Page 76 of Their Will be Done

“So why aren’t they here? Why aren’t they going through his shit?”

“You know Apollo has to be in the kitchen before breakfa—”

“You think I give a fuck?” Cass yells.

I set down the bottle of whiskey and turn to face him. He’s on his feet, hands bunched into fists at his side. But he’s glaring at the floor, not me, as if he can’t bear to make eye contact.

“Cass…”

“I risked my fucking life for that shit,” he says, finally looking up. Eyes the color of dirty ice stab through me. “I don’t care if you have to go drag that little cunt out of the kitchen by his fucking ball sack, you go and—”

“Christ, Cass, I’m here,” Apollo says.

We both turn to him as he sidles in through the opening to our lair. He’s wearing a baggy plaid sweater with an unraveling collar, sweatpants that have seen better decades, and a pair of tiger-striped gumboots. Judging from his rat tail hair and the damp patches on his top, it’s started raining again.

He slides a backpack from his shoulder and collapses on the couch, then glances across at me and groans when he sees the bottle in my hand. “Don’t we have coffee down here yet?”

“No power, remember? It’s this or warm beer,” I say.

“Fuck it,” he grumbles, hiking up his sweater as he shoves a hand under the fabric to scratch at his ribs. “I’ll get coffee later. Let’s get this over with.”

I take my usual seat and both me and Cass watch Apollo as he slips the drive into his new laptop.

“So what shit did you make up for Gabriel?” Apollo asks as he starts tapping the laptop’s touchpad. “He ran out of there like someone had set his grandma on fire.”

My eyes go to Cass, but he keeps his head down, using his thumbnail to push back his cuticles. “Does it matter? It worked.”

“Yeah it did,” Apollo says through a grin without looking up. “Looked real fucking spooked. That’s—”

He cuts off and starts shaking his head.

“What is it?” I sit forward. “Apollo?”

“Shit,” he mutters, his eyes flickering as he scans the screen. “There’s nothing here.”

“What do you mean there’s nothing?” Cass growls. He grabs the laptop from Apollo, stabbing the down button as a glare slowly deepens on his face. “There’s tons of shit on here.”

“Yeah, but nothing useful.” Apollo takes back the laptop, scowls at Cass, and then gets up and goes to sit in the armchair opposite us. “Just a bunch of crap.”

“You couldn’t have gone through everything so fast,” I say, wincing around my first sip of whiskey.

Apollo lets out a world-weary sigh. “I’m using keywords and search strings. Either he’s code-named the shit out of everything, or he’s encrypted the important stuff.” Apollo scratches his head and then gathers back his hair from his face. “I’ll keep looking, but I have a feeling he’s not keeping anything important on here.”

“A feeling?” Cass sits back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “How about you actually check first?”

“The fuck crawled up your ass?” Apollo mutters, sending a questioning frown my way before focusing on Cass. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. I can tell if someone’s trying to hide shit.”

“I’d feel better if you took a good, hard look.”

Apollo lifts his thumbs from the keyboard, throwing me an exasperated look. “Zach—?”

“Do a manual search,” I say. “It’s the closest we’ve gotten to him yet. Maybe there’s something you’re missing.”

“Oh, there’s something missing all right. She only got like eighty percent of the drive. Guess she pulled out early.” He glances up with a coy grin which none of us return, and then mumbles something under his breath as he goes back to the laptop. “And, he hasn’t even bothered to clear his browser history in…” Apollo holds up a finger as he stares at the screen. “Forever.Literally, since the dawn of fucking time.”

“Or he could have deleted just the shit he didn’t want you to see, leave everything else, then itlookslike he didn’t delete anything,” Cass says, lifting his eyebrows at Apollo.

“So either he’s really fucking innocent, or he’s really fucking guilty.” Apollo sniffs. “Go figure.”

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