“I know what time it is.” The half-drow gripped the straps of her backpack tighter. “I think I hit a sore spot, and if you can’t tell me what it is or why, at least admit I’m right.”
“You’re right.” The woman didn’t hesitate. “You’re welcome to keep coming to see me. When you feel like it. But if your involvement with that organization is anything beyond pure curiosity, and I mean anything beyond that, I can’t keep answering these questions for you.”
“It’s a conversation—”
“And I told you—” Mattie gazed behind her down the empty hallway and lowered her voice. “I told you words have power. I’d love to help you with whatever you got yourself into over the weekend, and I’d be more than happy to if it didn’t involve those people. Whatever you’re doing, I don’t want to know. I can’t know. Thank you for not telling me anything else. Now, if I’ve given you enough of a vague and panicked explanation, I apologize. But my time’s up here, and I need to go stick my head in some fresh air before it explodes. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’ll be here.”
“Good. Whatever happened, make sure you get someone to take a look at that hip. And don’t insult me by saying you’re fine.” With that, Mattie headed down the hall, her strappy leather sandals whispering over the wood floor.
Cheyenne blinked after her and didn’t move.
I ruffled all her feathers. At least I didn’t have to tell her I crashed a FRoE operation, got abducted by their best, and got involuntarily volunteered as their drow secret weapon on call. Mattie’s had more interaction with those people than she’s letting on, or she wouldn’t be so terrified.
With a sigh, Cheyenne turned in the opposite direction toward the Computer Science building’s doors that led into the quad.
Guess I can handle the rest of this from home. On my own.
* * *
The first thing she did when she got back to her apartment was to take a shower. Going five days without one, especially when those five days were spent unconscious in a hospital bed not anywhere close to a hospital, made Cheyenne want to take two. Instead, she settled for half an hour under the hot water and two rounds with the body wash and shampoo.
Her hip was still sore and achy, but it did look like it was healing. She stood facing the bathroom mirror after she’d toweled off and tilted her head. “I guess scars are cool. Better than no hip.” Better than Ember’s luck with a gunshot wound.
That thought made her grimace at herself in the mirror. You can be grateful, Cheyenne. But nobody likes a grateful asshole.
She slipped into a pair of black sweatpants and another black tank top, going for comfort more than anything else, and brushed out her towel-dried hair, then pulled it back in a loose ponytail. “Time to see if anyone’s found anything new for me.”
Not diving into the dark web for a five-day stretch wouldn’t have been considered a bad thing. Most people would say it was safer that way. But gu@rdi@n104 noticed me the minute I tapped into the Borderlands forum, and guess who’s been missing seeing my avatar handle around?
Cheyenne sat in her executive office chair behind the giant sturdy desk that served as her tiny living room’s sole furniture and powered up her computer. While the system booted, she checked to make sure everything worked the way it was supposed to. The last time she’d been on, someone else had caught onto her trail. They’d accessed the back door of her VPN and traced her to her desktop, where they’d seized control for about thirty seconds and threatened her to keep away from the powwow at the event center last Thursday. Whoever that someone was hadn’t wanted any competition in breaking up the party.
Fingers poised over her keyboard, Cheyenne froze. “What if they weren’t trying to keep potential competition off the grid?”
Knowing what she now did about that little operation—mainly that she’d blindly run into a FRoE sting they’d been working on for who knew how long—getting anonymous warnings to back off her search when she’d put all the details together last week didn’t seem like a mindless attempt to bully her into being afraid.
“What if they were trying to warn me away from what obviously wasn’t safe for anyone?” Cheyenne shrugged. “They don’t know that was me. It’s more likely they didn’t want some low-level street thug getting in the way. Extra paperwork and all that when they book more criminals than expected—if the FRoE handles paperwork.”
Shaking the whole scenario out of her head, the halfling decided she’d follow up later. Right now, she wanted to know if anything had popped up about Durg, the broken-tusked bastard who’d put a bullet through her best friend.
Cheyenne checked every entry point on her VPN server, which was airtight after whoever it was had taken over her desktop. She logged onto the dark web and found her way to the Borderlands forum hidden under the title Third Quarter Projections.
The first three threat titles at the top of the forum told her more than she needed to know. Things were out of control.
“A chick can’t disappear for five days anymore without the whole world losing their magical freakin’ minds.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“This is insane.” Cheyenne clicked on the first new topic. Before she had a chance to take a peek at the explosive comments on that engaging subject, she got a private message in the corner of her screen. It was gu@rdi@n104, one of the forum admins, and the only one she’d had any communication with. So far.
gu@rdi@n104: Look who decided to show up again. You’re one of those fashionably late kinda people, huh?
Cheyenne blew some strands of wayward hair off her forehead and settled back in her chair to think of a quick, flippant response.
ShyHand71: Wouldn’t it be the best if we didn’t have shit to
