Page 45 of Keys

“What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

I glanced up at the sound of Sweet’s voice. There was no telling how long I’d been staring at the screen in front of me, but the truth of what was there was a sucker punch to the fucking face anyway.

“You’re not going to believe this, because I don’t.” The only reason I managed to get the words out was because numbness had set in. “I fucked up even more than I already knew.” Though I’d mumbled that to myself, Sweet heard just fine as he came up to glance at the screen over my shoulder.

“How the hell did you fuck up?”

“We can count the ways as I show you what I found.”

“Wait,” he stopped me as I scrolled up. “Is this about Keys?”

I nodded my head and turned back to what I was doing. “She has an account, an older one that was opened when she was a teenager. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. When I couldn’t find any trace of her family or background, I thought maybe if I tracked the money, it would lead to them.”

“Sure, so what did you find? She connected to the Irish mafia or something?”

“Worse.”

“What the fuck?” Sweet stepped back and stopped looking at the screen and turned to me instead. “What the hell could be worse?”

“She was hiding the fact that her father is a fucking United States Senator.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Wish I was. Not only is he a well-known politician, but…” I left off, still unsure how to wrap my mind around the rest of what I’d just put into place over the past couple of hours.

“Hey! Snap the fuck out of it and just lay it on me, man.”

“You know that chick, Aubrey that I kicked out at the party the other night?”

“Yeah.” His voice was weary as he seemingly started connecting the same dots I had.

“I don’t know what kind of fucking scam those girls are running, but Aubrey is Keys’ sister. They’re both the daughters of Senator fucking Cassidy, and make no fucking mistake, he’s a complete asshole. Remember the shit that went down with the guys in Tallahassee? The whole reason they ended up taking over the gun run for that Canadian outfit?”

“Fucking hell. Do not tell me they’re all connected.” I sat silently and just waited since he didn’t want to hear the words. “You’re telling me that they are connected?”

“The esteemed Senator tried to hide his affiliation to the family, but there’s no doubting that he’s a part of it. His mom was the sister to the two cocksuckers in charge of that family. I guess he was able to swim under the radar when everything came out because of his last name being different and the fact that his mother had left Florida behind to get married young. He grew up in Atlanta. Not too far from them, but enough removed from the family that no one ever put him together with them when all that shit went down.”

“So, you’re telling me that Keys and this Aubrey chick - both of whom you dated - are linked to the family that caused all those issues for our Tallahassee boys and Crusher’s woman?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” I handed him some documents I printed off, but Sweet was too busy looking at what was actually on my computer screen to be bothered.

“What the fuck is that?”

I glared at the little red-headed demon cartoon that stomped back and forth across my screen with her arms flailing wildly about. “Best guess: that’s Keys shutting me down. I tripped some trigger when I found the Senator’s lawyer. The minute I downloaded these,” I told him while wiggling the papers in my hands again, “the little she-demon showed up and shut my ability to search down. This laptop is fried and compromised now.” I went ahead and shut it at that point.

“Is she able to get anything off of your shit?”

I shook my head. “No. You know how we use burner phones?” Sweet acknowledged that with a tip of his head. “Well, I do the same with laptops when I’m trying to track information down that might lead me down a path that I don’t want traced back to me.”

“How do you know she wasn’t watching or listening through it?” I stared at my President for a full minute before laughing. “What? I saw that expose the other night about those college kids who borrowed laptops from the school only to learn that someone was watching them through the cameras.”

“Jesus, Sweet. You think I’d be that stupid? I said these were like burners. Like a burner, the laptop is barebones. No cameras or microphones are in the mix. Best someone could do is run an IP trace, but I use a solid VPN and scrambler.”

“No clue what you just said.”

“It means my IP isn’t that easy to find. It reroutes the trace all over the world with something like 82 pings. If she takes the time to track them back, that’s on her, but I’m guessing she probably already has a good idea of who hacked her information. What you need to worry about, and find out, is why the women from her club don’t seem to know who the hell she is or that her sister has been under their noses this whole time too.”

Sweet clapped his hand down on my shoulder. “What’s in those papers?”

---