In the months since Beenie had hooked him up with Hydo, and he had become the regular dealer for the farm, he’d seen this station used only once. Sitting in one of the Red Bull-stained Zody chairs, counting white tablets of foxy from his baggie into a Ziploc, he’d nodded when Hydo received a call and told him he had to take it.
Keeping his head down, double counting the savage little pills of 5-methoxy-dijopropyltryptamine, he’d relaxed the muscles around his eyes, letting his peripheral vision widen as his self-defense instructor had taught him, and at the edge of his vision he’d seen Hydo unzip a backpack, take out a small flat box decorated with a single dot of red, and connect it to the sleeping Dell. An action followed by a Bluetooth conversation regarding items such as a Tyrant’s Pointing Hand, a Shadow Amulet, Crusader Gauntlets, someone named Thrad Redav, and a large amount of gold.
Park looked at his watch, self-winding, dependent on no power other than his own movement.
He’d been in the room for over five minutes.
He disconnected the drive’s USB plug, wrapped the short cable around its body, and tucked it into a cargo pocket.
Coming out of the room, he paused to take a picture of one of the partial footprints and then walked out into the final linger of evening sun, leaving the door open behind him, moving without hurry to the WRX parked behind a Dumpster nearly buried in its own trash at the open end of the alley that let onto Aviation.
It wouldn’t do to be seen running from here.
Even now the police investigated murder.
He told himself that was the point of the pictures he’d taken, and the hard drive he’d stolen.
But there was this as well: Beenie had said Hydo knew “the guy.”
And Rose hadn’t slept in over four weeks now. And late that afternoon, before leaving again for work, he’d come into the nursery and found her standing over the crying baby’s crib, index finger against the baby’s lips, making loud, desperate hushing noises, her finger pushing down hard enough to whiten the baby’s new skin.