the accusatory tone of my own voice, and Cam looked up at me again, his expression cautious, and difficult to read.
“I never said I wasn’t bound.”
“You never said you were, either.” I folded Hunter’s bank statement and stuffed it back into the envelope. “You made me show you my arm, but you never bothered to mention that you’re three chain links up Jake Tower’s ass.”
“We don’t have time for this right now.” He turned back to the screen, shoulders tense, forehead drawn low. “Did you find anything else?”
I had to clench my teeth to keep from yelling at him, and I only bothered because he was right—the longer we spent in Hunter’s apartment, the better the chance that Nick’s report would send one of his superiors our way.
“Just this.” I held up the bill, still wrinkled in spite of my best attempt to flatten it. “Hunter went to the E.R. for a broken arm four months ago and still hasn’t paid his bill.”
Cam frowned. “Why would he go to the E.R.?”
“Exactly.” Skilled people almost never go to the hospital, because of the compulsive blood-drawing policies and the staff’s utter refusal to let you incinerate your own biological waste onsite. Evidently setting fire to a medical wastebucket is a strict no-no.
Instead, we had our own doctors—certain legitimate private practices with access to all the same equipment as a public hospital, but run by people in the know. People who routinely gather everything you might possibly have bled on into one plastic bag and won’t look at you strangely if you take that bag home to burn in the privacy of your own apartment.
For the convenience of certain criminal elements, there were even private practices that were willing to overlook the legal requirement that they report gunshot wounds and other brow-raising injuries—for the right price. Or to comply he binding that had provided the funding to open that specific practice in the first place. Syndicate-sponsored clinics were all the rage.
“Something isn’t right with this guy,” I said, and Cam nodded.
“You found more than I did. He pays most of his bills online, but if he keeps a list of passwords, it’s either encrypted or saved under a name no one else would recognize. His emails are banal—no smoking gun there, which means we still have no idea who hired him, or why.”
“But we do have his first and last name, and one middle initial,” I pointed out. “You can work with that, right?”
“Assuming the name’s real and he’s still anywhere near the city, yeah.”
“Good, let’s get out of here before we run into any more of your fellow hired thugs.” I hated the thought of Cam working for Tower. I wanted to go on thinking that the dirt of the city hadn’t touched him. That his hands were still clean. I’d come to the city to protect us from each other, and instead, here we stood, side by side in the muck.
Cam closed Hunter’s laptop and frowned at me. “They’re not all like Nick, you know. There are some decent men and women working for Tower. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad things, Olivia.”
“I know.” Better than most. “But I also know that the closer you stand to the monsters, the more human they start to look.”
And perspective was something I could not afford to lose.
Seven
“H is apartment was empty, but there was blood in the bathroom. His, not Shen’s,” Liv said into her phone, one boot propped on my dashboard. “We think he was hired. Someone wired a big chunk of cash to his checking account last week.”
Anne spoke during the pause, but I couldn’t hear much of what she said over the traffic noise as I turned onto Third Street, the main drag and the heart of Tower’s empire.
“Not yet. Cam thinks he knows someone who can trace the account, but for now, we’re still trying to sniff him out the hard way. Any idea why someone might want Shen dead? Something to do with his work, maybe?”
Anne spoke again, and I
“I never said I wasn’t bound.”
“You never said you were, either.” I folded Hunter’s bank statement and stuffed it back into the envelope. “You made me show you my arm, but you never bothered to mention that you’re three chain links up Jake Tower’s ass.”
“We don’t have time for this right now.” He turned back to the screen, shoulders tense, forehead drawn low. “Did you find anything else?”
I had to clench my teeth to keep from yelling at him, and I only bothered because he was right—the longer we spent in Hunter’s apartment, the better the chance that Nick’s report would send one of his superiors our way.
“Just this.” I held up the bill, still wrinkled in spite of my best attempt to flatten it. “Hunter went to the E.R. for a broken arm four months ago and still hasn’t paid his bill.”
Cam frowned. “Why would he go to the E.R.?”
“Exactly.” Skilled people almost never go to the hospital, because of the compulsive blood-drawing policies and the staff’s utter refusal to let you incinerate your own biological waste onsite. Evidently setting fire to a medical wastebucket is a strict no-no.
Instead, we had our own doctors—certain legitimate private practices with access to all the same equipment as a public hospital, but run by people in the know. People who routinely gather everything you might possibly have bled on into one plastic bag and won’t look at you strangely if you take that bag home to burn in the privacy of your own apartment.
For the convenience of certain criminal elements, there were even private practices that were willing to overlook the legal requirement that they report gunshot wounds and other brow-raising injuries—for the right price. Or to comply he binding that had provided the funding to open that specific practice in the first place. Syndicate-sponsored clinics were all the rage.
“Something isn’t right with this guy,” I said, and Cam nodded.
“You found more than I did. He pays most of his bills online, but if he keeps a list of passwords, it’s either encrypted or saved under a name no one else would recognize. His emails are banal—no smoking gun there, which means we still have no idea who hired him, or why.”
“But we do have his first and last name, and one middle initial,” I pointed out. “You can work with that, right?”
“Assuming the name’s real and he’s still anywhere near the city, yeah.”
“Good, let’s get out of here before we run into any more of your fellow hired thugs.” I hated the thought of Cam working for Tower. I wanted to go on thinking that the dirt of the city hadn’t touched him. That his hands were still clean. I’d come to the city to protect us from each other, and instead, here we stood, side by side in the muck.
Cam closed Hunter’s laptop and frowned at me. “They’re not all like Nick, you know. There are some decent men and women working for Tower. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad things, Olivia.”
“I know.” Better than most. “But I also know that the closer you stand to the monsters, the more human they start to look.”
And perspective was something I could not afford to lose.
Seven
“H is apartment was empty, but there was blood in the bathroom. His, not Shen’s,” Liv said into her phone, one boot propped on my dashboard. “We think he was hired. Someone wired a big chunk of cash to his checking account last week.”
Anne spoke during the pause, but I couldn’t hear much of what she said over the traffic noise as I turned onto Third Street, the main drag and the heart of Tower’s empire.
“Not yet. Cam thinks he knows someone who can trace the account, but for now, we’re still trying to sniff him out the hard way. Any idea why someone might want Shen dead? Something to do with his work, maybe?”
Anne spoke again, and I
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