Up in Smoke (King #8)

I laugh and taste the sauce on the spoon he’s holding out to me. It’s so spicy I cough and choke. “How much red pepper flake did you put in there?” I ask, my mouth hanging open.

Nine hands me a glass of water and I chug it so fast most of it spills down the corners of my mouth onto my shirt. When I’m done, I hand my glass out to Nine who refills it. My eyes are burning. My throat is seizing up. I chug the next one down just as fast.

“Uh, this much?” Nine holds up the now empty bottle of dried red pepper flake that was full only a few minutes before.

“That might be a tad too much,” I rasp.

Nine takes a big mouthful of the sauce and swallows it down. I wait for him to react, but he shrugs and keeps stirring. “Tastes all right to me,” he says, smacking his lips.

“Back to Smoke,” I say when I’m not about to die via red pepper flake poisoning.

“Smoke’s a lone wolf, but that don’t mean others ain’t got his back. Who knows, he’s probably just still messed up with all that shit from Rage,” Nine says. His eyes go wide, and I see his regret. He’s revealed too much.

“Uh, forget I said anything.” he turns his back to me to stir his nuclear sauce. “Why do you want my laptop anyway?” he asks, changing the subject.

“I just want to look something up. A name. It will only take a minute, and you can watch the entire time,” I assure him, knowing there’s no way he’ll actually let me use it. I wait for the idea to form, watching his face as he’s deep in thought.

Nine puts down the spoon and scratches the back of his neck. I flash him yet another hopeful grin.

“Okay, here’s the deal.” He points to me and then to himself. “You tell me the name, and I’ll look it up for you and tell you what I find.”

Bingo.

“Deal,” I say, holding out my hand.

Nine comes over and shakes my hand. He doesn’t let go. He smiles and talks between his bright teeth. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

I don’t stop smiling either, talking through my own teeth. “Probably.”



Nine fires up his laptop. It’s top of the line and covered in stickers of rock bands and pot leafs. His desktop image is a pair of naked breasts.

“Classy,” I sing.

“Who doesn’t like tits?” Nine asks, keying in his passcode. “Everyone likes tits. Even women.”

“Is this some sort of lead into a conversation about how all women are hiding an inner lesbian?”

“That would be cool, but no. You know all those popular women’s magazines? You won’t find too many pictures of men. Why? Because women like to look at women. Women are beautiful. Their bodies are beautiful. Even most porn catering to women don’t have gigantic dongs swinging about. They’re useful, but they ain’t shit to look at. Unless, it’s mine, of course.

“Uh, huh.”

He cracks his knuckles. “All right, Frankie girl. What’s the name?”

I tell him the name from the ultrasound I found in Smoke’s cut. Nine begins his search.

A few minutes later, we both realize that Morgan Faith Clark is an enigma. She disappeared off the face of the planet last year. Nine can’t find anything else about her. “That’s odd. No missing person’s report. No nothing. As of last year, she just…vanished.”

“What about her address? Do we know where she lived?” I ask, leaning over Nine’s shoulder.

Nine hits a few keys, and within seconds we’re looking at the google street view of a small blue house with white trim and a flowery front walkway. “Who is this person, anyway? Someone important?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure yet,” I say looking over the information on the screen. “She could be.”

“How very vague of you,” Nine says. “I’m pulling up the public records for the house. There’s a bunch of city citations for overgrown grass and things like that which leads me to believe the house is abandoned.”

“Can you see when it was abandoned?”

“I can get close. Yeah. Here. The last utility bill was paid for last June so anytime in July I would assume. Wait, look at this.” Nine points to the screen. “Morgan Faith Clark was reported missing by an aunt in Sarasota.”

Nine’s fingers fly across the keyboard and I find myself missing the feeling. The sound of the keys sings to me like a favorite song I know all the words to.

“The aunt reported her missing on the 10th of July after Morgan didn’t show up at her house in Sarasota the prior morning. The police opened an investigation.” He clicks a few more keys. “But it’s never been closed.”

The screens change and flip as Nine flies through sites and codes, unearthing everything the internet wants to keep hidden like an archeologist of the web. Window after window appears then disappears as I follow along.

“Pull up the police report. Use the back way and use 911 at the end of the code if you’re going in via their webhost. That usually works.”

Nine scoffs, ash falling onto the keys. “Like I’ve never broken into a police department before. What do you think this is, amateur hour?” Nine’s cigarette dangles from his lips. “And you really are a tech geek aren’t you?”

I nod. “I am. Or, at least, I was.”

“Okay, here. Police report states that they went to the house, and there was no sign of foul play. Morgan’s purse and belongings were gone as well as her car, leaving them to believe she might have skipped town, but they note that there was no activity on her bank account or credit cards after July 9th.”

“Does the house have a security camera?” I ask.

“Already on it.” Nine reads down the report to the bottom in a flash. “The police report indicates the house has a Aestro Pro 7688 security system, but when they tried to access the feed, it was blank.”

I shake my head. “No such thing as blank feed unless a camera’s broken.” I say. “Aestro is high end security. Even if it’s not on the mainframe, it can be recovered through their servers.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Nine asks, looking at me with over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised. He stubs out his cigarette into a coffee mug and lights another joint. I pluck it from his hand before he has a chance to lift it to his lips, and I take a long slow drag, dramatically blowing the smoke at the computer screen.

“Maybe one of these days. If things work out for me. We’ll meet again, and I’ll tell you my story,” I say.

Nine smiles and takes back his joint, turning back to the laptop. “It’s a date,” he says. “But, not that kind of date. I don’t think Smoke would appreciate if it was.”

“Why would he care?”

“Uh, I saw the way he stormed out of here. A man doesn’t leave like that unless he’s frustrated as all hell and needs to clear his head. Plus, I saw the way he looked at you.”

“Bullshit,” I say.

“I’m hacking into Aestro now. Entering her address and the dates she went missing and cross reference that with the connected motion detectors in a few seconds we should be able to pull the feed.” Nine says. “And it’s not bullshit. He looks at you like you like he wants to…”

“Like he wants to kill me,” I finish for him.