“Not precisely, but close enough. Names have power, Miss Daeg—”
“Alexa.”
Rob scowled at me. “What if I like addressing you politely and respectfully, as you deserve?”
If Rob was so comfortable with declarations, I could make a few of my own. I matched his glare and hissed, “I won’t sleep with a man who can’t say my first name.”
“You did before, and you liked it.”
Determined to emerge the victor of our spat, I lifted my chin and replied, “I had to see if you had satisfactory endurance.”
“And I satisfied you. Anyway, I have, in actuality, used your first name.”
“Doesn’t count.”
“Why, exactly, doesn’t it count?”
While I had a faint recollection of him using my first name when I had been stunned from my fall, the opportunity to nettle him was too tempting to resist. “If I don’t remember it clearly, it doesn’t count.”
“If you didn’t insist on slamming your head into hard objects, you would remember it clearly.”
“My head still hurts,” I whined, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I look at the laptop and my stomach does flip flops.”
“I won’t force you, but the painkillers will really help. I already told you I won’t let you get hooked on them again. I’ll work the computer; you tell me what to look for. I’ll even make you soup if you quietly take your medicine.”
I had the feeling soup would be the only thing I’d be able to keep down. I twisted around to check on my roommate, who was nestled on a blanket on one of the armchairs. “Do you think Colby needs medicine, too?”
“I’m not sure what kind of medicine to give macaroni and cheese with an upset stomach from eating too much metal and electronics,” Rob admitted.
“Let’s not experiment. You owe Colby soup, sir.”
“If I can’t Miss Daegberht you, you can’t sir me.”
“Soup, Rob, not excuses.”
“You’re going to quietly take your medicine?” Frowning at me, Rob pressed his hand to my forehead. “You’re not fevered.”
“My skull is about to split in two. Have mercy and put me out of my misery.”
Rob got up and grabbed the blanket draped over the back of the couch. He wrapped it around me before heading down the hall. When he returned, he held two pillows, which he tossed on the couch beside me. “Lie down. I’ll wake you up if I need help with the computer.”
“If you drug me, don’t tell me about it,” I grumbled.
With a quiet laugh, Rob retreated to the kitchen. “Just shut up and go to sleep.”
I flopped onto the couch with a groan. A short time later, Rob sat beside me, and the jab of a needle lulled me into painless semi-consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There was something amusing about watching Rob do my job. At some point, he ended up with a pillow on his lap, which lured me to the pillow, and since he didn’t seem to mind working around me, I watched him sift through an endless mountain of digital files.
“Pervert,” I declared.
“Me or Mr. Moore?” Rob asked, pausing in his work to stare at me.
I pointed at the laptop. “We stole a pornography collection. I smacked into a skyscraper for a fucking porn collection.”
“To add insult to injury, it’s not even good porn,” Rob grumbled, shaking his head. “You’re prettier than these girls by far. No contest. Actually, I’m not sure if some of these are girls. Then again, he shoved some poor woman in his refrigerator. I could have lived without seeing the depravities he seemed to enjoy.”
“Poor woman,” I agreed. “Think they found her?”
“It’s likely. We did leave a gaping hole in the side of their skyscraper.”
“They have us on security footage,” I grumbled.
“Had.”
“Had?”
Rob pointed at Colby, who was still asleep on the armchair. “Colby’s pretty smart for a casserole. From my understanding, it decided to erase a lot of evidence while we were waiting for dawn on the rooftop. Maybe they’ll learn to upload their imagery to remote servers in the future.”
“Smart Colby is smart. I’m still trying to figure out how you understand what it’s saying.”
“Magic.”
“Stupid magical dae. Go back to magic land. Science makes sense.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ignore your request. Earth is such a lovely place with even lovelier company.”
“Blind squirrel,” I mumbled.
“We’re going to have to work on your self-esteem, Alexa. Customarily, when I compliment you for your beauty, you’re supposed to say thank you. If you’re feeling particularly thankful, I’m certain there are ways you could show your gratitude.” Rob paused in his work to adjust the blanket, tucking it around me. “We can practice after I finish with this work if you’d like.”
“Why would an elite like Terry Moore have so much porn when he could just go to a brothel?” I grumbled, pointing at the laptop.
“It might have something to do with his excessive lingerie collection or the fact he leaves women in his refrigerator. Any woman with a grain of common sense would avoid him.” With a snort and a shake of his head, Rob resumed browsing the contents of Moore’s computer. “For the record, there’s nothing wrong with a good lingerie collection, especially if you’re the one wearing the lingerie. Please, take your irritation with me out on my wallet. Acquire more lingerie.”
“You bought them. I had nothing to do with it.”
“But I want to see what you’d choose for yourself.”
I fluttered my hand in the general direction of the laptop. “Less talk, more finding useful files.”
What felt like an eternity later, Rob shook his head. There were a handful of college-related files on the machine. The rest was pornography.
Either Terry Moore had been an incurable pervert, or he had been clever in hiding information. With hundreds of thousands of images and videos to go through, we couldn’t check them all, and it was easy enough to mask a text file as an image. Was the system exactly what it appeared to be, or did it hold a secret?
Rob tapped in a few commands, went into one of the smaller directories, and displayed the file names, which consisted of letter and number combinations. Groaning, I stared at the screen.
“That’s a pretty useless way to name your pornography if you ever want to find a specific one.”
“And a brilliant way to hide information if you don’t know the encryption key to turn that shit into words, phrases, or names,” I pointed out, wondering how I’d be able to figure out if the filenames translated to something useful. “It could be nothing, or it could be good data that’s absolutely useless to us without the key.”
“So, what do we do with this?”
“I’ll keep a copy of all of his data and hope I can find the encryption key somewhere. We’ll clean the laptop; we’ll wipe the pornography, leave his school work, clear off the virus, and claim I found the laptop like that when I hand it over to Kenneth.”
“You’re going to cheat him?”
“He asked me for information on where to find his drugs, who Moore was friends with, and his money. Do you think he’s looking for oddly named pornography?”
“Unlikely.”
“After smacking into a skyscraper, I’m not feeling very charitable.”
“Especially since he was likely responsible for it?”
“Something like that. We just need to break into Moore’s tablet and look over his pictures and see if there’s anything there.”
Rob reached down and picked up the stack of papers he had pillaged from the condominium. “Don’t forget these. I grabbed everything I could find. He didn’t have much. I bet most of his work is at his living residence instead of his party place.”
“Can’t believe he was using something as expensive as the Ivory Tower to host sex parties,” I muttered, taking the pages from the dae. I rolled onto m
y back, wincing at the stabbing pain across my ribs. The medications had taken off most of the edge, but the fact they didn’t numb me to everything comforted me a little.
They weren’t the truly strong drugs. When they wore off, I’d crave more, but there was a good chance I’d be able to resist my need for them. My fear of reviving my addiction surged, and I forced my attention to my work.
One benefit of living in the fringe was the general absence of bills. People like me couldn’t afford many things, and companies who hired from the fringe often provided their cheapest goods to maintain the minimum standard of living for their employees. Elites, however, purchased only the best, and the smart ones got a receipt for everything.
I didn’t know what to make of the invoices I held; instead of buying, Terry Moore had been selling. However, the name of the buyer immediately drew my attention.
Dean Michael Lewis had paid Terry Moore almost half a million in combined sales; like the pornography, the items were listed by number and letter combination. “Hey, Rob?”
“Yes?”
“Run these numbers and see if there’s a match in the filenames.” I held up one of the invoices. Taking the sheet, the dae ran a search on the laptop.
“There’s a match. It’s a video, and it’s almost ten minutes long.”
“If a brothel bothers you, that’ll drive you crazy. I like it. Watch it, Rob. Find out if there’s some hidden gem for me in there.”
“Is this a common tactic?”
I shrugged, flipping through the sheets a second time. “It’s just the first thing I look for when sniffing. Is there anything unusual? Weird filenames are a great starting place. The really smart folks name them something normal—something misleading, like a dated classwork assignment, for example. Sure, if these are the only invoices he’s hiding, it’d take days or months to brute force locate something. If all of the videos contain important information…”
Rob made a thoughtful sound, then I heard him suck in a breath of air. “It’s the girl from the fridge.”
I twisted around, misjudged how much space I had on the couch, and flopped to the floor at Rob’s feet. Landing on my chest hurt so much I went limp, wheezing and shuddering from the pain.
“Shit!” Shoving the coffee table away, Rob worked his hands under me and helped me sit up. “Sorry.”
“No, I was the idiot. Not your fault,” I choked out. “Your painkillers suck. What did you do, steal them from an expired batch?”
With a soft laugh, Rob lifted me onto the couch, resting my head on the pillow across his lap. “Perhaps they were a little too safe of a choice. Still, I should have caught you.”
“Why does Terry Moore have a video of a woman he stuffed in his refrigerator?” Biting back a groan, I shifted until I could see the laptop. The display was so blurred I couldn’t make out more than pale shapes on the screen.
“That’s a very good question. The file was made right before the Dawn of Dae, too.”
I cringed at the thought of the poor woman’s corpse being stuck in a refrigerator for so long. “Wonderful.”
In a way, I was grateful for my unfocused vision; what started out as a classic pornography turned to murder, and when it did, Rob muted the sound. For a long time, I stared at the invoice, wondering if the dean had hired Terry Moore to eliminate the woman, or if her death had been some unfortunate accident. All I did know was that there was something very wrong with the job I had been assigned, and Kenneth Smith, Terry Moore, and the dean of my college were in the middle of it.
We checked every invoice number against Terry Moore’s files, and by the time we were finished, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. After watching the murders of five women, a sickening numbness settled over me.
In each and every video, Rob noticed Terry injecting his victims with a blood-red fluid—and every woman had died while under its influence. Deaths from drug overdose happened, but the way the substance made them enjoy it left my stomach churning.
The most recent invoice, one of the most expensive ones, had no matching file, and I wondered who had avoided her rape and murder thanks to the Dawn of Dae.
Rob sighed and closed the laptop, shaking his head. “I’m not saying my fellow dae are the nicest of people—we really aren’t—but that’s repulsive.”
“What I don’t know is if Kenneth realizes what his drugs are being used for, not that he’ll care. All we know is that there’s someone, likely a woman, who barely missed becoming the subject of a horror film.” I shuddered, rolling over so I could bury my face in the pillow. “I could have lived my entire life without seeing something like that.”
“Is it Mr. Smith’s style to kill people this way?”
“No. He prefers a knife in an alley—anything other than using his drugs to kill someone. He’d never allow one of his hounds to record a murder. Too risky. Last thing he wants is the government sniffing out he’s the primary drug lord of Baltimore.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
The question bothered me. While under the influence of painkillers, no matter how mild, I wasn’t comfortable making any important decisions, but the problem of Kenneth Smith and Terry Moore couldn’t wait for my ribs to heal—or my head to clear. “I’m going to hide the…”
I blinked, and sucking in a breath, I shoved my hand down the front of my shirt to grab the black velvet bags I had stashed in my bra. “Plug these in and see what they are.”
Rob’s eyes widened as he took the pouches from me. “Where did you get these?”
“First place we hit. I forgot about them.”
It didn’t take long to discover they were copies of the videos we had watched—plus a collection of others. Rob skimmed through each one, shaking his head as he confirmed their content. “At first glance, no one would ever think it’s more than pornography.”
“Right until the end, when it turns into a murder,” I muttered.
“Someone has a very sick interest in entertainment material—and the dean paid a lot for each one.”
“Explains how he could afford a place in the Ivory Tower. One of those hits alone pays for several months of rent, probably.”
“What I want to know is how he has gotten away with it for so long—there’s at least fifty videos on these cards.” Rob spat curses, shaking his head. “And now you’re caught in the middle of it.”
“I’m not, actually.” I gathered up the evidence. Like Terry Moore, I’d have to find suitable hiding places for them, but I had years of experience to draw on. I’d leave them in a place so secure no one would find it—not without me telling them where to dig. “We’re going to delete all of the videos, leave the school work, and wipe the virus from the system. When I talk to Kenneth, I’m going to take the laptop, which will have been unfortunately damaged due to the failure of my harness. I will pretend I know nothing of the videos. I’ll give him the invoices, and let him sort out the mess.”
“One vial of the primary drugs, the rest of the narcotics, and the cash you found will be enough?”
At the doubt in Rob’s voice, I shrugged. “Should be. I’ll warn him about the woman in the refrigerator, though—a tip on the house. If I warn him, he’ll be more likely to believe I’m not out to turn him into the authorities. The information on Dean Lewis should help, too.”
“Will that be enough to leave you free and clear of him?”
“I’ll never be free and clear of him until the day one of us dies,” I admitted, resigned to the reality of my situation. “With my Bach degree, I can leave Baltimore, which will help, but Kenneth doesn’t like giving up what he views as his.”
“Rest assured, Alexa. I have zero intentions of allowing Mr. Smith to continue his use of you, inappropriate or otherwise. Maybe the other elite of this city are cowards, but I am not. If your efforts don’t force him to back off—and give you safer, better work—I will deal with him personally.”
“And what is an appropriate use of me?” I demanded, balling my hand
in a fist, ready to pummel the dae if he started his property bullshit again.
“Do allow me to show you. Don’t worry; I’ll be gentle, and I promise you’ll like it.”
Rob cheated, using my desire and need for touch against me. With each stroke of his hand, he wiped away my resistance to him and eased my pain far better than any medication ever could. As I had the first time we had slept together, I ended up sprawled on top of him while he held me, his fingers tracing patterns on my bare skin.
“I told you you’d like it,” he murmured.
“You realize I’m using you for my personal pleasure and gain, correct?” I asked, flicking at his hair.
Laughing, he turned his head to dodge my fingers. “That seems fair to me. It’s mutual, I assure you.”
I liked the way I made him tremble when I touched him. The way his careful control shattered and turned into desperation for more aroused me in equal measure. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on frequent examinations to ensure you’re staying properly in shape. Men like you fall prey to idleness so easily.”
I trailed my fingertips down his throat, and he shivered beneath me.
“Tease,” he accused, shifting his weight to roll me off him. “I have a laptop to damage, drugs to pack, and soup to finish. You should take a long soak so you don’t get stiff and sore. I want to take the goods to Mr. Smith tonight so we’re both finished with him. I’ll take you back to your apartment afterwards.”
“Won’t be that easy,” I warned him. The single vial of drugs and the invoices would, however, buy me time—probably. The warning about the dead woman would likely be enough to get Kenneth to call off any other attempts to get rid of me, at least for the moment. I’d have to find a way to deal with Baltimore’s crime lord once and for all, and I had the sinking feeling I’d need Rob’s help to pull it off.
“The things worth doing never are.” Rob got out of bed, grabbed one of the bathrobes, and wrapped up in it. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll also figure out something about the dean and make certain he doesn’t get you involved with his dirty work, too. I’m aware Kenneth was trying to hire you out of the dean’s keeping, and I think it’s a game I’m going to get very involved in.”
The Dawn of Dae (Dae Portals Book 1) Page 30