by JA Huss
I flip it closed, set it down, and exit—quickly locking the storage unit back up and jogging all the way up the stairs to the top floor.
Inside the phone is buzzing in the drawer. I have a slight moment of panic as I try to assess how many seconds late I might be, and then force myself to take a deep breath and let it out as I answer.
“Yes,” I say.
“Progress?”
“Yes,” I say. “I have a meeting with them tomorrow.”
“Make sure you get what I need.”
“Yes. I’ll have what you need.”
The line goes dead and I stare at the phone for a moment before flipping it closed and tucking it away in the drawer once more.
I’m shaking again. All over this time. My legs, my arms, my hands, my whole body is nothing but fear.
Ellen Abraham is no threat to me. But the people on the other end of that phone are another breed of evil.
I walk around my condo, pacing back and forth down the hallway between the living room and the bedroom to avoid the cameras they have hidden in every single room. Fully immersed in my own thoughts.
And then the security phone next to the door rings.
I breathe in and out for a couple seconds, not allowing myself to fall apart even further. I walk to the door and pick up the handset. “Yes,” I say.
“Miss Kalashova, you have a visitor.” It’s the doorman.
“Who?” I ask, hoping it’s Oliver.
“Miss Ariel Shrike, ma’am.”
Hmm. This must be very important if she can’t wait until tomorrow.
“I’m afraid I’m just getting into the shower,” I say. “Can you ask her to come by another time?”
But also very dangerous.
“Yes, ma’am,” the doorman says. “Sorry to bother you.”
I hang up the handset and go to the window to try to catch a glimpse of Ariel. She works two doors down with Oliver. But there is no way for me to get over there without being seen.
I open the drawer that holds my sanctioned disposable phone and text.
A few minutes later it rings. “Yes?” I ask.
“Meet with her.”
Chapter Twenty-Three - OLIVER
Some time later—hours, probably—I hear footsteps on the stairs. And when I look up from my work they are all there.
Perfect, Romantic, Corporate, and Mysterious.
“What’s up?” I ask, looking back at my computer. There were two servers down this morning but they went back up without any interference from me. So I’ve been half-heartedly working on another delete file, while doing my best to come up with a plausible story to tell the Misters—because let’s face it, the one I told was pretty bad. And also compulsively checking Katya’s Hook-Me-Up profile for another video.
No luck, as usual.
“I think you know what’s up,” Nolan says.
“No, Nolan,” I say, exiting out of the admin page of Hook-Me-Up. “I really don’t.”
Mac comes and takes a seat in one of the chairs in front of my desk. West takes the other one. Nolan stands behind them and Pax goes to the window, looking down on the city below like the suspicious motherfucker he is.
He steps back, untucks the curtains out of their holdbacks, and then pulls them across the window, the metal rings clanking across the rod.
“How the fuck can you do business without a door?” Pax asks, nodding towards the stairs.
“I don’t usually need so much privacy up here.”
“Well, you’re gonna need it today,” Nolan says. “We should probably go somewhere else.”
I stand up and shrug. “Follow me then.” I couldn’t have asked for a better invitation to explain more of what’s happening here.
I walk over to a door on the other side of the stairs, open it to reveal another door, then dial the combination.
“What is this?” Pax asks, knocking on the metal door with his knuckles.
“SCIF,” I say, like this is normal.
“Nice,” Pax says. “How come I didn’t know you had a SCIF room?”
“Need-to-know basis, my friend.” I look over my shoulder at him and smile. “You never needed to know.”
I open the second door and lead them down a flight of stairs. When we get to the bottom I dial the combination to the third door, open it, and let everyone pass me by as they enter the dark room.
I turn on the lights, jog back up the stairs, close the first door, lock the second door, then hop back down the stairs and lock the third door.
“I think you’re being dramatic,” Nolan says.
“You would. But you’re the dumbass who had a SCIF room in his resort basement and didn’t know it.”
“Do I need to know what a SCIF room is?” Mac asks, leaning against a wall.
“Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” I say.
“Got it.” Say what you want about Mr. Perfect. He’s a big-picture guy and I appreciate that sometimes.
“Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” West asks.
“Look,” I say, “I didn’t lie back there at Ariel’s house, OK?” I look at Paxton. “I just didn’t—couldn’t—tell the truth in front of Cindy.”
“Explain,” Pax says.
“I did see my sister Rory that day. It completely fucked with my head since, ya know, she’s supposed to be dead. But that’s not why I covered for Allen that night.”
“Then what is it?” Mac asks. “Because I know Allen was home that night.”
“He was standing outside with me,” West says. “Tori saw him too. He definitely had contact with that girl.”
“He didn’t do it though,” I say.
“Of course he didn’t. But neither did you,” Pax says. “Because you weren’t even there.”
“Like I said, he had something on me. But it wasn’t Rory. It was…” I laugh a little. “This.” My arms go wide as if this room explains everything.
“What is this?” Nolan asks.
“This is what he really does,” Pax answers. “Black ops.”
“It’s not black ops, you dick. It’s just… dark web. We—Ariel and I—we run a marketplace for illegal data.”
“What’s that got to do with Allen?” Nolan asks.
And I have to give him props for not asking for more details. I guess he’s done with the details too. “I was away from the house that night because Allen hired me. Somehow he fucking knew I was running this thing from a storage facility one block off-campus. He followed me there that afternoon, kinda backed me into a corner with a few choice threats, and then said he needed an invitation to our… marketplace.”
“What was he looking to buy?” Pax asks.
“That’s the thing,” I say. “He didn’t want data. He just wanted in.” This isn’t a lie, either. He did want in. And boy, did he ever get in.
“In?” West says, pulling out a chair in front of a computer and taking a seat. “In what?”
“Into our operation.”
“Why the fuck would he want that?” Mac asks.
“Well,” Pax says with a small laugh. “Obviously we know now. He was Silver Society. He wanted a place to do business.”
“That’s what I think too,” I say. “But he never had a had a chance to tell me because he got a phone call and left. I’m just figuring this out, you guys. So I don’t really understand it yet.”
Because I’m making it up as I go, I don’t add.
“So why did you cover for him that night?” Nolan asks.
I walk over to the computer and ask West to move. He gets up and I sit down, then power the laptop up. I type in my password, the software pops open, and I navigate my way through the forum I set up earlier today until I get to the thread and open it.
“See for yourself,” I say, standing back up.
Pax pushes Weston out of his way and takes a seat. “What the fuck is this?”
“What does it look like?” I ask, hoping he won’t ask too many questions.
&
nbsp; “It looks like…” He hesitates as he tries to make sense of it. Then starts clicking the back button to the main forum. “It looks like you’ve a whole bunch of people here looking to hire hitmen.”
“It looks that way because that’s what it is.”
“You run hitmen?” Nolan asks.
“No, you dick. They run hitmen. They got into our servers and started this forum. You see?” I say, opening up a command prompt so they can see the code. I scroll my way through lines and lines of it and finally come to the hidden message about Allen. Cover for him or we turn you in for setting up contract killers.
Everyone just sits there in silence for a while and stares at the screen. It’s a decent excuse for one afternoon’s worth of work. At least I tell myself that until Pax takes control of the mousepad and scrolls back up to some code at the top. “It’s dated the night that shit went down back in college,” Pax says. “Why the fuck didn’t you delete this shit from your site?”
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t delete it. It’s malware, you guys. We have it contained in this quarantine area so it’s inert. This is not the real code, it’s the one we use to run tests. We cannot delete it without deleting the whole fucking site. We’ve tried. They have a built-in cascade that will wipe everything if we try to shut it down or disconnect it from the server bank. We don’t even maintain that server anymore. Someone took it over about eight years ago. We have full access, but no control.”
“What the fuck?” Mac says.
“And he’s been holding this over your head the whole time?” Nolan asks.
“Yeah. We’ve tried everything. Five has been working on it for years. We can’t migrate the servers without wiping all our databases. We can’t delete it. All we can do is live with it.”
“It’s pretty risky,” West says.
“Ya think?” I roll my eyes at him.
“I’m just saying,” West continues. “If it were me, I’d nuke the whole thing and be done with it.”
“My whole family is in danger,” I say. “I have gotten enough threats over the past decade to have no desire to start fucking with them.”
“Your parents don’t seem the type to roll over. They certainly aren’t helpless.”
“Feel free to risk your parents, West. Oh, I forgot. You don’t have any.”
“Fuck you.”
“Well,” Mac says with a slight laugh. “I guess you’re part of them too now, Shrike. Because like it or not, you’ve been doing their dirty work for a decade. Your fingerprints are all over this bullshit. And how much do you want to bet that they’re setting you up for a real big fall right now?”
I don’t take that bet. Just nod my head and agree. “So tell me what to do about it. Because if I go down, you go down too.”
They all look at me like I just threatened them. Even Pax, which kinda hurts since he is my best fucking friend.
“You can’t possibly believe this is about me,” I say. “It’s about us. So you guys had better come up with a plan real fast, or we’re all going to prison. Because they’ve had ten years to set us up. Ten years to plan their end game. And Five isn’t coming to save us this time. This time… we’re on our own.”
Chapter Twenty-Four - KATYA
“Well,” Ariel says in the ground-floor office of Hook-Me-Up. She’s holding her winter coat, just about to hang it on a hook off to the left of the lobby. “I thought you were in the shower.”
I look around, trying to determine if anyone is close enough to hear our conversation, and then decide I’m safe. “I had to get permission.”
I expect a ton of questions about that statement, but Ariel’s nod and acceptance reminds me that she is a professional. “Follow me.”
She slips the coat back on and pushes her way through the front door. I do follow—I don’t have much choice—and catch up with her at the curb.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Ariel says nothing. Just looks left, then right, and steps off the curb to cross the street.
Again, I follow.
Thirty seconds later I realize where we’re headed. Sick Boyz tattoo shop. As soon as Ariel pushes the door open the buzzing of tattoo machines fills my ears. I follow Ariel down a hallway. One side is nothing but floor-to-ceiling examples of tattoos, the other side is a line of private tattoo rooms, four of which are filled with customers and artists.
The last room is empty and once we enter, Ariel starts talking. “No one can hear anything in this place. Lucky, huh.”
She’s right. If I were wearing a wire—and I’m not—the audio would be useless with all the buzzing.
“OK, tell me what we’re up against tomorrow.”
I screw up my face as I consider her question. “You’re not going to question my loyalties or accuse me of being a spy?”
“Are you loyal?”
I just blink at her for a second. “No. If I’m not fucking someone over I’m the one getting fucked over.”
“OK,” Ariel says, considering my answer. “But you are honest. So this meeting tomorrow. They set it up? These Silver people?”
“How much do you know?”
“Look, you’re back in town after four years and you’re trying to hook up with my brother. You’re his ghost. Can we at least agree on that?”
“I’m not here for him. I mean, I want to be here for him. But I’m here for Weston Conrad. The people—one of the people I work for. He wants something from Weston. Something to do with gold. And before you ask anything else, I don’t know any more. I work by direct order only. When you rang, I texted them, and their answer was to meet you. I’m assuming they thought they’d get some kind of intel out of it.”
“They won’t,” Ariel says. But then she says, “Is this about Weston Conrad’s secret treasure?”
“So much for not giving me intel, Ariel.”
“I’m pretty sure everyone involved already knows something about the treasure. And we’re not giving up shit. Clearly they don’t understand how many resources we control in Fort Collins. Believe me, we cover our bases.”
“You don’t cover your bases well enough to fool them, Ariel. I’m telling you—”
“Regardless,” she says, waving a hand. “What do you think will happen tomorrow? Do I need snipers?” She says this casually. Like she’s asking if I’d like fries with that.
“You have snipers?”
“Not on me, obviously. But I can get them. Do I need them?”
I consider her question for a moment. “I don’t think they’re going to make a move tomorrow. I think when I get back from that meeting they’re going to ask me what I know. And I’m going to tell them something and they will give me another order. That’s how it usually works.”
“Is this how you make money?” Ariel asks. “Oliver wasn’t too keen on telling me what you do for a living.”
“No.” I almost laugh. “I don’t take their money, for fuck’s sake. I’m their prisoner. Whatever they pay me stays in the bank account they set up. I’m not stupid enough to actually use it. I make money as an erotic artist.”
“Uh-huh,” Ariel says.
“Don’t call the kettle black, pot.”
She smiles. A small laugh comes out. “I’m not judging. I’m just curious what an erotic artist actually is.”
“Ask your father.”
Her face. Jesus Christ, her face goes from friendly to I-will-kick-your-ass in two seconds flat.
“It wasn’t a derogatory remark. I’m just saying your father used to paint naked women, OK? He’s what I’d call an erotic artist.”
“So you paint naked women?”
“I paint myself,” I say. “Naked.”
“Hmmm.”
“Is that enough small talk for you?”
“What’s your end game here? Get Oliver? Me? My parents? Who?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, Ariel. I’m not driving this car. I have no clue what they’re doing. I just want to save my little sister from being indebt
ed to these people and I’ve worked my ass off for the past four and a half years to get her to this point. I don’t even know your secrets, OK? I have no clue why they’re interested in you.”
“But you’re here to find out secrets about Weston Conrad? Who hired you for that?”
“You don’t need to know that,” I say. “And I’m certainly not going to tell you.”
She looks away, focusing on something over my shoulder. “OK, then. Good talk.”
“That’s it?” I ask.
“You have something more to say?”
“I don’t know. Some support would be nice.”
“Support?” Ariel looks at me like she’s truly confused. “Oh.” She smiles. “I get it. Team-building. Well, Kat, I wish I could say welcome to the family, but I’m afraid I’m going to take your advice and not trust you. I’m going to assume you’ll be wired tomorrow, or you’ve told them the location—”
“I won’t be. And I didn’t.”
“—or you’re going to take our plan and find a way to fuck it up once you know about it.”
“I don’t think this is about your plan. There was never any mention of a plan. I think this is about gaining your trust. Getting you to let your guard down so I can—”
“Fuck me over. Well, I’m the fucker, Kat. Me. Not you. But we’ll go through with this and see what happens because Tori insists on it. I’ll walk you out.”
I wonder if I should try to keep the conversation going. Or ask if maybe Ariel might bring Tori over here right now so we could have a chat.
But a tall guy, with even more tattoos than Oliver, appears in the open doorway. “Excuse me,” he says. “You’re in my room. Is there something I can help you with?”
I look around for Ariel, realize she left me standing there, and then shake my head and make a run for the front door. When I push through, Ariel is just disappearing into her building down the block.
Good talk, Ariel. I hope we can do it again some time.
But in the meantime… I need to figure out a way to get Oliver’s attention tonight.
If my life is going to fall to pieces, then I want to spend every minute I can with the only man who can put me back together.
