No Broken Beast by Snow Nicole

Author:Snow, Nicole
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Ice Lips Press
Published: 2019-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

15

Dead End (Clarissa)

I can’t get her words out of my head.

You’ll end up dead and take poor Deanna to the grave with you.

I sit, curled up on the couch with my knees hugging my chest, biting at my thumb knuckle. I’m watching without really seeing as Leo works at my laptop with the drive plugged into one of the USB ports.

He’s done something to it. Downloaded some kind of program. A lot of programs, really, and I didn’t get what he was saying about secure connections and VPNs and brute force encryption, but he seems to know what he’s doing.

That’s another thing I never knew about Leo.

He’s pretty freaking good with computers like this, understands cracking data.

Honestly, there are a lot of things I never knew about Leo. Why?

Was he lying to me when I fell in love with him twice? Or just trying to protect me?

I want to believe I loved the man he really was, and the secrets he hid were things I didn’t need to know, some inner darkness he didn’t want to keep whenever he was with me.

But now, I just don’t know.

I shouldn’t even be thinking about this right now.

I should be trying to think what hidden messages Deanna could’ve possibly left that would lead me to the password for the data.

Her face flashes in my mind—not as I want to remember her, but bloodied, bruised, frightened. I shudder, my heart hurting. Every word she said replays in my mind, but if she was hiding some clue for me in there, some phrase, some meaning...

I just can’t make the connection.

“You’re staring at me,” Leo murmurs, his thick fingers still rattling over the keyboard, his lips moving past the shadow of the hood.

I jerk, then blink, forcing a faint smile. “You’ve been playing stalker in the shadows for a while. It’s a little weird to see you sitting at my kitchen table instead of skulking around in the woods.”

A chuckle drifts out from under his hood. “I’ve got a portable solar charger out at my camp, but it’s not much to keep a laptop going for long.”

My throat feels full, and I cough.

God, I want to say it.

I want to tell him I’m freaking glad he’s here, glad he’s inside, glad he’s taking up this space in my life instead of hiding out like he thinks he’s some freaky monster who can only live in the shadows.

But the words dry up on my tongue. I make myself look away.

“You look stressed,” I deflect instead. “Maybe it’s break time?”

“Breaks aren’t a luxury we’ve got. What’s on this drive is our only leverage, our only damn chance.”

“What’s on that drive could kill us,” I say softly. “Once we know, we know...and giving them the drive for Deanna won’t erase that. Once we see it, that’s it, Leo.”

“So you want me to stop?”

“No.” He can’t stop, not when Deanna’s running out of time. “But maybe just give me a few more minutes of sweet ignorance?”

“Ah. Okay.”

I’m half expecting him to brush it off and keep working.

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