Page 11 of Magnum, Volume 1

“I’m yours for the day. From what Mad Dog said, today will be about the chicklet showing us what she’s found, and us digging farther if we see a spot where we can.”

- - - ❖ - - -

Magnum

I was ready to get to work, but when I motioned for Storm to sit in the chair Skippy had just vacated, she crossed her arms and said, “I can’t get a read on you. Tell me five things I’d find if I could do a background check on you, and I’ll tell you five similar things about me.”

I could only stare at her, because what the fuck?

“You don’t need to know anything about me other than my club is keeping you safe, and we’re working together to bring down the people who’d just as soon see you dead.” I crossed my arms right back at her. “And once I step into this, they’ll want me dead, too. That’s all you need to know.”

“I went to jail for three weeks once because I wouldn’t give up a source. He eventually went to the judge and outed himself because he felt so bad about me being in jail for him.”

“Jail, or prison? And do you know the difference?”

“Jail, the place you go while awaiting trial. Not prison, the place you go once you’re found guilty.”

Well, fuck. Now it felt like I needed to give her a similar fact. Shit.

“I nearly killed a man with nothing but my fists. Was supposed to do ten years in prison, but got out in three years and a handful of months — combination of good behavior and…” I’d started to say paying off the right people, but no way in hell was I admitting that to an investigative reporter.

She lifted her brows, but I didn’t scent fear, or even surprise. “What, money changed hands? We all know it happens.” She shrugged. “Want to share why you nearly killed him? Because I’m guessing he probably needed it, based on my initial impressions of you.”

“He punched a too-thin, very-pregnant woman in the face, knocked her to the ground, and he was raring back to kick her in the stomach when I tackled him.”

Her eyebrows might be the most expressive thing about her, and they drew together in adorable little concerned furrows.

“And a jury sent you to prison for that?”

“She lied. Said the motherfucker hadn’t hit her. Said her shiner was from a tree limb rebounding while she was cutting a small tree off her flowerbed that’d been knocked down by a storm. She had pictures of the tree and everything.”

“Bites,” she noted, clearly angry on my behalf. “That kind of thing might keep you from wanting to help others. I promise I’ll do my best to keep you from having to pay for helping me.”

Well, that was refreshing. “I appreciate that you aren’t making promises you can’t keep. We both know if this goes to shit, we could both end up dead.”

“Right, but you’re smart, Skippy’s smart, and I’m a fucking genius, so… we’ll figure it out.”

“Or we won’t, and we’ll all be dead,” I noted, and motioned her — again — to sit down.

“I can’t think of anything else bad to share,” she said, rather than sitting down. “Everything else big would sound like bragging. Ask a question and I’ll answer it.”

“And then I’ll have to tell you something. Sit your ass down and let’s get to work.”

“I have a question,” Skippy said. “Where’d you learn about network security?”

“My best friend in college dated a hacker, and I had him teach me the basics.” I met his gaze. “And maybe a little more than the basics. I pay a guy I trust these days, but only for stuff that won’t get him killed, so I haven’t brought him into this. He helped on the missing homeless, back before I knew it was a problem, but nothing about the fight ring. I get him to show me stuff here and there, when he does something I don’t understand. Keeps my skills up to date.”

“And that doesn’t obligate me to share anything about myself. Are we going to work, or talk?” I asked, and I let my voice sound a little grumpier than I felt.

I wanted to learn more about her, but I wasn’t up to sharing anything about myself. Not yet, anyway.

She narrowed her eyes at me a few seconds, but finally stepped to the desk chair and focused on the open browser.

To start, she checked to see what IP we were registered as, did a simple tracert, then got a little more complicated, digging through the same info on the browser. I watched her move through about a minute and a half of checking before she typed an IP address into the browser, skipping DNS, and her fingers hovered over the keyboard. The screen was blank, nothing identifying, with only the two inputs for her login credentials.

“You’re going to know all my passwords,” she said. “You want me to think you’re just dumb muscle for some reason, but your setup says otherwise, and my guess is you had your laptop in your room last night so you could put a keylogger on it.”

Fuck me. She was right on all counts, but no way in hell was I going to admit it outright.