Page 62 of Collin: Episodes 7-9
Mr. Reevesworth was out when Collin made it back, but Mr. Moreau was waiting for him. He saw to Collin’s needs and cuddled him for all of five minutes before leaving for an afternoon consultation at the airport. Head full of too much new information to listen to more podcasts, Collin wandered over to Ash’s dungeon.
He knocked with his accustomed rap-tap-tap.
Ash called from within, “Enter, ye poor fellow supplicant.”
Collin pushed open the door. Ash was lying on the floor, on the camping pad, inside the sleeping bag, a keyboard on the floor in front of him and three monitors spaced out around him. That was…odd. But it was Ash. He’d comment on it later if he felt like it. Instead, Collin dropped to the floor with his back to a filing cabinet facing away from the screens.
“What are we fellow supplicants in?”
“The vocalizations of the ancient emperors of Han.” Ash scrunched up his nose and typed aggressively with two fingers on the keyboard, then pulled another keyboard out of the shadows and touch-typed rapidly on that one.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m talking with friends on the dark web. And I’m monitoring a couple of things. And there’s this program I want to finish making.”
“What does it do?”
“Helps me map IP addresses.” Ash waved his hand in a way that said he really didn’t want to talk about it.
Collin sighed and stuck his headphones in. He might as well get more listening in even if he didn’t want to. At least he knew the difference between cricket and rugby now.
He fell asleep listening to two self-described blokes arguing over football, which was actually soccer.
He woke up to Paulsen and Ash talking. Paulsen, in a pair of jeans and a winter coat, sat on one chair and Ash on another. The camping mat was rolled up and put away, and both men were staring at a screen. Collin sighed and readjusted his dark glasses. Too bad he had to wear them for another twenty-four hours.
“Hey, Paulsen.”
“Ryker.” Paulsen nodded. “Our guy here is just showing me that tape. We know the name of the girl in the video feed from yesterday.”
“The one in the room with the hacker who’s watching my laptop?”
“Yeah.”
Ash spun around on his chair. “It’s Dana Reevesworth.”
“Fuck.” Collin rubbed his face. Was he surprised? No. Disappointed? Yes.
Paulsen sighed. “I’d like to know where this room is.”
Ash grinned. “I’ve narrowed it down to this region. What can you do with the footage and a region?”
Paulsen smirked and rubbed his hands together. “You’d be surprised. Since there’s a child involved in an illegal activity, I can ask a few professional contacts for a bit of support. They have really nice databases.”
“Is Dana Reevesworth actually related or a fraud?”
“Damian says the DNA test looks legit at the moment.” Paulsen opened his laptop and set it up on the edge of Ash’s desk. “So, we’re looking at it from that standpoint first, and we’ll follow other leads later. Between this and everything else, I’m going to need to hire more guys.”
“People,” Ash said. “Hire people.”
“Um…yeah.” Paulsen shot Ash a hard look.
“Like you should get grandmas and housekeepers and weird people. They know things.” Ash hummed to himself as he typed in commands.
Paulsen laughed and rubbed his face. “What would you know about private investigations?”
“When I was in jail, the only thing I had to read was the complete works of Sherlock Holmes. And he had all these weird people he consulted. Like beggars and stuff. Because they see things.”
Paulsen chuckled ruefully. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m taking advice from fiction.”
