Page 64 of Love Her

One of my eyebrows crept up.

“Those kids are pervs of the highest order, Rhaim—and I know you, and you know me,” she said, and I grunted. “But they…film themselves. Doing things to women.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I said in a dark voice.

“Standard frat-ass shit, I know. But the thing is, they then send each other those videos. Like…bro-porn.”

That made me do a double-take. “What? Really?”

“Yeah. Intentionally. You can see them mugging for the camera sometimes—and they know the other one’s gonna watch it—I mean, how else would Zane wind up with two hundred gigs of his brother boning down on his phone? And another hundred and fifty of his own videos, which I’m assuming he sends over?”

“You mentioned a felony though?”

“Like ninety percent of the women are willing—to be fucked, even if they don’t know they’re being filmed. But in ten percent? They’re out of it. Passed out, I don’t know, drunk, or high, but severely unable to consent. And in a hundred percent of the films, he made sure you could see the women’s faces. Like, when they’re out of things, he does a slow scan of their faces then gives the camera a thumbs up.”

I began to adjust my plans from framing Zane for Bix’s murder to a simple double homicide.

“And, in today’s episode of reasons why I’m not straight—they text each other about it,” she went on. “I’m pretty sure they’re keeping score. That’s the exact same face I made, by the way, Rhaim. I want to erase it all, and then spritz my eyes with bleach.”

I closed my hand around the USB drive, making a fist. “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

“Me too. It’s hot—in an incriminating sense, not a sexy one. So how long should I keep it? I’ve got it on a locked external drive now, but?—”

“Seventy-two hours.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded. “Assuming you’ve got a list of Bix’s regulars you can use to lure him out on Friday night.”

“On it. I’ll pick the most irregular regular one.”

“Sound good. I’ll give you a location when I have it.”

She nodded, looked at the USB in my hand, and made the sign of the cross at me, as I got out of her Rivian.

34

LIA

Ihad my driver let me out at the front lobby. I’d dressed in power-beige this morning, monochromatic almost, from my shoulders down to my boots, so I looked like I belonged—it was like wearing office camo—plus I still had my badge in my purse, right next to the Ativan Dr. Genziani had given me.

I scanned through the lobby and the elevators, and took the first one up to the right floor, and three turns in an open-office concept later, I could see one of the glass cages, like the ones Rhaim and I had taken over, when we’d started on the IPO, only this time it was full of stuffy old men.

Including my father.

Including my uncle.

I froze.

I hadn’t seen him in person since my father had pulled him out of the fire—and I’d been crying then, that it hadn’t worked, that I hadn’t managed to kill him—and it was like a decade’s worth of tears that’d been stoppered up inside started flowing now, instinctually. I couldn’t stop them, and I hated the wayIbetrayedme.

“Miss Ferreo?” asked one of my father’s secretaries. She was overburdened with binders, probably catching the board up on all the work I had done before I’d been shoved out. “Are you all right?”

I was not all right.

I was twelve.

I was ten.

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