Slowly grinning, Foxx was about to do just that when his phone dinged. He snatched it up from where he’d laid it on the bed and quickly unlocked it. It was the email they had been waiting for.
He snorted. “You can stop pretending to sleep, old man. They finally sent the email.”
Harlow suddenly took a deep breath in, as if he was just waking up, and stretched. “Mm, they sent it?”
Foxx eyed him with exasperation. “You know I can tell the difference between a sleeping human and an awake one, right? Like, who are you trying to fool?”
Harlow let out a low chuckle as he sat up, looking smug. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just get out your laptop. It will probably be better to see everything at the biggest size we can. Wouldn’t want to strain your poor old human eyes by making you stare at a tiny phone screen. I don’t have my font set to extra-large,” Foxx said with false sweetness.
Harlow made a choking noise that sounded a bit like he was holding back laughter, before shaking his head and snagging his laptop off the floor. The human must have left it on because it only took a second for the screen to light up his face.
Slipping off his bed, Foxx sat down next to Harlow, one leg folded under his butt.
Harlow eyed him for a moment, but then went back to messing with his laptop as it slowly refreshed to show the email.
“You need to replace this thing.” Foxx glared at the slow-ass piece of trash.
“Why? It works perfectly fine.”
“It’s literally a split second from dying. No laptop in this day and age should be moving this slow.”
Harlow rolled his eyes. Eventually, the browser finally refreshed, and the new email appeared at the top. Foxx watched the human drag his finger on the mouse pad at the slowest speed possible to click on the email. “Oh, my Goddess, you are as slow at using it as your computer is at running.”
Harlow glared over at him. There was a tick in his jaw, and Foxx could hear the sound of teeth grinding.
“What?! It’s not my fault you and your laptop are giving off old man vibes! Just look at it… It still hasn’t even loaded the email yet!”
Harlow sighed and shook his head.
“Sigh all you want. No email should be loading inch by inch!” He glared at the screen, offended to the max. “You are replacing this thing. Or you are just never going to use it again in my presence. I have my laptop. I should have just gotten it out!”
“I am not replacing my laptop,” Harlow snapped.
“You are! I’ll even pay for it. Hell, I’ll pay for two. But what I won’t do is suffer through the agonizing minutes it is taking for your craptop to load a single email again.”
“You are such a drama queen,” the man stated in disgust.
Foxx sniffed. “Get higher standards.”
The email finally finished loading. Foxx's gaze scanned over the currently visible information. He almost laughed when Harlow squinted and leaned towards the screen as he read.
Besides all the information, there were also pictures. They all looked to have been taken from security cameras of various quality—some sharp, some pretty grainy. Mixed in were a few lists, one of all the deaths.
The low ages of the murdered paranormals turned his stomach—they were mere children. The last list held his interest, as it was a warrant list of six names, followed by clear ID photographs, and addresses of properties owned by the six mentioned. There was also a bunch of information on the properties and their location.
“I’m guessing that the new human database comes in handy with crime,” Foxx mused.
At the unveiling of paranormals to the world, there had been changes that didn’t just affect his kind and other paranormals. With the creation of the P.E.A.R. database, came the Humanity Registration database, or H.R. for short. Humans now had to register on it at the age of eighteen. It was as mandatory as P.E.A.R. was for paranormals, though paranormals had to register straight away. Well, if you were a made paranormal, you were supposed to register within a month of your change. And if you were a born paranormal, your first registration would be at age ten, and then it was a requirement that you update every five years until your aging process stopped. So, it was a lifetime responsibility for those who could die of old age, but a limited one for species that could potentially live forever, such as vampires.
“It sure makes it easy as hell to find these idiots, since most don’t try to hide from cameras.” Harlow cracked his neck and leaned away from the laptop. He eyed Foxx for a moment, and Foxx eyed him back. “I guess we should…discuss the information?” the man said, sounding disgruntled that he had to do so.
“Probably would be a good idea. As we need to make some sort of plan, don’t we?”
Harlow sighed. “Fine… So, this is a case where most of the work has been done for us. They won’t all be like this, so don’t get used to it. We have six names; Daren Stilts, Josiah Landin, Mark Brodi, Joe Slater, Eastin John, and Boden Grote. All of them are near the same age, mid-thirties, and all have a warrant for their arrest. We won’t know if they will head out to hunt tonight, and we still have to figure out where they are likely to meet up and take their victims. Our best bet is to review the properties they own, and narrow it down based on size and location.”
Foxx nodded. That made sense. They could probably track them down individually, but the easiest thing to do would be to just capture them all at once. He had a thought. “If you were on your own, would you hunt them down individually, or wait until they convened together?”
