“Here.” Cam handed me a black baby-doll-style T-shirt. On the front was a beautifully detailed golden dragon clutching a human skull with one clawed foot. The crinkled, gauzy black skirt was ankle length, and heavier than it looked. It wasn’t something I would ever have bought for myself, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy, considering the alternative.
But there was no bra.
“Thanks.”
When he turned to give me privacy—which I would have found pointless, if not for the mark on my thigh—I stepped into the skirt first and didn’t fully relax until it was tied at my waist, my secret safely hidden.
“Okay, assuming you’re right about these transfusions, where’s Hunter getting the blood?” Cam asked, as I carefully pulled the shirt over my head.
“I don’t know. But the implications of this are beyond terrifying.” I tugged the shirt into place, trying to ignore the pain reawakening in my arm, then tapped him on the shoulder. Cam turned and met my gaze in the mirror as I ran my hands through my hair, trying not to look at the rest of me. Blood loss and exhaustion were not good looks for me. “I mean, if the resources are there, men like Hunter—or anyone else—could be Travelers one day, Blinders the next and Seers the day after that. Men like Tower could hirne thug and get a whole series of Skill sets. Maybe even more than one at a time. Though I’m not sure how that would work.”
I wasn’t sure how any of it would work, but the concept alone was staggering. It was world-changing. And if the government couldn’t even officially recognize the existence of Skills, it would never be able to regulate the renting of them.
Rented Skills, like everything else private industry couldn’t legally provide, would be offered up to the black market on a silver platter. And presumably, those who could provide the rarer Skills—Seers, Bleeders and Jammers—and those with extraordinary ability in any of the more common Skill sets would be in high demand.
And worth even more to the syndicates than they already were.
“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s clean this mess up, then we can figure out our next move.” Cam doused the contents of the tub with rubbing alcohol while I took a match from the box. When he was done, I lit the match and tossed it onto the pile.
Flames erupted immediately, and the fire burned hot and fast. Cam flipped on the ceiling vent to suck out the smoke, and when the flames started to threaten the shower curtain, I pulled the plastic liner out of reach. Thank goodness for porcelain tubs—fiberglass would have burned right along with the clothing and bandages we needed to destroy.
When we were sure all the blood was destroyed, Cam turned on the water and aimed the handheld shower head at the base of the flames. The blaze was out in seconds, leaving only the soggy, charred rubble in the tub and another layer of smoke on the ceiling—a common sight in most Skilled households.
Before he moved out, Cam would have to repaint the entire bathroom. As would I, in my own apartment.
I grabbed a contractor bag—a big, thick black garbage bag, like building contractors use—from beneath the kitchen sink while Cam dug up a couple of pairs of thick dishwashing gloves, and I held the bag while he scooped the wet rubble into it, so I wouldn’t have to move my injured arm too much. Then he walked the trash to the apartment complex’s Dumpster while I used the high-pressure setting on the showerhead to spray the remaining tiny bits of char and ash down the drain. After a final scrub with a disposable sponge and some bathroom cleaner, the shower was fit to use once more.
“Thanks for doing all this,” I said, settling onto a bar stool while Cam pulled open the fridge.
He glanced at me over the open door. “I’d do more, if you’d let me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.
“You hungry?” Cam asked, pulling two bottles of water from the fridge. “Fajitas wouldn’t take long….”
“Shouldn’t we focus on finding out who’s trying to kill Hadley? Or who’s selling Skilled blood transfusions to known criminals? Or both?”
Cam closed the fridge and eyed me across the counter, his hands flat on the tile. “You were just shot. You need rest, water and food.”
“I don’t have time for any of that.” The monster who wanted Hadley dead wasn’t going to put his horrific mission on hold just so I could take a nap.
“Okay, then, you grab my laptop, Hunter’s cell phone and his bank statement, and see if you can’t find out where he got this super-Skilled blood transfusion while I make dinner. Because I’m starving.”
I considered arguing that with his help, the detective work would go much faster. But I wasn’t entirely sure that was true—too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen. Also, he’d already started pulling beef and vegetables from the fridge.
And I was a little hungry…
“Laptop’s in my bedroom, on the dresser,” he said, when my lack of objection seemed to indicate surrender.
“Fine. But make it fast.” I waved one arm at the spread of colorful peppers, tomatoes and red meat now covering the kitchen peninsula. And only then did it occur to me that he hadn’t pressed for the explanation I owed him. I wasn’t sure why he’d forgotten—could that be attributed to the sight of me nearly naked?—but I wasn’t going to remind him.
I stopped in his bedroom doorway, surprised to realize that even after six years and at least one move, he still had the same furniture we’d shared for two of our three years together, in college. Same scarred upright chest of drawers, which he was still calling a dresser. Same weight bench in the corner, ancient free weights stacked by the wall. Same simple iron-frame headboard with stupid decorative balls topping the posts. I wondered if the mattress still squealed, or if he’d replaced it.
Curious, I almost sat on the bed to test it, but then my gaze found the laptop and its cord on top of the chest of drawers, and I remembered why I’d come in the first place. And it wasn’t to try out Cam’s mattress. No matter how hard memory and nostalgia tried to argue otherwise.
At the peninsula again, I plugged in the laptop and dug Hunter’s phone and bank statement from my satchel.
I started with the statement. I’d been over it several times before, but this time I was looking for a big expense, not a big deposit. I wasn’t sure how a Skilled blood transfusion would work but I was sure it would be expensive, and I was sure it would have to have been done—and thus paid for—very recently, considering how quickly it had faded from his blood signature.
Unfortunately, the period covered by the bank statement ended the week before—the payment from the Tower syndicate was literally the last entry. Which meant that any transactions made in the past eight days would go on the next reporting cycle, and until then, they’d be accessible online only.
“Hey, you said Hunter paid most of his bills online, right? Did you notice whether he has online access at his bank? Statements in his inbox, or something like that?” Though he clearly got printed statements, too…
Cam looked up from the peppers he was chopping. “Yeah, I think so. But you can’t log in without his password.”
“Fortunately, we have his account number….” I held up the bank statement, then set it on the counter and crossed the room to grab Hunter’s laptop from the box of supplies Cam had brought in to restock. “And if he’s anything like the rest of the country, he probably uses onepassword—or variations of one password—for most of his accounts. I’m guessing he’s smart enough to use something random, but not smart enough to keep all the variations straight. Which means he probably keeps a list.”
Cam scraped the peppers from the cutting board into the skillet. “Well, if it’s on his hard drive it isn’t called ‘top secret keys to invading my privacy,’ or anything else convenient. And I didn’t find a notebook or calendar, or anything it could have been written on.”
I set Hunter’s laptop on the bar next to Cam’s and pressed the power button. “Nobody writes anything down on paper anymore. But what’s the one thing people never leav
e the house without?”
Cam looked up from the skillet, challenging grin intact. “Underwear. Or would you like to prove me wrong?”
I rolled my eyes and logged in to Cam’s wireless network. “Cell phone. Most of them have a notepad feature, and you know what most people keep on it?”
“I’m guessing passwords?”
“Yup. And grocery lists, and reminders, and anything else they need access to. Although, personally, my phone calendar is much more incriminating than my notepad.”
“So, if I want to know where you’ll be this Friday night, all I have to do is steal your phone?”
“Well, that, and figure out the code to unlock it. But his phone isn’t locked.” I opened a browser on Hunter’s computer, then clicked the drop-down menu listing his favorites. And sure enough, after three listings for what could only be porn sites, he’d bookmarked the power company, the water company, his mobile service provider and…his bank.
I clicked on the bank link, and while the page loaded, I scrolled through his cell-phone notes for anything resembling passwords. There weren’t many choices, and the third one, titled FNB, consisted only of a seven-digit alphanumeric code with a pound sign at the end.
“First National Bank. Got it.” Hunter turned out to be no smarter than the average bear.
I typed his account number into the bank site, then his password, and when the site had “verified” my stolen identity, I clicked on My Account. Where I discovered what I already knew—until the week before, Mr. Hunter had been in dire financial need, even more so than I. But his banking activity since the big deposit was sparse.
The bank had auto-removed the overdraft fees he owed, and he’d paid a couple of utilities online. But other than that… “Nothing.” I looked up to find Cam chopping peppers on a plastic cutting board. “There are no big withdrawals. His bank balance is just over $49,500. Nothing in savings.” I frowned as he scraped the peppers from the cutting board into the skillet. “So, what? The transfusions were free?”
“Or he paid by credit card.”
“There were no credit cards in his wallet, and based on his banking history, I’d say that’s because his credit is less than stellar.”
“So maybe the transfusions were free for him.”
“Someone else paid….” Shit. The only reason someone else would pay for Hunter’s superpowers was to help him carry out a job they’d commissioned. Which meant… “The Tower syndicate paid for Hunter’s upgrades. They didn’t just hire the monster—they created him.”
Fourteen
“Did you know about this?” Liv watched carefully for my reaction, obviously fully aware that my body language might say things my mouth wasn’t allowed to.
But this time, I had nothing to hide. “Nope. Whatever Tower’s up to, it’s above my pay grade.”
She looked as if she wanted to believe me. As if she was working really hard to convince herself that I could be trusted. But we both knew I couldn’t be. Not so long as my enforced loyalty to Tower trumped everything else in my life. Including her.
But I was telling the truth.
Frustrated, I set my butcher knife on the counter and met her suspicious gaze with an open one of my own. “Liv, if there’s something I can’t tell you, I just won’t say it. But I’m not going to outright lie to you.” That much, at least, hadn’t changed.
“Unless Tower tells you to. You’d have to lie then, right?” Her brows rose in challenge, and suddenly I hated Jake Tower more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. Including previous incarnations of my own hatred for him.
“Yes. If he told me to lie to you, I’d have to. But unless he got really creative with the orders, I wouldn’t have to make you believe it. I’m not going to go out of my way to make him happy, after what he’s done to Anne and her family.”
She almost smiled, and some small bit of tension inside me eased. “So, you’re working under protest now?”
“Silent protest. But yes.” Because open protest would only get both of us killed. “And anyway, I haven’t had any communication from Tower directly or indirectly all day.” Which was interesting, considering the fact that I’d been seen all over the west side of town with her.
“What do you think that means?”
I shrugged and resumed chopping. “I think it means that we were allowed to track and kill Hunter because that benefited the syndicate—we were cleaning up their mess. But if we step over whatever line they’ve drawn for us, they will redirect my attention to something Tower considers more worthy. More syndicate-spirited.” And Liv’s interest in syndicate business would be noted. And monitored.
Nothing good ever comes from being monitored by the Tower syndicate.
“That means we’ve hit a dead end on the money trail for now, then?” she said. “Because if we keep digging into their involvement, they’re going to hit your manual reset button.”
I laughed. “Pretty much.” And the reset button, for the record, was the back of my sku I set the spatula down and met Liv’s gaze, letting her see that I was serious. “But I’m not saying we should give up on the money trail or the transfusions. I’m just saying that if we dig for clues directly beneath the syndicate, we’re going to come up right under Tower’s feet. And he’s going to stomp on us.”
“So we should approach them both from another angle? Pursue leads that don’t originate within the syndicate?”
“Exactly.” While the skillet sizzled behind me, I picked up Hunter’s phone. He hadn’t gotten a single call since his fortunate demise, which was no shock, considering he’d only been dead a couple of hours. “I suggest we start with this. Maybe someone he knows can tell us where he got the transfusions, or who actually hired him. Even if they don’t know what they’re really telling us.”
I slid the phone across the counter to Liv and plugged my food processor in on the peninsula as she scrolled through the entries on the phone.
“He only got eight calls in the last week, two of them from the same number. And he only made three calls. Not exactly a social butterfly.” She pulled my laptop closer and started typing. “With your computer, my credit card and an online reverse phone book, I should be able to put a name with most of these numbers.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just call them?”
“Definitely.” She glanced at me over the screen. “And calling his friends, relatives and ‘professional’ associates would also be the easier, cheaper way to raise a bunch of red flags, put Tower’s men on our tail and get us both shot for our troubles.” I stared at her, and Liv laughed. “New to this part of the game, huh?”
“Yeah.” I dug three tomatoes from the vegetable drawer and rinsed them in the sink. “Most of my work involves name-tracking, not computer snooping. I usually call in Van for that kind of thing.”
Liv’s fingers attacked the keyboard, rapid-fire clacking, as if she could pound the answers from the internet by force. “I think we should leave Van out of this, for her own safety.”
“Agreed.” I cored the tomatoes on the cutting board, then dropped them into the food processor and started on the cilantro. “Any luck?”
“Yeah.” More clacking, then she picked up the notepad and spoke as she scribbled. “One of the outgoing calls was to his bank, on the day of the big deposit. I assume he was calling to make sure the money landed safely.”
I nodded and scooped the leftover onion into the food processor with the cilantro and tomatoes.
“The second call went to a man named Gavin Payne, no address listed.” Liv glanced up when I started chopping again. “I hate jalapeños. They’re all heat but no flavor.”
I kept chopping. “This is a smoked poblano. You’ll like it. Trust me.”
She looked skeptical, but went back to her typing with no complaint. I ran the food processor, and a few minutes later, I poured fresh salsa into a bowl shaped like a hollowed-out red pepper.
Livn the cut when I pushed the bowl toward her. “Okay, I can’
t find anything on the third number, even on four different sites claiming to have access to unlisted landlines and cell-phone numbers.” She picked up a corn chip from another bowl and dipped it into the salsa. “Wow.” She finished the chip and dipped a second. “When we were together, it was all takeout, all the time.”
“I’ve had some free time lately.”
“Well, it’s paid off.” She turned back to the screen, crunching into another chip. “Of the numbers that called Hunter’s phone, two look like they’re from his mother, calling once from her home phone and once from her cell. I wonder if Mrs. Hunter has any idea that her little boy grew up to be an attempted murderer of small children?”
I shrugged and turned off the stove. “I blame the parents.”
“Me, too.” Liv snagged another chip while I pulled the steak from the skillet to slice on a fresh cutting board. “The repeated incoming number was Gavin Payne, and the one that called most recently was the same unidentifiable number Hunter dialed last night. The other three incoming calls were from his building superintendent, his pharmacy and a telephone survey company.”
“Bastards. They always call during dinner.”
Liv laughed as I slid the sliced steak onto a platter and topped it with the sautéed vegetables. “Forget crime lords and corrupt politicians—telemarketers are the root of all evil.”
“Now you’re getting it.” I took a twist tie off a bag of flour tortillas and set a clean plate in front of her. “So, unless he’s in cahoots with Walgreens or his landlord, the only real possibilities are this Gavin Payne and the unknown number.”
“Yeah. But I still have to check his texts.”
“Let me.” I took the phone from her and replaced it with her empty plate. “You eat.”
Liv hesitated, then reached for a tortilla.
Hunter hadn’t sent any texts in the past week, and he’d only received one, a couple of days earlier. An address. “Shit.”
“What?” Liv looked up from her empty fajita, and I turned the phone around for her to see.
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