15. Fiona
Chapter 15
Fiona
The next day, the fluorescent lights of the staff room beamed down on us. I held my breath as Erica cocked a brow at me.
“So you think I might be able to find something different from you? With researching?” she asked, crossing her arms.
Not quite, but close enough. “Yeah,” I said.
“But I just started here.”
“I need a fresh pair of eyes on this thing.”
“Okay. Let me get this straight. You want to look up Sawyer’s dad? ” Erica asked. “Why? Do you have a daddy fetish or something?”
“Come on,” I said. “You said you wouldn’t ask questions.” I threw up my hands. “Besides, he’s dead!”
“All right. Let’s see.” She tapped the keyboard, signing into her remote desktop. “What’s his dad’s name?”
“Forrest Feldman.”
She typed for a moment, then scanned the results. “Billionaire family legacy. Great at livestock farming. Yadda, yadda. Ahh.” She pointed at the screen. “Died last year. Gunshot wound.” Erica scanned the rest, then gasped. “Murder!”
I leaned over her shoulder. “What?”
“I’m kidding,” she laughed. “It says ‘natural causes.’”
Natural causes? I checked the birth year and death year. “But he was in his late fifties,” I said. I pointed at the county coroner’s signature. “Look this person up.”
“On it.” She opened a new tab and typed into the search bar. She smacked the final key and straightened her shoulders.
No Results Found!
“Is that even possible?” I asked.
“Let me double-check.” She scrutinized the signature, then typed again.
No Results Found!
“That’s weird,” she muttered.
“That’s weird?”
“Usually there’s some kind of result, you know? Even if it’s the wrong one.” She shrugged. “What’s this about, anyway? Did you hear something weird about him?”
I couldn’t exactly say, Our boss said he murdered his own father. So I changed the subject: “So this coroner doesn’t have a record?”
“Which means,” she paused, “either the coroner is just as private as the Feldmans, or someone is hiding something very nefarious.”
Sawyer had said the words plainly like he had nothing to hide: I killed him. Sawyer was strange, and sometimes he seemed sadistic. There was a strange undercurrent of violence to him, like he expected to own everything, even if he had to kill to get what he wanted .
But Sawyer had never hurt me or threatened my life. Not like that, anyway.
Was he joking? Or had he been completely serious this entire time?
Part of success is knowing when you need to ask for help, he had said.
I glanced at my desk drawer, thinking of the files in there.
I needed her help to open the file. I didn’t have to share it with her.
“Can you help me figure out how to open this thing?” I asked. I grabbed the two small metal devices, holding them up to the light. “It’s encrypted or something. Nothing I’ve tried has worked.”
“Now that I can tinker with,” she said. “I knew these technology skills would come in handy somewhere.” She slid them both into the open slots in the computer tower. “Not much to work with here, but if my login back at my old job still works—” she paused, opening up a new page. Diametric Focus Hub. It sounded familiar, though I didn’t know why. She logged in.
A black screen appeared. Green characters popped up as she typed, but the actual content was in some sort of programming language. I watched her like a hawk, wishing I could follow what she was doing. The computer beeped, and she groaned. “Plan B,” she said. Next, she tried another program, shifting through her old work’s database, but when that didn’t work, she snapped her head up straight. “Third time’s the charm.” She tried another option, and finally, a window popped open.
A single video file. A series of numbers and a name.
Erica reached to click the item, and I jumped in front of her .
“Let me look at it first,” I said.
“What is it?”
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s private.”
“I mean, if you’re using encryption software, it is definitely private,” she said, side-eying me. “But you asked for my help. Can’t you at least tell me what it is?”
I almost wished I could tell her, but I honestly had no idea. And ‘a work video’ might inspire her to ask more questions.
“It’s my little sister’s diary,” I lied. Sorry, Elaine.
“And she encrypts her diary?”
“She was extremely private.”
“And she’s going to talk about boys, then. It’ll be hilarious.”
I used the only thing that I knew would get her to stop pestering me: “It’s my dead sister.”
She sighed. “Geez, Fi.”
“I’m serious,” I pleaded. “Can I at least watch it by myself first?”
“Suit yourself.”
As a set of patrons formed a line at checkout, Erica disappeared to the front desk and I made sure that the other part-time assistant was occupied. I popped in my earbuds, then double-clicked the screen.
A video player popped up. A man dressed from head to toe in black crossed in front of the lens, circling a man on his knees, his hands tied behind his back, a cloth gag in his throat. The man in black shook two red dice, then let them fall to the ground. Words were murmured. The victim on his knees mumbled, his voice shrouded by the cloth, and the man in black bent down, using the knife to cut it off, slicing through his cheek.
You can’t do this, the victim said. Please. I’m begging you. I have money. Land. You can have it. I’ll pay you double what they paid you. I’ll ? —
The man in black murmured, and the victim’s bottom lip quivered. Please, he cried. Please. I don’t. I don’t ? —
The man in black grabbed the victim’s hair with his gloved hand, then sliced the knife across the victim’s throat, the victim choking on his own blood as he gurgled, his body falling forward. The man in black rested his foot on the back of the victim’s head, pushing the victim’s face into his own blood.
My heart raced.
What the hell was this?
The man in black bent down, then lifted the man’s head until his dead eyes were in the camera’s lens, the yellow and pink flesh split open on his neck like a second mouth. The killer bent down, peering into the lens himself. Every part of him was covered in black, except for his blue-gray eyes. A cruel calmness rippled through his expression.
The video ended, freezing on those eyes. I knew those eyes. I had stared into them before, felt that chill when they landed on me. But that couldn’t be Sawyer. We had talked about murder. How it was wrong to kill. He had asked me if I would kill for my library and I had said that I would rather die than kill for it.
But Sawyer had never said if he would kill himself.
So if the man in black on that video was Sawyer—and if it was a video of his work, like he said, then that would explain why we couldn’t find anything about the Feldman Farm; a business like that had to be kept secret. And it would also explain why a coroner had faked Sawyer’s father’s cause of death.
But one thing confused me: Sawyer had told me his truth through a video .
Why hadn’t he told me to my face?
I’m a blood-thirsty leader of an assassin company.
I killed him.
But he had told me to my face. I hadn’t believed him.
It didn’t seem real. Sawyer was protective. He looked after me.
Could he really be a killer?
I exited the file, but the screen froze. Nothing moved. I panicked, then grabbed the file out of the computer and smacked the screen.
“Come on,” I whispered.
But nothing happened. I smacked the screen’s button off as another person came in through the entrance. Erica searched for the part-timer, but since she was shelving the nonfiction, Erica put on a fake smile and helped the patron.
I switched on the screen. The blue-gray eyes were still there.
I climbed under the desk, then unplugged everything, the humming sounds coming to a halt.
“Fi?” Erica asked.
“Under here,” I said.
She raised her brow. “What are you doing?”
“Your computer froze.” I shrugged. “I had to unplug it.”
She laughed. “You broke my computer? I hope the file was worth it.”
I forced a laugh back, but it unsettled me. It had seemed more like a horror movie than an actual clip of someone working. What had I just seen?
How would Sawyer explain it to me?
As soon as Erica went back to the front desk, I dialed Sawyer. “Hey,” I said. My fingers rattled against my phone.
“What?” he growled.
I paused, not knowing what to say. Why was I calling? What would it accomplish? It’s not like he could admit he was a murderer over the phone.
“I’m working,” he said quietly, correcting himself. “Our main rival’s employment base has been substantially downsized, but I’m in the middle of confirming that. What do you need?”
I needed answers, a clue, a sign, anything telling me how to make sense of what I had seen. I wanted him to admit that the video was him. But I couldn’t make myself ask him to explain what I had seen. I didn’t know what the truth would do to me.
Instead, I made up an excuse.
“You need help with anything?” I asked. Why couldn’t I make myself say those words? Hey, Sawyer. Why do you have a snuff film of a guy dying? Was that you, playing the part of a killer? Is that what your family business actually specializes in, or are you just into horror films and special effects? Please say you’re into horror films.
“You’re not my assistant yet, are you?” he snickered.
“Yet?” I asked. “I haven’t said those two words.”
But I wanted to.
Please, Sawyer. Tell me you’re not a killer.
He let out a breath, not finding my joke funny. “You’re not my assistant, Fiona,” he said. “I don’t need your help.”
Those words crushed me. I was trying to make excuses for him, but he didn’t need me. Maybe he wanted nothing to do with me.
“Let’s go out to dinner,” he said, interrupting the silence. “Tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you. Things are tight at work, but we can do something tomorrow. And once you finish up your program proposal, I’ll find something for you to do for me.”
“With the library?” I asked .
“With your job, yes.” He huffed out a breath. “All right. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
As I hung up, Erica eyed me, judging as if she knew what was on my mind. The frozen computer. The encrypted file. Looking up Sawyer’s father. But I let her go. This was about Sawyer.
He wasn’t the man I thought I knew. And yet, he had never tried to pretend around me.
I’m a blood-thirsty leader of an assassin company, like he was proud.
I killed him, as if he was glad he did.
Why hadn’t I believed him?