“Apparently when the original crew set up shop here, he was just a scrawny thing. A little scrap of a kitten who was all skin and bones and battle scars from fighting off alley cats three times his size,” Sam explained.
“The original crew?” Grace’s dark gaze sharpened.
Eliza was quick to intervene. “Do you take cream or sugar in your coffee, Grace?”
“Black is good,” Grace told her and gratefully accepted the mug Eliza slid her way.
Within seconds, steaming cups of fresh brew sat in front of Sam and Hunter. Eliza began cutting into the crusty, golden quiche she’d brought with her.
“Back to the subject at hand,” she said, dishing up massive slices of the breakfast pie and passing them around. “Disinformation campaigns are nothing new. During the Cold War, Russia was known for peddling conspiracy theories right and left. They were the ones who first pushed the idea the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination. And weren’t they the ones who claimed the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. military? They’ve been sowing distrust in our government and our governmental institutions for decades.”
“True.” Grace nodded, wincing slightly when Peanut began kneading her thighs and purring so loudly he drowned out the hum of the industrial size air-conditioning units. “But social media has made itsomuch easier to spread these false narratives. They go viral on a scale previously unimaginable. During the 2020 election alone, Twitter estimated Russia used 50,000 automatedbots”—she made finger quotes—“to tweet out disinformation about the candidates and the electoral process. And that was just on Twitter. When you add Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, the amount of what-the-fuckery circulating as fact is mindboggling.”
Hunter was already halfway through his slice of quiche when he ventured, “So what does all that have to do with you calling me to come pick you up on the side of a deserted Indiana roadway in the middle of the night?”
She blew out a windy breath and obediently fed Peanut a piece of her quiche when he meowed at her demandingly.
“Three weeks ago, I got a tip from one of my CI’s,” she explained. “Remember when I said these social media posts and groups were becoming more sophisticated and difficult to spot as having originated from a foreign government? Well, according to this informant, that’s because they aren’t being created and pushed by Russia anymore. They’re being created and pushed by Americansworkingfor Russia.”
“Otherwise known as traitors,” Sam grumbled.
“But only if theyknowthey’re employed by the Kremlin and working against our democracy, right?”
Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Look, it’s not the first time our fellow citizens have taken jobs pushing wild conspiracy theories. Hell, there are entire special-interest groups that employee hundreds, if not thousands, of people to do exactly that.” Another morsel of quiche went into Peanut’s mouth, and the cat thanked her by rubbing the top of his head under her chin. “So my initial thought was there was a troll farm employing Americans and having them put out this disinformation without them knowing the content or their paychecks originated in Russia. I figured these people thought they were working for some group of like-minded radicals, but that they were under the impression it was at least anAmericangroup of radicals.”
She took a bite of quiche and Hunter got distracted watching the fork disappear between her succulent lips.
Lips he knew were warm and soft. Lips that’d moved against his in an eager caress he’d relived a thousand times over.
“My partner and I set out to investigate,” she went on, and Hunter forced his gaze away from her mouth by focusing on crushing the crumbs of crust on his plate with the tines of his fork. “It didn’t take long for us to realize this troll farm, located in an old strip mall near Koontz Lake, was a much bigger threat than we could’ve imagined.”
“Stewart and I…” She stopped and explained, “That’s my partner. Or…wasmy partner.” Her chin wobbled. Her eyes grew overly bright. And before Hunter could stop himself, he reached for her hand.
Her smile was wan and grateful when he squeezed her fingers, and something expanded in his chest when she briefly turned her hand over so that she could thread her fingers through his. But then Peanut caught sight of their clasped hands and let loose with a hiss that could’ve come from Satan himself.
Hunter was tempted to hiss back at the furry little fuck. The cat was too big for his britches.
Literally.
Peanut weighed in at a rotund seventeen pounds. And no matter how much Becky spent on diet cat food, the tom couldn’t seem to drop the extra el-bees.
Probably because he had a way of begging for food that was impossible to ignore.
But instead of devolving into a pissing match with a foul-tempered feline, Hunter simply moved his hand back to his own lap when Grace released his fingers. Peanut expressed his satisfaction with this turn of events by once again butting the top of his head under her chin, all the while giving Hunter the evil eye.
Oblivious to the cat’s Machiavellian machinations, she gave his big, furry butt a scratch above his crooked tail. And just like that, Peanut’s motor was back to running.
“Am I to assume your partner is…” Sam let his sentence dangle.
“Dead.” Grace swallowed convulsively. “Murdered.”
Then she dropped the biggest bomb yet.
“And everyone thinks I did it.”
6
