Page 25 of Private Exhibit
Devon stared at his phone, waiting for a voicemail notification to appear, but nothing happened.Weird. He closed out the phone app and reopened it to no avail. Just a missed call. Nothing else.
The room suddenly grew dark, the desk illumination dimming from inactivity. Devon quickly put his phone away and touched the desktop.Gods. The Rosses would have to wait. He needed to focus.
Devon got back to work, inwardly talking himself through it, setting small goals so he wouldn't be distracted by thoughts of family and friends.
And attraction, he thought, glancing at the morgue door before studiously focusing on the desk again.
By the end of the day, he'd made a decent dent in the stack of files, but there was still a lot of work to do. Devon clocked out, wondering if he should go saygoodnightto Dr. Gerard—who still hadn't come out of the morgue—then decided to go straight home. It would be rush hour outside. Lots of traffic and people. The sooner Devon could get through that mess, the better.
When he finally made it home, Devon put his back to the door and let out a heavy sigh.
“Hey,” Oliver called, getting up from his side of the dining table. “You alright?”
Devon nodded. “Traffic.”
“Ugh.
“Yeah.” Devon set down his empty lunch bag, took off his shoes, lined them up on the mat, then carried his bag to the kitchen.
“So how was it?” Oliver asked, leaning back against the counter.
“Pretty nice,” Devon admitted. “Very quiet, and I got to keep the lights off all day. Oh!” Devon whirled around to face him, feeling a grin take over his face. “Atlas. Two-Fifty. D,” he said, emphasizing each word.
Oliver's eyes got wider with every syllable. “No fucking way,” he gasped.
Devon nodded.
“Holy shit. Seriously? Is it amazing? Tell me it's amazing.”
“Better. Oh my gods. It's so fast. And flawless. I've barely scratched the surface of all the things it can do, but oh my gods. It's incredible.”
“And I'm officially jealous. They didn't even have one of those at Turner, and that place was high-end,” Oliver said,naming the insurance company where he used to work. He shook his head, a look of sadness flickering across his face.
Devon winced.Poor Oli. His friend had a great, steady position at Turner, until he'd simply not shown up one day, too busy tracking down Dannika's last movements. Oliver hadn't been able to get a job since. With a no-call-no-show on his record, nobody wanted to hire him. That, combined with the debts Oliver had piled up—spending all his money on trying to find answers—meant the boy would be back on the streets if it weren't for Devon paying the rent.
Damn it. Devon couldn't wait to have a chance to look up Dannika's autopsy file. Then maybe the detective's report, if there was one somewhere. Oliver couldn't access the former and was afraid to go after the latter. But Devon at least had hospital credentials now. He could probably access the servers remotely, fooling the system into thinking he was logging in from one of their own terminals. Then he could at least get Oliversomeanswers.
Which had to happen sooner rather than later. Once Devon was dead, Oliver would be completely out of luck. Devon would be a ghost, of course, and eventually able to interact with the physical world, which meant he'd be able to use a computer again, but until that happened, he'd have to watch, helpless, as Oliver struggled on his own.
And Oliver claimed he couldn't see ghosts. Devon suspected that wasn't strictly true, but he'd never wanted to push the issue. Still, if it were true, it would mean Oliver not being able to see him.
Then they'd both be truly alone.
“Gods,” Oliver breathed, cutting into Devon's thoughts. “Can you imagine the things we could do with one of those?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“I mean, compared to these,” Oliver added, gesturing at their second-hand setup.
“Oh!” Devon exclaimed, realizing Oliver was still thinking of the Atlas 250D. “No kidding,” Devon whispered as his imagination took over. They could run hacks at lightning speed. Get into multiple places at once, the sheer processing power putting to shame every one of their own computers combined.
“Speaking of our ancient computers,” Oliver said as he headed back to his side of the dining table. “I heard yours wind up this morning. Wasn't sure if you were running something or if you had a drive heating up again.”
Devon started to shake his head, knowing he hadn't left any hacks running while the computers were otherwise idle. “No!” he said, breathing a laugh. “I logged in remotely from work. Doctor Gerard had a…patient,” he said, sparing Oliver the wordcorpse, “that he couldn't identify, so I used one of my programs to track down the guy's name.” Devon grimaced. “Turns out he…did something really bad, years ago,” he carefully explained, leaving out the details. Knowing Oliver, between the gang rape and the suicide, it would hit too close to home. “I was able to hack into a hospital over on the east coast, and found an exact match to his DNA profile. It looked like he moved and changed his name at some point,” Devon went on. “ItwasSteven Mason, but now it's Bill Jaan, which is about as generic as you can–”
“Oh!” Oliver blurted out, interrupting him. “I almost forgot.Grimposted a new job this afternoon.”
Devon gasped, then rushed to his computers and logged into the Gentleman Hackers chatroom. Sure enough, there was a new item on the task list.
