As if on cue, he entered the room carrying a tray with two Tylenol, a steaming mug, a plate of toast, and little pot of jam, which Maeve bought for the loft because she said it was nicer to have your own tiny jam than to dip into the jar where everyone else left their toast crumbs (she hadn’t named names but I was pretty sure she’d been talking about Bram).
“Do I have time?” she asked, scooting back on the bed.
“You have time,” Bram said, setting the tray carefully on her lap. “Aloha’s not going anywhere. How are you feeling?”
“It’s a battle of wills between my uterus and me and I’m determined to win,” she said.
She looked at the steaming mug, then looked up at Bram. “You made me tea?”
“Doesn’t coffee make your cramps worse?” he asked.
She smiled. “Yeah, I just didn’t know you’d remember.”
Ray had lifted his head, like he wanted to be part of the conversation.
“I’ll take Ray out while you eat,” I said.
I got the dog outside, fed the stray cat that had been coming around (I don’t know what Bram was talking about when he called it a demon, the cat always purred when I fed him and was more than happy to let me pick him up), and went back inside to change.
An hour later we were leaving the loft and heading for Aloha’s place on foot. It was only a couple blocks north and even though it was cold Maeve had insisted she wasn’t an invalid and didn’t need someone to drive her two blocks.
We stood around her, trying to keep her warm while we waited for Aloha to buzz us in, and a minute later we were stepping into the old warehouse that was his headquarters.
“This is where he works?” Maeve said, taking in the cavernous warehouse, the old equipment shadowed in the faint light that leaked in from the gray February morning.
“In the back,” Poe said, taking her hand.
We crossed the warehouse floor and a large walled off box came into view. I’d been to Aloha’s enough that it had stopped seeming unusual, but I imagined it must look pretty weird to Maeve, like a big black box had been dropped into the warehouse by aliens.
A security panel glowed next to the door and two cameras pointed at our position. A few seconds later Aloha buzzed us in and we stepped into a room about a thousand foot square, the only light emanating from banks of computers lined up on worktables and a couple of laptops manned by Nyx and Echo (hackers were weird), two of Aloha’s people.
Nyx, a beautiful older woman with dark skin and a bald head looked up from her screen with a nod before returning to her work. Echo didn’t even look up, and I caught site of his ear budsunder a black beanie that almost completely covered his brown hair.
“Yo,” Aloha said, turning in his chair to greet us. Multiple computer screens glowed behind him, his bald head lit purple by the LED strips that glowed where the ceiling of the box met its walls. “You gave me a dumpster fire.”
“What can I say?” Bram stepped closer. “I never promised you a rose garden.”
“Hey, Maeve,” Aloha said.
“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for doing this for us.”
“No problem. I just hope it helps."
Bram looked annoyed, probably because if we’d said thank you Aloha would have pointed out that he didn’t really have a choice, which was true. But Aloha had been sweet on Maeve since the beginning. Not in an I’m-going-to-steal-your-girl kind of way — he’d be dead if that were the case — but in a you-lucky-sonofabitches kind of way.
“What did you find?” Bram asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“What didn’t I find?” He turned to face his screen. “Let’s just say this dude has some… interesting connections.”
“What kind of connections?” Poe asked.
“I didn’t run them all down, but lots of Russian names, quite a few Eastern Europeans, and get this… more than one rich and powerful American.”
“Define rich and powerful,” I said.
“Politicians, tech bros, business dudes, even a few celebrities. That kind of shit.”
“They’re Ethan’s clients,” Maeve said. “They have to be.”
