Chapter 8 Pandora
PANDORA
“So this is my dorm,” I tell Anastasia Voronkov as I lead her inside. “You can have my roommate’s bed.”
Anastasia sets her guitar case down near the kitchen table. Her gaze lands on the dried up dahlias on the table, before she goes to peer into Samantha’s room. “Your roommate isn’t here?”
“Nope!” I answer cheerfully. “She probably got murdered or something.”
“Just as long as she didn’t get murdered in her bed. I’m not a fan of ghosts,” Anastasia says. She eyes me. “Seriously, though, Pandora. What the hell is going on?”
I sit down at the kitchen table and give Anastasia a thorough once-over. Long red hair, about my height, and she only wears light makeup when she bothers at all. Her black peasant-style shirt is off the shoulder, and her jeans are tight enough to be interesting without being excessively so.
She might be the Voronkovs’ oldest, but that doesn’t mean she really understands the reality of what her parents—my parents—do. Kratos has a massive crush on her, but again, that doesn’t mean anything.
Anastasia is the only person I know who does all this computer hacking stuff, though, and I know I can trust her not to rat me out to anyone. She wouldn’t even tell my brothers.
She quirks a brow at me when I don’t immediately answer. “Or you could leave me in the dark and give me no hints whatsoever,” she says, deadpan. “That’s always good, too.”
“I’m thinking!” I say. “I don’t really know what’s going on with my roommate. That’s why I agreed to let you stay here.”
Anastasia raises a brow. “Let me? You practically begged me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I sit up properly. “Samantha’s tablet is still here. I want to see what she’s got on it. Maybe there’s clues about where she disappeared to. And then I’ve got another, probably way harder to crack device. I hope you brought your whole hacking kit.”
“It won’t be as easy as on my computer at home,” she says, “but I’ll see what I can do.” She pulls out her laptop and sets it on the kitchen table. “Let’s do this.”
I grab the tablet and the hard drive and hand both of them to her. Anastasia connects the hard drive to the laptop, and I purse my lips.
“Isn’t that dangerous? Just connecting it like that,” I ask. I’d done it, of course, but it’s not like I cared about anything that was on my tablet.
“I have it isolated on its own virtual machine so that…” She glances up at me. “Never mind. I’m using protection. Don’t worry, Mom.”
I grin and ruffle her hair. “Oooh, you do have a few jokes in you.”
It’s easy to forget she’s two years younger than I am, especially when she’s all business, but the way she wrinkles her nose at me reminds me of Mel.
I’d never ask Mel to do anything like this.
“What do you think I’m going to find?” Anastasia asks, starting to type. I can tell she’s only half-paying attention to me now, though.
“I don’t know. Snuff porn?” I watch her click around and type a few things, but honestly, it’s boring. I thought there’d be a bunch of numbers scrolling by on screen, or she’d have to type ultra fast in order to bypass some sort of timed self-destruct protocol.
Maybe I watch too many movies.
Her fingers go still on the keys, and she glances up at me. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she says.
I pretend to think about it. “Like, fifty percent kidding?”
Anastasia shakes her head. “Okay. Well, I’m going to run a program to hopefully crack the encryption on the drive. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the tablet.”
I pass Samantha’s tablet to her. Anastasia turns it on and taps on the screen.
I’m once again confronted with that awful picture of Samantha with Zayden.
The urge to take a red sharpie and draw all over Zayden’s face is strong. I want to draw a thick red line across his neck. Gouge his eyes out. Cut his mouth all the way to his ears.
Fuck, maybe I should have kept the head after all.
My impulsiveness robbed me of some catharsis.
I bet the boys simply disposed of it. What a waste.
While I’m imagining all the awful things I could have done to Zayden, Anastasia taps on the screen. After a few seconds, the lock screen is gone, and we’re looking at the desktop.
“Uh. What did you do?” I ask.
“There was a pattern swipe password option,” Anastasia said. “I tried the most common patterns. The second one got me in.”
I feel a bit silly that I hadn’t been able to figure that out myself, but I guess that’s why I’m not an elite hacker. I ruffle Anastasia’s hair again. “Good job, baby sis.”
“I am thankfully not related to you,” she says, but her cheeks turn pink anyway. “Anyway, what am I looking for in here? Texts, DMs, whatever?”
I lean in closer and tap the email icon, which shows over fifty new messages. “I know somebody who wants to make you my sister,” I say, grinning. “Tall, muscled, kind of an idiot, can’t spell for shit?”
“Kratos doesn’t have a crush on me,” Anastasia says dismissively. “I tried to ask him on a date a few months ago and he turned me down.” She scrolls down the list of emails. “Okay, so it looks like she hasn’t checked her email in over two weeks.”
I snatch the tablet from Anastasia and angle it away from her. “Yeah, I got it.”
There’s no need for Anastasia to know all of Samantha’s private business.
The most recent email is from somebody named Hank Lawrence. Her father or brother? I click it open.
Re: School absence
The administration has told me you’ve been skipping your classes.
Why am I paying the exorbitant fees if you aren’t going to actually go?
If you’re uninterested in learning—as we told you you would be—then come home and get married.
John is still willing to take you. Lord knows nobody else would have you, after the scandal you caused.
I grip the tablet tighter, and before I can think too hard, I hit the reply button.
Go fuck yourself.
I send the short message, but I feel only a little better about it.
“Kratos didn’t turn you down,” I say to Anastasia. “There’s no way he turned you down. Did you ask him directly or did you say it in big words he didn’t understand?”
Anastasia has gone back to the laptop, and this time, she doesn’t bother to pause in her typing as she replies, “I asked him if he wanted to go to a small show I was playing at.” She shrugs. “I’d ask Ares, but that’d be barking up the wrong tree, I think.”
I cannot imagine Kratos refusing to see Anastasia play. But I also don’t get her comment about Ares. “Wait, are you into Ares? What wrong tree?”
“What?” she asks, glancing up at me. “Ares? For one, I’m not into him. And two, he’s not into anyone of the female persuasion.” She pauses, then says, “You did know that, right?”
“No, Ares is bi, not gay,” I say. “Like, he’s not into you, because if he were Kratos would beat him up and then Ares would start a fire and it’d be a whole thing.
But I’ve seen him with other girls.” I give her a crooked grin.
“You know bisexuals are real, right? Don’t erase us just because we’re only dating one set of genitals at a time. ”
Anastasia rolls her eyes. “Yes, I know bisexual people exist. You’re not the only one with a creative living arrangement. I just thought he was only into the one guy. Anyway, has anyone told you you’re seriously distracting, Pandora?”
“All the time, actually,” I respond.
Samantha’s email pings with a reply from Hank.
I’m contacting the administration and stopping all payments. Book yourself a flight home.
Well, fuck him too.
I scroll down farther. No emails to or from Zayden. Mostly, she’s on religious mailing lists, with daily affirmations and asking people to think of Jesus. I go in and unsubscribe her from all of those lists.
I open up the messages app next. There are two from worried classmates or religious study buddies — whatever — and then I finally find her text chain with Zayden.
I scroll up, skimming the convo, until my eyes land on a familiar name.
Samantha
That guy came over again. River. Isn’t he in your fraternity now?
Zayden
Yeah. He’s okay. Kind of quiet. Probably won’t last the pledge season.
How fucking dare he. With Blaze vouching for him, there’s no way River can fail.
Zayden
JFC PANDORA STABBED DECLAN
Samantha
What?
Zayden
In the thigh! He’s in the hospital. Needs four stitches
Samantha
I always knew she was insane.
“Well, this insane bitch is going to save you,” I mutter at the tablet.
Anastasia looks up at me. “What?” she asks. “Save her?” She sits back in her chair. “Okay, I need context.”
“You don’t need context,” I correct her. “You want context.”
“Guilty,” she replies without batting an eye.
“My roommate got kidnapped by a frat guy, and I’m trying to figure out where he took her.” I scroll back down to the newest messages.
Samantha
I heard what happened. I’m so sorry.
Do you need company?
Zayden
Yeah. I’ll come pick you up.
That tells me nothing. Zayden had told me he’d handed Samantha off to some guy, in between all the screaming, but he was also too incoherent to be much help after that.
“Shouldn’t you be taking all of this to the authorities?” Anastasia asks me, only to correct herself, “I mean, like the FBI. Not the local police.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll drop everything to investigate some random chick who disappeared with her boyfriend.” I let out a dark laugh. “They won’t find the boyfriend. I made sure of that.” I glance over at the laptop. “Are you done with that? Did you find the snuff porn?”
“You do realize this takes more than five minutes, right?” she asks. “I know they take three seconds on TV, but there’s a reason I told you I’d probably need to stay overnight.”
“It’s been at least twenty minutes,” I say. “Fine, we can chat some more. How’s your family? Do your parents know what illicit things you do in your free time?”
She scoffs at me. “Who do you think taught me?” she counters, then sobers. “Honestly, if you weren’t being so hush-hush, I’d have asked if you wanted my mom to help. She’s got so much more experience than I do.”