Do Not Disturb

“What?” I demand.

“Oh my God,” she chokes out. “His finger… it’s almost cut off. I can see bone—” she gags, and I have the sudden image of MysteryBarbie vomiting all over the crime scene.

“Get away from him. Have you checked the rest of the house?”

“For what?”

I growl into the phone. “Blood, dead bodies, a masked man waiting to slash your throat?”

“Do you think I’m in danger?” Her voice squeaks slightly, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes again. Fuck it. I roll them.

“Just check the house.” Shit. I need him. I need him to tell me what the fuck is going on. I need him to tell me if he is the one who took my money, or if he stole it for someone else. I need to find out what he said to them, what he told them about me. I need to know if this was about me, or if my missing money was just a side effect of some other deal he had cooking. I need to know if this is my fault. I need to know if I should prepare for war.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

RUN.

Four minutes later, I hang up the phone, knowing little more after MysteryBarbie’s pussy-ass tour of the house. I swear to you that my grandmother had bigger balls than this chick. Plus, she was hiding something. Her answers to my questions all seemed carefully designed to hide one gigantic secret. I wanted to know one thing: whether that secret had anything to do with me. Anything else, I didn’t care. Let him smuggle coke, or grow weed in his backyard. Or have a wife and five kids. I wanted my money and my hacker back. And my friend, if I want to get all gushy about it.

She was an emotional mess, wanting to know how to unhandcuff him, how to pull him out of shock, whether she was in danger of the handcuffing-finger-cutter coming back. I told her to cut off his wrists and let him sing “Jingle Bells” till he starved to death. Her stony silence let me know her level of humor. A part of me wasn’t joking. The knowledge that Mike had suffered through one hell of a forty-eight hours melted my anger, but I wasn’t ready to put the BFF necklace back on until I knew which one of us had fucked up. Chances are, it was me. I swallowed a mountain of guilt and told her in the nicest words I could, to start Googling answers to her questions. I’m not a freaking nurse.

I let out a sigh, and make a slow, measured spin, looking at my apartment with new eyes. Mike knows a very long list of information, including, in big bright fucking letters, my address. RUN. The message makes a little more sense now, the pieces falling into logical place. Mike is the only person, other than Jeremy, who knows who JessicaReilly19 really is, and where she lives. Mike. Jeremy. And now, a new man: FingerCutter. A man. Probably just one. I can handle a man. RUN. Mike must have given him my information. The man must be on his way here.

I fight against it, but a small smile breaks through anyway. Yes, I could follow Mike’s directive. Add my twelve grand to the Cayman fortune and leave this life. Run. Hide. Buy a new identity and cut all ties. Leave behind the man I love. The only friend I have. Live safely in a new bubble of fakeness. That option sounds horrific.

Or, I can wait. Wait for the man who comes. And take my time on him when he arrives. Punish him for torturing my friend.

My smile widens. Stretches so tightly it hurts.

PART 4

“Skip to the fucking point.”

CHAPTER 80

WHEN YOU KNOW someone is coming, the biggest enemy is time. I knew where, I knew how. The only thing I didn’t know was when. I call back MysteryBarbie and ask the question I should never have overlooked.

“Where are you? What city?”

“Worcester.”

“Where the fuck is that?”

“Google it.” She hangs up the phone and I smile despite myself. MysteryBarbie might have teeth after all.

Worcester turns out to be in Massachusetts, some fifteen hundred miles away. I have to assume he came straight here. If he had flown, he’d be here already. Driving would take him… I do a quick calculation. Twenty, twenty-two hours. Not counting bathroom breaks and an overnight stop. Which means I have little time.

One feature I offer on my website is a live voyeur feed that displays my cam chats. I scroll through three years of saved cam history and pick a day fifteen months ago. I embed four hours’ worth of video files into my site and start streaming the video through my “live” feed. Anyone checking my site will see me, naked and happy, pleasuring myself for strangers. I leave it playing and unclip my corset, loop by loop, walking to the dresser and yanking open a drawer.

The transformation from vixen to ordinary is less than a minute. I lace up tennis shoes, pull my hair into a ponytail, and stand, shrugging into a jacket, too hot for summer, but one that will hide an instrument of death.