Page 64 of The Fighter
I held up the wristband. “In 2433 this wristband was nineteen years old? That’s crazy.”
“Oh, now I understand. I’ve never been good at math, so I didn’t catch that part.” She shrugged. “It’s unusual, but not everyone wants the newest gadgets.”
“No.” I was quiet and thoughtful. “But maybe his phobia about new technology can be helpful to us.Ifwe can get access to the information on it, that is?”
Raven pointed to the burner. “Maybe there’s a log on the last printed papers.”
“Wow, you’re really serious about being bad at math, aren’t you?” I gave her a smile. “Marcus died eighteen years after Dina. I doubt this burner existed in 2415, around the time of her death.”
“Ahh, but what if one of his last printed papers was a confession of what he did to her?” Raven tapped her temple with a sly smile. “The first rule of investigation, boss, never rule anything out.”
She was so bloody cute at that moment that I had to get my brain to stop thinking about all the things I wanted to do with her.
Raven kept looking through the box while I worked on the burner and the wristband.
“I’m sorry, Raven, but I think we’ll need an expert to access this. It’s completely dead and I’m not getting anything.”
“Give it to me.” Raven reached for the wristband and placed it around her wrist. “Maybe it needs heat or movement.”
“It’s an oldie, so yeah, probably.”
Raven sat back against the bed tapping on the wristband, but it remained dead. “Well, this is disappointing.”
“I warned you not to expect too much.”
She shrugged but kept her eyes on the wristband. “It would have been nice if he had left a confession letter.”
My laugh made her look up. “I agree. The criminals really ought to think of us poor detectives and make it a bit easier to solve their crimes.”
Raven smiled back at me. “At least we agree on something.”
“Come on.” I got up and reached out my hand to pull her up. “We’re going to the station to see what’s hidden on that thing.”
As we stood by her bed, I couldn’t help a small complaint. “You know what bums me out, Raven?”
“What?”
“That all that talk about your bed being the reason you couldn’t invite me in was just an excuse, and so was what happened at my house.” I picked up a picture of the diary that was in my closet. “A part of me wanted to believe that you really came to see and that you enjoyed making out with me.”
Raven’s eyes fell from my face to my shoulder and her voice was low when she answered, “I did.”
I scoffed low.
“Leo, it’s not what you think.”
I held up a hand to stop her. “You’re an opportunist, Raven, and you worked with what you had. I’m not blaming you. I’m just sad that I got caught up in your net.”
“What net? I thought you liked making out with me.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t like. You took what you needed and left me with nothing.”
Her eyebrows were close together and she bit her lip. “That was never my int…”
Cutting her off, I moved to the door. “At least now that I know it was all just a hoax, I can focus on my job again.”
Raven stood with her shoulders low and her arms hanging by her sides. She didn’t have her usual feisty energy, and I had to call out from the door. “Are you coming or what?”
We hardly spoke on the way to the station and were disappointed to find that our gadget expert had already left for the day. I called him up and he explained how to unlock the wristband and where to find the extractor that we would need to do the job.
