Chapter Thirty-Three - OLIVER
“What’s going on?” Pax says from the top of the stairs.
West and I both whirl around, taken by surprise. Jesus Christ, I really do need an office door. We are both huddled up to my computer, looking at the tracking app I have access to on Ariel’s phone.
“When did you get here?” West asks, recovering for me.
“What are you guys looking at?” Pax asks, walking over to us.
“We’re just trying to figure out what the girls are up to,” I say.
“They’re downstairs. Why don’t you just ask them?” Pax says.
“Because they’re having some kind of secret meeting today at lunch and we want to get in on that.”
“Hmm,” Pax says, taking a seat in a chair. “Victoria is looking for you, West. I told her I’d come see if you were up here with Oliver.”
“OK,” West says with a sigh. He looks at me. “Let me go take care of her and I’ll be right back.”
I nod as he leaves, but I’m looking at Pax. “What?” I say, after West’s footsteps fade down the stairs.
He props a foot on the opposite knee. Like he’s getting comfortable. “I just have a question or two about that ‘hack’ you showed us yesterday.”
“Why are you making air quotes for the word ‘hack?’ You don’t believe me?”
“I’m just confused,” he says, using a familiar overly patient tone. Which I hate. “I need some clarification. About all of it really.”
I don’t volunteer anything.
“So you said that Allen set you up and you had to go along with it because they made a forum which implicates you in some kind of hitman-for-hire operation?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And that’s it? Plus, you saw your sister?”
“I saw my dead sister, Pax.”
“Missing sister,” he corrects me. “Is she presumed dead?”
I just stare at him.
He waves a hand through the air like he’s clearing it. “Never mind her. That was just my opener. To let you know I’m not buying your bullshit. Because while I might not be as clever as you Shrike people when it comes to computers, I am not a stupid man.”
I know what he’s going to say. My explanation yesterday in the SCIF room was lame. So fucking lame. But it was all I could come up with without asking for Ariel’s help.
“They threatened you.”
“They did.” My tone is neutral. “Still are,” I add. Because all that’s true.
“Do they mine data from your site?”
Dammit. I really didn’t think he’d catch on to that. “Yes,” I say.
“Dating site data?” He scoffs.
“Credit cards,” I say. “Emails, addresses, phone numbers. You’d be surprised at how much personal information people share on a dating site.”
“Yeah,” Pax says. “I get it. It’s not totally worthless. But the threat to you is way too low, Mr. Match.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Hitmen? Really? I mean, surely you understand you probably have an alibi for every single hit—if, in fact, there ever were hits. They can’t possibly have covered all their bases. Your explanation…” he says, trailing off to think about his word choice. “While it doesn’t completely ring false, it doesn’t completely ring true, either. So why don’t we go into that little room of yours and you can show me the other half of the truth you’re hiding.”
I let out a long breath and take a few moments to think. “Look, Pax—”
“No,” he interrupts. “You look. I’m on your fucking side, asshole. I’ve had your back for ten years.”
“Eleven,” I say. “Did you even notice that another anniversary went by?”
He pauses and I know he didn’t.
“Neither did I,” I say. “Until today.”
“Go on,” he says.
I get up and motion for him to follow me with a nod of my head. “You wanna see? OK. There’s really no point in hiding it anymore. We’re already in the middle of it, Pax.”
“Middle of what?” he asks, following me over to the door on the other side of the room.
“The shit hit the fan some time ago, brother. It’s all over us and we never even smelled it.”
I open the door and we go through the ritual of entering the SCIF down on the third floor. When we’re inside, there’s just that one laptop sitting on the stainless steel table. I sit down on the stool, flip it open, and then log in.
The black command prompt box opens and I type in the code to bring up what I didn’t show the other guys yesterday.
“What am I looking at?” Pax asks, data scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
“Code.”
“Obviously, asshole.”
“Just give me a second,” I say, my fingers flying on the keypad. A beep comes from a cabinet just to my left. Pax reaches over and tries to open the door, but it’s locked.
“That’s just the secure server coming online. It’s nothing.” I type for another three or four minutes, then press Y, to initiate the final command, and a website pops up.
“What’s this?” Pax asks, leaning in to get a better look at it.
“That,” I say, turning the laptop so he can see the screen better, “is the real Hook-Me-Up website.”
“You’re using Tor?” he asks. “An onion domain.” He looks at me. “You have another deep web marketplace? This is more than hitmen, isn’t it? That’s what you’re hiding?”
I sigh and shrug at the same time.
He points to the screen. That’s an advertisement for—”
“Counterfeit money. Yup.”
“So it’s real, then? You sell all this shit?” He points to another forum. They are all stacked neatly up into rows on the page. “All this illegal shit? Prostitutes, and drugs, and—”
“Not me,” I say, disgusted. “I’m not selling any of this shit.”
“Wait,” Pax says. “This is where Cindy gets her ‘clients?’” He makes air quotes again.
“Yeah, about that. Look, she’s talented, OK? She’s sneaky and smart and she figured us out pretty early. She got in, we couldn’t realistically keep her out because we cannot—let me stress this hard—we cannot fuck with this code. I’m not lying about that part.”
He leans against the server cabinet and scratches his chin. “They’re blackmailing you pretty hard,” he says.
“They are, Pax. Only they’re not blackmailing me with some stupid threat to go to the cops. I made that up to try to explain away my involvement with the Misters. I didn’t really connect the dots that this was the origin of all our trouble until today. I had suspicions, but that’s all they were. Now I have proof. They own this site, OK? Hook-Me-Up on the clear web is ours. But Hook-Me-Up on the dark web belongs to them.”
“Who is them?” Pax asks.
“My guess would be as good as yours, Paxton. I have a few good ones, but I don’t know anything for sure. Other than who it isn’t. But none of this is the important part. None of this is why I’m showing you all this now. Every year since this site popped up on our server, they’ve added to it, Paxton. The first year, that night that girl accused us of rape, they added the drug marketplace. The second year it was pirate shit. Music, books, term papers. The third year it was assassins.” I scroll down the main page so he can see all the different marketplaces. “Ten in all, one for each year. A little reminder on the anniversary to keep me in line. To keep the threat fresh.”
He zeroes in on the worst of them. Which isn’t the hitmen. And then he gets a disgusted look on his face. “What the fuck are you doing, Shrike?”
“I’m not doing this, Pax. You, of all people, have to know I’m not doing this. I have no control over this site. I get no money from it.”
“But you host it.”
“I host it, yeah. Because they make me. They have everything tied into me, my sisters, my parents.”
“That’s why you covered for Allen that night.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand anything back then. I had no clue that eleven years later I’d still be dealing with this shit. That every year it would get worse. Darker. Sicker. If I knew this would be my life, Pax, I’d have taken my chances with the rape charge.”
We both look up at the ceiling. Footsteps creaking the old floorboards.
“That’s West,” Pax says.
“Yeah. But I don’t want to show him this yet. We just had an anniversary, right? It’s eleven years now. But we still only have ten categories in the marketplace.”
I don’t need to spell it out for Pax. He gets it immediately. “They have a surprise coming, don’t they?”
I nod. “They set us up again. I’m not sure how, but they did. And brother, we are going down this time. They are planning something that will take us all out at once, and probably tie it all back to the rape charge eleven years ago.”
Pax walks to the other side of the room. Stops, turns back. Paces towards me and then turns again. This goes on for a few more laps and then he looks me in the eyes. “Fuck that,” he says.
“Fuck that,” I agree.
“I’m done with this life. I say we put it all on the line right now. We tie this shit up with a bow or we go down trying.”
“What do you have mind?” I ask, so fucking thankful I can finally get his opinion on all this.
He smiles. But it’s not a Paxton Vance smile.
It’s a Mr. Mysterious smile.
“I’m gonna kill Mr. Corporate and Liam fucking Henry is gonna tell me everything.”