Chapter 8 #2
On the flipside, Willow had issues going there with Gabe, which took another while.
And now we could add Knox in that mix when it came to me. And this was going to last for eternity.
Gluh.
“So, before we go out there,” I began, “I need to give you a heads-up about something that you have to be very careful about sharing with anyone without a cross-your-heart-hope-to-die.” I thought of this and added, “Solidified by a pinkie promise that you nor they will allow it to get to Knox.”
Tying on her apron (beige to go with her army-green T-shirt dress), she focused on me. “What?”
“Do you cross your heart and hope to die?” I asked.
She blew out a breath, crossed her heart then lifted up three fingers in a scout pledge (when she’d never been a scout, but I’d allow it).
Though, I did hold up my pinkie.
Another big breath from Raye, and she hooked her pinkie to mine.
When we broke, I said, “I have reason to believe Cheyenne is stalking either me or Knox, or, since he’s very stationary and I’m looking after him, both of us.”
Her eyes got large.
“I know,” I agreed to her nonverbalized shock.
“How do you know?”
“I saw her drive through the parking lot at The Porch last night as I was walking in. She didn’t come in to eat, by the way.
And before you ask, I haven’t noticed a tail since then, and I’ve been watching.
But my guess is, she was either staking out Knox’s, and she followed me when I left there, or she was staking out the Oasis, and ditto. ”
“Why don’t you want Knox to know this?” she asked.
“Because I told him she confronted me, he flipped out immediately, phoned her and tore her a new one. Alas, he also told her to leave me alone, so even if he was very clear, it didn’t work.”
Raye didn’t say anything for a long time, she just stared at me.
I allowed this for a while, then said, “And yes, I know I need to sort myself out. Knox and I are doing that after work tomorrow.”
“Good,” she mumbled. “What are you going to do about Cheyenne?”
I lifted a shoulder. “No clue. If she follows me around and keeps her distance, hopefully, it’ll blow over and that’ll be that. If she doesn’t…I still don’t know. I’ve never had a stalker.”
“It’s pretty extreme to follow you around, Luna. Maybe we should ask Shanti’s cousin what he thinks you should do.”
Shanti’s cousin, Jayden, was a cop. A hot cop with a wife that was “extra” (per Shanti).
I’d met him during a tense conversation where we learned the entirety of the Phoenix Metropolitan Police got a bulletin that they were not to assist the Angels in any way.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
We hadn’t been at our Angels gig for very long, but we already had a reputation.
Even if he was unhelpful when we were going to hit him up to be our man on the inside in the police department, it did not dull his hotness (he was that hot).
Though, Raye was right. He could probably advise on this.
“I’ll ask Shanti when she gets in.”
“We hitting up Byron today?” she asked.
“Yup,” I answered.
“Cool. I always get a thrill when we add to the team.”
She was nuts.
And I loved her.
“Samesies.”
“Ready to make some tips?”
“You betcha.”
Suited and booted, or in our case, clothed and aproned, we headed into SC.
* * *
“All together, or should just one of us go in?” Willow asked.
We were behind the bar, Raye, Willow and me, and we were watching Byron while strategizing our approach.
Of course, all he had to do was look up and he’d catch us watching him, so we weren’t exactly being stealth.
That meant we needed to figure this out pronto and get it done.
“I don’t think Tex would like it much if we all did it together,” Raye spoke truth, unless we were having an Angels Confab, which Tex (and Tito) horned in on without fail.
Tex, because he considered himself our vigilante mentor.
Tito, because he liked to be in the know about what his girls were up to.
Only in times like those, Tex didn’t mind how long we gabbed and didn’t work.
“Just one of us should go in. Being super cajz. I can do it,” I offered.
“Okay, yeah, right, good,” Raye agreed. “I’ll keep an eye on your tables.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I headed out from behind the bar, wondering why I volunteered, because, even if this was my idea, how exactly did you approach someone, share you were a member of an unpaid, vigilante investigations team, and you were recruiting a local computer guru?
Well, since I was on my way, I guessed I was just going to have to wing it.
On that decision, I strolled right up and sat down opposite Byron.
His body gave a slight jerk, and his eyes were round when he looked up from his computer to me.
He also, I thought tellingly, shifted his laptop so the screen was facing the corner.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Uh…”—his gaze dropped down to my ass in the seat then came back up—“hey.”
“So, the girls have been talking, and we think you’re an internationally wanted hacker.”
I thought he’d laugh.
He didn’t laugh.
He swallowed nervously.
Holy shit!
“Are you?” I whispered.
“No,” he said quickly. Then asked, “What is this? You never sit down with me.”
“Actually, I was joking before. Though we girls have been talking, and we realized we’ve known you for years, but we don’t know you. You’re a good customer, and recently, you’ve taken our backs with some stuff…”
This was true.
When Willow’s ex chased her around SC, he got up to chase him to stop him from catching her (though, in the end, it was Harlow who accomplished that).
He’d also stuck up for me when Dream had been in, doing her normal: giving me shit. In so doing, he’d even gone so far as to declare me as “kind of” a little sister.
Not to mention, he’d manned the bar on occasion when things were going down, which was really beyond the call of duty, even for a regular.
“…so we thought it was high time to get to know you better.”
“Well, I’m not an internationally wanted hacker,” he said.
Good to know…even if I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“So, what do you do?” I asked.
“I have a variety of projects with a variety of clients,” he answered, though not very thoroughly.
It was then that I realized, over the years, I actually had made getting-to-know-you overtures. And Byron had always been vague. It had become such a thing, it became habit.
Therefore, I’d never really noticed how cagey he was.
Now I was noticing.
“Doing what?” I pressed.
“Are you…investigating me?” he inquired.
I was confused. “I’m a server. Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re an Angel.”
It was my turn to swallow nervously.
But I didn’t deny it.
I mean, being there every day, considering most of our Angels confabs happened behind the bar (and Byron was often on the opposite side, waiting to ask for another dirty chai), he’d have to be deaf and blind to miss it.
Not to mention, Byron had chased one of our bad guys around SC.
Even so…
“How do you know about that?” I asked.
“Because it’s all over the boards.”
Oh shit.
I didn’t know what “the boards” were, I just knew the Angels being “all over” them was not good.
“What boards?”
“The, you know…”—he leaned toward me—“boards.”
I leaned toward him. “No, I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He studied me then turned his attention to his laptop. He hit a few keys and shifted the screen around to me.
It was black, with blue words on it, and it looked kind of like a Reddit thread.
But it was not a Reddit thread. Even I could tell this was something deeper…and weirder.
When I caught a few names I knew too well, one of them mine, I squinted my eyes and peered closer at the screen.
It was an in-depth discussion about where Kevin Johanssen might be.
Kevin was Willow’s ex. The one who chased her around SC. A user, loser, and verbal abuser. The dating app scam he was running with his best bud was our mission a few missions ago.
After that mess was over, he’d been disappeared by the Nightingale crew, partly because he was a user, loser and verbal abuser, and Gabe was going to go for Willow (and then he went for her…
and got her). Mostly because he’d made a powerful enemy during that mission (as in, a US Congressman) and it was safer for him to drop off radar.
Since then, Kevin had been gone and not missed.
Even the Angels didn’t know where he was, and four of them were sleeping beside Nightingale boys.
“It’s not about you, exactly. It’s about the Nightingale guys,” Byron said.
“That’s the overall board, but there are tons of threads that have strung off it.
It started years ago, when a load of stuff was going down in Denver.
Then those Rock Chick books happened, and it’s kept going from there.
Though, I’ve only been on it for about a year. ”
“About a year” being about as long as the Angels had been in operation, or more aptly, a little over a year.
My voice was pitching higher when I asked, “How are the Angels on it? I mean, are there people watching us?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or, I don’t think so. Mostly, it’s informants or witnesses or people scanning newspapers. Like, you and Raye were at the police station after those women were rescued.”
We were.
That was the culmination of our human trafficking mission.
“It was the Nightingale guys on record for rescuing them,” Byron carried on.
“But someone saw you there and started posting you guys to the boards.” His expression turned sheepish before he said, “At first, they thought you were just the new Rock Chicks. Though, they figured out you guys were in on the investigations when that homeless thing happened, and you were on the scene when that drug lab caught fire.”
And that was our homeless-people-getting-kidnapped mission.
“Then some stuff went down with the Russian mob,” he kept at it.
That was our mission to save one of our informants from being used by some bad guys in a way that might have gotten him dead.
“So…I do what I do because I’m good at it,” Byron stated. “And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t investigate me.”