Against the Rules by Laura Heffernan

Author:Laura Heffernan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Published: 2019-07-29T14:02:53+00:00

Chapter 13

While this game is cooperative, remember that each player has their own secret goals. Determine carefully who you can trust. Ultimately, you’re on your own in there.

—The Haunted Place Player Guide

In the year and a half or so since Lucas and I broke up, I’d been interviewed by police, the prosecutor, three additional lawyers, and one local news station. I’d hired my own lawyer before reaching an immunity agreement with the assistant US attorney. Which meant I’d been over and over what happened. I could recite the events in my sleep.

The two of us met in high school. We started dating our sophomore year after being paired up in a computer science project. We both loved computers, and at fifteen, any mutual interest combined with attraction was enough. For weeks, we made out in the computer lab after school before we went on a real date. We stayed together through college and graduate school. I majored in computer programming; he majored in business and accounting. I loved him. We’d planned to get married. We started a venture capital company together: I maintained the website and the systems, plus did some customer support. He found investors and managed the financial side. I trusted him to do his share of the work and never looked at the books.

Apparently, I should’ve paid attention to the numbers, because he also laundered more than half a million dollars, including our entire shared savings account and an inheritance from my grandparents. He turned our business into a pyramid scheme, using funds from new “investors” to pay dividends to the old ones. When the government found out, they were less than pleased, to say the least. They weren’t too happy with me, and I wasn’t too happy with Lucas. Even if I hadn’t found out he’d been cheating on me around the same time, my decision came easily: I’d rolled over on him in a heartbeat. He’d betrayed my trust in more ways than one and no longer deserved my loyalty.

The prosecutor didn’t have to say much more than “immunity” to get me to spill everything. Unfortunately, the terms of my plea agreement prohibited me from working in tech for a year and a half. My lawyer tried and tried, but they wouldn’t budge, and I wasn’t willing to risk going to jail. Thankfully, I liked working at the store, even though it didn’t use my very expensive degree. In another few months, I’d be free to move on. It would be nice to stand on my own two feet again. I had already started scouring employment sites, reaching out to recruiters, and started practicing how to explain the eighteen-month gap on my résumé. Spiritual journey?

According to Terri, Lucas and his lawyer planned to conduct a fishing expedition, where they sought as much information as possible, in case any of it was useful. She suspected they hoped to blame me for everything and discredit me as a witness. Nothing could get me in trouble legally at

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