I looked over to find Alex looking around, her brows drawn together, making two little vertical indentations form between her dark brows. “What?”
She looked back toward me. “Just wasn't what I was expecting,” she admitted, but there was a strange sadness in her voice. “How often do you stay here?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Few days a month. Longer in the winter when I don't want to travel as much.”
To this, she nodded, walking over toward my living room and looking through my DVDs.
“What's up?” I asked, noticing her dropped shoulders.
She shrugged. “I've been on my own since I was seventeen,” she admitted, her voice far away. “And still... everything I own can be thrown into two moving boxes with five minutes notice.”
Jesus. She was jealous of my house. Small and simple as it was. Her life was even more empty than mine.
I walked up behind her, watching her fingers trace the spines of the DVD boxes. My hand landed on her hip from behind, for once, not sexual. Just a touch. “You gotta put roots down sometime, Alex.”
“Yeah, maybe once Lex is out of the picture once and for all,” she said, pulling away from me. “So where's your laptop?”
The moment was gone. Her shields were back up.
“How about you get yourself a shower? I'll make coffee and some food and then we can get to work.”
She turned back to me, shaking her head. “You need to like... brush up on your kidnapping lessons. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to offer me showers and food.”
“How 'bout we pretend I ain't your kidnapper from here on out? We're working together unless we have to pretend otherwise.”
To this, I got a shrug. “Alright. I could use a shower. That train floor was filthy.”
I nodded, leading her down the hall to the bathroom, leaving her for a second so I could go grab her a t-shirt to put on. Pants would be useless, she was too small for my stuff to stay up without her holding them in place.
And I was trying real hard to not think about her being without panties or a bra underneath one of my t-shirts as I went to the kitchen and started throwing together some breakfast.
I could cook. When the occasion called for it. Being up on the outskirts of civilization made the lure of takeaway less tempting. So I figured out how to throw some stuff together to feed myself.
I settled on omelets, breakfast potatoes, and toast and set to work as the coffee dripped.
The bathroom door opened as I reached for the plates.
And out she walked.
In nothing but my tee.
It was wide on her, her thinness something like half my size. But it wasn't long. Maybe mid-thigh. Giving me a nice view of her long legs.
“I can't believe you cook,” she commented, coming into the kitchen and reaching for the pot of coffee- pouring into the two cups I had left out in front of it.
“Why?”
“I don't know. I guess because I've never known anyone who could cook.”
“Not even your mom?”
“No. I mean... not unless things like spaghetti and frozen pizza counts.”
“They don't,” I clarified.
“Then no.”
“Well, this ain't anything special,” I said as she leaned around my arm to peek at the food on the stove, “but it ain't bad.”
“Smells good,” she allowed, then moved back. Thankfully because the smell of my soap was all over her and it was a little too intimate. “Where's your laptop? I can show you some stuff while we eat.”
“Drawer under the TV,” I said, scooping food onto plates.
I set the food on the coffee table, went back to get the cups of coffee, and when I got there, she had already gotten into my computer. And I mean... into it. As in... past the password protection.
“The fuck?”
“You're supposed to use words and numbers, you know. I mean... not that it would help, but still...”
I shook my head, handing her a fork and watching her put the laptop on her lap and balance a plate on the arm of the couch like it was something she had done a thousand times before.
“So what do you got?”
She reached into the box, pulling a USB out by random and slipping it into the drive. I watched as she punched in a passcode that seemed to have at least thirty digits, her fingers moving over the keys so fast there was no way I could even catch two of them put together.
The screen popped up. And there were folders upon folders, each locked individually. And even when she opened one, they were coded. She was careful. I appreciated that kind of attention to detail.
“Just have to... oh my god,” she groaned, her head going backward, her eyes closing. “This is nothing special?” she asked, chewing her food, rolling her eyes at me. “What the hell did you put in the potatoes?”
“Just onions and spices, doll,” I said, shrugging.
“If I live through this, I need to learn to cook.”
“We live through this, I'll teach you.”
Whoa.
What the fuck?
I'll teach her to cook?
What the hell was that?
I didn't teach anyone anything.
I certainly didn't let women hang around and chop onions with me.
Jesus Christ.
“I might take you up on that,” she said almost shyly as she turned her attention back to her computer, brought up some kind of box and typed rapidly until the page suddenly refreshed and the code was gone.
“Holy shit,” I said, dropping my plate back onto the coffee table and leaning closer. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I released a nasty little bug on his cell and computer a while back. But not before I did some digging around myself. This is a list of the dirt he has on all the organizations in the area. This is how he keeps them under his thumb.”
“How the fuck did you get into his system?”
At this, she snorted, shaking her head. “I sent him an email from an address that was one letter away from one of his usual contacts so he wouldn't be suspicious of it. And I sent him a link to a snuff film.”
“A snuff film?” I asked, my brows lowering.
“Yeah you know... like a porn where they kill a girl at the end. But it isn't porn. It's real.”
“Al, I know what a snuff film is, doll. I just didn't think they actually existed.”
“Oh, they exist,” she said with such authority that there was no question in my mind about the topic anymore. “Incidentally, I wasn't sending him to a real one. All he had to do was click the link and the bug was in his system. It actually sent him to a video about ending sexual assault.”
“So this is what you got from him?”
“This,” she agreed, throwing the lock back onto the files and ejecting the USB, “along with financial records and pictures.”
“Pictures?”
As soon as I pressed the point, she looked pale. She reached for her plate and set it on the coffee table only half eaten like she had lost her appetite.
“Yeah, pictures,” she said, digging around for the USB. When she found it, she held it up toward me, but she didn't plug it in.
“What are the pictures of, Alex?”
She swallowed hard. “Women.”
I was pretty sure I knew where that information was heading, but I needed confirmation. “Doll...”
She took a deep breath, looking down at the keyboard, typing into it.
“Pictures of women in varying forms of undress. Enduring varying forms of torture. Most prominently, women in the act of being raped.”
“Jesus fuckin' Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“What can we do with this kind of information?” I wondered allowed.
“I was thinking that while I was showering,” she admitted and an image of her naked flashed into my mind before I very deliberately pushed it away.
“Come to any conclusions?”
“I could put this out there.”
She said 'out there' in a way that implied it had a meaning. Just one I didn't understand. “Out where?”
“The dark net. Deep web. Whatever you want to call it.”
I'd heard of it. Anyone who did anything illegal in their lives probably had. It was a place for people like Alex. Hackers. People who did shit they wouldn't be able to do on normal browsers. And other small time crimes- endless pirated material. Porn. Government documents. But also, it was for other things. The bad shit. Gun running. Drug selling. Skin trading. Pedophilia. Fuck, even to get yourself black market organs.
“How would that help?”
At this, she shrugged. “It could incense the right people. You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people out there who actively try to shut down things like this. Operations other people are too scared to take on. In the grand scheme of things... I'm a nobody. My skills are pathetic compared to what some of these people can do. And some of them aren't just freaks behind a computer screen. They're people who... do shit. If I can ferret them out, get them interested, maybe they will take action into their own hands.”
I couldn't disagree with her. There had been a lot of hackers calling themselves hacktivists all over the news in the past few years. Taking down federal websites, turning the internet back on in Egypt when the government shut it down, releasing the names of KKK members, trolling organizations until they caved into whatever demands the hackers were making. They were powerful in ways I didn't understand but knew enough to respect.
“How long would that take?”
“No way to tell,” she said, typing until my screen went black and some site opened up a forum called 'info exchange'. “Could be minutes. Could be days. But it's worth a try.”
I had to agree since it was all we really had to go on.
So she set to work, digging out the occasional USB, unlocking certain files, adding them to the post she was creating. Crime reports of beaten and raped women with descriptions of their attacker, detailing a very specific scar he had running across his chest. She found a shirtless picture of Lex and posted it beside the reports, scar on full display. Then she opened the USB that made her pale, unlocking a folder saying simply 'faces' - and uploaded half a dozen shots of women with their faces brutalized.
She ended the post explaining her situation. Who she was (a nickname. Not her real name). That she had been working on her case for ten years. That she was compromised and there was a price on her head. Leaving out the part about me. Detailing how many more incriminating files she had on the topic. Then giving instructions for anyone to contact her.
Which was, apparently, through some kind of coded chat that she was going to leave open on my laptop to keep an eye on.
“Now we wait,” she said, settling the laptop on the coffee table and reaching for her cold coffee. She was silent for a minute, contemplating the black TV. “How long do you think I have?”
“What?” I asked, turning to look at her.
“Before Lex finally decides to come fetch me. How long?”
That was a good question. One I had been considering myself. He didn't seem like he was in a rush when he told me of the deal. And maybe that was because he wanted me to get worried about Shoot. The more time that passed, the more chance of him getting himself into trouble. If Lex made me sweat it, maybe I would be more willing to hand over Alex.
At least, that was all I could come up with anyway.
Nothing else made sense.
“Not more than a few more days I'd guess,” I admitted. “Three tops.”
Alex simply nodded. No hysterics. No reaction whatsoever.
“Did you happen to pick me up...”
At this, I sighed, reaching into my front pocket and pulling out a baggy with white powder. “This is the good shit. Strong. A third of this could make a non-user OD.” I handed it to her. “Ain't never bought drugs before,” I admitted, looking down at the baggy.
“Well, at least it was for a good cause,” she tried lightening the mood.
“Doll, you dying... that ain't a good cause.”
She looked away from me, taking the smack and slipping it into her boot, ripping the lining slightly away from the ankle to push the baggie between the lining and the leather. Easy access, but hidden.
“Alex,” I called, watching her look blankly across the room.
“What?” she asked, her voice distant.
“Look at me.”
She exhaled sharply and turned her head. And there was just... nothing there. No sadness. No horror. Again, just her grim resignation to her fate.
“Come here,” I said, stretching an arm across the back of the couch.
“What?” she asked, brows drawing together.
“Come over here,” I repeated.
“Why?” she asked, but her body had turned slightly. Even without knowing why, her body wanted to be closer to mine.
“Because I am going to show you one of the many reasons you should be upset about not being alive to keep experiencing.” Her eyes held mine, seeing my intentions, and weighing whether or not she was going to submit herself to them. “Seventy-two hours, doll,” I went on. “We could both be dead. The fuck we wasting time for?”
Her eyes slanted to the laptop for a second, seeing no activity, then letting her eyes fall on mine. I saw it before she did. In the quickening and shallow-ing of her breath. In her slightly parted lips. In her heavy lidded eyes.
She swallowed, wet her lips, then closed the space between us.