Page 24 of Nave (Henchmen MC: Next Generation #14)
Nave
“What are you doing, you idiot?” Kit hissed at me as Ariah and Lolly watched Edith greet the homestead dogs like long-lost friends.
“What was that?” I asked, brows pinching.
“We gave you five days to convince her to stay.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The stupid panels have been fixed since the day after she left. We waited as long as we felt we could. But it felt wrong to lie to her yesterday.”
“Wait… why would you lie to her?”
“Because we were giving your ass a chance to make a move. Did you choke?”
“Never had you pegged for a matchmaker, Kit.”
“Oh, please. Anyone with eyes could see the two of you mooning over each other when the other wasn’t looking. I just gave you some extra time together.”
“What makes you think I choked?”
“She’s moving back in, you dolt.”
“Dolt?”
“It’s an under-appreciated insult.”
“For the record, I didn’t choke.”
“No? Then why is she back here?”
“Because she feels like she needs to come back because you told her it was ready. She thinks you’re expecting her.”
“Oh. Oops. Well, we’re not. I mean, she can come and go as she pleases.”
“She will. But maybe this isn’t a bad thing.”
“I swear on my new piglet’s boop-able nose, if you got involved with that woman and suddenly decided it’s too much for you and want to break it off, I am going to beat the shit out of you. And we both know I could do it.”
She could.
As skinny as she’d always been, when we’d been forced to spar as kids, she’d wiped the floor with me. Granted, I’d always been very aware of not hurting the girls. So she might not have the actual advantage she thought she did.
“That’s not it at all,” I assured her. “I actually have a real estate agent lined up. And I want to go look at some houses without Lolly knowing. I don’t want her to think I’m doing something big like this for her.”
“But you are.”
“Yeah. I mean, she needs a real home for the baby.”
“Definitely. I mean, I have very fond memories of that motorhome. But I was young and I spent most of the day when we weren’t driving out exploring the world. Those walls are going to close in on her sooner rather than later. Especially with baby stuff cluttering everything up.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“But speaking of baby stuff, Gracie wants to plan a baby shower for Lolly.”
“It’s early for that, isn’t it?”
“Well, we weren’t going to have it next week,” Kit said, rolling her eyes. “But we have to lock in a venue. So we wanted to ask if you think Lolly would be okay with that. It just seems like she could really use a village right now. And, you know, baby stuff.”
“I think she’d love that. She’s been so alone for so long. And she loves all of you guys already. My only caveat is she needs it to be a venue that has no cameras.”
“Oh, okay. I think I could probably talk Matteo Grassi into turning them off for the day.”
“I can handle Matteo,” I told her. I knew what he needed to know about closed circuits and shit like that.
“Good. It might also help to put feelers out about what kind of mom she’s going to be. A beige mom? Bright, primary colors mom? Pastels mom?”
“How might I go about figuring that out?”
“Get some baby magazines. Look at them when you’re hanging out. Pay attention to what item she seems most interested in.”
“It might be too early until she knows the gender.”
“True. You have, what, six or eight weeks?”
Hopefully by then, I would be close to closing on a house too. It would give us plenty of time to settle in, for Lolly to do some nesting.
“So, anyway, just make sure you keep clothes on when you come out of the motorhome when you’re sleeping over. Nobody wants to see… all that,” she said, waving at my body in general.
“I don’t know if sleeping here is possible. She’s sleeping on a twin-sized bed.”
“True. Well, make sure she knows you’re leaving. Don’t be a dick.”
“Your faith in me is truly humbling, Kit.” I pressed a hand to my heart.
“Just gotta keep it real. And you bikers can be dense sometimes.”
I said a quick goodbye to Lolly, promising to drop by with dinner later, then made my way across town to drop in on Junior.
I hadn’t heard from him.
And I was starting to worry that was a very bad thing.
“Nave,” he said after letting me inside. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”
“I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from you.”
He gestured toward the couch before dropping into his office chair and swiveling to face me.
“However skilled you thought this man was, it’s more. He’s… a scary fuck.”
“From a surveillance standpoint?” I clarified.
“Well, that, sure. But it’s more than that. His hands are… dirty as fuck.”
“I know you probably can’t know him like this, but his hands can’t be dirty.”
“Oh, the OCD thing? Judging by the cartfuls of cleaning supplies I’ve seen him buy, yeah, I guessed as much. But no. He’s not driving in a knife or anything. Still, he’s got bodies.”
“How?”
“Remember that woman you mentioned? The one you said Lolly saw him stalking?”
“Yeah.”
“She was married with a couple kids. I guess he got sick of seeing her with another man.”
“He killed him.”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Hacked into the smart controls in his car. Locked up his steering wheel and put out his brakes. On a curving path a few miles from his home. Sent him flying over a cliff.”
“Jesus. I didn’t know that was possible.”
“It’s fucked up what you can do to a car remotely if you know what you’re doing. Did a bunch of work on mine and Shale’s when we got new cars.”
“When you have some time, would you mind looking at Lolly’s new car then too?”
“Sure. To keep her away from that sick fuck, I’d be happy to help.”
“You said bodies. Plural.”
“Apparently, he has a long history of hyper-fixating on women he’s interested in. He had two girlfriends when he was younger. Who, I imagine, figured out he was a sick fuck before he could really lock them down.”
“Did he stalk them?”
“That’s a tame way of putting it. He stalked them each so relentlessly that they had to shut down all social media and move.
And he still found them. Still spied on them.
They both tried for orders of protection.
But he wasn’t getting within fifty feet of them.
He was doing it all from halfway across the country. ”
“No one could make any kind of charges stick?”
To that, Junior snorted.
“The cops will barely enforce a protection order; you think they give a fuck about cyber-stalking?”
“Yeah, true. Was that all of ‘em?”
“No. No, there was a girl right before Lolly. Another secretary. You said Lolly temped for Ben, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think this was the woman she was replacing. Seems like she filed several HR complaints. But it was Ben’s business.”
“Did she move too?”
“No, no, it was much more insidious than that.”
“Great. What was it?”
“She had devices: laptop, phone, smart TV. All that shit can be hacked. He hacked it. And started whispering shit to her, driving her slowly crazy until she grabbed a kitchen knife and slit her wrists.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“She lived, thankfully. But you can imagine how little credibility she had when she was put on a 5150 and started claiming her phone, TV, and laptop were talking to her.”
“Is she still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there any way we can get her out?”
“I don’t know. It’s sticky. I mean… she might very well be disturbed now. He could have genuinely driven her to insanity. We don’t know. But I can see what I can do about an anonymous tip.”
“Good. Was he always so fucked up? Did you get a history on him?”
“That was harder than I expected. Ben Dalton was hard to find information on before he opened his business. Because Ben Dalton didn’t exist before then. He was Ben Follett before then. Only child of Cora, who was a computer teacher. And Robert, a security consultant.”
“That tracks.”
“Yeah. From what I can tell, right after Ben finished college, he went no-contact with them. They seem happy. So, maybe his ass just came out wrong. Or, more likely, got himself into some gnarly shit online when he was too young for it. Warps the brain. Seen it time and time again. Living in their twisted online echo chambers, just getting more and more fucked in the head.”
“Yeah, makes sense. So, with Lolly’s new identity, do you think it’s possible to stay off his radar?” I sighed at the look Junior shot me. “Don’t like that look.”
“Look, if she commits to staying off the radar in every way, it’s possible. But that means no name on school records, no hospital visits, no nothing.”
“Even under her fake name?”
“I mean for a sane person, yeah. That would be enough. But if he is still fixated on Lolly, he might be able to track her down eventually. Cameras are fucking everywhere these days. And facial recognition has gotten really good and fast. If he’s looking for a face and she gets caught on one…”
“Great.”
“Well, you know where to find him, don’t you?” Junior asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I do.”
It wasn’t ideal to have to go that route. But if someone wouldn’t back off, you had to do what you had to do to protect yourself and who you cared about.
“You do what you gotta do to find peace of mind. And you sleep soundly knowing it was the right thing.”
He sounded like a man who spoke from experience. And he was right. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over Ben being wiped off the surface of the earth.
But there was time.
I didn’t want to be taking any trips until I was sure that Lolly felt secure with me and where we stood.
Once I was sure of that, it seemed I had a little road trip to the woods to plan.