Anna briefly filled her in while she stuffed the rest of the cinnamon roll pastry in her mouth.
“Unfortunately, the note doesn’t actually say anything threatening,” Archer chimed in, looking down at the note that he had obviously just read. “It says, ‘I wish you would reconsider and go on a date with me. I think you are making a big mistake. I understand your father is sick and you have the bakery, but you need to make time for yourself. I’ll give you a few days to think about it, and then I will return. Hopefully you will change your mind and make the right decision before it comes back to haunt you.’”
“That last part sounds like a threat to me!” Ruthie said defensively.
“Not legally,” Archer pointed out, and he would know since he’d been a cop in Las Vegas prior to coming here and starting this company with his cousin Vince and his friends.
“He could easily say he was just trying to give her some advice and hopes she makes the right decision about her lifechoices,” Archer said and held up his hand when Ruthie tried to interrupt him. “Look, Ruthie, I get it. The guy sounds like a tool.”
Ruthie slumped in response, but I was caught on his word of choice.
“Tool?” I leaned over to ask, unfamiliar with this word.
“Dick. Asshole. Jerk. Weirdo,” Ruthie said to me.
Ruthie had been great over the past year or so, really helping me fine tune my English language skills. When I came to the States, I spoke a decent amount of English, but when I engaged in conversations with people, there were many nuanced words and phrases that I didn’t understand. I needed to get better at it, but I didn’t like small talk, and that was the best way to learn the colloquial terms of another language.
Sensing my frustration, she snapped her fingers at me as though she’d just thought of the best idea in her entire life. “Oh! Axel! I’ve been meaning to tell you... Tammy said they are looking for someone to help out occasionally at the bar. You should offer to work as a bartender to help her out.”
“I have a job,” I replied, unclear why she was telling me this.
“Yes, but this would just be maybe once a week for a few hours, and it would help you meet people and practice your English more,” she told me. “Besides, Tammy would do the hard work. You really just have to get people drinks and make casual conversation.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I also didn’t really like to hang out with strangers. I wasn’t an introvert per se, but I just didn’t like small talk or having random conversations with people I didn’t know.
“I’ll talk to Tammy. Don’t worry,” Ruthie said.
“I’m not worried,” I told her.
She smiled at me, the one she used when I said something wrong or not in the correct context.
“Focus, people,” Anna broke in. “Here’s the thing. I told her we would look into the guy, but she told me not to because she…and I quote…didn’t want to bother you guys if it turned out to be nothing.”
Anna rolled her eyes at that last part and shook her head lightly. “Clearly I’m going to make you do it anyway, which is why I told her it was a moot point and to let me have the letter from today.”
“And also why you brought us all these goodies from her bakery as bribery,” Vince surmised with a small smirk on his face.
If this were any woman dealing with a creepy man who couldn’t take no for an answer, I would gladly help if Anna asked me to. But knowing it was Stella, I felt compelled to help her even more, knowing she was a fellow Swede.
“I will do it,” I told the room, causing Anna to look at me and smile.
“Thank you, Axel. I actually figured you would be the best person for this anyway,” she told me. “I’m hoping maybe if you go to her bakery and meet her…tell her you are also Swedish…maybe she will open up to you a little more. Plus, you also have the skills to look into this creeper without raising any red flags.”
Subtlety was my specialty when it came to digging for information on the internet. Plus, I also knew a few others in the business who I could reach out to for help if I needed it.
I may have learned my skills while in the Swedish Armed Forces, but the dark web could also be a meeting place for like-minded people. I had met and assisted two other hackers over the years who had become my friends, even though I had never met them in person.
Tex—a man based here in the U.S.—and Kitty—a woman in Portugal—and I had worked on a couple of projects together involving child trafficking.
I had been wrangled into the project not only because of my skills, but also my location. Unfortunately, Georgia was one of the top human trafficking places in the U.S. The Atlanta airport was the world’s busiest airport by passenger volume, which made it an easy location for shuffling people around. From the airport, people could be moved quickly all across the southeastern states via the vast number of roadways, making it difficult for authorities to track the victims and criminals.
I had met both of them through internet chat rooms—the same one Tex had actually found his wife through. Tex and I shared military backgrounds, even though they were for different countries. And Kitty and I shared a love of curling and cooking shows and had connected that way. I had turned to those chat rooms in my darkest time, and Tex and Kitty had pulled me through.
“I don’t know her exact schedule, but she’s usually there through the afternoon most days that I go,” Anna said, breaking me out of my inner thoughts.
“I have a few things to file for Ruthie, and then I’ll go to the bakery,” I replied, hoping to catch Stella toward the end of her shift so perhaps she wouldn’t be as busy, though I had no idea if that was how bakeries worked.
“If you promise to bring me something back from the bakery, I’ll finish filing the papers for you,” Ruthie said to me, which was shocking since she never offered that.
