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“They hacked into her account?”
“No, they don’t have my skills.” There is well-earned pride in Stiel’s voice. He’d been the first of us to delve into human technology once we left the cave, but he doesn’t linger on the emotion. “They had to do it the old-fashioned way.”
I frown, narrowing my eyes at the pink and silver website, searching for anything that might stand out as a sign of their wrongdoing.
Stiel hits the message icon in the top right corner. Only one conversation pops up, spanning the past month and ending only yesterday. I’m not familiar with the username of whoever’s account we are in, but I know instantly who the conversation is with.
“Jules H.”Julianna.I choke on her name.
“Richard Perkin’s email was used to set up this account,” Stiel says matter-of-factly. “Just one day before he first messaged Jules. He’s been pretending to be a wealthy businessman in from out of town for a few months. I found the photos he used stolen from some poor guy in Australia.”
“What did Julianna say to him?”
“She gave them everything they needed,” he says ruefully. I search for any condemnation towards Julianna in his tone and don’t find it. “He strung her along for a while. She was in desperate straits. When he told her he’d never been a sugar daddy before, she went over how she normally works—in detail.”
“Oh Gods, baby girl,” I murmur under my breath, rubbing my clawed hand over my face. A month ago, I didn’t know Julianna. I didn’t know her problems, but I desperately wish I did. I could’ve saved her from all of this.
“She finally blocked him yesterday. Seems like he could never commit to a meeting time.”
Jealousy slices through my chest. Julianna had been talking to another potential sugar daddy right up to the party at Freddy’s.
We have an arrangement. We have an end date, I remind myself. She is far too smart to wait until after Freddy’s unveiling to start looking for her next source of income. Hell, until the party, we thought that last night was going to be our final time together. Still, the urge to find her now, in whatever expensive boutique she’s currently in, and fuck her until she can only think of me settles permanently beneath my ribs and in my cock.
“Can you get rid of it? Any messages, his profile and hers?” I swallow hard and focus on the matter at hand. She could make a new one after this is all settled. It’s too dangerous for her on that site now. “Did any of this information get sent to their lawyer?”
“I erased their profiles, effectively getting rid of any communications on the site too. It doesn’t look like any phone numbers were shared. I checked both her cell phone and Richard’s to be sure. But Titan…” Stiel turns on his swivel stool towards me. “Unless I go to the source, I can’t be sure he or the mother hasn’t saved it all to their desktop or printed out hard copies.”
My breath quickens to a pace not far from that of the Pull, but instead of cold, cutting desperation, I’m filled with the heat of control I only seem to feel around Julianna. My claws curl tightly into my palms, and the tip of my tail thumps wildly against the ground. There is no way for me to know how much material they have on Julianna or what they are going to use against her in court from the penthouse.
“They want to have her declared incapable of running her own finances.” Stiel pulls up an email between Richard and their lawyer on a computer screen. “And with the way human laws view sex work and her current financial position—”
“A position her own family put her in. Not that it is any of their Godsdamn business.” I slam my fist on the desk, cracks splintering the wood with the force of it.
The Strange live too long to think things as natural as sex and the nude form are worthy of judgment. I’ve seen all kinds of Strange naked and fucking to be the least bit scandalized by what Julianna does or who she associates with. But the human world doesn’t work that way, and her mother and Richard are using it to their advantage.
“Yes, but they won’t see it that way, and we can’t trust that a human court will be a fair one.”
I pace the small room back and forth, back and forth. There’s not enough room to spread my wings and fully think. There is no thinking when it comes to Julianna’s safety. There is only what has to be done.
“All we need is to get whatever they have off their desktop and any hard copies, right?”
She’d asked me to gather this information. She’d wanted me to. How else is her lawyer meant to win her case if he doesn’t have all the information?
“And if I’m there, with a solid ten minutes, I can set up remote viewing software and monitor more closely what they have—and dispose of anything else from a distance.”
She wanted me to do my collecting from the safety of the penthouse. We could do that, but it would require a small field trip first.
“Do we know where Kathleen and Richard are?”
Stiel pulls up the phone tracking program on the far-right screen and zooms out on the map of Los Angeles several times.
“Kathleen is still in Beverly Hills. Recently entered a spa, it looks like. And”—he narrows his eyes, pulling in close so his horns touch the screen—“Richard is driving back from Las Vegas. Just crossed over the state line, but there is traffic.”
I told Eden to keep Julianna out as long as she wanted, to take her to an expensive dinner, treat her to drinks and dessert, even dancing, whatever she desires. Anything to take her mind off of today. They won’t be home for some time.
“We go only for the information, nothing else.” It’s as much a warning to myself as it is to Stiel.
* * *
