Page 62 of Rule the Night

I hopped up the concrete platform leading to Aloha’s warehouse — one of the buildings owned by the Blades — and approached the metal door. It clicked open in seconds thanks to the camera mounted above it, and I stepped into the cool, shadowed interior.

Concrete floors stretched into the distance, and old factory equipment loomed in the shadows. Dust motes floated through the air, lit by the columns of sunlight that streamed in from the big windows overhead.

I crossed the expanse of concrete, aiming for the steel-walled box that had been constructed toward the back of the building.Aloha’s currency was information, his idea of security more concrete than my own.

Aloha kept people out of his shit with metal walls and a series of 0s and 1s, lined up on a computer screen like ancient hieroglyphs. I kept people out of mine with fists and guns and knives.

With fear.

I stopped at the door leading to the metal box, then stepped through it when it clicked open.

The door was heavier than it looked. It swung shut with a thud and I stepped into a room that was even darker than the shadowed warehouse floor. That had been an homage to the past: the machines that had once made something tangible now silent, the ghost of footsteps and busy hands lurking in the shadows.

Aloha’s headquarters was an ode to the future. Computer screens were lined up on long worktables, and the only light came from strips of LEDs mounted under the ceiling of the black box and the electronic glow of the computer screens.

Two of the computer stations were occupied by two younger dudes in Blades cuts. A pretty bald woman sat at a third, her fingers flying over the keys, earbuds visible in her ears.

Other than the tap of fingers on keyboards and the soft hum of the processors at work, the place was silent.

I ignored them and approached the bald guy sitting in front of three monitors, the Blades MC logo — a pair of daggers forming an X over a blood-drenched skull — visible on the back of his cut.

He stopped typing and turned his chair to face me without missing a beat. It was a concession I didn’t take for granted. I was in Aloha’s lair now, a place where the hacker reigned supreme over everyone but me, and it wasn’t uncommon for himto keep people waiting when he was deep in the weeds of his work.

He stood and I shook his hand. “How’s it hanging?”

He had course features and a graying beard, his once-muscular arms now more meaty than sculpted.

“It’s hanging,” Aloha said. “You?”

“Same. Thanks for that work you did for us a couple weeks ago.”

It was hard to believe Maeve had already been with us for almost three weeks. She’d slipped right into our lives, filling the fridge and freezer with her delicious food and the loft with the scent of strawberries (whatwasthat?), disappearing for her shifts at the mall, shutting herself in her room with her computer, which she always closed when one of us approached.

“No problem,” Aloha said.

The favors I asked of Aloha — of anyone in Blackwell Falls — weren’t really favors, but I pretended they were in the name of a good working relationship, and Aloha played along for the same reason.

“Mind taking a deeper dive?” I asked.

“On the girl?”

I nodded.

“Anything specific?”

I thought about Maeve’s background, her sister’s murder, the fact that Remy had caught her listening to that douchebag Ethan Todd. “Her sister was murdered a year and a half ago. I want anything you can find on the case, her family, the guy they got for the crime.”

I knew from my own research that the sister’s boyfriend had been a fan of Todd — that had been part of the trial — but that didn’t explain why Maeve would subject herself to his toxic bullshit.

He rubbed at his beard. “Sounds like you want everything.”

I had a flash of Maeve’s dark hair, swinging in its ponytail while she checked something in the oven, her blue eyes bright when she looked at me even though it was obvious she wasn’t a fan.

“I want everything.”

37

MAEVE