“Santi, there you are. I was wondering if I could get your help with something?” He says.
Blair pats my arm and steps around me.
“You can come with me tomorrow,” she says. “Hey Ledger. I’m heading out, let Wes know I probably won’t be back for dinner, will you?”
Ledger nods, watching her leave with that strangely intense stare he saves just for Blair.
“Will do,” he calls after her as she slips out the back. The minute the door shuts he looks back at me. “I’ve been trying to figure out who’s behind the hit on Blair but I’m not getting anywhere. I know you have special software and more knowledge on hacking than I do. Care to take over and see if you can access information that I can’t?”
He wants me to help figure out who’s behind the hit on Blair?
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Ledger chuckles, the sound is tired though.
“Great. After Rhett and I disposed of the body the other night, I tried to locate his handler who goes by the name Dixie, but nothing is turning up. I’ve already got some feelers out in my network of colleagues asking about a contract for a father/daughter duo and I just did the same to see if anyone knows this ‘Dixie’ character but I haven’t gotten anything yet.”
“So,” I frown. “What do you thinkIcan do to help?”
“I need to expand my reach to others in my field of work but we’re all very isolated people—for safety reasons, as you can imagine,” Ledger hedges. “But we all use the same website to find work. Once you access the website, there are personal high security chatrooms that each gun for hire has to communicate private jobs in.”
I hold up a hand, a grin spreading across my face. “So you think I’m smart enough to break down a few firewalls and probably decrypt whatever coding is happening in these other backdoor chatrooms so that we can find whoever this Dixie person is?”
“Yeah, so can you?—”
“First, I appreciate the vote of confidence in me. Iamsuper smart,” I tell him with a wink. “Second, before I can do anything, I need to see a baseline for the coding you use. I’m sure it’s not all that different from the others, just with a few variations here and there. Once I have that, encryptions and decryptions will come easier to me.”
Ledger crosses his arms over his chest, his expression turning grim.
“I can give you access to my laptop but I have to lock a few things—there’s stuff you can’t know.”
I shrug. “Deal. When do you want to start?”
Ledger scoffs as his arms drop and he heads for the hallway. “Give me an hour to sort through the shit on my laptop. Once I’m done, you can have it. Take it with you, leave it here, I don’t care. But get it done, Santi. The faster we can get to Dixie, the sooner we can stop any other hits he might send our way.”
“I won’t disappoint you, Ledger. I got this.”
As he walks away, Wes walks in through the backdoor. He greets me with a warm smile. “Santi, everything alright?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine.” I’ve just been giving the monumental task of finding out who’s hunting down Blair. No biggie.
“I’m going to go shower before dinner,” I tell him before taking a step toward the hallway.
“Good, you stink,” he jokes with a chuckle as he opens the refrigerator.
I snicker and start to turn away but pause as I remember something.
“Before I head upstairs, can you look at something real quick?” I ask him.
Wes closes the fridge and gives me his complete attention. “Yeah, what’s up?”
I pull out the folded piece of paper back from my back pocket, walk over to Wes and show it to him.
“Do you remember this woman by any chance? Her name’s Ashleigh Burr.”
Wes stares at the missing person’s poster for all of three seconds before he’s shaking his head and stepping away. “That thing looks ancient, Santi.”
I sigh. “That’s because it is. The woman was found a few years ago.”
