Page 64 of Preying Heart
Obviously, I’ll have to forego the hunt this year, despite having reserved the tags from the game department.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve uploaded all of Remi’s NFTs and with her under supervision, she’s been auctioning them off—slowly, one by one, as to not flood the market. It’s addictive to watch the prices rise as she sets them out and gets attention in the marketplace. Lucy bought the Loud Lioness named Lucy, and of course, Remi reserved her Loud Lioness Lokelani for herself.
The Loud Lioness Lorenza was auctioned off for over twenty thousand dollars, and on deck are the lionesses: Lupe, Lilah, Leanna, and Linx.
It was so exciting I couldn’t sleep, watching the bids go higher and higher.
I wake up late, not surprisingly, and find Remi has already taken Glock out.
“Can we go online?” she asks before wishing me a good morning. “I want to see the bids.”
“They were exploding last night.” I yawn. “Don’t you want to eat anything?”
“Not until we see how the Loud Lioness League is doing,” she says. “I need to go on social media and whip it up more. Answer questions, engage with the community. Why can’t you let me go on without having to wait for you?”
There she goes again, bugging me for access.
“I can’t let them trace you back to Divine, Idaho. There are agencies that spy on everyone. They expect me to go online, and if they captured data, all they have is Tristan Summer selling NFTs under the name Lioness Lokelani.”
“In other words, you’re impersonating a female artist.” Her brows furrow with that rebellious expression I know too well. “What happens if the community finds out you’re male? They’ll reject the lionesses and we’ll lose money.”
“They won’t find out.”
“Oh yeah? I heard there was a famous mystery author who turned out to be male, and ‘she’ lost her fan base. It’s tacky to do female NFTs as a male.”
“But you are female!”
“Except not according to the spooks tracking the online access. I thought you said if we use VPNs we’ll be safe.”
“The VPNs only hide our location. It doesn’t hide what we do on the blockchain or what we post on social media. They have artificial intelligence to correlate everything we do.”
“Then why bother hiding iftheyknow everything?” She makes air quotes around “they.”
“Because there are other theys that could harm you.”
“Who?” She crosses her arms. “I think you and Lucy are keeping me here scared and frightened so you can control what I do.”
“Someone killed your foster father, and someone was after you at that casino.”
“I don’t believe you.” She juts her chin at me. “We’ve been here for weeks, and no one’s come after me. We’re just here cooling our heels while you wait for my baby to be born. And then you and Lucy will pressure me to give it up for adoption. You’ll get paid off and share it with me, and then we go our separate ways. This smells like a big con game, and I’m the mark.”
“You’re not the mark. I’m helping you sell NFTs and own crypto.”
“No, you have the keys to my wallet, which means it’s all yours,” she counters. “Don’t think I’m dumb. You’re the guy doing all of this online.”
“I’m giving you the wallet.”
“Except you set it up. Tell you what, Heath Ruger, if you want me to trust you, then I need to distrust you first. Give me a brand-new pristine wallet and let me set it up. Let me ‘own’ the Lokelani account. Transfer it to my own private hardware wallet where I keep my PIN and key phrases private.”
I swipe my hand over my sweating forehead. I know when I’m trapped. She has no reason to trust me.
“In that case, we should move our physical location. You should buy a pristine hardware wallet and set it up somewhere else. Yes, we’ll use VPN, but I don’t want your identity compromised and associated with my identity.”
“Are you proposing a field trip?” Her eyes brighten and a smile lights her face. “Can we please get off this mountain? Get away from this fortress? Because I’m getting cabin fever here. I go hiking and I know every inch of it. Glock and I have even crawled into the mineshaft, and we’re bored stiff. Meanwhile, all you do is sit on that computer day and night, watching my NFTs and my crypto balance.”
It takes me no time to make the decision.
I, too, am getting cabin fever. While I can’t take Remi hunting, I can arrange for a road trip. We can visit fall festivals, follow the rodeo circuit, and visit the backwoods for the fall foliage.
