Page 98 of Perfect Order
Five minutes later, I’m strolling down the street with tears falling.I failed, Lee. I let you down. Someday, I hope you can forgive me since I’ll never be able to forgive myself.I wipe the snot against my sleeve and debate where I should go.
Though, it’s not like I have anyone left in my life who gives a damn about anything other than what I can do for them. Then again, did they ever care about more than that to begin with? With that thought, I jump on the nearest bus and silently disappear into the throng of people going anywhere.
Four hours later, I’ve added more black marks to my name. Yet, I hope the thousands of dollars I’ve dropped into their Uber accounts to compensate them for borrowing their IDs to get me where I am makes up for the inconvenience.
A few hundred yards ahead of me lies a pinnacle of wood and glass, my house and all the creature comforts inside of it. It’s lit up like a beacon in the dark, beckoning to me. I ignore it and walk down the road until I come face-to-face with an enormous boulder. Shrugging off my backpack, I lean against it for a few minutes. It was a risk to come back here, but everything I need is just behind this rock: shelter, equipment. Most importantly, safety.
During the hours in the car, I began berating myself for not coming here first. Instead of trying to lure Lee’s killer out into the open, I should have just done what I’m about to do—set a trap with myself as bait.
Cleaner.
Swifter.
Over.
I shove off the rock and slide my weapon out of my bag. Leaving the bag where it is, I circle the rock to check nothing has been disturbed since I was last here. I slide a pair of night goggles from my pocket, slipping them on before scanning the surrounding area. Nothing but a couple of deer. I deliberately rustle my feet in the leaves to determine if they’re plants or real. They bound off, fearful of becoming prey themselves.
As certain as I can be I’m alone, I reach down and lift the storm drain situated just behind the boulder. Slowly, it creaks as it’s pried open. Once it’s propped enough, I grab my pack and toss it down into the fathomless darkness, certain the cushioning will protect the contents inside. I start lowering myself into the dark, keeping my weapon level until I have to slide it behind me to lower the grate. I do so quickly before I reach for it again until the darkness shrouds me and I’m alone.
It’s how I should have been and how I will be for however long it takes to find out the answers I started searching for before I was distracted by myself and my heart.
“Q?zais going under. Give her any and all assistance.”
“Should we keep trying to flush out the perp?”
“We don’t have much of a choice.” A chair slams into a desk in fury.
Who would have ever thought Erzulie was that cold beneath her sweet and light act? I promise, Beckett, if you need some comfort, you come right on over here and I’ll comfort you.
If I actually owned one of her albums, I’d return them as fast as I could.
— Sexy&Social, All the Scandal You Can Handle
Follow the money.
And when the money doesn’t make sense, figure out why.
Why disparage Beckett Miller? Because he’s media gold. Anything with his name will generate hits, shares, videos. But the person had to have known about Beckett’s past. On the surface, that would initially lead someone to believe it was someone within Beckett’s inner circle.
His fiancée.
His daughter.
Carys and David.
Angie and Ward.
His security team. Kane. And as a byproduct…me.
My training automatically kicks in as I strip apart every person on that list, cross-checking them against the employees of StellaNova, starting with their editor in chief, Aerk Ronan.
I’m flabbergasted when I find a connection of sorts, though not the kind I was expecting, between Carys’s assistant and the social media’s ridiculously wealthy owner. “Shit. Poor Angie.” But I shove my softer emotions aside and keep digging.
Then the data slams to a halt when I bump up against something I never expected to encounter—Dioscuri. My own fucking software? I probe around it without tripping the tentacles I know are lying in wait to alert my people in Saratoga Springs. “Why is Dioscuri attached to a bunch of fucking social media servers?” I wonder.
Backing out, I attack this from a different perspective. When I do so, I get an overview of StellaNova’s network map. Only three of their servers are encrypted by Dioscuri.
I study the systems connected to it before sneering at the commercial off-the-shelf software that has so many security holes I can get to the data I want simply by pulling the data down. And because the access control on the tables is completely out of the box, plain as day is the data I’m looking for—the identity of who provided the data to StellaNova. “People really are that stupid,” I declare before my fingers start to fly.
