Up in Smoke

  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.

  “Yeah, that too.” Nine says.

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s got some deal with a guy named Griff. Smoke’s keeping me while this Griff person tries to get my father to surface using pictures of me. If my father doesn’t show his face in a few days, and he won’t, Smoke’s going to take me to this Griff person so he can get take his pound of flesh my father owes him out on me.”

  “Something sounds a bit screwy with your story,” Nine says.

  “What do you mean? It’s the truth.”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just saying that if Smoke was hired to kidnap you for this Griff person don’t you think he’d hand you over to him right away? There’s got to be a reason why he hasn’t. Something more personal to the story.”

  “Like what?”

  “Beats the fuck out of me, Frankie girl.”

  Nine hits enter and a screen pops up. A black and white video. He fast forwards through the feed and finds the day in question. He pauses and hits play again. A woman, who I assume is Morgan is there. She’s a little older than me with shorter wavier dark hair. She’s alone and obviously very pregnant. She’s just walking around the house packing for the most part. There’s an open suitcase on the kitchen island. The video doesn’t have sound, but she appears to be whistling.

  That is, until she’s no longer alone. “Shit,” Nine whispers.

  Morgan jumps back in surprise, but whoever she’s surprised to see it off camera.

  Nine tries to pick up another angle, but the feed suddenly goes blank.

  “Where did it go?” I ask, needing to know and see more.

  “Shit. It’s not there. Someone must have washed it out,” Nine says, slamming a few keys. “I’ll try and recover.”

  After prying open a few internet doors that were never meant to be opened, the screen flashes with an image but it’s hard to see what’s on it because it’s flickering on and off like a light bulb that’s about to die.

  “There, that’s all that’s left of it,” Nine says. “Whoever cleaned house knew what they were doing, that’s for fucking sure.” He takes another drag of his joint and passes it to me. I do the same.

  “Can you freeze it?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder.

  Nine presses a few more keys, and the image freezes and expands.

  My stomach flips, and I cover my mouth.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Nine whispers, his eyes as wide as the computer screen.

  I’m glad it’s in black and white because I can’t imagine how it would look in color if it’s making me want to vomit now.

  “I can’t look at this anymore,” I say, as Nine’s sauce threatens to burn its way back up my throat. “Do you think Smoke could have…”

  “I don’t know.” Nine shakes his head. “I know some sick fuckers, but this…” He leans into the screen and squints. “Wait! Look.”

  He expands the image again. In the corner of the frame, walking away from the bloody scene is a man. “I’m going to zoom in more.” The face of the man is blurry, but he’s too small to be Smoke.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “So, all we can make out is that the man is wearing an old fashioned white hat with some sort of black ribbon or stripe around it above the brim,” I say.

  “And that it’s not Smoke.”

  “And that it’s not Smoke,” I repeat.

  I was hoping this would give me some insight into what Smoke’s hiding from me, but all it’s done is make me ask more questions than ever.

  “Fuck me. Do you see that?” Nine says, pointing to what the man’s carrying in his hands.

  “Holy shit,” I say, covering my mouth with my hand. Nine’s right. There ismore.

  So. Much. Fucking. More.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Nine putshis laptop back in the van.

  When he comes back he stands at the counter, eating his pasta slathered in his ‘world famous’ sauce. I pass because one more taste will surely set fire to my stomach and I’ll turn into a dragon.

  Nine cleans up while I go change.

  I need to go outside. To breathe fresh air.

  To think.

>   The weather is beyond beautiful. Eighty-five degrees and cloudless blue sky. The world around me is obviously unaware that it’s not supposed to be so lovely under the circumstances.

  It’s odd to think that despite if I’m here or not, everything will still go on without me. Good weather. Bad. Droughts. Storms. Day and night will still take shifts.

  Just because I know what might happen to me doesn’t mean I’ve given up hope.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I want to take advantage of the beautiful day so I rummage through the big storage container of clothes and pull out the only bathing suit I can find. Along with everything else in the box, it’s new with the tags still attached.

  It’s a simple black string bikini that ties at my hips, behind my neck and around my back. It’s a size too small so my ass cheeks hang out the bottom as do the bottom swell of my breasts, but it’s all I got so I pull it on and tie my hair into a messy bun on the top of my head.

  I grab a towel from the bathroom and one of the romance novels I found on a small bookcase in the corner of the living room. I need a distraction after seeing that gruesome scene on Nine’s computer, and I decide that Mercy by Debra Anastasia, a romance I’ve read several times before, will be just what I need along with a little sun on my skin.

  I let Nine know where I’m going, and he tells me he’ll be out in just a sec. He’s on his phone, talking in a hushed voice at the dining room table.

  I lay my towel down in the middle of the small front yard, the only section for miles that isn’t a tangled web of vines and weeds. I’m not two paragraphs into my book when The Warden appears, nudging my book with his wet nose.

  “Okay, okay, boy” I laugh, taking the tennis ball from his mouth and tossing it across the yard.

  After a few minutes of play, The Warden tires and lays down next to me, content to chew on his ball instead of chase it. I do the same and pat his head with one hand while lying on my stomach and holding up my book with the other.

  “Mind if I join you?” Nine asks. I look up to find him shirtless. A big goofy grin on his face.

  I sit up and put down my book. “You’re the babysitter. I think if you left me alone that would kind of be beside the point.”

  “True. Although Smoke’s on his way back. He just called so I’m gone soon. I just wanted to give you something first.”

  “What’s that?”

  Nine hands me a mini zip drive. “Hide it. I hope you can somehow use it to help your cause.”

  “Thank you,” I say, taking the drive and tucking it into the pages of the book.

  “And there’s one other thing,” he says. His hands come around from behind his back and before I know what’s happening he’s spraying me with cold water from a hose. The Warden barks, and I yelp in surprise, then spend the next ten minutes trying to take the hose from him to get him back.

  When we’re all out of breath, we collapse onto the towel, and I dry my hands, picking back up my now somewhat soggy book.

  Nine is on his back with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed to the sky. I’m next to him on my stomach, again with my feet in the air.

  “I hope things work out for you,” Nine says, sitting up. “And just for the record. I would save you if I could.”

  “Thank you.”

  He lights a cigarette. “If nothing else. It was nice getting to know ya. I hope Smoke does the right thing as soon as he figures out what that is.”

  “Me, too,” I say with a sigh.

  The sound of a rumbling engine shakes the ground. We both turn our heads.

  Smoke pulls into the pebble drive and kills the engine.

  “I guess this is good-bye,” Nine says. He takes me by surprise when he leans in.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Just go with it,” he whispers. “Trust me.”

  I’m too shocked to pull away. His lips land on mine for a kiss two seconds too long to be considered a peck. I feel Smoke’s presence behind us.

  “Who knows? Maybe, we’ll run into one another one day,” Nine says, standing. He looks to Smoke and smirks. “Good thing I parked in the back.” With a wave to an approaching Smoke he turns to leave, but then pauses and kneels to quickly whisper. “The thing on your leg? It’s not a bomb.” He stands back up then disappears behind the house.

  I don’t even have time to process what he just said when a familiar shadow is cast over my entire body.

  Smoke.

  I look up and am met with his stone hard gaze.

  “Shit,” I swear.

  His jaw ticks.

  “What’s going…” I’m lifted off the ground and tossed over Smoke’s shoulder with ease. The leather of his cut is hot against my bare skin. “What are you doing?” I ask, kicking and yelling, pounding my fists against his back.

  “I should break his fucking neck,” he seethes.

  “Whose neck?” I shriek.

  Smoke doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even stop until we’re back in the bedroom. He throws me down on the mattress and removes a set of cuffs from his wrist, cuffing my wrist to the headboard.

  “What the hell!” I yelp.

  “I should do a lot fucking more than cuff you.” He looks as if he’s trying to gain control over himself but he’s losing. His breaths are rapid. His vein is pulsing in his neck. His knuckles are white.

  “I don’t understand. Why…” I don’t get a chance to finish my question because he’s already gone. The bedroom door is left partially open. I hear the front door slam shut and his bike engine roar to life.

  I’m so wound up. I can’t think straight. There’s a sinking feeling pulling me down into its depths. I’m pissed the hell off. If I had any chance in hell I’d strangle Smoke with my bare hands. The pain and anger is crippling.

  What the hell just happened?

  All signs point to Smoke being jealous but is that even possible? He can’t be mad that Nine kissed me. It was just a friendly kiss. But then I realize that’s exactly what he is.