Trenton
My brother was using this trip to play games with Ariel and push her every chance he got.
Every time I looked at him he was either touching her in some way or whispering some bullshit in her ear.
I wanted to be annoyed with him, and I would have been if she seemed in any way uncomfortable with it. She didn’t. Quite the opposite, really.
The little shit was actually making all the right moves for once. I was never going to hear the end of it when we were alone again. He could be up his own asshole all he wanted and I’d let him get away with it because we both benefited from his actions this time.
We’d gone out for breakfast after we’d all gotten up this morning and it had been a quiet outing. Ariel hadn’t talked much but it was easy to see she had a lot weighing on her mind.
Both Simon and I ate but we both spent the majority of our time watching Ariel and everyone else in the restaurant with a close eye.
We weren’t under any kind of threat but that didn’t mean we still weren’t taking Ariel’s safety very fucking seriously. We'd never slack off on that job. Her safety and wellbeing would always come first and be the most important thing to the both of us.
We would never take most of the Council around here being wiped out to mean there was no threat lurking anywhere. Isobel was a prime example of why it was impossible to ever let your guard down in any way. Bad shit almost always happened when you got too comfortable.
Ariel could get comfortable all she wanted. She’d never be in any real danger when she was out with my brother and I. The fact that she could take care of herself was just an added bonus.
The car ride to the store until after breakfast was uncomfortably silent and Simon’s constant fidgeting with his phone made it obvious that he was struggling to keep his mouth shut and remain quiet. It was a battle he thankfully won because Ariel didn’t need any of his bullshit at the moment. She’d shut down and had receded into her head. It was a defense mechanism I’d seen her do several times before. A way to protect herself from the hurt she thought was coming her way the moment we made it to our destination.
She did this often and I never liked it. But I always let her be because she’d come back to the real world when she was ready to. And, besides, she already had enough people in her life that badgered her and made her spill her guts constantly. I didn’t want to add my name to that long list of bossy motherfuckers.
I hoped Simon got the silent memo and all of a sudden learned how to be cool. He probably never would though.
We left the diner and made our way to the storage place. All without incident.
I parked in front of the building that had a sign in the window that proclaimed it to be the manager's office. “I’ll run in really quick, grab the keys, and make sure no one bothers us. These people in some of these places can be nosy as fuck sometimes. Especially if a unit has been left alone but paid for as long as this one has.”
We didn’t need any curious people with prying eyes. Nosy people pissed me off. How hard was it to just mind your own business all the fucking time? Impossible for some people, it would seem.
Not to mention we’d seen some serious shit in a place like this before and I couldn’t take any chances.
The woman sitting behind the desk in the office barely looked up from her computer screen when I walked in. Not smart. A woman here all by herself ought to pay closer attention to what was going on around her. Anyone could easily rent out a storage unit and plenty of people did so for not so good reasons. We’d been there before, for fuck’s sake I couldn’t stress this shit enough.
I wanted to lecture her but her safety wasn’t my concern and I didn’t really care what happened to her. I didn’t care if that made me sound like a dick, it was the honest truth.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a nasally voice as she clicked around on her mouse. All without bothering to look up from her screen at me. So fucking stupid it was almost kind of sad.
I pulled the little black pouch out of my pocket and opened it up. I dumped a quarter size amount of the gray powder out into the palm of my hand.
“Hey, buddy. You can’t be doing drugs in here,” she snapped at me, finally looking up. “You can’t do drugs on the premises either. You should just leave before I call the cops on you and you end up in big trouble.”
I guess she had some common sense after all. Too little too late. And she was lucky I wasn’t a creep or something worse. Just a pissed off witch on a mission.
I leaned over the desk and blew the powder right in her face.
She blinked slowly as she otherwise sat there completely frozen. The powder disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. Always worked like a charm.
She couldn’t move or talk. She’d be just fine when it wore off. She’d just have a small lapse in her memory. No big deal.
I walked around the desk and scooted her in her chair out of the way, thankfully it was on wheels. I clicked around on her computer, going through things until I found the files and searched through the bills until I came across the name Quinton had given me that Vivian Kimber had used as one of her many aliases to keep herself hidden from Rain. I memorized the unit number before moving on to the app that opened up the surveillance cameras. I deleted the footage from the last ten minutes and shut the cameras down entirely.
These people needed better security because this system sucked.
I started searching the office for where the woman kept her keys. They weren’t on the desk or in any of the drawers in the desk. I found a keyring with several keys in her purse under the desk and swiped them.
I started in on one of the many tall cabinets along the wall behind the desk. The second one I opened is where I found the lock box. I pulled it out and carried it over to the desk. One of the keys on her keyring from her purse fit into the lock on the box and opened it.
