Page 41 of Broken Love

Boxcar

Los Angeles.

What a fucking dump.

I’m not sure what I expected was going to happen today but sex with my estranged wife was definitely not on the docket. I absolutely assumed my chances of getting inside of again were next to nothing. There was a greater chance of my plane getting taken down by a kaiju monster over St. Louis than I was of ever fucking Caleb Fawn again, but here I am. My dick isn’t even dry yet and I’m already on the street outside.

Fuck it. I did what I came here to do. I told her about the Hart twins. I told her about Snake Eyes gunning for Fox. I told her to watch her back and I don’t need her to watch mine anymore. I played my part. No guilt. No regrets. No nothing. She’s on her own now — as she always intended.

Magic bullet? What a crock of shit. There are plenty of reasons why Caleb and I don’t work. Her ridiculous fear of death isn’t one of them. Being with me should make her feel better about it, not worse. I should make her feel safe and warm and—

Unless, of course, I don’t.

Suspicions confirmed. Caleb needs a big, manly hero to make her happy. Not some nerd with a laptop. Don’t need a scrawny human shield like me helping her out. Nope. Not needed. I get it. I do, but—

I kick an abandoned can on the sidewalk, but the aluminum clanging sound isn’t nearly as satisfying as I hoped it’d be. I pause and look around, ready to side-eye anyone who targets me for littering or some bullshit, but no one even looks up from their feet or their phone. Not that I’m complaining. I prefer it when strangers mind their own goddamn business.

I hail a cab and an address slips off my lips. There’s only one friend I have in this city and his place just so happens to be vacant.

Fox’s house — or should I say Roxie Robert’s house, as I’m pretty sure she paid for it — sits in the Hollywood Hills, nestled down in the valley between two pop stars and some old film director who’s way past his prime but no one has the heart to tell him to pack it in. Hell, I’ll do it. I’ll shout it from the porch across the street. It might make me feel better, although it goes against my strangers should mind their own goddamn business philosophy.

The cab drops me off. As I stare at the solid, black gate in front of me, I start to feel a little nostalgic.

Once upon a time, impenetrable fortresses like these were my weekend projects. I’m not sure why I got into it in the first place. Boredom, probably. I was a sixteen-year-old early high school graduate with nothing to do. My minimum wage parents didn’t have time between the five different jobs they worked to give a crap about what I did with my time. I couldn’t afford higher education, even with scholarships. I had to find something productive to do with myself.

So, I started picking locks.

It started with the bathroom door. Then, the front door. Then, the neighbor’s front door. Then, things kinda snowballed all the way into a pair of handcuffs in the back of a police car. I picked those, too.

After that, it was security systems. A lot of them.

I didn’t steal anything. I wasn’t a thief yet. I just liked the idea of being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. I liked penetrating walls that weren’t meant to be overcome and experiencing the deep satisfaction of doing it so much that I didn’t care about consequences once I got in.

Hmm.

My fascination with Caleb Fawn suddenly makes a whole lot more sense.

I scale the black gate and sit on the edge, being extra careful not to pierce my damn ballsack on the spires at the top. There’s a security camera here and, luckily, it’s the same crappy brand peddled out to rich people for five hundred percent over the value of its parts.

And people call me a thief.

I reach into the bottom of my bag for a small screwdriver and pop off the back of the camera to expose the wires. This brand has an exploit that the manufacturer themselves aren’t even aware of. If you cross the blue and red wires and then short it out, it’ll take down every single camera on the network and they won’t turn back on until the unit itself is replaced — or until I fix it. I’m not about to completely disable my best friend’s security system.

What am I, an asshole?

The cameras shut down. I crack a smile as I hop the rest of the way over the fence. I don’t bother checking for witnesses. I honestly don’t care and it’s not like the owners won’t vouch for me or anything. I marvel at the perfect landscaping for a few seconds until I reach the front door where yet another hurdle presents itself, this one in the form of a numerical panel with a keycard slot.

It’s a model CX-22B, by the looks of it. No, I take that back. It’s the 22C. Either way, it’s easy to crack with the right tools.

Damn, Fox. Paranoid much? Eh, I guess he has every reason in the world to protect himself and Dani. I highly doubt most people around here have to worry about an underground organization of assassins trying to bust their doors down.

Then again, this is Los Angeles.

I pull out my laptop, along with a “key” of my own invention from the pocket on the side. I don’t have a cutesy name for it. It’s a USB-powered skeleton key, basically. I slide the keycard into the slot and plug the cable into my laptop. A few keystrokes later and my program gets to work, brute-forcing its way through as many key combinations as possible.

The CX-22C requires a six-digit code, meaning there are one million possible combinations. It automatically sounds an alarm if you miss it more than three times in a row — making it the preferred system over the 22B. I programmed my skeleton key to override that function, but I still might be here a few minutes.

Finally, it lands on 122407 and a green light shines to unlock it, along with disabling any alarm system the place might have.

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