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“On it.”
I flipped open my laptop and started to hunt. Rick returned with coffee for each of us and fresh sandwiches. I’d have frowned at the food that close to my machines, but Drew took each from Rick with a wordless smile and it was the first thing to chase away the sadness that had taken up residence there since she’d seen her father’s picture.
It took me thirty minutes to find the storage place. Not my proudest moment. “It’s about four hours from here,” I told her, “if I’m reading the mileage right. It’s a Lock and Store off Old Highway 151. Not much else out there. A gas station. A fast food place. And cows probably.” I didn’t care much for cows.
“Cows kill more people annually than wolves,” Rick said and I wasn’t the only one who looked at him. He gave a little shrug. “Bees kill more than cows. And tractors kill more than bees.”
The corner of Drew’s mouth curved upward.
“I’m not going to ask how you know that,” I said before taking another sip of coffee and glancing back at her screen. “You ready for the wow?”
She raised her brows. “This is fairly impressive, but what else did you find?”
“Click over to that third terminal window.”
She closed out the files and switched to the third terminal. If I hadn’t been watching her, I don’t think I would have believed the change rippling over her. The smile faded, the cheer in her eyes vanished, and her expression was so neutral she looked exactly like her father, and that sent a shiver of apprehension right up my spine, and a fresh pulse of lust right to my very happy to see her again, dick.
Goddammit, how could I be turned on and terrified by the same thing? Still, Drew stared at the files. A list of names.
Not just any list.
A list of active killers within Dion’s network. Some for hire. Some for personal. He color coded them. Thackery and Vienna Drew were also on that list. They were two of five names in black. Those names weren’t in code, they were the only ones to be listed by first and last name. They killed for their own reasons and never accepted payment or hire. Those in green definitely took money and those in red, were unpredictable and dangerous. At least as far as I could tell. Both those in green—like the Vanisher—and those in red were all listed by code names. No first or last names in evidence.
But there was a name at the bottom of the list. A name she’d asked Dion for.
Red Death. One file.
I’d opened it earlier.
Inside were two sets of numbers. One was a phone number and the other was an IP Address.
“You can find him using this?”
Yeah, I thought that was what she would ask. “I can find the IP address if it’s in active use. Currently, it’s not.” I hated disappointing her. “There’s more.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and I waited. Then she opened them and focused. “How much more?”
“Terabytes. I haven’t cross-sectioned half of what he has on here. He’s got files on an entire network of people, including some that have cross-pollination in other fields, from law enforcement to academia. Then there’s the pay for play and the manipulation of records. He also made money on the side selling whatever searches he did for some individuals to others. In particular bounty hunters, but that’s just from what I skimmed earlier.”
“I’ll put on another pot of coffee,” Rick announced, grabbing both of our empty coffee cups and plates on his way out. I’d give him credit, he didn’t touch anything else and he was keeping the area neat. Huh.
Drew stared at the screen for a moment, her expression still unreadable and dead neutral. There were heavy hitters on that list of names, some were politicians, some were politically adjacent. Movers and shakers that I only recognized because they were the behind-the-scenes guys, the kingmakers who came to parties to mingle and do business.
Dion had a fucking goldmine of information and so much dirt, we could bury a thousand lives, and probably barely skim the surface. It was heady stuff, and dangerous. Because sometimes, too much information was worse than not enough. Particularly if you weren’t sure where to start or focus your priorities.
Somehow, I didn’t think that would be Drew’s problem.
“Tell me what you need,” I said when she’d been silent for too long. Rick hadn’t returned and the absolute neutrality of her demeanor unsettled me. It was like seeing her stuck in the dark and someone needed to turn a light on. Blinking, Drew refocused on me again. All at once heat crept through me at the intensity in her stare.
“I need you.”
Elation flooded me.
“But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Well…shit.
28
