“Okay,” Ty said. “But we need to be in and out as quickly as possible.”
Caleb was all for that. Although he didn’t expect that Sellers would be able to claw his way back to this plane any time soon — or maybe ever — he also didn’t want to deal with some over-zealous security guard coming along to investigate any movement in an office that should have been empty at that hour of the night.
“No worries.”
Delia came over to him and calmly looped her arms around his waist. “Ready when you are,” she said.
He couldn’t allow himself to react to her, except for a nod to show he’d acknowledged her comment. A few feet away, Pru approached Ty almost timidly, although he seemed matter-of-fact enough as he put his arms around her and said, “This will be quick, but you still need to hang on.”
A second later, the four of them materialized in front of the big walnut desk. Because the windows didn’t appear to have any coverings, enough illumination from the lights of Laughlin streamed in to make the rest of the room visible enough. The photo Pru had found online hadn’t shown the sitting area off to one side, with a leather couch and two matching chairs and a coffee table of what looked like hammered copper, but it was far enough away that it hadn’t interfered with their arrival.
At once, Pru stepped away from Ty and hurried over to the desk. She had her head down, and Caleb wondered if she was blushing, or trying to conceal something about her reaction to the way the half angel had held her a moment earlier.
Hard to say. Although you could walk around in here without having to turn on the lights, some of the finer details were lost.
Caleb was glad of that, though, just because now there was probably a lower chance of anyone noticing they were even here.
He noticed Pru hadn’t started working on the computer yet, but instead was opening the desk drawers and hunting around inside. Meanwhile, Delia and Ty stood behind her, looking awkward.
Well, they all knew that Prudence was the one who’d have to do the heavy lifting here.
“You think Sellers left a file in there with all the info about his demon friends?” he asked dryly.
Her mouth tightened in irritation. “No,” she replied. “But, like I’ve tried to explain about a million times by now, I’m not a computer hacker. If I sit down and try to brute-force my way into the jerk’s computer, I’ll get locked out — and probably set off an alarm somewhere. This may not be the Pentagon or something, but I’ve learned that these casino types have plenty of safeguards built into their systems.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to see if he taped his password somewhere,” Pru said, her response somewhat muffled because she’d gotten down on her hands and knees and was feeling around under the desk. “You’d be surprised how many executive types do that. It’s like they carry so many numbers around in their head that they can’t be arsed to remember a password.”
Maybe, but….
“You do remember that we’re dealing with a demon here, and not some C-suite bozo with a degree from Wharton,” Caleb pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter. Sellers was a real person once, right? And the demon inside him took over at some point?”
That appeared to be the case. Sometimes demons managed to slither their way onto this plane without possessing anyone, but that didn’t happen nearly as often as them simply taking up residence and then doing their best to hang on to their mortal shells, like some kind of diabolical hermit crab.
“I suppose so.”
“She could be right,” Ty put in. “Even demons can’t completely override twenty years of bad human habits.”
“And…got it!” Pru pushed her way out from under the desk, holding a yellow sticky note with tape on two sides, as if whoever had placed it down there had been worried that the original adhesive from the Post-It wouldn’t be up to the task. “Jerk thought he was being cagey by taping it to the rear of the desk drawer instead of underneath, but it was there. Now let’s see what’s in this bad boy.”
She settled herself in the oversized chair, looking very small and as if she had ended up sitting there because it was “bring your daughter to work” day.
Not that demons had daughters. At least, not that Caleb had ever heard of.
Delia and Ty moved closer, although they hung far enough back that they couldn’t be accused of crowding Prudence too closely. She didn’t look up, but instead typed a combination of letters and numbers and symbols on the login screen before her.
At once, the login disappeared and was replaced by pure black across all three screens.
“Cheerful,” she commented. “Some people like something a little more colorful for their desktops, but I suppose demons don’t go for that sort of thing.”
There was still some kind of menu bar along the top, and Pru clicked on it and opened the file explorer. Caleb had always been a Mac guy, so he’d be the first to admit he didn’t really know much about how Windows worked. Luckily, Prudence seemed to know what she was doing, because she opened a window that appeared to show all the files on the hard drive.
Leaning forward, she stared intently at the screen. Just a moment later, she said, “Gotcha.”
“What did you find?”
