“What’s wrong?”
“She’s up to something. I want to know what.”
“What do you need the laptop for?” She perches on the edge of his bed. Watches as he tries to type, the cocoon that dominates his right hand making the task infinitely more difficult.
“Checking her feeds. See this?” He spins the computer around, showing her a ridiculously gorgeous woman, her body spread out on a pink sheet, her face grinning as she blows a kiss into the camera.
Jamie shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah.”
“That’s Dee. This is showing as a live feed, on her website’s cam. But it’s not live. I can rewind the feed, and it doesn’t show an interruption for the phone call we just had. She’s looping an older feed. A normal person wouldn’t have any way of knowing.” His face winces, and he moves his right hand into his lap, pecks at the laptop keyboard one-handed.
“That’s Deanna? The chick who verbally bent me over and raped my ass?” She can’t put them together. Not this bright-eyed chick with the Justin Bieber poster taped to the wall above her bed. The one with a body she would chew off her right arm for.
He snorts, his mouth curving into a smile. “She’s an acquired taste. But don’t judge her too harshly. At the time of that conversation, she was under the impression that I had stolen from her.”
Now it was her turn to snort. “You’ve been stabbed. Are missing half a finger. Plus, you’ve got the money to cover it. She had to have known you’d pay her back.”
He shoots her a look that indicates the intelligence level of the statement. “Not quite. Few people can cover a million-dollar debt.”
Her legs move on their own accord, pushing her to her feet and she gawks, physically gawks at the man before her. “You took a million dollars… she has a million dollars?” She points a shaky finger at the laptop, newfound respect and appreciation for the maybe-not-such-a-bitch.
He doesn’t respond, his brow furrowing as his one hand moves. She moves around, climbs upon the bed next to him, watching as he types, the screen opening and closing browser windows.
“What… What are you doing?”
“The webcam feed is fake, so I’m tapping into her cameras. Activating them privately to take a look into her apartment, see if she is there. Or if he is there. A normal girl would have taken my advice and got the hell outta Dodge, but she…” He presses a complicated sequence of keys, something that changes the screen and opens a window showing the same angle as before, the pink bed and Justin Bieber poster, but no girl, only empty sheets. He types, and the camera changes. The bare floor, the image grainier than normal, almost as if there is some smoke in the room. Fingers fly over keys. Empty wall. More strokes. The bed. Then another. Then another angle. More strokes.
Jamie gasps, and they both lean forward at the same time, watching the screen as a body lies on the floor, jerking, his head tilted back, his face contorting in a duct-taped scream of agony, a body straddling him, the head in a gas mask, her hands moving in some action that is causing the man inordinate amounts of pain. Jamie swallows, pulling her eyes from the screen and finishes the sentence for him. “Isn’t normal.”
“Yeah.” His voice sounds tired. Defeated. “She isn’t normal.” He pushes the laptop away from her, blocking her view at the moment that Deanna severs an appendage, shutting the screen on the image, his stomach rolling with sudden nausea, and she leans against his chest, his arm moving to grant her access, her body curving into his as she buries her face into his warmth. Then, with the image of the man’s face contorted in pain, branded in her mind, she starts to cry.
CHAPTER 94
IT TURNS OUT my hand strength is that of a small child’s. I’d like to say I took his entire finger off—got the whole digit, something with some substance to hold on to. But I don’t. Can’t. With his squirming and howling, and my puny muscles, I have to move the pruners down. To his knuckle, where I don’t have to snip through a bone. Where I just have to cut through the cartilage of a joint. That is easier. I am still covered in blood when I finish.
Accomplishment. I feel like I have run a marathon, my chest heaving, my blood on fire, the still-dripping-blood appendage triumphantly grasped in my hand. He shouldn’t have fucked with Mike. Not my hacker, the man who protects my lifestyle and shares the information highway so freely with me. I have no family. I have no friends. Don’t fuck with the only acquaintance on my payroll. I set the finger on the counter, ripping off a dedicated paper towel for it to lie on. Then I rinse the cutters under running water, watching the diluted red water run down my white sink before turning the tap closed and setting them down into the sink. I wipe off my hands and turn back to the man.