Page 30 of Take Her

She peered down the block, and started to wave someone down.

An Uber? To follow me?

No—just some man in a beat-up red Camry.

He rolled down his window and she leaned in—and for a second I was worried I was going to see her kiss him and then I was going to have to murder him on principle—for Nero’s sake, of course—but all she did was shout a little, and then when other people started honking he drove off.

But not before I got a photograph of his license plate.

I watched her stand there, clearly frustrated, her hands curling into and out of fists, before she went back in—and I had to hurry to make my lunch date.

I always met Sable at a small outdoor café, where if you bribed the waiter—I’m sorry, tipped the waiter, I mean, like normal people do—you could sit at a table with your back to the stone wall, and have a good view of the passersby, plus three different exit routes, and they made a perfect cappuccino.

She strode up from wherever it was she’d been loitering after I’d secured the table, with a genuine grin on her face. We’d met when she’d been a punk over a decade ago, dropping USB sticks in the lobby of Corvo trying to get helpful idiots to download her malicious code, and after that, I’d hired her to work for me for years.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mister Selvaggio, come looking for help,” she said, sitting down.

Throw out whatever misconceptions you had about hackers being hunchbacked nerds—Sable was a lanky, almost-six-foot-tall Black woman, and her hair was always in stylish braids. Today she was wearing jeans, army boots, and a T-shirt that said “You’re not fucking her, I am.”

“Who are you in trouble with now?” she asked.

“Would you like them in a tiered ranking, or alphabetical order?” I said, pulling out my phone and texting her the picture I’d taken outside of Corvo’s building. “First off? Figure out who the fuck owns this car.”

She glanced at her phone’s screen as the picture flashed over. “You called me out for kindergarten grade shit?”

“No—cover your tracks, because I’m fairly sure I’m dealing with the FBI.”

Sable squinted at me. “Fairly?” she said, with the utmost sarcasm.

“I don’t take a shit before I know if the toilet will flush, Sable. So I’m not going to tell you I’m certain of things when I’m not—and I’m also not one to leave a mess behind.”

“Duly noted,” she said, licking an imaginary pencil and ticking off a non-existent box in the air. She flagged down a waiter and placed an order, before flipping her napkin out over her angular legs. “If that’s the appetizer, what’s the main course?”

I had considered what this would require of me ever since I’d texted her. I found myself not wanting to tell anyone about Lia, like she was a secret I wanted to keep to myself—but I had to share, for Corvo’s wellbeing. “You swear not to tell anyone?”

She looked deeply offended. “Do you even have to ask?” Then she leaned forward, with a light in her eyes. Sable was another cat. “Come on. Out with it.”

“I need you to research a girl for me.” I paused on purpose, so I could see her inhale delightedly, before I deflated her. “It’s Nero Ferreo’s daughter, Lia.”

She clucked her tongue and reared back. “What? No. Why?”

“She’s come back into his life out of nowhere, after being gone a good long time.” She hadn’t even been present at her mother’s funeral, thinking back. I’d noticed her absence at the time, but then assumed it was because her dad was already shacking up with another blonde who was heavily on display, crying like she knew Lia’s mother personally—which, given Nero’s womanizing habits, was possibly true. “I want to know where she was, what she was doing, who she was with—and why the fuck she’s back now.”

Sable considered this and nodded. “Does it have something to do with the FBI?”

“I’m hiring you to tell me.” I didn’t want to taint Sable’s powerful intuition with my own assumptions.

“Hmmm,” Sable said, as the waiter brought her salad. She ignored me for her phone for a moment. “This her?” she said, flashing a picture over, after making it larger with her fingers. It was Lia in a group shot on Facebook in the mountains somewhere. Lia was beautiful, of course, but appeared unhappy under the direct sun—she was a moth, not a butterfly.

“Yeah.”

“Pretty,” Sable said, before giving me a look.

“She doesn’t like women.”

“How do you know?” Sable teased, before jabbing, “I’m good at everything I do.” Then her jaw fell open a little. “Unless—please tell me you have not slept with her, Rhaim.”

“I have not,” I said firmly. But I’d possibly like to.

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