“What boards?”
“The, you know…”—he leaned toward me—“boards.”
I leaned toward him. “No, I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He studied me then turned his attention to his laptop. He hit a few keys and shifted the screen around to me.
It was black, with blue words on it, and it looked kind of like a Reddit thread.
But it was not a Reddit thread. Even I could tell this was something deeper…and weirder.
When I caught a few names I knew too well, one of them mine, I squinted my eyes and peered closer at the screen.
It was an in-depth discussion about where Kevin Johanssen might be.
Kevin was Willow’s ex. The one who chased her around SC. A user, loser, and verbal abuser. The dating app scam he was running with his best bud was our mission a few missions ago.
After that mess was over, he’d been disappeared by the Nightingale crew, partly because he was a user, loser and verbal abuser, and Gabe was going to go for Willow (and then he went for her…and got her). Mostly because he’d made a powerful enemy during that mission (as in, a US Congressman) and it was safer for him to drop off radar.
Since then, Kevin had been gone and not missed.
Even the Angels didn’t know where he was, and four of them were sleeping beside Nightingale boys.
“It’s not about you, exactly. It’s about the Nightingale guys,” Byron said. “That’s the overall board, but there are tons of threads that have strung off it. It started years ago, when a load of stuff was going down in Denver. Then those Rock Chick books happened, and it’s kept going from there. Though, I’ve only been on it for about a year.”
“About a year” being about as long as the Angels had been in operation, or more aptly, a little over a year.
My voice was pitching higher when I asked, “How are the Angels on it? I mean, are there people watching us?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or, I don’t think so. Mostly, it’s informants or witnesses or people scanning newspapers. Like, you and Raye were at the police station after those women were rescued.”
We were.
That was the culmination of our human trafficking mission.
“It was the Nightingale guys on record for rescuing them,” Byron carried on. “But someone saw you there and started posting you guys to the boards.” His expression turned sheepish before he said, “At first, they thought you were just the new Rock Chicks. Though, they figured out you guys were in on the investigations when that homeless thing happened, and you were on the scene when that drug lab caught fire.”
And that was our homeless-people-getting-kidnapped mission.
“Then some stuff went down with the Russian mob,” he kept at it.
That was our mission to save one of our informants from being used by some bad guys in a way that might have gotten him dead.
“So…I do what I do because I’m good at it,” Byron stated. “And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t investigate me.”
I squinted my eyes again, this time, at him, “Are you one of the witnesses or informants who add to that thread?” For emphasis, I stabbed a finger at his laptop.
“What?” His body jolted back and his expression became, as far as I could tell, genuinely offended. “I would never.”
I took him in, and it did seem like he would never.
I changed topics. “Is what you do illegal?”
“Not entirely,” Byron answered.
“What’s the ‘not’ part of the entirely?” I pushed.
He tossed out both hands. “Listen, I can’t tell you. I can just say that it’s kinda like…keeping my eyes on folks.”
