Blood Bound Page 54


Before he moved out, Cam would have to repaint the entire bathroom. As would I, in my own apartment.

I grabbed a contractor bag—a big, thick black garbage bag, like building contractors use—from beneath the kitchen sink while Cam dug up a couple of pairs of thick dishwashing gloves, and I held the bag while he scooped the wet rubble into it, so I wouldn’t have to move my injured arm too much. Then he walked the trash to the apartment complex’s Dumpster while I used the high-pressure setting on the showerhead to spray the remaining tiny bits of char and ash down the drain. After a final scrub with a disposable sponge and some bathroom cleaner, the shower was fit to use once more.

“Thanks for doing all this,” I said, settling onto a bar stool while Cam pulled open the fridge.

He glanced at me over the open door. “I’d do more, if you’d let me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.

“You hungry?” Cam asked, pulling two bottles of water from the fridge. “Fajitas wouldn’t take long….”

“Shouldn’t we focus on finding out who’s trying to kill Hadley? Or who’s selling Skilled blood transfusions to known criminals? Or both?”

Cam closed the fridge and eyed me across the counter, his hands flat on the tile. “You were just shot. You need rest, water and food.”

“I don’t have time for any of that.” The monster who wanted Hadley dead wasn’t going to put his horrific mission on hold just so I could take a nap.

“Okay, then, you grab my laptop, Hunter’s cell phone and his bank statement, and see if you can’t find out where he got this super-Skilled blood transfusion while I make dinner. Because I’m starving.”

I considered arguing that with his help, the detective work would go much faster. But I wasn’t entirely sure that was true—too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen. Also, he’d already started pulling beef and vegetables from the fridge.

And I was a little hungry…

“Laptop’s in my bedroom, on the dresser,” he said, when my lack of objection seemed to indicate surrender.

“Fine. But make it fast.” I waved one arm at the spread of colorful peppers, tomatoes and red meat now covering the kitchen peninsula. And only then did it occur to me that he hadn’t pressed for the explanation I owed him. I wasn’t sure why he’d forgotten—could that be attributed to the sight of me nearly naked?—but I wasn’t going to remind him.

I stopped in his bedroom doorway, surprised to realize that even after six years and at least one move, he still had the same furniture we’d shared for two of our three years together, in college. Same scarred upright chest of drawers, which he was still calling a dresser. Same weight bench in the corner, ancient free weights stacked by the wall. Same simple iron-frame headboard with stupid decorative balls topping the posts. I wondered if the mattress still squealed, or if he’d replaced it.

Curious, I almost sat on the bed to test it, but then my gaze found the laptop and its cord on top of the chest of drawers, and I remembered why I’d come in the first place. And it wasn’t to try out Cam’s mattress. No matter how hard memory and nostalgia tried to argue otherwise.

At the peninsula again, I plugged in the laptop and dug Hunter’s phone and bank statement from my satchel.

I started with the statement. I’d been over it several times before, but this time I was looking for a big expense, not a big deposit. I wasn’t sure how a Skilled blood transfusion would work but I was sure it would be expensive, and I was sure it would have to have been done—and thus paid for—very recently, considering how quickly it had faded from his blood signature.

Unfortunately, the period covered by the bank statement ended the week before—the payment from the Tower syndicate was literally the last entry. Which meant that any transactions made in the past eight days would go on the next reporting cycle, and until then, they’d be accessible online only.

“Hey, you said Hunter paid most of his bills online, right? Did you notice whether he has online access at his bank? Statements in his inbox, or something like that?” Though he clearly got printed statements, too…

Cam looked up from the peppers he was chopping. “Yeah, I think so. But you can’t log in without his password.”

“Fortunately, we have his account number….” I held up the bank statement, then set it on the counter and crossed the room to grab Hunter’s laptop from the box of supplies Cam had brought in to restock. “And if he’s anything like the rest of the country, he probably uses onepassword—or variations of one password—for most of his accounts. I’m guessing he’s smart enough to use something random, but not smart enough to keep all the variations straight. Which means he probably keeps a list.”

Cam scraped the peppers from the cutting board into the skillet. “Well, if it’s on his hard drive it isn’t called ‘top secret keys to invading my privacy,’ or anything else convenient. And I didn’t find a notebook or calendar, or anything it could have been written on.”

I set Hunter’s laptop on the bar next to Cam’s and pressed the power button. “Nobody writes anything down on paper anymore. But what’s the one thing people never leave the house without?”

Cam looked up from the skillet, challenging grin intact. “Underwear. Or would you like to prove me wrong?”

I rolled my eyes and logged in to Cam’s wireless network. “Cell phone. Most of them have a notepad feature, and you know what most people keep on it?”

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