– IX –



I half-expected for my apartment door to hang off its hinges when I got there. It didn’t. In fact it looked just fine. I took a deep breath, grabbed the box of doughnuts a bit tighter and unlocked the door. The apartment stank of cigarette smoke but that was about it. It wasn’t trashed, there was no blood anywhere, nothing. I kicked my wet shoes off and went into the kitchen. I needed my coffee bad. So bad that my hands were shaking. I started the coffeemaker, grabbed a doughnut out of the box, and went into the living room.

Dylan was sitting on the couch, one bare foot underneath him, the other one tapping toes on the carpet. He had my laptop balancing on his knees and he was frowning at something thoughtfully. I moved the half-full ash tray onto the table and sat next to him. He glanced up and grabbed my wrist. He pulled me closer and took a huge bite out of my doughnut. I just hemmed at that.

“Found anything interesting?” I asked.

“Kinda”, he mumbled with his mouthful. “Mmm… Here… Check it out…”

He moved the laptop onto the couch and got up.

“Be right back”, he said. “I smell coffee.”

“Uh huh”, I looked at the screen, chewing my doughnut absent mindedly.

It seemed like he was looking up Dinah Waters – the PI that showed up on my doorstep last night. I blinked when I saw a strange little program running in the right corner of the screen. It kept spitting out some code, flashing green letters every ten seconds or so .

“Here”, he said and looked up, startled.

Jesus, he could move quietly when he wanted to. He handed me a mug full of coffee, dropped the box with doughnuts on the couch and sat down, his own coffee mug attached to his mouth.

“What the hell is this?” I pointed at the program window.

“Makes searching easier”, he said, pulling his feet up. “And makes it a hell of a lot harder for anyone to trace me.”

“So what, now you are a computer genius?” I grabbed a doughnut.

“I am not a genius”, he snorted. “But I know some very handy stuff.”

“There are at least fifteen Dinah Waters here”, I gulped some coffee down. “Any way you can pull up pictures?”

“No need”, he shook his head. “This one…” he pointed to the third from the bottom link. “I looked at it and it’s the closest one.”

I clicked on the link.

“Still no picture”, I noted while reading whatever was on the page.