Chapter 17
CRUZ
Grayson and I had been waiting in a dark room for the last ten minutes.
The moment we reached the last floor, the dim light was depleted entirely, and instead, the little lights at the bottom of the floor turned on.
They reminded me of the ones at the movies, except these guided you to the rooms you were meant to wait in.
I only knew which way to go because this was not my first time.
You had to give it to the people. They were creative as fuck.
The lights varied in color, and depending on what you needed, you followed that color until it led you to a door.
This was the best way to keep the people walking the halls somewhat anonymous from each other.
It was hard to make out facial features in the dark.
“I can’t see shit,” Grayson whispered.
“We need to follow the yellow lights,” I told him.
He let out a masculine chuckle that seemed to vibrate in the darkness.
“Follow the yellow brick road?”
His comment made me smile, and I was glad it was dark so the asshole wouldn’t see I found him amusing.
“Yeah, what we need is in yellow.”
Each color was for something different. Yellow was for the hacker apartment. It had three rooms, and Teclas had one room to himself in there.
Green was for thieves, and people who could recover things you might have lost or get you something you desperately wanted.
I had never been in there, but I knew Big Dog was familiar.
You came to these kinds of places enough and people tended to talk.
As long as you didn’t talk back or snitch on what they said, you’d be surprised by the kind of information they tended to share with you.
The red lights took you all the way to the end of the hall to the dead end.
I hoped I would never need to go to that side.
Red was for blood—for murder. That’s where people who were desperate enough to require a score went.
I was glad for the darkness these hallways offered because that way I didn’t have to see the kind of people who found themselves desperate enough to follow red.
This floor had no cameras in the hallway.
It was forbidden, both for the protection of every person walking for a service and the ones who granted them.
Grayson and I arrived at the door, and I knocked three times before waiting patiently as they opened it. The only reason you knew the door opened was that it creaked. I reached behind me and took hold of Grayson’s wrist and pulled him inside with me.
Since I had already experienced this, I was expecting the brightness, but it didn’t get any easier. The moment the door closed, the lights in the apartment went on. Compared to the darkness we had been subjected to, it felt like gazing straight ahead at the sun.
“The fuck,” Grayson muttered.
I agreed with him. The inside was a total mind-fuck compared to the whole building. The ambience was lit up in a cool light. The geeky little fuckers had a lounge area with an espresso machine that would make any coffee lover jealous as fuck.
From where we stood, we could see the camera pointed at us, with a sign that said, “Smile, you’re on camera” and a smiley face on it.
They didn’t bother to hide their faces. Why should they? With a few taps on their keywords, they could make your whole life a living hell.
“Teclas is in his room. Pasale,” the guy who opened the door for us, let us know.
Now that my eyes had adjusted to the light, I turned to look at Grayson. I could tell he wanted to say something but was holding back, which was smart of him. As we walked to the “primary bedroom” of this complex, I wondered when the hell I became an expert in reading Grayson’s expressions.
“You have to be shitting me.”
Never mind. I took back what I said. Grayson was done holding his tongue. At least he said it low enough that only I could hear…well, at least I hoped.
Teclas had a fancy-as-fuck desk covered in monitors on both sides and on the back, the middle empty so he could look at you when you came to do business with him.
“I see you’re back, Cruzito,” he said while looking at me. His gaze then shifted toward Grayson, and he smiled a gummy smile, teeth covered in braces that gave away his age. “And you brought a friend. Please take a seat.”
Grayson and I sat down on the chairs in front of the desk.
Teclas was younger than me, I was sure. If I had to guess, he was between sixteen and nineteen.
He had the height, but he was lanky, like a willowy spider that had not yet discovered it was a predator rather than prey.
If I had to use one word to describe him, it would be prodigy; no one could find information like he did.
Surfing the web, using HTML was just an extension of who he was.
Grayson took note of this, but kept his mouth shut.
“We need some information,” I began to say, and then gulped because there had been something I didn’t tell the guys last time. “I’m ready to go all in. I want to trace the number back to the source.”
I looked at Teclas, but in the corner of my eye, I could see Grayson’s head snap toward me, and a part of me hated myself for keeping quiet on this.
On the fact that I could have found out who was targeting us a lot sooner.
I didn’t want to look Grayson in the eyes because I would see the anger in them.
He would regret ever trusting me, no matter how frail his trust was to begin with, and now that I was certain I had just lost it again, it made the pit of my stomach sink.
Teclas smiled, and the teenager with a gummy smile and braces was no more. In his place was a teenager with the smile of a psychopath.
He swiveled in his chair and scurried over to grab a device that he handed to me.
“Plug your phone here,” he instructed me. “I’m going to make a copy of your information. Anything you receive, I’ll receive.” He then smirked at us and wiggled his eyebrows. “No naughty pics unless you guys want me to see them too.”
I knew Grayson wanted to scoff at this, or make a nasty retort about sending me anything, but he didn’t. I allowed myself to take a peek at him, and I could see he was biting his lip. Probably to keep himself from snapping at me.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied.
I thought it was best to go along with whatever he wanted. In this place, he held all the power.
We waited in silence as Teclas made a back channel into my phone. Once he was done, he told me to unplug it and that he would contact me.
I got up, and Grayson followed. Just as I turned around to walk out of the room, Grayson spoke up. Based on his tone, I knew he was pissed at me. In this moment, I was glad I had driven, or else I was sure he would have left my ass here.
“What about payment? What do we owe you?”
Teclas leaned back and looked Grayson up and down, and then at me.
“When I think of something, I’ll let Cruzito know.”
Grayson’s jaw clenched, and he just nodded at him.
Another thing I should have probably mentioned was that Teclas didn’t always deal with money. He was a teenager who had more than he knew what to do with it. What he wanted were other things that would serve as his entertainment.