A Web of Lies

by Bella Forrest

  I swiveled again in my chair, facing the counter, and busied myself with my water. He arrived by my side and pulled up a stool next to me.

  “Hi,” he said, flashing me a Ken-worthy smile. He didn’t look any older than twenty-one.

  I offered him a small, fleeting curve of my lips.

  “I noticed you sitting all alone over here.”

  Yes. Happily alone.

  “Can I order you something?” he pressed.

  I raised my glass of water to him, offering him a broader, though more artificial smile. “I’m good,” I said curtly.

  He chuckled. “All right.” He called over the waiter and pointed to my glass. “I’ll have the same.”

  I felt like vomiting in my mouth. Augh. That was so cheesy.

  “My name is Rolf,” he said, holding out a hand.

  I declined to shake it, fixing my head on the chalkboard menus and pretending that I had not seen him extend it.

  “Hi, Rolf,” I said in the most unenthusiastic voice I could manage. This guy was the persistent type. A more timid guy would’ve gotten the hint by now that I wasn’t in the mood. Rolf would not take no for an answer easily.

  “Are you new?” he asked. “This is the first time I’ve seen you.”

  “Yes, I am new!” I said, inspiration suddenly lighting up my brain. I turned to him and looked him straight in the eye, smiling. “I’m totally new. And you know, I’m actually looking to hook up with someone tonight.”

  He grinned impishly, but before he could get too smug, I went on, “Rolf, you’re pretty and all… but I’ll be honest with you. You’re really not my type.”

  His smile faded for a moment, but then returned full force. I guessed he thought that this was some kind of flirting technique.

  “Well,” he said, taking a sip from his water, “why don’t you tell me what kind of guys you are into, and maybe—just maybe—I could help you out.”

  I cast my eyes around the rest of the room. “Hmmm.” My eyes settled on the nerdiest-looking guy I could find, a guy who looked the complete opposite of Rolf. He had a slim, lanky build with brown hair tied up in a ponytail, complete with a short beard and large black spectacles. He could have been something other than a computer person, of course, but he was at least in the right category.

  “I’m into guys like him,” I replied, pointing directly at the ponytail guy.

  Rolf’s eyes shot to the nerd. Then he burst out laughing. “He’s my friend, Jude. Jude Webb. He’s your type?”

  “Uh-huh!” I said.

  Rolf had apparently spoken a little too loudly, and Jude had overheard his name. Jude turned to face us, cocking his head to one side.

  I gave him a beaming smile and waved a little, even as my cheeks grew red hot. Oh, my God. What. Am. I. Doing.

  “Hey, Jude,” Rolf said, “come on over here.”

  Perhaps Rolf still thought that I was joking, but at least he’d called Jude over. As he approached, he really wasn’t bad-looking at all… just on the nerdy side.

  “What?” Jude asked, looking half amused and thoroughly confused.

  Rolf planted a hand on my shoulder. “You have an admirer here. Her name is…” Rolf’s gaze fell to the badge on my chest. “Ronda. Ronda Clarkson.”

  Jude’s eyes narrowed on the letters beneath the name. “Assistant to the Chief Dish Sanitization Technician,” he said in a snooty voice, before snorting. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  My expression turned to disapproval. That was actually kind of rude. I suspected that if I had actually been the Assistant to the Chief Dish Sanitization Technician, I would’ve taken great offense to that comment.

  “That’s not actually a position… is it?” Jude went on.

  I pursed my lips. “It is,” I said, clipped.

  An awkward silence fell between the three of us. My show of taking offense had worked. Any doubt Jude had regarding it possibly not being a real position evaporated, and he stumbled to say, “Hey, I’m sorry, Ronda.” He reached out and nudged my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that it was kind of a…” He cleared his throat, setting his glass down on the counter next to me. “Never mind.” Jude turned to Rolf, clearly now desperate to patch up the situation. “Well, if you said Ronda is my admirer, what are you still doing here, loser?”

  Rolf nudged Jude in the shoulder, even as he laughed and walked away, shaking his head—apparently still disbelieving that I could choose Jude over him.

  As Jude turned back to me, I examined his badge. And I couldn’t believe it. I did an imaginary fist-pump. My first true bit of luck this evening.

  “Jude Webb,” it read, and beneath it said in the same small writing as my own made-up title: “IT security and maintenance.”

  Yes! My eye for nerds was sharp.

  I warmed my expression and offered him a charming smile—or at least I hoped it looked charming… and not like a creeper’s.

  Jude moved closer to me, pushing his glass next to my water.

  “So, how long have you been with the IBSI?” he asked, his voice a tad slurred.

  “I was just telling your friend that I’ve only just joined,” I explained, before I budged ever so softly backward to create more of a distance between us. Jude was definitely less shy than I’d thought he’d be.

  “So you’re a new recruit, eh? Where are you from?”

  “Chicago,” I replied. Given that Lawrence had been on my mind so much, it was the first place that came to my head.

  “Interesting. Then I’m curious why you’re here? Why not work at the Chicago base?”

  Good question… “It’s the weather, if I’m honest,” I replied, after a moment’s hesitation.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s a good reason to want to transfer… What did you train in, then? Hospitality? Or is the cleaning job just a starting position, and you hope to work your way up?”

  “Hospitality,” I replied—it was the easiest answer. Then, my gaze falling to his badge once again, I went on, “I’m really interested in computer science, though. My older brother is kind of a nerd, always talking about computers and… stuff… So I guess it kind of rubbed off on me.”

  “Yet you never pursued it as a career.”

  “Nah… My mom pushed me toward hospitality. Anyway, why don’t you tell me a bit about what you do?” I asked, hoping to prevent more questions aimed at me.

  He nodded down to his badge. “Like it says, security and maintenance in the IT department.”

  I paused, trying to pull the most interested expression that I could as I took a small sip from my water. “What exactly does it mean by ‘security’?”

  “Ah.” He let out a breath. “All sorts. Hardware vulnerabilities, viruses, encryption—”

  Encryption. I stopped listening as he continued rattling off items. My brain froze on the word. This is our guy!

  “—backups, system lockdowns…” Jude paused, apparently noticing that I had become disconnected. He narrowed his eyes on me. “Do you seriously find this interesting, or are you just being polite?”

  “Go on,” I encouraged, offering him another smile. “I’m listening… In fact”—I squinted as I looked around the dimly lit room, the music loud in my ears—“why don’t we go outside to talk? Take a walk along the beach?”

  I couldn’t help but grin internally as I said the words. Ah, taking a walk along a beach. Standard Novak tactics. Poor Jude.

  The poor fellow looked pleased by the suggestion. “Sure.”

  My stomach twisted with guilt as he looked at me, and I had to remind myself that unlike the many bloodthirsty vamps who’d employed the old ‘beach walk trick’, I wasn’t going to harm Jude. Arwen and I just needed to… borrow him for a while.

  To encourage him further, I slipped an arm around his waist before leading him to the door. We received several wolf whistles from Jude’s friends as he closed the door behind us.

  I removed my hand from his waist and took his arm ins
tead. I began steering him subtly away from the Checkered Dog and toward the spot Arwen had told me she would be waiting.

  “So, yeah,” Jude concluded with a sigh. “I basically listed all the stuff that I deal with on a day-to-day basis.”

  “That’s cool,” I said, gazing out toward the waves and breathing in the fresh salty air.

  He stared down at me, his overgrown eyebrows knotting in a frown. “I’m still not sure what you’re doing holding my arm,” he remarked, a grin curving his lips, “but I’ll take it.”

  I decided that it would be less awkward if I refrained from responding to that. I just smiled at him again instead.

  We had created a fair distance between ourselves and the buildings by now. I hoped that Arwen would not wait too much longer to swoop down and get us. I just had to keep some kind of conversation going in the meantime—but more importantly, keep him moving forward.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “On site, of course,” he replied. “Don’t know of anyone my age who has joined the organization and remains living on the outside.”

  “How old are you?” I wondered. Looking at him, I would’ve guessed around twenty-two.

  “Twenty-four,” he replied. “You?”

  I didn’t get a chance to respond this time as, finally, a hand closed around my shoulder. A second later, I had vanished with Jude.

  I wasn’t actually sure where Arwen would make us reappear—I thought that perhaps she would take us straight back to The Shade where we could talk to him and show him the drive I had with me in my pocket.

  Instead, she made us appear again barely half a mile away. We were still on the same beach, concealed by a different patch of bushes.

  The shock caused Jude to fall to his knees. His eyes shot up to us, wide and panicked. But before he could yell—or perhaps reach for a hidden weapon—Arwen cast a spell on him that both took away his voice and froze his limbs.

  Gazing down at his terrified eyes, I felt another twinge of guilt. Who would’ve thought that I would feel guilty about a hunter?

  “We’re not going to hurt you, Jude,” I said, trying to calm him.

  “Uh, yes, we will,” Arwen said, raising her brows at me, before glaring daggers down at Jude. “We will hurt you—a lot—if you don’t cooperate with us, dude.” Arwen’s mouth formed a mean, hard line as she glowered.

  I guessed her approach was right, though. I doubted that she would actually hurt him, and if Jude didn’t think that there would be serious repercussions to his not cooperating, what reason would he have to cooperate?

  Arwen’s harsh demeanor seemed to have gotten through to him. His expression grew tenser.

  The witch stooped down and gripped his ponytail, lifting his head to a forty-five-degree angle. “Hand me the necklace,” she said to me.

  I dove into my pocket and gave it to her. She swung the pendant to and fro a little in front of Jude’s nose—I guessed deliberately prolonging the tension—before pressing the clear transparent jewel in the center of it and causing the USB drive to reveal itself.

  “This contains a folder filled with files that have been encrypted with IBSI technology,” Arwen said. We think, I added in my head. Arwen’s eyes flickered to Jude’s badge. “Since you work in the IT security and maintenance department, opening them should be a cinch. And that is exactly what you’re going to do if you ever want your voice back.”

  The hunter’s eyes bulged.

  “You have twelve hours to return to this same beach I snatched you from with this thumb drive intact and the files unlocked and readable. Is anything unclear?”

  Since he was frozen, as well as speechless, we could only go by the look in his eyes. He certainly didn’t look like he had accepted what Arwen had said. I exchanged a worried glance with her.

  I tugged at her sleeve. “Could I have a moment?” I whispered into her ear. She vanished us several feet away from Jude, out of earshot, where we turned our backs on him.

  “How exactly are we thinking we’ll pull this off?” I asked. “What if there is a witch working for the IBSI in this Hawaiian branch? She could undo your spell of silence for Jude and then they’ll have the thumb drive.” I instinctively reached out and took the pendant from Arwen. I clutched it. “The contents of this could be valuable, and we weren't able to make a backup. It’s my only lead on Georgina. If Jude managed to figure out some other way to get his voice back, then we could have lost this forever.”

  I wondered if it might even be of interest to the hunters. Anything that was of interest to them ought to be held onto.

  Arwen shrugged. “Well, do you have any better ideas? It’s pretty clear that these files can’t be opened on a regular computer. He’s going to need to take the drive back to his base and open them up there. We just have to hope that either a) there is no witch easily available to Jude, or b) he’s too afraid to take the risk. If he knows anything about witches, he should be aware that they don’t all have the same level of power. I’m powerful, given my mother’s bloodline, and it’s possible that whatever witch they may have wouldn’t be able to undo my spell anyway.”

  We had to hope that Jude would be too chicken to take the risk.

  “All right,” I murmured.

  We returned to Jude, who now looked pretty desperate.

  “Now,” Arwen announced. “We have decided to grant you movement again. So you can go back to your base and get to work.”

  Before lifting her spell, Arwen bent down and searched him for any weapon he might have hidden in his clothes. It turned out that he had nothing except a small pad of paper and a pen in his back pocket. He hadn’t even brought his cell phone.

  Jude staggered to his feet. Reluctantly, I placed the necklace in his shaking right hand. As he hurried away through the bushes and back out onto the sand, we had no way of knowing whether he would ever return. I had no clue whether I had just kissed that necklace goodbye forever.

  All we could do was wait.

  Grace

  We returned to The Shade to wait the twelve hours. I ended up staying with Arwen in the Sanctuary. We both camped out on the sofas in her spacious living room and tried to get some sleep, but neither of us got much.

  We had set an alarm for when we approached within fifteen minutes of the appointed time. As soon as it went off, we both sprang to our feet.

  We collected Arwen’s laptop, since it was nearest to us, and placed it in a bag before she vanished us back to Latimer Beach. We waited among the familiar patch of shrubbery, watching the stretch of sand where Jude was supposed to emerge in just less than fifteen minutes. It being still fairly early in the morning, the beach was mostly empty, except for a few dog walkers.

  I kept glancing down at Arwen’s watch as the minutes ticked by. When we had only five minutes left, I clenched my fists. I was so tempted to voice the question playing over and over in my mind, aloud—Will he come?—but I spared Arwen my nervous discourse. She already seemed tense enough. Her breathing was uneven.

  Then, with barely two minutes left, we saw him. Jude Webb stumbled across the sand toward us. He wore the same clothes as when he’d left us, though he was looking far more disheveled. Tufts of hair had come loose from his ponytail and spiked out at odd angles. He looked pale and exhausted.

  Arwen stepped out of the bushes and transported herself to him quickly before vanishing them both back. We each grabbed one of his arms and pulled him further into the shrubbery.

  In spite of my nerves, I couldn’t help but smirk as Jude looked from me to Arwen. He had wanted a date. Well, he had gotten a double date. Just not quite the type he would have expected.

  “So, were you successful?” Arwen asked.

  He nodded tiredly. He held out the thumb drive. I reached out and took it from him. Pulling out Arwen’s laptop, I switched it on and inserted the thumb drive. I hurriedly navigated to the files, barely breathing as I clicked on the first one. This time something different happened. A window popped up, but the me
ssage it flashed at me was certainly not what I had been expecting.

  “Forced entry. File annulled.”

  “What does that mean?” Arwen murmured behind me as she looked over my shoulder.

  I quickly moved to the next file and tried it. Exactly the same window and message popped up. I worked my way down and tried to open five more. The same thing happened with each.

  We both whirled on Jude.

  “I thought you said that you were successful?” Arwen accused him.

  “Let him speak,” I said.

  As Arwen removed her spell, Jude gasped, “I did open them!” He clutched his throat, rubbing his Adam’s apple. “As you can see from the message, it was forced entry. I made them open, but they were encrypted with such a method that there was no way to do it without the files being destroyed. I did a batch operation and didn’t realize they would self-destruct until they already had… except one,” he added. “Go through them. It’s a file near the bottom of the list. That was the only one that wasn’t corrupted and that I managed to successfully crack open. Seems that whoever encrypted these forgot to apply the same fatal setting to that one.”

  My eyes returned to the screen. I scrolled to the bottom of the file list and began frantically clicking on one after the other.

  I kept receiving more “annulled” messages, until finally one of the files—about seven from the bottom—opened up in my browser.

  My eyes widened as I found myself staring at a stream of black text.

  “Um, Grace,” Arwen said, as Jude moved to scamper away again. She stunned him, causing him to fall to the ground with a yelp. “We need to decide what to do with this guy. Should I let him go?”

  “I swear that I did my best,” Jude growled through gritted teeth. “I had no way of knowing that they were encrypted to self-destruct. There is no more that I could have done, or anyone could have done.” He let out a low groan. “Ugh. I’ve been up all night, dammit. Just let me go!”

  I supposed that it was possible that Jude had corrupted the files on purpose and taken whatever information they might’ve contained for his own purposes. I sensed truth in Jude’s voice, but we had no way of knowing. He could simply be a good actor. At least we had one file.