“I’ll be there,” Garik says.
I think of the men behind us. “You could take shifts with somebody.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know who to trust yet.”
I breathe deep. “Thank you.” It’s not a word I would give to anybody else in my organization.
“Of course,” he says, his gaze behind me making sure no one comes at us. “What about Jerry?”
I shrug. “I don’t care. See if somebody wants to take him to the hospital. If not, toss him out back.” He’s moaning, so at least he’s not dead.
“You’ve got it,” Garik says.
I stride out into light rain and head to my bike around the corner. It’s not raining too hard, and I have work to do, so I ride rapidly through the city to the building I purchased earlier and nod at my man at the reception area before entering the elevator and riding to the penthouse. The place smells like pizza. Frowning, I walk back to the office to see Ella munching happily on a slice of pepperoni.
“What?” she asks, frowning.
“How did you get pizza?”
She waves a hand. “Oh, Geoff and George went and got pizza,” she says. “You know, the guys you have guarding the elevator in the parking garage?”
“I don’t recall giving anybody permission to do so.”
She shrugs. “We have to eat, dude.” There’s pleasure on her face, and I doubt it’s from the pizza. She’s already addicted to this computer setup. While I’m sure her setup is impressive, she lacks the funds I now have.
“Did they both go?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “Of course not. One stayed here to guard your whole building. Did you buy the building?”
“I did,” I say.
“Huh. Ten floors, businesses on each, penthouse on the top.” She nods. “It’s a good investment.”
“Thank you,” I say wryly. “That is my aim.”
She grins and then turns back to the computer.
“Have you found anything yet?”
She looks at me over her shoulder as if affronted.
I hold up a hand. “Sorry.”
She looks back. “Yeah, Howard Fissure is an asshole.”
“That I already knew.”
She shrugs. “Okay. So he runs Nero Tech, but honestly, he’s been partially forced out. There was a mini takeover about six months ago.”
“Why is that?” I stride into the room.
“According to corporate emails, and maybe a couple of private ones I hacked, people think he’s doing drugs, but ...” She hops in her seat. “This guy’s involved insellingdrugs.”
Impressive. The little hacker should be a detective. “How do you know that?”
“Money, offshore accounts, known associations,” she says. “A couple of the accounts are too hard to crack, even with these resources. My gut feeling is that he’s working with several organizations and not just Twenty-One Purple.”
“What about his schedule?”
