Chapter 12 Lilian
LILIAN
PLAYLIST: SCARS TO YOUR BEAUTIFUL – ALESSIA CARA
My eyes wander from the screen into Ella’s eyes as she grasps my chin and pulls me up.
She is biting her bottom lip, and I can’t resist her. I can’t.
“You asked me what I do to you,” she whispers in a voice that hums warmth into my cold chest. Her beautiful green eyes shimmer like a forest in the sun after it rained and the water drops twinkle like diamonds on every leaf.
“But don’t you see what you do to me?” she says. “Don’t you see how you shatter every single one of morals?”
I cannot grasp her words because her touch distracts me from whatever I was doing. I cannot remember who I am right now.
The woman looking in my eyes right now, the woman whose touch electrifies my skin, is the only reality existing for me right now.
I should be scared. Scared of what she does to me. But I am not. Not in this infinite moment where it is just me and her and nothing else.
Her lips meet mine, and a flutter rushes through my body. I have never felt anything like it before. Yes, I had heated sex and butterfly moments. But this here, this is different. It shatters my insides into a million pieces as it rips everything I hold onto from me: Control.
She rips me of all my control. Mentally.
Physically.
Spiritually.
Not that I’d describe myself as a spiritual person, I couldn’t be further from it, but what I feel right at this moment is something otherworldly, and I want to get lost in it forever.
“Lil,” rips Doug’s voice through my mind, and I realize where I am and what I am doing. I step back from her and turn to Doug. He looks concerned.
“What?” I asked harsher than I meant to, but I don’t feel like myself right now.
“I would call it in, unless you wish me to do otherwise,” he says.
Call it in.
Call in what?
My scrambled brain needs a moment to recall what has happened.
The thing with the employee.
Right.
Business.
The photos.
The folder.
My mind is elsewhere.
With her.
The woman who stands next to me is making me lose my mind.
“Wait a moment,” I say to Doug. “I’m running it through Zeus.”
I glance at Ella as I turn to the laptop. She looks way too proud as she knows exactly the effect she has on me, and I want to murder her for it. Doug comes close and glances at the profile Zeus compiled.
“Messages to unknown number, the day of the shooting,” he says. I see it too.
“You think he gave someone intel on my schedule?” I ask.
“Likely,” says Doug. He’s in professional mode, meaning not a word too much.
“Let me pull the tower data,” I say, and my mind finally focuses, “Maybe we can retrace other logs of that number.”
Only it runs into a dead end.
“Cross-referencing other employees wouldn’t make sense,” Doug says, thinking to himself. “What’s the threat potential?”
“Came clean,” I say. The employee was, after all, initially and continuously vetted.
“Does your threat potential show his connections to white nationalists?” asks Ella, who stands in the doorway to my office, and I am ripped from my mind. I didn’t even hear her walk away.
“What?” I ask, and look from her to Doug and back.
“Here," says Ella as she walks over and hands me a picture frame with a photo of the employee, showing him with a couple of friends in a group of people, probably at a festival. I don’t see anything particularly notable about it.
“Their hands,” she says when I glance at her questioningly. “It’s the sign for white power. Sometimes labeled as a hoax, but if you look closely enough at the people in the back, one of them has a shirt with the ‘Viking Compass’ on it. It’s misused by nationalist extremist groups worldwide.”
I stare at her, at the photo in my hand, then back. Everything is so subtle that even I, who sees patterns everywhere, didn’t notice it. I've walked past this picture for months, and yet, it takes her just one look?
My eyes narrow as my gut warns me something's off. But is it her? Or because I didn’t catch it? Or because I uncovered an extremist within the company?
I look at Doug to see what’s going on in his mind. He stares at her, too.
“My brother was part of such a group in Denmark,” Ella says silently. “One of the reasons I had to get as far away as possible.”
“Could it be a possibility that it’s them coming after you here?” I ask, genuinely concerned, remembering I am not the only one with issues right now.
“I don’t know,” she says. I see her get smaller. “I hope not.”
“I don’t rely on hope,” I say and turn to Doug. I hesitate. “If we call it in with the officials, we’ll be out of control, and those groups have excellent lawyers. If we don’t, we’ll be vulnerable.”
I also don’t feel comfortable with Ella being so close in a matter like this, but I cannot tell him that out loud.
“Your choice,” he says.
“Can I see his profile?” Ella asks, and Doug and I both narrow our eyes at her.
“Studied psych, remember?” she asks and laughs. “It’s my special interest to analyze people.”
I hesitate a moment, but then say, “Sure.” An extra set of eyes doesn’t hurt.
She pulls the laptop towards her.
“You can put in prompts for certain requests,” I say, and show her where.
“I’m more interested in what Zeus didn’t catch,” she says. “Like the photo.”
I watch her scroll and click through the profile.
“Can I see the phone?” she asks, and I hand it to her.
She swipes through the used apps.
Mail. Messages. Photos. Socials. I see nothing out of the ordinary. She types in search words like ‘proton’, ‘vault’, and ‘privacy’. She checks the names of contacts; her finger lingers on one name a little longer than the others.
Wes Peter, I read in my mind. A name that says nothing to me.
“So,” she says after a while. “First thing, he uses Tor. Second, does Zeus go beyond hidden folders and file vaults? And third, can Zeus look for a contact in other known extremist group members by the name of Wes Peter? Not the number, but the name?”
“It does, both,” I say, and put in the prompt for the cross-referencing request.
It takes Zeus a moment to assemble the data, and I can feel my heart pounding against my chest.
The output returns over ten thousand matching datasets, all have a contact named Wes Peter, and my jaw drops. Something that rarely happens.
“Have Zeus look for anything connected to the number eighteen or eighty-eight, Social handles, messages, numbers, photos, everything,” she says, and I set Zeus onto it.
I get eight names; one of them stands out for a connection to something called H88.
A nationalist movement originated in Germany, now active in Texas, and the man I am looking at is on the radar for pushing anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas, rape, violations against gun laws, and the use of nationalist signs.
I check everything we have on him.
Ella holds the picture frame next to the display.
“Looks like him,” Ella says and points at the man in the back of the photo, referring to one in the database.
It’s hard to tell because his face isn’t shown, but the appearance matches the mugshots available in the database.
“Can you print that out?” Ella asks me.
“Why?” I ask.
“Let’s see his reaction to it,” she says casually. “I’m sure your bulldog has learned all the interrogation tactics there are.”
I nod.
We enter the room where Doug has handcuffed the employee, and the security staff watches him.
Doug flaps the photo in front of him.
“Recognize that?” Doug asks.
I see his pupils widen for a fraction of a second, almost impossible to catch. It is all the confirmation I need.
The man shakes his head. I can see the glee on his face; he’s wearing it proudly like a crown.
“Listen,” I say, “You can either tell us what you’re up to, or we’ll invoke every possible fine and legal option we have per violation of your contracts for the protection of government secrets.”
He seems utterly unimpressed.
“Try me,” he says, and I have a desire to hit him full in the face. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“Being part of an extremist group is,” I say dangerously.
He looks me dead in the eye as if I am something beneath him. “Prove it,” he says darkly, an arrogant smirk on his face.
A tickling sensation spreads through my fingers. I am going to crush him. Doug sees my anger and signals me to keep it together. I don’t know what’s happening to me lately. Everything seems to spin out of control.
Ella leans in on me and whispers in my ear.
“He’s so self-assured; those people are very well connected with the underground world, drugs, money, guns, identities. There is only one thing that can’t be changed, and that is DNA.”
“You think he’s someone else?” I whisper back.
“My brother vanished and became someone else—” she says silently. “There’s only one way to find out…” she adds.
I can’t tell what it is, but when I look in her eyes, I don’t see the woman I met before all this anymore. She seems so different, and I don’t know whether that is a good thing, but I don’t have time to think about it right now.
I tell Doug what to do by whispering in his ear. He nods and unceremoniously walks over to the man and scratches the guy's arm purposely with his fingernails.
Completely illegal, but I don’t care at this point. I’ll vanish that man faster than he can say lawyer if it comes to it—well, or Doug will.
Doug nods at me, telling me he’ll take care of running the DNA, and we leave. I need that DNA, I need to know who that is and what’s behind it.
I take Ella back to my office, and I close the door behind us. I lean against it for a moment, closing my eyes. I feel slightly jittery as the adrenaline flushes out of my system.
Her hand on me. Grabbing around me. Her touch. Her body. Her lips.
She’s like a remedy to all my pain, and I hate everything about it, but I can’t withstand it any longer.
I need release.
I need her.
I need to get my mind off everything, and Ella is the answer to that particular problem.
I know I shouldn’t.
I’ve never relied on anyone for anything in my life, and now I do.
And I know it will cost me one day. Dearly.