Page 28 of Plain Sight

“No. In real life.”

Okay. She’s awake. Lily sits up and cuddles close to me. My heart wants to climb out of my chest and cover her like a shield so nothing can touch her again.

“A second kidnapper?”

“No. Like a—a Good Samaritan.”

That raises my fucking hackles. Why?

Because of Remy.

Because of the guy who saved her at study group. From the prick who gave her cigarette burns. You don’t have to worry about the Good Samaritan guy.

“Did you⁠—”

“I didn’t get his name, no,” Lily says. “Light hair. Gray eyes. Tallish. He snuck in⁠—”

“How did he sneak into an empty room?”

“Hallway.” She yawns. “And he, like, distracted the kidnapper—Walsh—with a penny. He threw it so it made a noise, and then he hit him over the head with a lead pipe.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a dream about Clue?”

A laugh. “It was real. But then he disappeared. I guess he didn’t want credit for saving me.”

“Maybe he’s Jesus.”

“Maybe.”

So there are two people I’m looking for.

Walsh, and the Good Samaritan.

Breaking and entering is different when it’s private homes. Rich assholes always have a lot of security systems. Mason doesn’t like those, because he hates the idea of having videos of himself—and all of us—on some server somewhere that he’s not in charge of, and none of us are tech geniuses, so there aren’t cameras all over the buildings.

Hades is weird about being filmed, too, so I guess it’s a plus for everyone.

It’s definitely a plus for me, because there’s no footage of me leaving the building every night. And, in my younger years—when we didn’t have the money for fancy security shit—it meant that I had to figure out how to disable those systems so I didn’t get caught every time.

People’s houses are different from corporate trespassing because people are usually home at night. It works in my favor that many of the people in the consortium’s orbit are rich enough to have detached houses with small yards or some sort of terrace entrance into a shared garden space.

Their houses are quiet while I go through filing cabinets and load digital records onto thumb drives. So quiet that I can hear them breathing.

The first time I find myself standing over someone’s bed in the main bedroom, I think, oh, I could kill them.

I’m in the house. They don’t know it. It would be the work of, what, twenty seconds?

But looking at the defenseless, middle-aged couple in the bed, I don’t want to kill them. I don’t hate them. I’m not angry. I don’t feel much of anything at all.

At first, it’s a nice break from how painfully I love Lily.

Then it’s a little⁠—

What would Zeus say?

Troublesome.

But I’m busy, so I keep going.