Page 38 of Dragon's Desire

"I do some of my best work naked, but since you asked nicely," he turned and walked into his room, pulling off the towel just before closing the door.

Kiercy really needed to figure her shit out.

When he came out wearing just a pair of pants, she asked, "How do we find him?"

He picked up something that looked like a tablet with a pistol grip.

"One of the things he gave me was this scanner, but it hasn't been calibrated correctly because I'm not getting any useful information."

Then he looked up at her, his eyes going to her cleavage above the towel she had wrapped around her.

"I'm going to get dressed, and we can figure it out when I get back."

The only clothes Kiercy had were the ones she'd fallen from a second-story window wearing. They were a mess. She used a little magic to clean them up as best she could and put them back on. They didn't feel just out of the wash fresh, but she didn't have to worry about shards of glass either. It would have to do for now.

When she came out, she saw that Peter had hooked the scanner up to a laptop and was typing furiously.

"What are you doing?" Kiercy asked.

"I'm changing the coding. If I get this right, it will scan for Xander tech. There were still plenty of items missing that we haven't recovered. Legermain doesn't seem like the sharing type. If any of that stuff is still out there, chances are that it's Legermain with the equipment."

"Where did you learn to do something like that?"

"Do you want to swap life stories, or do you want to catch this bastard?"

Kiercy fell silent, and Peter went back to work. After three hours and a dictionaries worth of curse words in various languages, Peter said, "Yes! I got it." He paused. "I think."

He handed Kiercy the goggles and said, "Can you leave the apartment and walk around the block for me?"

"Is this some subtle way of telling me to get out of your hair?"

"No. I prefer you in my hair."

Kiercy snatched the goggles from him and walked away.

Getting out of his apartment was actually probably the best thing she could have done for herself. It helped clear her head. By the time she got back, Peter was still with the scanner.

"It didn't work?" she asked.

"Yes and no," Peter said. "It works, but its range is extremely limited, and I think I might have killed the battery life. If we use it like this, it's going to take a lot of driving around until we can possibly get a signal." He let out a frustrated sigh. "The coding is complicated, and I can't tell if it's a firmware issue or a hardware issue. I mean, I can keep toying with it, but that means at least another twenty-four hours of work, not counting sleep or any other activities."

Kiercy rolled her eyes and said, "If we just give it greater range and more battery life, we'd be all set."

"That 'just' is doing a lot of work there."

"I could try some magic," she offered.

Peter raised an eyebrow.

"I've tried scrying Legermain before, but he's protected himself from divination spells. But I'd bet he hasn't specifically protected the chips in each individual piece of tech he stole. If the scanner is meant to find them, I could use divination to make it search for them at a greater distance. Making the battery last longer is just simple augmentation," she added.

"Do you think it would work?" he asked.

"Well, Gil's tech seems built to integrate meta’s abilities, so it should."

"What are the risks?"

"Anything from it shutting down to it exploding."

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