“I need to be careful with what I wear, because certain fabrics create background noise when I move. I try not to shift around in the chair while I’m recording for the same reason.”
“I’ll bet that’s tough when you’re doing a long session,” I observed.
“It does make my back stiff, that’s for sure, plus even with the straws and the vibrator, my throat still gets sore. I do some gentle full-body stretching exercises and have a couple of cups of hot tea with honey and lemon, and that helps on those days.”
“If you ever need a massage just let me know,” I teased, flexing my fingers. “As you may have noticed last night, I have great hands, babe.”
She rolled her eyes, and I smiled at the gesture I’d come to expect from her.
“What’s this?” I picked up a small plastic cube with a button on it.
“That’s the clicker I use to make it easier for the editor to splice my recording with Ben’s. He’s the narrator handling all the male character voices. Since he lives in Florida, we each record our parts for a chapter, then upload the file to a shared drive. When I say my lines, I hit the clicker,” she reached forit and demonstrated. “When the completed files are sent to the editor for post-production, as soon as they hear the click, they know to splice in Ben’s part next.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if both of you were in the same room, recording it live?”
She nodded, then shrugged. “In an ideal world, yes, but it’s not always feasible to choose two narrators who live in the same area. If one narrator has to travel and stay in another location for the duration of the recording, it adds to the overall price of production, so cutting and splicing two files ends up being more cost-effective for the author.”
Lauren glanced up at the digital clock on the wall. “Crap, it’s later than I realized. I need to get started, and you need to get to the gym” she said, standing on her tiptoes to give me a quick and altogether unsatisfying peck on the lips.
She reached around behind me and opened the door, then shooed me out of the room.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said, then smiled at Tony, who was now stationed outside the door.
“Lock the door to the booth,” I directed as she closed the door, nodding in approval when the lock engaged.
I left a few minutes later, after giving Tony a list of instructions.
I sent Bull a text from the parking lot, asking him to check into JD. If he was going to have access to Lauren, I wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything sketchy in his background.
Bull called me with an update a few hours later, when I was in my office trying to rearrange the scheduling. Rossi’s fighters wanted to book additional practice time in the octagon, and I needed to line up some extra sparring partners for them.
“The good news is that I got access to Beau’s phone and computer since the dumbfuck uses the same password for both. He opened the attachment late last night. The bad news is that I didn’t find shit on either one, aside from a fuckton of porn, and profiles on just about every dating and hookup app in existence.”
“So, he didn’t send the emails?”
“Not from either of those devices, but if he was smart he bought a burner phone that couldn’t be traced back to him. He could have also used those gaming systems Lauren mentioned. Unfortunately, I can’t hack into those until he turns them on and connects to his network.”
“Dammit,” I muttered, slamming my palm down on my desk.
“I’ll keep at it, man, and the second he connects the burner phone or his game systems to his Wi-Fi, we’ll be able to nail his ass to the wall,” Bull assured me.
“I also started running that name you sent me earlier. I should have background intel later this afternoon.”
When Tony called mid-afternoon to let me know that Lauren was done for the day, I told him I would leave early, too. “Just stay with her at the house until I get there, and then you can take off.”
I parked in the garage forty minutes later, and Tony walked over to meet me as I got off my bike.
“Everything was quiet today, and the custodian got the OK to keep the building locked,” he reported. “Oh, and we ran into that Dustin guy when we were leaving. Lauren told him about the asshole stalking her.” He hesitated, nervously rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. “He gave her a hug, but hedidn’t try anything else. She seemed OK with it, and you said Bull had cleared him, so I didn’t stop him.”
My gut twinged in what I’d come to recognize as jealousy, a feeling completely foreign to me before meeting Lauren. I pushed it aside and focused on responding to Tony.
“It’s not a big deal. Thanks for the update. I’ll text you later about the schedule for tomorrow.”
I used the spare key Lauren had given me to unlock the front door, finding her lounging on the couch, with a mug of what I assumed to be hot tea in one hand, her Kindle resting on her lap, and the cat curled up at her feet.
“Hey, babe, did you have a good session?” I locked the door behind me and activated the alarm, then bent to remove my boots.
“Yes, I was able to get a lot done, but my voice is just about shot,” she sighed, sounding slightly huskier than usual. “This is my second cup of tea.” She took a sip, then leaned forward to set the mug on the coffee table.
