Solving for Myself

Chapter 5: Sensible Approach

After 30 grueling minutes, the download was completed and Carson checked the system was reset before slipping out with his phone and heading back the way he came. The guards let him go and wished him a wonderful night before he walked out into his van and drove off. The entire operation took an hour and thirty minutes which thankfully worked in his favor. After driving for a few miles in random directions, he pulled into an alleyway before remotely tampering with the office footage by removing the segment of his intrusion and replacing it with doctored footage. Once he finished, he abandoned the van, changed his outfit, took the dirt bike in the back of it, walked a couple of blocks from the van, and then rode it home.

When he arrived home, Stella was sitting at her desk working but she popped her head up to grin evilly as he walked past, looking defeated. As soon as he walked down the hall, she began to get a worried look on her face as well. She wanted to cheer him up from whatever had the stoic man looking like a child who lost a baseball game. She struggled with the decision before getting up and walking towards his room, determined to see what was up. When she reached the room, the door was already open so she walked right in, revealing Carson lying on the bed with a bottle of whiskey next to him.

He looked at her and said"What? come to kick me while I'm already down?"She looked at him confused before he sighed and said"You were right...we should've done it your way. My mission was a success alright, but for all I know I just wasted all my time for lousy spending records and sales receipts". Carson sighed and said, "I've never been wrong on a hunch but there's a first time for everything". He pointed to the phone on his dresser and said"Take it, I don't even feel like analyzing it, it's probably nothing but city budget reports and all the bureaucratic bullshit". Stella reaches over and gently slaps him before saying"Stop talking like that...it's unbecoming of you to act like a spoiled brat".

He frowned and said, "Well maybe I'm tired of being an adult right now". Stella sighed and said, "Well next time you exit this room, you'd better be a full-fledged adult again...it's no fun competing against a loser feeling sorry for himself over a simple mistake".She got up walked over to the dresser and grabbed the drive before noticing he had fallen asleep with the bottle of whiskey in his hand; barely consumed. She walked over and took the bottle before leaning down and kissing him on his cheek. Stella giggled and said," You're such a lightweight...please wake up being the hard-headed, stoic Carson again. He's the one that's captivated my heart and that's who I wanna see".

She exited the room with the phone drive and the bottle of whiskey before shutting the door and walking back up front to her desk in order to download and sift through what was recovered. She mainly wanted to do it so she could see if something was useful and if not, she would pretend it was so he could get his head straight. She spent the night sifting through pages of standard junk until something caught her eye. She bookmarked key areas and merged them into a file before going to sleep around 1 am, excited to cheer Carson up with her findings.

The next morning, Stella woke up early and quickly worked on printing the data and organizing it into neat clusters on the conference table before going to make herself some coffee. It was 10 am and Carson had yet to get up so she decided to check on him. When she did, he was still fast asleep so she figured she would let him sleep and she would handle the reports. A few hours later, Carson finally joined her, and much to her happiness, he was back to his stoic, egotistical self. When he walked over to the conference table to check on Stella, she turned to him with a smile and said: "you really shouldn't doubt yourself...the data you recovered is looking very promising and if you don't mind, I could really use your help so we can get this done quickly".

Carson smiled before hugging Stella and saying"Thanks" which made Stella blush hard and feel a bit strange. She gently pushed him off and said"Hey, last night was a one-time deal; we're still rivals and you need permission to touch me!" He giggled and said"Ma'am yes ma'am" which aggravated her because it made her feel old. The next few days, the pair worked closely with each other to analyze the data and look for ties to past evidence during the case. Within 7 days, they had the entirety of the evidence correlated and were finally sitting down to review their findings before sending the chief the first report and taking further action.

Stella was the first to speak and she said"Well, the reports you pulled seem ordinary to the naked eye but upon close inspection and reference of the town's programs; you notice something is off".Stella placed a series of documents down that was titled: Environment and Urban Renewal; however, there's one issue. Carson looked at her and said"The governor's office deals with these documents and both him and the mayor publicly denounced global warming and environmental harm". Stella smiled and said"Exactly, and I dug through public documents and state archives and they show that this program never existed; it's a shell organization. All programs by the state are made public for people to donate and to maintain transparency so there's no reason this program would need to be secret". Carson looked at her and said, "That's not all either...take a look at the group supporting this project!"