Page 45 of Haven't Killed in Years

“I don’t take bribes, miss.”

“Please, just tell me and I’ll go back to the office and talk up your Chinese satellite bullshit, convince everyone to give up on digital.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Yes, I know. Sorry.”

“But you’ll tell ’em?”

“Yes.”

He glared at me, wondering if I could be trusted.

“Okay, hypothetically…” He paused to acknowledge he was in no way admitting to this. “Hypothetically, we may have had a small break-in about a year ago. But nothing was taken. The office door was jimmied open, that’s all. But I got new locks, double dead bolt,” he was quick to point out.

“Do you have any surveillance cameras?”

“Well, we’ve got some fake ones. They say they’re just as good of a deterrent.”

“Clearly,” I scoffed.

“Well, that’s all I got for you.”

“Thanks,” I sneered, walking out.

“Don’t forget the deal,” he yelled after me. “One EMP from a basic rocket can wipe out the whole grid.”

One rocket wiping out the whole grid actually sounded quite wonderful. Maybe all the doors at Edgar Valley would open, creating mass hysteria, then my father would escape, help me track down whoever was doing this to me, and choke the crap out of them.

- - - - -

I slumped down intothe passenger seat as Dominic finished something on his phone.

“Good news,” he said. “I got us a hotel room a couple hours from here. Kevin let me use some of his points. Two beds, don’t worry.”

I turned to him, unsure how I felt about that. The exhaustion was taking its toll on me and I wasn’t looking forward to another five hours in the car, but it still seemed presumptuous of him. We had kind of discussed it on the ride there. I guess I didn’t need to bebothered by it. There were too many other things to be bothered about. I nodded and grabbed my phone to fire off an email telling my boss that I was still throwing up, must not be food poisoning, must be a bug. I wouldn’t be in to work the next day either.

- - - - -

Attached to the HolidayInn was a heavily decorated Chili’s knockoff restaurant called Tastes of the Pacific, which we found ourselves at soon after checking in. The hostess showed us to a pleather booth near the bathroom and we were greeted by our waitress, Heather, who appeared to be over us before we even spoke.

“What can I get you to drink?”

I scanned the drink menu, which was obscene and required a lot of reading to determine what all the themed drinks were actually comprised of.

“I’ll take a Blue Bahama Breeze, please,” I said.

“Candy rim?”

“What kind of candy?”

She looked at me like I had said something truly insane. “I don’t know, honey, it’s just sugar.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sure, sounds good. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t, like, a Tootsie Roll or something.”

“And you?” She turned to Dominic.

“Same thing,” he said, possibly afraid to engage her further.