Page 16 of How to Hack a Hellhound
And he had a notebook and pen in his hand. Well, shit. That meant he was in writer mode, which was never good for anyone.Yay. I couldn’t wait to be asked all sorts of questions about being drugged. I opened the door and let him in.
“Are you ok? How are you feeling? I heard you were…” Toby trailed off as he came in, and then he started poking around the living room.
The place had an open floor plan, so the living room led into the kitchen. It felt spacious for a small pool house, or whatever it was, and it was sparsely but expensively decorated. There was a comfy looking couch, a television stand type thing with a gas fireplace built in, and a large television mounted above it. There was a kitchen island that separated the living room from the kitchen area. Toby was currently opening the cabinets and drawers on the tv stand. I had no idea what he was doing.
“I’m fine. I’ll have to thank Dexter,” I said.
Toby stopped and looked at me. “Why?”
“Um, because he saved me from being assaulted or killed or sold into sex trafficking… again.” I chuckled mirthlessly at my last comment.
“No he didn’t,” Toby said, staring at me curiously. “You don’t remember who brought you here?” He opened his notebook and jotted something down.
I barely resisted rolling my eyes. I felt like I should just get the story out of the way so Toby didn’t ask me a million questions. “Aiden said Dexter brought me home. That’s what I was going off of. I was drugged by the bartender, and I remember him helping me into a back room, and then a tall guy with dark hair busted in, and I think he knocked James out, but I’m not sure. Everything is fuzzy and disjointed, because, you know, I was drugged. Then I think the dark haired guy helped me to a car, and I feel like he put James in the trunk, but that’s kind of crazy.”
Toby looked down guiltily at that. Ok, so maybe that wasn’t crazy. I had to remember who I was dealing with here. MaybeToby was a vampire and he had minions who brought home people for him to suck blood from.
I tried to muster up some horror at that, but Toby was nice, if a little weird, and he hadn’t hurt me or Aiden. If hewasa vampire, I bet he was so clumsy and squeamish that Dexter probably had to do most of the bloodletting.
I stifled a chuckle at that thought, because I could totally see Toby going to bite some person and missing their vein like three times and even the person getting exasperated. I pictured some guy saying,Hello, you’re just poking holes in me now and barely getting any blood. What kind of vampire are you?
Ok, so maybe Toby wasn’t a vampire. But he was still looking guilty, and he had said Dexter was a hellhound, whatever the hell that meant. Based on my rescue experience, I was guessing something with fire. If James was a pile of ashes right now, I didn’t really feel bad about that. I probably should, because I had thought of him as an almost friend, but he’d drugged me. Maybe not caring if he was dead made me a bad person, but I didn’t really care.
“Toby, is the guy who drugged me dead?” I asked.
“Ummm, well, I mean… I’m nottechnicallysure what happened to him,” Toby hedged.
Uh huh. Right. Nottechnicallysure.
“Who brought me here?” I asked, trying a different line of questioning.
That was apparently easier, because Toby brightened up. “Oh, that was Liam. He’s one of Dexter’s… brothers. Sort of. He was at the club and saw what happened.” He shrugged, and then he looked guilty and started poking around the cabinet again.
“Liam was the tall guy with dark hair?” I asked.
Toby mumbled, “Mmhmm,” but he didn’t turn around. He was now kneeling on the floor, ass up in the air as he looked underneath the cabinet.
I rubbed my head. Toby was a lot for me to deal with on a good day, and today was not my best day. “Did you lose something?” I finally asked. I was tired, and my head hurt, and I just wanted a hot shower, and instead I got Toby being… Toby.
“No?” he said, looking up at me. It was more of a question than an answer, though.
“What are you doing? I feel like I’m on a prank show or something,” I muttered.
Toby started laughing a little hysterically as he stood up and dusted himself off. “A prank show! Haha, yes! A prank show! Where people film youwithout your knowledgebecause they think they’re watching over you when really they’re just beingcreepy as fuckbecausepeople do not spy on others without their consent.”
Then he stared at me. Like I was supposed to know what the fuck he was talking about.
“Toby, I’m tired, and I had a rough night, and I amnotspying on anyone, and I have no idea what you’re talking about, so maybe you could let me go take a hot shower and then give me a ride back to my apartment?”
Toby just muttered something under his breath about cameras and my apartment, then he walked over to the kitchen island where my laptop was set up and closed it (even though the screensaver was on). Then he stared at me, looking nervous.
“Just spit it out, whatever it is,” I sighed.
“If someonewaswatching you, like through your camera on your computer or little cameras scattered throughout the house, haha, then I’m sure that person would only be doing it because they were trying to watch out for you and make sure nothing bad happened to you, even if it was a total and complete breach of your privacy, but sometimes people who are…different… don’t always know what’s normal and appropriate.” Toby looked at me beseechingly.
“Is Dexter spying on me?” I asked, tossing the idea around in my head. Did I mind if Dexter was spying on me? I mean, I probablyshouldmind, but he’d rescued me, and obviously I wasn’t out of danger yet, because I’d almost gotten myself taken again last night. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of what would have happened if someone hadn’t been there watching.
Toby looked a little horrified, though. “Dexter would never spy on you!”
