Page 33 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I updated the first hardware node in four minutes. The second took less than three. The replacement near the fire escape seated cleanly into the hidden bracket I had installed before, its new casing matte and dull enough to disappear into the old metal shadow of the window frame. I checked the one I’d placed in her bedroom and adjusted the angle so I could watch her whenever she allowed herself to sleep.

At seven minutes and forty-two seconds, the work was finished.

I should be thinking about leaving.

I didn’t even pretend to move toward the door. Instead, I stood in the center of her living room and listened to the quiet. Then I moved to her desk.

Her monitors were dark. Her laptop was gone with her, which disappointed me more than it should have. The secondary machine sat powered down and quiet, a little trap waiting just for me. I did not wake it. She would have expected me to be tempted after the crossword. She would have built something new around the Watcher file. Probably several somethings.

Good.

Let her think of me.

Let her plan for me.

The thought made my fingers flex once.

There were new sticky notes on the monitor.

Check assumptions, not just logs.

He wants reaction.

Do not let him set the terms.

I looked at the last one for a long time.

Too late, little ghost hunter. The terms had already been set. She simply did not know how far.

On the desk, beside the keyboard, lay a pen.

A cheap blue ballpoint.

It was nothing special. The kind sold in ten-packs at pharmacies and office supply stores, the kind people stole from banks or left in drawers until the ink dried. The cap was chewed at the edge, not badly, just enough to leave little dents along the plastic. She had probably done it while thinking. Or while annoyed. Or while staring at a line of data that refused to become useful no matter how hard she glared at it. Oy maybe while she was thinking about me.

I picked it up.

That was my first mistake. The second was noticing the warmth that moved through me when I held it, not physical warmth exactly. It was cold plastic. Ordinary. Worth maybe twelve centsif bought in bulk. There was no rational reason for my pulse to shift over a cheap pen with bite marks on the cap.

Except her mouth had been there.

The thought was immediate, unacceptable, and utterly intoxicating. I looked down at the pen in my gloved hand. Then at the desk. Then at the door.

I slipped the pen into the inside pocket of my jacket. The movement was so smooth it happened before I could begin arguing with myself.

Then the argument started.

A pen was evidence. A missing object, however small, was exactly the kind of thing Kit might notice, especially now. She photographed her apartment. She catalogued everything. She counted everything. She knew her space the way I knew systems, by expected pattern and deviation. Taking anything was foolish, unnecessary, impulsive.

I reached into my jacket to return it. My fingers closed around the pen. I stood there with it in my hand, halfway between theft and correction. Then I let it go back into my pocket.

Not everything I did needed to be defensible, which was a very dangerous thought.

I carried it with me into her bedroom.

The room was dimmer than the rest of the apartment, the blinds half-drawn against the afternoon light. Thin strips of gray fell across the floor, the bed, the chair near the closet. It smelled faintly of clean laundry, lemon cleaner, and her.

The bed was unmade again, but only one side. The same side as before. The blanket had been pushed down, the sheet twisted where her legs had caught it, pillow angled slightly toward the window. There was something oddly intimate about the one-sided disorder. It did not look careless. It looked like evidence of a woman who slept badly, briefly, and alone, curling into one narrow piece of space as if taking up too much room would give the world another angle of attack.