Page 90 of Take Her
RHAIM
Iwas halfway to the city when Sable got back in touch with me. She texted, and then I called, because I needed to get back to wherever the fuck Lia was—I’d made her trashy PI send me the address.
“Yo, Rhaim,” she said, sounding concerned.
“Spill,” I demanded, zooming through traffic like I was in NASCAR.
“I don’t know who’s driving that vehicle, but I do know who it’s registered to.”
“Yeah?” I asked grimly, wringing the steering wheel as though it were somebody’s neck.
“Corvo. It’s part of the fleet. You know how your boss has drivers?—”
“Do you have eyes on it right now?”
“She’s in the fucking middle of nowhere, Rhaim. They don’t have CCTV out there.”
“Can you get eyes on it when it comes back into the city?”
“Possibly?” she said, her voice arcing up. “It’s going to take a little bit of time. I don’t suppose you could get her to stall, do you?”
I grimaced. Despite the fact that I was having cameras installed at Lia’s house in a few hours, I didn’t want her to know how completely I was stalking her.
I weighed all my options. It was daylight. Her current driver was with her. And the PI was still nearby—and speaking of, he cut in with a text.
The other car is leaving. Follow him, or stay with her?
I hung up on Sable so I could use speakerphone to message him back.
Stay with her. And send me your bank details. You just went on payroll.
“I take it that’s a no?” Sable asked, after I called her again.
“The car’s on its way back already.”
“I’ll try to get into the camera-guns at the bridges, but there’s a lot of ways into the city.”
“Do what you can,” I demanded, and then hung up to call Lia’s camera people, taking the next exit off the freeway so that I could go back home.
What I wanted to do was tag Lia like some gazelle on the Serengeti. Thread an RFID chip through her ear so I’d know where she was at all times, get texted every time her heartbeat rose over eighty, and my phone alarm would ring if she wasn’t drinking enough water at night.
But the cameras were the next best thing.
I had them call me when they got there, so I could text her to let them in. I wasn’t particularly fond of her letting strangers into her apartment, but these were guys that had done work for me before, setting up the panic room at the farm, so I trusted them—and I had them add motion sensor alerts on her door.
If anyone else came into Lia’s apartment, I wanted to know immediately.
After that, and once they’d left, I concentrated on getting caught up on work with Lia’s camera feed off, knowing I’d get a text if anyone visited her.
No luck on the car, Rhaim
Sable texted me later that afternoon.
Want me to hack into Corvo?
I eyed the phone like a cat bringing a dead mouse into the house.
Did you really bother to ask?