Page 49 of Being Lost

My VP stays at the door as I walk back into the room, tearing my filthy t-shirt over my head as I do. Opening a drawer, I take a clean one out.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten.”

Fuck.I never sleep so late. Caused by the whisky, obviously. I stretch, then slip my clean shirt over my head, raking my fingers through my hair.

“You look like shit, Brother,” my VP helpfully observes.

It will have to do. No time to take a shower but… “Just give me two minutes and I’ll be down.”

I divert into the bathroom for a much-needed piss, which I do in the unmanly manner of sitting down so I can save time brushing my teeth and getting rid of my whisky-fouled morning breath at the same time.

Ignoring the men using jackhammers in my skull, I race downstairs.

Patsy’s in the clubroom, her eyes widening at my dishevelled state. She looks like she’s hesitating to even speak to me, but in the end can’t stop herself asking tightly, “Beth…?”

I hold up my hand. “Soon, Patsy. Demon needs to update me on something first. I’ll come get you as soon as I can, okay?”

Then ignoring anything else she’s got to say, and having no time to attempt an apology, I head straight for my office.

Token picks up the phone. “Demon said to call him back. We ran out of small talk waiting for you.”

I nod as he hits the numbers. “You know anything?”

“Not yet. Demon wanted to wait for you.”

The call connects.

“Lost?”

“I’m here, along with Dart and Token. What you got, Demon?”

The Colorado prez doesn’t waste time. “Got Beef and Ink here with me as well as Cad.” He pauses, and I hear him take a breath. “As Beth’s the one with the authority to open the safe deposit box on her mother’s behalf, Ink had to bring her in on the fact that we were interested as to what was inside. Well, you know women. She was curious as fuck after Ink told her, so she took the morning off work. Ink and she were at the bank as soon as it opened.”

“You going to tell me there was nothing there?” As usual, I expect to be disappointed. Had to be too simple to get answers straight off the bat.

“Gonna tell you the opposite, Brother. There was shit there. An envelope buried right at the bottom.”

“What was in it? What have you found?” I sit up straighter, my hangover all but forgotten. I notice the sparks of interest in my brothers’ eyes. “Demon, don’t keep us hanging. What have you discovered?”

“Nothing as yet.”

What?“What the fuck d’you mean, Demon? What was it, an empty envelope with nothing inside? Any address written on it?” Anything at-fucking-all would help at this point. But there was something about the way he said it that makes me suspect he’s toying with me. I glare at the phone. “Spit it out, Demon.”

He snorts. It comes down the line clearly. “Not yanking your chain, Brother, just can’t give you much right now. The envelope was tucked into a folder containing Phil’s will. Well, that’s obsolete now, but Patsy had clearly overlooked taking it out. Maybe she didn’t want to take responsibility for it—”

“Demon,” I growl.

He puts me out of my misery. “There were three floppy discs inside. Cad’s been working on getting into that shit.”

Floppy discs?I haven’t seen one of those in years. “They password locked or something?” Surely Cad could break that. Token would be able to.

“Hey, Lost, it’s Cad here.” I hear Demon’s tech guy’s voice and raise my chin though he can’t see me. “We’re talking about shit from twenty years back. Had to find what they were written in first, then I had to get Windows 95 emulated on a laptop.”

“And?” Dart prompts, getting as impatient as me.

Token, I notice, looks as excited as a historian would be hearing a description of archaeological finds from an ancient dig. “What did you find, Cad?”

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