Page 545 of Dark Love

I believe him. Shock has always been smart and careful. He has a crush on Barb. He wouldn’t risk her life. “Then how did it get there?”

Shock shrugs. “What if it’s not related?”

“Barb’s name just doesn’t show up on the dark web without something happening.”

“That’s true. But we’re leaving one element out of the equation.”

“What?” Because everything under the sun is running through my head right now. Especially a government assassin being sent to hunt her down.

“Barb.”

“Huh?”

“Barb could have done some digging on her own. I put a little worm on her computer to watch for related searches, but she could have searched for something else that bypassed my spyware.”

Could our determination to protect her have backfired? “Can you find out?”

“Sure.” He walks over to a metal door in the middle of the room and opens it.

The lock appears to be even more complex than the one he set up for my library. It reveals even more computers. One is currently running a game.

“Do you play?”

“Huh?”

“The game? I’m farming credits to buy better armor.”

Do I look like a gamer? Payne dabbles occasionally, but I just never got the point of creating fake characters to shoot things when I do that in real life. “No.”

“It’s a good one. You should try it sometime.” He starts tapping on the keyboard, and in a few seconds, the screen fills with the picture of a dissected body.

“What is that?”

“The first cadaver Barb ever worked on. She keeps it as her screensaver to review and remember all she learned.”

Barb is messed up. Then again, what doctor that can cut people up isn’t a little twisted?

Screens flash by quicker than I can even process. Which is no small feat considering I’m a speed reader.

“There’s nothing here. In the last month, she researched medical papers, read medical journals, played solitaire, and talked to her friends about some weird medical stuff in an obscure medical forum. There’s nothing here, nothing at all.”

The only thing strange about that is that Barb has friends that she chats with. “It’s time to talk to Barb then.”

“Does she have to know about my part in it?”

I raise my eyebrow at him.

“Can you let me explain it?”

Like he won’t muck it up. “We’ll see. I need to call her and get her down here.”

“There’s no need. She’s in her storage room at the club.”

Of course, Shock knows exactly where she is. “Where is it safe to have this conversation with her?” I didn’t even think about repercussions when I came to chew out Shock.

“You can bring her here. I have my entire apartment protected.”

That’s convenient. I turn to walk out the door to get her and stop. “What happened to your apartment?”

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