14 Weeks (Investigators Book 2), page 15
"Tig."
"Sawyer," his voice met my ear. "Brock took off to shower and change. I am out front. Hate to interrupt the fuck fest but the crew has been working all night, and they want to talk to us. You have five minutes to get dressed and get down here so we can head in. I got five energy drinks for Jstorm and about a gallon of coffee for L. They're going to be surly as fuck."
"Right, down in five," I agreed, nodding my head at Kenz as she came into the hall in one of my towels, knotted to the side of her chest.
"We have to go?"
"We have to go," I agreed as we both moved back down the hall into the bedroom where she found her bra and slipped into it, foregoing the panties because, apparently, no force on earth would excuse wearing dirty panties. Then she slipped into one of my dark gray dress shirts that hung low enough to be called a dress, using three, yes three, of my ties braided together as a belt. Then she slipped into those fucking heels, and I swear to fuck you'd have thought she planned the outfit rather than pulled it out of her ass.
Then we went to the office.
Where we got some bad news.
Unfortunately, we weren't aware at the time that the truly bad news was to come much later that night.
And it fucking broke my perfect, hardass, sweet as fucking sin Kenzi.
ELEVEN
Kenzi
You could practically taste the sour energy in the room when we walked into the office ten minutes later.
Barrett was still at his desk, his hair a mess, deep sleep bruises under his eyes. L had vacated the guest chairs, letting the girls lounge there, both of them doing so in awkward positions, likely because everything hurt from sitting on such uncomfortable spots for so long. Jstorm was slouched almost fully down, her shoulders barely touching the chair, her legs propped up on Barrett's desk, dangerously close to knocking over one of his, then nine, coffee cups. Alex was beside her, sitting across the chair sideways, her back against the cabinet lining the wall. One of her feet was cocked up on the chair, the other stretched over the back of Jstorm's chair.
There were five energy drink cans scattered across the floor along with some papers, both of Alex's shoes, and L's hoodie.
It was like a frat house.
Or, more accurately, given that they were all a bunch of computer geeks, like some dark basement full of LARPing weirdos.
I almost smiled at that, an image of Barrett and L in full-on orc and dwarf garb.
"Don't," Alex said, not having looked up, "take one damn foot inside this room unless you have coffee."
"I brought reinforcements," Sawyer assured them, pushing us in so he could pass out the goods.
Brock rolled up another two minutes later with coffee for the rest of us. I took mine, opening it, surprised to find blueberry flavor, and giving him a smile.
"Alright, let's hear it," Sawyer said, waving a hand at the odd crew of hackers and PIs and cyber investigators.
"It's fucking crazy," Jstorm supplied, popping the cap on her energy drink and taking at least half of it down in one pull.
"I mean, I have tried every goddamn backdoor I can think of," Alex piped in, looking our way, paler still than she usually was, and she usually was a ghost. "And I know computers aren't your things, but trust me, I know my backdoors, and this is," she went on, waving a frustrated hand at her laptop, "is not normal."
"So what you're saying is..." Sawyer prompted.
"What they aren't saying, you mean," L corrected, surly normally, and even more so without sleep. He had moved his laptop to the side, cradling his giant coffee between both hands. "Look, whoever this guy is, I can't find a trace of his profile anywhere online and trust me, the underground details on any kind of criminal activity is extensive and detailed."
"L, I think we all could do without the runaround. What's the fucking profile?" That was Sawyer for you. Brock told me over breakfast that when he met Riya, his woman with the missing year, he had recreated the year full of holidays for her, so she didn't feel like she missed so much. It seemed wholly unlike the man I had always known- rude, brash, opinionated, a little, okay, a lot, annoying. I guess love really could change a person. But apparently only when around that person, because he was being his usual dickish self that morning.
L shrugged. "The computer shit threw me. Guys like this- base, crass, violent guys... they aren't usually guys who can firewall their computers and sweep their traces and think to use shit like Bitcoin at fucking all."
"So you're thinking..."
"That there's two of them," L concluded. "It's the only explanation really. You have one guy with a sick obsession. Truly, there's nothing interesting about him. He's your typical stalker escalating to rapist and..."
"Hey," Tig cut in, tone firm, making L's eyes move over to us, likely picking up on the silent demand to not bring up that kind of thing around me.
But there was no need for that.
There was nothing L could say that I hadn't already thought of myself.
My breakfast suddenly started rolling around in my stomach.
"Really? You think that's not the first thing on Kenzi's mind? Never mind all the graphic calls and messages she got detailing this guy's psyche here, but in case you haven't noticed, she's a woman. And women, they live with the reality of possible rape every day. I don't need to pussyfoot around a topic that is literally always on her fucking mind when she lays down in her bed at night and realizes she forgot to lock the door, or leaves work and the streetlight is out, or she accidentally looks away from her drink at a bar. You..."
"Alright alright," Sawyer cut in, shaking his head. "Moving on."
L exhaled. "What I'm saying is, he's a white male in his mid-twenties to late-thirties who finished high school but didn't go to college. He works a menial job, not likely retail, but something involving his hands. Women find him creepy, but not dangerous. He is likely average or slightly below average and has a taste for women who would never want anything to do with him."
"Guys like that are typically loners," Brock observed.
"Right. Which is why I don't think this is a buddy thing. He contracted out. He got Cass, and maybe it didn't have the thrill he wanted. Or who the fuck knows what. He realized it wasn't enough. So he farmed it out."
"And you girls can't find a trace of who this hacker might be? Aren't you all vain and shit? Leave clues in the code and nerdy crap like that?"
"Sure, but without anything but this email, which is clean, it's hard to get any clue about who he is," Jstorm said, sounding as frustrated as we all felt.
"So you're saying that we need to go through with the Bitcoin deal and see if you can trace it from there."
"It's the only choice," Alex said, shrugging.
"But you are going to ask for proof of life before you transfer," Barrett said, speaking for the first time. I almost forgot he was even there. "And then you are going to ask about how you are going to go about retrieving Cassie. Once you..."
Everyone jumped instinctively when the door burst open behind us. Sawyer, Brock, and Tig all stiffened, hands curling into fists, every inch of them vibrating with capability. But Jstorm, Barrett, Alex, and L, all whom I knew were fully trained as well, didn't even budge from their positions as a man walked in, tall and slim, with a black hoodie with white piping and pulls walked in, the hood up, blocking his hair and a good portion of his face.
"Oh, that's Luce. You get used to him," Jstorm supplied, shrugging, as the man in question just barged in, ignoring the sparking intimidating energy of three of the men there, as he just walked across the room and shut himself into the bathroom.
It was perfectly in unison that Sawyer, Brock, and Tig turned back to Barrett.
"Barrett, who the fuck is that?"
Barrett didn't have friends. That was just something everyone accepted about him. He was a loner through and through. That being said, everyone associated with someone here and there, especially when your job involved investigation. Human interaction had to happen eventually.
What was weird was there were all working on a sensitive case, maybe doing a bunch of illegal things, and none of them, not even Jstorm and L from up at Hailstorm, seemed the least bit bothered by his presence.
"Luce, like Janie said," Barrett said, not bothering to look up, not the least bit thrown off by his brother's firm tone.
"And he's here because..."
"Because Barrett has kick-ass protected wifi," L started, "and he does sweeps every morning when he opens up, and Luce, well, let's just say he likes making his phone calls in private."
"Who the fuck is Luce and what the fuck is he into?" All of them shared a look. And not one of them were speaking. "I am going to need an answer."
"You're going to need to mind your own business," Barrett countered, bored-sounding, like he was used to his brother being invasive, and having to brush it off.
Then, not two minutes after he disappeared inside the bathroom, out this Luce guy came again, walking right up behind Barrett, and looking at his laptop.
"He's using Tor and a public wifi? If he broke the chain, you guys are so fucked." And with that, he was at the door. "Because if he's smart enough to pull that off, he's smart enough to have a middle man to pick up and mix the coins which will make them completely untraceable."
And then the mysterious Luce was gone, leaving all the hackers in the room looking green. Not because it was new information, maybe, but because it was a confirmation of their worst fears.
Alex was the first to speak.
"But if he is using a middle man, that is a link. He had to have met with him, emailed with him, made some kind of connection. If anything, that might even be a better lead. But to move on that, we need to get things going. Kenzi," she said, giving me a sympathetic smile. She and I had shared many a Sunday dinner together, most of it was me complaining about her lack of cooking skills, and she bitching at me about how sexist it was to expect her to know all that girly shit. We liked each other. "You need to get involved now."
In a way though, even with nerves tightly coiled in my stomach, I was happy to get involved, to do something, to not just be standing by and contributing nothing to the whole situation.
So I moved forward, going to sit behind the desk where Barrett had vacated the seat to kneel on the floor, moving with a grumble thanks to too long in the same position.
Then he brought up my email, and had me type up a response to the address that had sent the video the night before, agreeing to the transfer, but demanding proof of life, and details for Cassie's release.
Then we waited.
It wasn't like some cheesy action movie where the reply was almost instantaneous. I sat staring for a good twenty minutes before Barrett got antsy and pushed me out of the way so he could get to work again.
It happened after a late lunch, Brock running out, insisting everyone would stop biting one another's heads off if they had something in their systems other than caffeine. He also came back with three extra folding chairs.
Tig pulled me down on his lap, picking at his food that he had propped on my lap because I couldn't bring myself to eat anything; his other hand wrapped around my hip reassuringly.
I couldn't help but wonder what was taking so long. If he was desperate for the money, why wasn't he glued to his computer, waiting for a response? A nasty, dark, morbid little voice whispered that maybe it was because he was doing something awful to Cassie again, something that made my stomach lurch, and made me seriously consider making a run for the bathroom.
And then there was a bleep in the otherwise mostly silent room.
"We're in business," Sawyer declared from where he set up his chair beside his brother behind the desk. "Got a picture and instructions," he added as we all went to stand.
I rushed forward as they hit the image, bringing up a picture of Cassie, looking even more busted up. It was bad. It had her entire eye socket swollen; a long gash was down her entire cheek; her lip had deep purple splotches that looked like teeth marks- like she or he had bit into it hard enough to bruise the flesh.
My stomach rolled, and I was glad for the lack of food in it as my eyes moved over the paper in her hand.
"Alright," Sawyer said, addressing the rest of the room. "We have proof of life. We need to get on transferring this money before the banks close."
"What about the plans for the pickup?" Tig asked.
"Somewhere just outside of Newark. Seven AM. No cops. The usual shit," Sawyer said, making me look at his profile hard.
The usual shit.
There was nothing 'usual' about it.
But, I realized as I looked around, that it was only unusual for me. Everyone else in the room looked calm and collected and understanding. It was maybe the first time I really got to see past the computers and the personas I had always known these people to be. I saw what they really were- people who lived in a very gray area of life, who daily saw the kind of ugly that rarely touched normal people; they had all seen it enough almost to become hardened to it. And yet, they never gave up; they still tried to fight for the right things.
"You're not going to call the cops in on this?" Brock asked, trying to be a voice of reason.
"I trust Lloyd to let us take the lead here as much as possible, seeing as they haven't turned up a mother fucking thing, but that partner he is strapped with now..."
There was a snicker from Alex had Sawyer struggling to not smile.
And I remembered what Alex had said about Detective Jones and his choice porn involving male butt play and the strapped comment almost made me crack a smile too.
"We could always call them when we are almost at the drop site," Tig reasoned. "That way, if something goes south, we have them there to help."
"Alright, now let's try to get this moving," Sawyer said, looking at his computer crew. "What do you need?"
"Space," was Barrett's very characteristic reply.
"Don't you need my account..." I started, only to be met with four sets of eyes, all with at least one raised brow. "Right," I said, shaking my head, and moving back toward the front of the office.
So we gave them space, and they worked.
"Alright, we're at the hitting the button stage," Alex declared when it was nearing five that evening.
"Then hit it."
That was me, my voice a little rough, a little surly. But I had, yet again, just been standing around doing nothing while these people did all kinds of crazy shit to try to fix my situation. It wasn't that I felt guilt per say. This was their job. I had no such skill set. But I hated feeling useless. I hated doing nothing. For an action-oriented person, that was the worst feeling.
Tig moved up behind me, his whole front pressing into my back, his hand sliding around my lower stomach, giving me a squeeze I didn't realize I needed so badly.
Because this was the catalyst.
This was the beginning of the end.
I was so ready for it to be over.
Well, it wouldn't be 'done' for a long, long while. Because having Cass free of that psycho didn't mean I would have my Cass back. I wasn't delusional, and I had paid just enough attention in my elective psych class in high school to know that she might never be my old Cassie again. She was going to need a stay at the hospital. And from there, well, I imagined there would be endless amounts of therapy. I would need to be gentle with her at first, let her recover. After that, I would need to learn how to be both gentle and firm, so I could try to bring her back out more, get her back to work, show her how to live again so that she didn't sink into the misery. Not that anyone would blame her if she did sink into it. She went through hell, things I didn't even want to think of because just the idea of them made me feel physically ill. She had the right to not get past that.
But she deserved more.
She deserved to have her old life back, her old happiness. Or, at least, as much of it as she could with the darkness inside she would now have to contend with.
Maybe it was that survivor's guilt, revamped. She was alive too, but I still, in a completely irrational way, felt guilty. It could have been me. If it were me, she wouldn't have to have gone through it at all. Which was a warped way to view it because neither of us deserved it, should have ever had to even worry about it. But I couldn't shake the feeling either.
Then Barrett clicked.
And everyone went nuts.
I didn't know it was possible to type as fast as they all started typing. I was maybe a little surprised that the keyboards didn't break or the laptops didn't go on fire.
"What are they trying to do?" My voice sounded odd, far-away, like I was hearing it from a distance.
Sawyer gave me a blank look and shrug. "Fuck if I know. I think they are trying to follow the Bitcoin from one 'wallet' to another. Yeah, I learned that there was such a thing as an online 'wallet' today. Fuck if I know what that means, though."
I had no idea either.
I had the typical computer skills of my generation, meaning I could do everything from set up to pull apart and reconnect things that slipped or add more memory and all that. I could also stalk like a champ on social media. But I knew absolutely nothing about things like the dark web, aside from knowing it existed and was full of dark shit, and Bitcoin which I knew was a way for people who no longer trusted banks and economy to handle their money.
Watching them, it almost looked like something worth getting to know. Not because I wanted to hack anyone or because I wanted to get away with doing illegal things online, but because it seemed to lend them a power. While I stood there completely powerless.
"It's done," Barrett declared, moving away from his computer.
"Where the fuck are you going?" Sawyer asked as Barrett moved toward the front door with the pace and posture and skin tone of a zombie.
"Shower. Bed. Food."
"No, we need you..." Sawyer started, but Barrett was gone.
"Brothers," I agreed, giving him a sympathetic shrug.
