wages.”
“You’re what?” Logan and I both demanded at the same time.
Pierce crossed his arms and smiled. “I was an employee for Christie’s non-profit for two years. She never once paid me. Until now.”
I laughed in his face. “That’s not how this works. You helped your girlfriend with some of the non-profit’s finances. You weren’t employed. You