Page 32 of Of Angels & Absolution

I wipe sweat from my forehead and head up the stairs. Unlike the girls’ dorm, the boys don’t have a Father at the desk watching. They don’t care about our chastity, about who we might sneak into our rooms in the night.

I consider going to Angel and Heath’s room, the same way I did when I woke up and saw that Mercy wasn’t in bed. I checked the other cameras and saw her creeping through the dark, slipping off campus, before I believed it. Even then, I didn’t go to the others. They would have opinions I’d feel obligated to take into account, urges to quell and considerations on what we should do. That would take too much time. I already took too much time running to her dorm to check, to make sure she hadn’t tampered with the cameras, that my little mouse of a sister really left campus by herself in the middle of the night.

Fury throbs in my temples as I pad along the hallway on the fourth floor.

What the fuck is she doing?

I pound my fist on the door I want, then wait, checking my phone again, as if she’ll have reappeared so soon. It’s been twenty minutes. If she had a craving for ice cream, she’s had time to get it. She should be returning at any moment. I know she wouldn’t do something so reckless, and yet, I hold onto the impossible, naïve hope that could more accurately be described as denial.

I’m about to knock again when the door creaks open and a boy peers out, his brown hair mussed and sticking up on one side in a cowlick. With his glasses askew and the scowl on his face making his lower lip draw in, he looks like an owl.

“I need to know where someone is.”

“Not my area of expertise,” he says, his voice raspy with sleep.

“Let me in,” I order. “And make it happen.”

“This is outside my regular business hours,” he says. “I charge twice as much after hours, and four times if you fuck up my sleep schedule.”

“Fine,” I say, shoving my phone at him. “That’s not an issue.”

The kid sighs and pulls open the door, raking a hand through his hair, which only makes it stand up more atrociously. He’s wearing flannel pajamas buttoned to the neck to combat the damp chill in the room caused by the half-open window.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asks, waving the phone at me.

“I don’t know,” I say, frowning down at him. “Aren’t you the hacker?”

“What do you want me to hack into?” he asks. “Your video feed hasn’t been disabled or put on a playback loop. It’s still going.”

“I know that,” I grit out, gesturing to the still campus shown on the screen before narrowing my eyes at him. “How can you tell?”

He shrugs. “I’m good.”

“Humble too,” I mutter, glowering down at the scrawny nerd. I could break him in half with my bare hands.

He arches an arrogant brow. “You want good, or you want humble?”

“Asshole.”

He cracks the slightest smile. Nate Swift is an enigma—no friends, no girls, no known attachments, only connections in his own dark web. No one knows for sure how far and wide that goes, though there are rumors of the powerful people who owe him favors. He’s known for his discretion and certain skill set that makes him invaluable to men from every walk of life, from fathers like mine to ones like Angel’s. He can get in andout without leaving a trace just about anywhere that the internet reaches–for a price.

That price is never cash, though.

“Time’s ticking,” he says, tapping the screen with a blunt, clean fingernail trimmed so close it looks painful.

“I want to know where she went.”

“You want me to hack into a closed-circuit security camera?” he asks, handing back my phone and powering up his tech center, which looks like something out of a spy movie. “Which one?”

“I don’t fucking know,” I say, throwing myself down on his rumpled bed. “Figure it out.”

“Off. My. Bed.” He stares at me with eyes so unflinching I’m reminded of those favors he’s owed by men far more dangerous than me.

“My bad,” I grumble, shoving off the mattress. It was a dick move to drag him out of bed and then toss my sweaty ass on it. Besides, the recently vacated sheets are disconcertingly warm. I’m not opposed to a little sword crossing when I’m sharing a slut with the bros, but there’s something uncomfortably intimate about feeling a stranger’s warmth in his sheets.

Nate turns back to his monitors and taps away like nothing happened. From the back, with his bedhead hair and ears sticking out, he looks like the guy that got wedgied by guys like me in high school. But he’s not a wimpy brainiac doing the homework of the popular jocks. It might seem like it at first. Protection is the first favor he asks—he’ll do something online for you that you can’t figure out yourself, and in return, you’ll guarantee that none of your crew will bother him.

But if at some later time a person finds himself in need again, he pays however and whenever Nate asks. If someone tried to refuse, he wouldn’t just have proof of whatever illegal thing they’d asked him for, but anything that’s ever existed inthe furthest reaches of the internet. The kid can find anything. By now he’s racked up enough favors to earn him his own status, more untouchable than anyone on campus, including Hellhounds and Sinners. He plays both sides—on campus, in the town, in Washington, if the rumors are to be believed.

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