26. Naz
TWENTY-SIX
NAZ
“Did you get all that?” Scott asks, his voice sounding tired and strained through the car speakers.
“Yeah, we heard the whole thing,” Cory confirms.
“So, what do you think?”
“How do you feel about traveling to New York? Are you comfortable following this through and seeing where it leads us?”
“He’s setting me up to meet whoever this guy is in a public place, and I sincerely doubt anything would happen on the way there.
Honestly, my biggest worry is wasting time taking a damn bus all the way to New York and then having it be another dead end.
” Scott says over the rustling sounds of movement, and somewhere in the background a door closes.
Cory notices too. “Where are you right now?”
“On my way to the bus station. I looked online, and there’s a bus departing at 10:05. I figure I’ll sleep on the bus and get there ahead of time.”
Imagining someone as tall and bulky as Scott trying to sleep in a bus seat would be funny if this weren’t such a serious situation. “Are you sure you shouldn’t get some rest first?”
“It’s not like I’d be able to sleep anyway. I’d rather just get this over with, and the sooner I get there, the sooner Francis can set me up with whoever this meeting is with.”
“Do you think Francis will be there?”
“He said he’d be nearby if I need him. Whatever that means.”
“How kind of him,” I deadpan.
“At least now we know you were right about who it is.”
“Be safe, and keep me updated,” Cory says.
“Will do.”
I stew for a long time after the call ends. Fucking Francis. I fucking knew it.
“I fucking hate that guy,” I mutter.
“You’re not the only one,” Cory agrees, watching the rearview mirror carefully as he takes another random exit. We’re doing our third pass of the exit we need to take to get to the compound.
Not long after we drove away from Scott at that crummy motel, we got an alert that a call was coming through on Scott’s line. Cory pulled over so we could listen in, courtesy of the software the Waves App set up to mirror the phone’s screen and audio.
I’m seething.
Fucking Francis. That fucking scumbag. Just fucking wait until I tell Ari, and then promise him whatever he wants to make up for not standing up to Francis for all those years.
I knew he was a smarmy asshole, but I had no idea he was as bad as he is.
I didn’t like him, and I didn’t like the way he handled us, especially Jesse.
He treated him like a puppet, pulling his strings this way and that, doling out his prescriptions as if he was Jesse’s personal keeper.
By the time we all got with the program and banded together to ask for new representation, Francis had manipulated the entire label into thinking we were the problem.
“We have to keep this quiet, you know that, right?”
“Of course.” I pause. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Because I know you’re ready to do some kind of SWAT Team raid wherever Francis is hiding out, but we can’t go in guns blazing with this.”
“I know that,” I say, crossing my arms. “I don’t even like guns.”
Cory smirks and checks the rearview again. “This is a delicate situation. The less people know, the easier it will be to contain it.”
“The guys deserve to know that it’s Francis,” I tell him.
“I’m not disagreeing with you, but if you tell them, they’re going to want to help. And there’s really nothing any of you can do,” he says. “This might be a bigger operation than we thought.”
“Francis is full of shit.”
“He’s also very confident, which is how he’s always gotten away with stuff. This seemed like more, though.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “He talks as if he has someone powerful in his back pocket, but he could be bluffing.”
“The problem is, with all the changes happening at the label, we don’t have anyone backing us up if this goes wrong. We need to tread carefully.”
“Who do you think he’s setting Scott up to meet?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll be curious to see if Francis shows his face.”
“Me too.”
The silence that fills the cabin feels oppressive. I don’t want to go home. I want to be on that bus with Scott. Or better yet, stowing him away on a private flight where he has plenty of room and no one can touch him but me.
“I think you should stay here with the other guys and your grandparents.”
“Not happening.”
“Going through a breakup and being in hiding don’t really make sense if you’re seen running around New York again. And we don’t know who we can trust.”
“Don’t start with the Emmy thing again. There’s no way he had anything to do with the bug.”
“Maybe not on purpose, but it still needs to be investigated. Quietly. I’m supposed to go up tomorrow to meet with Blake and his contact at the Waves App, so I’ll be in the city if Scott needs me.”
“How are we so sure we can trust them?”
“We’re not. But it's all we have right now. Blake has his connection at the Waves App digging into the label's systems and will find the leak.”
We don’t speak again until we’re pulling into the driveway.
Cory drives me up to my trailer, but I don’t get out.
I stare at the door, at the lights I left on inside, at the space that used to be mine but now feels suffocating.
And I have to stay in there, because I can’t tip Francis off that I know I’m being listened to.
Fucking Francis. He took both of my safe spaces from me. This was my paradise. And Scott… I still have Scott, and we can still have good sex, but those sessions were about so much more than sex. I don’t know how I’ll ever find it in me to let go like that again.
“I’m going tomorrow,” I tell Cory, still looking out on my ruined happy place. “You can take me with you, or I’ll get there on my own.”
I step out of the SUV, not looking back or giving him a chance to try and reason with me.
“We leave at oh-six hundred hours.”
Giving him a little salute, I trudge up the steps to my trailer.
The door buzzes at exactly the right moment, saving me from having to explain to Blake why I’m here, much less why I’m wearing a security uniform and have makeup covering all the tattoos from my neck down to my fingertips.
He gives me a stern look before moving to open the door, stepping aside as Kit Quinley and a smaller person with bubblegum pink hair and a thigh-length translucent yellow raincoat walk in. They’re both holding their fingers to their lips, instructing us to be quiet.
Without a word, Kit guides their companion into the apartment and gestures to the kitchen island.
Pink hair friend sets a device on the surface, a cylinder about two inches in diameter and about eight inches tall.
They push a button and the cylinder opens into what looks like a camera tripod.
After a few seconds, a thin green ring begins circling the top of the cylinder.
Kit and friend nod at each other before Kit turns to acknowledge us. “Okay, now we can talk.”
“What is that?” I ask.
“It checks for wireless transmitters and blocks any attempts to record or listen in to our conversation,” Kit’s friend says.
“And who are you?”
Blake steps in front of me. “You must be Sunni. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person. Thank you again for all your help.”
This is the tech expert? They seem really young for a genius cybersecurity analyst.
“Sunni is a student at NYU. She just started working for the Waves App about eight months ago and has become a huge asset to the team.”
Sunni waves, showing off perfectly white teeth with a gap in the middle that makes her look even sweeter. Her name suits her.
“Hello. Don’t tell me. Obviously you’re Blake Holland,” she says, tipping her head at Blake.
“And you’re Cory and… Not Eric.” She looks over at Kit.
“The flight manifest said Eric. But you’re…
” Her eyes trace me from head to foot. “You’re either Naz Lester without tattoos or he has an unregistered twin brother. ”
I grin, but whatever snarky comment I would have made is cut off by Blake.
“Mr. Lester was just about to explain to me why he’s here and wearing this poor disguise.”
“It was his idea,” I say, pointing to Cory.
Cory rolls his eyes. “He insisted on coming, but I didn’t want to put him on the flight manifest in case it was being tracked. It was the best I could do on short notice.”
Blake turns his unimpressed glare back on me. “You have to be difficult?”
I shrug. “A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.” I make zero apologies for wanting to be here to back up my man.
Blake huffs. “Would anyone like some tea or water before we get started?”
“No thank you. I’m ready to get to work.
” Sunni beams and looks around before spotting the large dining room table, where she takes off a baby blue backpack and sets it on the table.
While she’s pulling a laptop and what looks to be a screen extender out of her backpack and setting them up, she chatters pretty much nonstop, asking questions but then answering them in the same sentence.
“Would you like to get started with the data I pulled from the phone or what I found regarding your information leak? Actually, never mind. Let’s start with the systems analysis, and it’ll segue right into the phone data. ”
Kit takes a seat to Sunni’s right, smiling at their young employee like she’s the most precious little thing to ever set foot on earth. Which, to be fair, might be accurate. She’s so bubbly, it’s hard not to get caught up in her joy.
“So, this system is not as secure as they make it out to be. I barely had to try to get access. It doesn’t look like your leak came from anywhere external, which I realize isn’t good news.
So I may have… wandered outside the scope of what Kit technically asked me to do and took the liberty of peeking into the label’s main databases. ”
“And by peeking, you mean?” Blake doesn’t sound like he actually wants to know the answer to that.
“She hacked them,” Kit confirms.
“Hacking is a strong word.”
“What would you call it?”