Page 544 of Dark Love

Me: Dahlia and I had company this morning.

Payne: Who?

Me: You owe him $20

Payne and Torment have a running joke that the other lost a bet and didn’t pay up.

Payne: Oh?

Me: On my way into the office to deal with it.

Payne: Imogene is sleeping. We can be there in an hour.

Me: Let her sleep.

I’m about to wake up Shock and rearrange his face. This all stems from his nutty idea to protect Barb when she didn’t need protecting…

Be reasonable. It’s better to address this in our own way than to have itsurprise us.

Me: I’ll take care of it and update you.

Payne: Thanks.

Shock is just going to have to deal with Barb disappearing with a new face and a new identity.

Then we’re going to have to break the news to Barb.

What has my life come to?

A few minutes later, I let myself into Shock’s apartment.

Something is wrong.

When did the cleaner come by? This place isn’t just clean, it’s spotless.

Is Shock even living here?

If Max moved him out, I’m going to be perturbed.

Not that there’s much I can do about it… yet. “Shock!” My voice echoes through the large open loft. “Shock!”

“What?” He ambles around a corner nook half-dressed with his hair standing on end. “What time is it? Why did you wake me up?”

“What did you do?”

“Max and I were working all night.”

Good to know. “That’s not what I meant. I had a visitor this morning.”

“And?”

“A friend found out about your little project and now Barb is in the crosshairs.” And I’m going to make you pay for that stupidity. After you fix the problem. If that’s possible.

“That’s impossible. I didn’t leave even a spec of a trail. What did this friend say exactly? Because I was careful. Past careful. There wasn’t anything to leave crumbs with.”

“Well, there had to have been. My friend—” I use that term loosely since Torment doesn’t have friends either. “—found Barb’s name on the dark web. Now there’s chatter about people coming for her.”

“It wasn’t from me. It couldn’t have been. I scraped everything off their servers. I didn’t put anything on it. There’s no way they heard about her from me.”

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