26. “Quietly Yours” #2
There was so much you could hide behind text banter.
And by the time you’d convinced someone you were a decent person, and they finally met you, you already had your in.
You could hide the skeeve a lot better when you’d established a preconceived notion about who you were when you were not that at all.
“He’s numbered them, so there are no names,” Luna shared. “We’d have to go through them one by one to see if we know any of them, or if any names were spoken during the, erm…”—Luna cleared her throat—“ activities . But Phoenix is a big place. The chances we’ll know any of them are small.”
“But we need to find the one who would have the resources to shut Trev down so thoroughly,” Shanti added. “So maybe we can find the killer.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We’ve asked Arthur if he has any face recognition software,” Willow said.
“He does,” Luna said. “And he has already started, but with the sheer number of files on there?—”
“There are fifty-seven videos,” Shanti cut in to say.
“He’s got his work cut out for him,” Luna finished.
I looked down at the screen and mumbled, “This is crazy.”
“It’s diabolical,” Willow snapped. “Can you imagine, you meet a guy you think you like. You let him in that way. You give him that. You share that intimacy. You offer that gift to him. And he videotapes you without you knowing and threatens to humiliate you if you don’t give him money?”
No, I couldn’t imagine.
“Internet lasts forever too,” Shanti put in. “You could lose jobs for that kind of shit. I know, if my mother saw anything like that, she’d have a stroke. My father…” She shivered.
Another indication I’d done the right thing to cut my family out of my life.
If this happened to me, I knew my father would be silent. My mother would rave at me about being so stupid. And the whole time, Easton would smirk his superior smirk and file my little peccadillo away so he could bring it up at a later date when it might cause the most pain.
Yeah.
I wasn’t going to mourn them.
Or at least, I wouldn’t do it for long.
There was a knock on the door at that point, so I quickly reached out and slapped the laptop shut.
Shanti shot me a raised-brow look, while Willow’s brow lowered.
But I knew it was Javi at the door, and I did not expect him to take this news well. He was not that guy who would ever consider doing this to a girl.
I mean, I knew they knew this was the blackmail gambit, but having the depth and breadth of it exposed in a cloud folder might make him lose his mind.
Though, I kinda wanted Gabe to see it, just to, you know, test the waters there.
Luna went to answer the door, and I was right. Javi filled it.
Luna tried to play it cool. “Hey, big man. Want a beer?”
Javi’s gaze went to me, the laptop, me again, then Luna. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said breezily.
“We thought we’d change into our bathing suits and take a dip,” Willow lied.
“Maybe we could get an Oasis Sunday night barbeque going?” Shanti suggested.
“Okay, no.” I stood.
Luna knew what I was thinking and surprisingly didn’t hesitate to get out of the way.
Javi entered.
Luna closed the door.
I took a big breath and laid it out. “Enough with the competition. This has been real for a while but now we know how real it is, and sure, Trev is now very out of commission. But we have to figure this stuff out.” I pointed to the laptop.
“We have to find out who those girls are. We have to find out who killed Trev. And we have to find a way to contact those girls and tell them they’re off the hook.
Tell them the videos have been deleted forevermore. And tell them they’re free.”
“What girls?” Javi asked, and although his tone was sexy low, it was freakishly scary low too.
“I’m not going to show you because you might lose your mind,” I replied.
“What girls?” Javi repeated.
“Again, I’m not going to show you. I’m just going to say, there are a lot,” I told him.
“Harlow.”
“Javi.”
“ Harlow .”
“ Javi .”
He came my way, got toe to toe with me and only tipped his chin down to look at me so he was towering over me when he said, “Baby, not gonna ask again. What girls?”
“Just show him,” Luna sighed.
Bah!
I reached around him, opened the laptop and jiggled my finger on the touchpad.
This time, Luna’s password page came up. She bent down to show the screen her face, and then the folder appeared.
Javi’s breath whistled, he sucked it in so fast when he saw the video file icons.
“I take it Kev didn’t share what a massive racket this shit was,” Willow stated angrily.
“No,” Javi said slowly, his attention glued to the laptop screen. “He did not.”
Oh boy.
“We have Arthur running facial recognition on the files,” Shanti informed him.
“Good,” Javi grunted at the screen and looked at her. “I’m out on the barbeque.”
Oh boy!
He turned to me. “Gotta go to the office.” He then turned to Luna. “You’ll get an email of where to copy that shit so we can get Brody’s assistance with tracking down those women.”
Luna nodded.
Javi again looked at the screen.
He did this so long, expressions chasing themselves over his face that shared explicitly he wished he was the one who slit Trev’s throat, so I reached out and caught his jaw in my hand to turn his face my way.
“Honey,” I said.
“That motherfucker,” he said.
“You got that right,” Willow said.
“You do a barbeque, save me some food,” Javi ordered.
I nodded.
He kissed me quickly.
Then he prowled out.
“I’m with you, Lolo,” Willow declared. “The sooner we find out who killed Kev, and the sooner we can tell those women they don’t have to live in fear of their life crashing down around them, the better. I don’t care who wins this anymore. I just want it done.”
I just wanted it done too.
Especially for all those ladies.
What an ordeal.
“Agreed, and Luna, you gotta agree too. I’m so over this shit, it isn’t funny,” Shanti said.
“Oh, I agree,” Luna replied. “We can race the guys on another case. This one needs to be in our rearview. I’m just trying to decide if we should do hamburgers or hotdogs for the spur-of-the-moment Sunday Evening Oasis barbeque.”
“Both,” I said.
“I want barbeque chicken,” Willow said.
Oh yeah.
Barbeque chicken sounded yummy.
“All,” I amended.
“Set up an Instacart, bitch, I’m activating the Oasis phone tree,” Luna replied, while moving to her phone.
I pulled up Word on her computer, instead of Instacart, because I couldn’t do buying groceries without a grocery list.
Willow helped me.
Shanti got on the phone to do her phone tree bit.
And as it went at the Oasis, within fifteen minutes, we had the makings of a party.