Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) (31 page)

I texted, ‘I’m back home. Ready for files.’

He texted back, almost immediately, ‘Outside on my bike. Hear the water pipes going in the guest room. I’ll take you to the files?’

‘Teleport me?’ I texted back.

‘Against the contract’s rules’ he texted.

‘Don’t think I’ll make it walking,’ I sent.

‘I’ll bet you five bucks you can sneak out without him catching you,’ he sent.

‘Make it five pizzas and I’ll try,’ I sent.

‘Five pizzas.’

Unclasping my heels, I left them on the bed and stepped onto the floor with my bare feet. Stepping lightly is a skill I have worked on for years and I put all my effort into being silent as I crossed the floor to the door. At the door, I turned the lock to the room slowly, as to lessen the sound it made when it unlocked. I cringed as the lock made its very quiet
snick
.

“If you want me to come out and get you, I will,” Wyvern said over the sound of the shower.

I locked the door. “Changing,” I called, “You don’t need to come out.”

“Then change,” he called.

I walked back to the bed, picked up my phone and texted Bobby, ‘Make at least one of them pepperoni.’

‘Will do,’ he sent, ‘Will call Carol. Expect files on your family account.’

I did change my clothes, but I did it because I was tired of wearing my cocktail dress and not because Wyvern had told me to. I realized that Wyvern had grabbed both a sports-bra and underwear, which was just all kinds of not cool.

Booting up my computer I entered my family’s secure web-space. I had to get through three levels of security to get to my personal drop box, but the file was already waiting. Unfortunately, the compressed file was humongous and even though my laptop was usually fast, it estimated it would take twenty minutes to download. I made sure the laptop was plugged in then laid down on the bed to wait.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep in seconds.

What seemed like moments later, my eyes opened blearily. Wyvern’s face came into focus on the pillow beside mine; his hair fell messily around his face. His arm reached across the space that separated us, his fingers were wrapped in mine and under my cheek. I must have pulled his hand under my face.

Faintly, I was aware that I was sleeping next to a very dangerous dracon who I had only known for a couple of days. The last thing I should have felt was safe, but I did.

From where his hand touched my cheek, incredible warmth spread throughout me; the warmth overwhelmed the part of me that told me I should not feel as safe as I felt. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

When I woke again, Wyvern was no longer lying beside me. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and looked around. Wyvern sat at the end of the bed, my laptop in his lap.

“You’re on my computer?” I asked croakily.

“Good morning, Dakota,” he said.

“How did you log in without my password?” I asked.

“I downloaded a program last night before I went to bed so that I can override your passwords,” he said it without any shame.

“You could have just asked me for my password,” I said, too groggy to be as pissed as I knew I should be.

“Passwords can be changed,” he said. “Unfortunately, the security on the file you just downloaded is too complicated for my program to override.”

Go Aunt Carol. That meant that he probably could not get into any of my work files either, so the only thing he could really get into was my school emails and social networking websites.

“So what are you looking through?”

“I just checked some emails,” he said. He fiddled with the laptop for another second, then turned it around handing it to me.

On the screen was a prompt box with the question: ‘What is your sister Clara’s favorite ice cream?’

It made me smile that Wyvern’s program was stumped by the word: ‘Strawberry.’

“The question changes every five seconds,” Wyvern said.

And the question did change to: ‘What is Your Uncle Robert’s favorite word?’

I typed: ‘Shit’ and pressed enter.

The file opened. Inside there were hundreds of files labeled by date and by room. Scrolling down through months, I found the correct date’s file and clicked on the ‘office’ file. In that file, there were files for camera one, camera two and camera three per hour for twenty four hours labeled in military time.”

“Look at nine o’clock first,” Wyvern said.

“I should probably check my call log and—”

“I already did,” he said.

I looked to where he was now sitting directly next to me on the bed. “You went through my call log?”

“And your text messages,” he said.

“Is there anything personal of mine, you haven’t gone through yet?” I grumbled at him.

“Your room,” he answered, “And your mind.”

“Good luck with that one,” I said as I opened the ‘Camera One, Hour Twenty-One’ file.

“It only seems fair,” he said, leaning over me to get closer to the computer, “You’ve gone through mine.”

“I barely touched the surface of your soul, not your mind,” I said, “I don’t hear your thoughts or anything.”

The video was of a room filled with boxes, there were windows that had obviously been boarded up in the background. The camera caught a floor to ceiling view, but there were no doors.

I paused the feed and opened the ‘Camera Two’ file of the same hour. That one had a door. This camera covered a desk, a couple boxes, some books, and the door. The room had had some light in it though it was dim. I set the playback to double speed watching for any subtle differences in the scene.

“How old are you?” I asked Wyvern, though I was looking at the video.

“One hundred and fifty,” he said.

I looked up at him, shocked.

He smiled, “I have a human mother, remember? I’m nineteen.”

Obviously. I must not be entirely awake.

“You’re still too old for me,” I said, returning my eyes to the screen, “I’m only fourteen.”

“You’ll be seventeen next Saturday,” he said, sounding bored.

“Who told you that?” I asked, annoyed.

“Your birth certificate,” he said. “I researched you before I offered to hire you.”

“So I’m your employee?” For some reason, I did not like the sound of that, even though it was technically true.

“Not any more than I am yours,” he said. “I knew that I could not trust anything your family said about you. I’ve met your great-grandfather.”

I paused the recording to stare at him. “You’ve been to the Dragon Kingdoms?”

“My father started taking me there the first time I changed into a dragon,” he said.

“How old were you? Wasn’t that a huge risk?” I asked.

“It was a risk he was willing to take. I was eleven that first time.” When I continued to watch him, he said, “My father is very proud of what I am.”

I could not help but notice that he said ‘what,’ not ‘who.’

Wyvern leaned over me and pressed play on the recording. I turned my attention to the screen and forced myself to pay attention.

After a few more minutes I said, “The door just moved.” I paused the recording and rewound the video a few seconds, then pressed play. I paused it again. “There, you see the door knob turned,” I played it again, “Door knob turns but the door doesn’t open. But if you look there, the angle at the top of the door shifted just a little.”

I let the video play forward. About two minutes passed with nothing, then the door pushed open and a pig walked into the room.

“What the—?” I said.

It wasn’t just a pig, it was a boar. A white boar, with no ears.

After it gently pushed the door open, it ran into the room, knocking over boxes and hit the desk so the computer came crashing down. The video did not record audio, but my guess was that what the boar was doing had to be pretty loud. The boar ran out of the camera’s view only to run back a minute later. It ran to the door it came in from, stopped by the door and used its tail to slowly close it to only a crack. A minute later the door closed all the way, and then the lock turned back into a locked position.

I paused the video and we both just sat there for a minute.

“I think I’m going to need to see that again,” I said.

After we watched the recording the second time, Wyvern said, “There was something in her mouth when she ran back into the bathroom.”

Rewinding the video to the part where the boar ran past, I paused it and saw that he was right, there was something white that looked like a piece of paper sticking out of the boar’s mouth.

We were both quiet for a long minute, and then I said, “We really need to talk to your mom.”

Chapter Eighteen

“I’ve never even heard of a were-pig,” Mele said from the back seat of the car Wyvern just bought.

We had left the Vervari at the house. It took a little convincing, but when I told Wyvern that there was no way he could leave his Vervari out of sight for more than fifteen minutes on the other side of the island without it being at the very least keyed, he reluctantly agreed to buy, not rent, a less conspicuous vehicle.

According to him ‘renting’ anything was just tossing away money. I wasn’t actually that surprised to learn that Wyvern owned the Vervari and had shipped it over for his vacation.

Wyvern made a phone call to his steward and then twenty minutes later someone dropped the new car off at my house. The whole thing made me a little sick to my stomach.

Less than an hour after Wyvern had decided to buy the car, we were driving through the seemingly endless cane fields that separated the tourist side of the island from the side of the island where tourists were not welcome.

“Were-boar,” Wyvern corrected Mele. He did not look quite right in a just-plain sedan. Even though today he was as casual as I had ever seen him, wearing baggy-ripped jeans and a T-shirt, with his hair tied-back at the nape of his neck, he still would have fit better in the Vervari.

I forced my gaze away from Wyvern. “I’ve never heard of a were-boar infection either,” I said, “And if she was a were-boar, how could she get past the water wards?”

“Maybe she had one of those charms we’re going to go get from the witch?” Mele suggested.

“No, she still wouldn’t have been able to change into a boar inside the wards,” I said. “Regardless, at the end of the recording she ran back into the bathroom. Nothing we found out explains how she disappeared from the bathroom. It just raises a million more questions.”

“You say she broke into the office next to the bathroom and ran around crashing into things?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Honua was in there for a really long time, but I did not hear anything,” Mele said.

“You were there?” I asked.

“Yeah, Keanu, Auli and I were waiting outside the door,” she said.

“Who suggested that you use
that
restroom?” I asked, looking back at her.

“Um,” her eyes looked up in thought, “Honua told Keanu she had to go to the bathroom, but said there was a line for the bathroom in the living room and basement. I think Keanu suggested they use the one in his room, but Honua said she had seen someone go in there. Keanu then said that we could use the guest room bathroom but he had to make sure that the water was still on because they were doing construction on it on Monday. I remembered as we walked there Honua was
really
grateful.”

“So you went with her?” I asked.

“Yeah, I remember I wanted to wash my hands, there had been something gross on my cup or something,” Mele said, looking down like she was trying to remember. “We went to the bathroom; we checked and the water worked. Honua went in and did not come out.”

“Was there anything weird about the bathroom afterward?” I asked.

“Actually, the water in the sink was running,” she said. “I thought that was a little weird.” After a second Mele said, “Do you think that’s important?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “Possibly.”

“I did not really think that much about it at the time, but I had just used the bathroom in Keanu’s room and I did not see anyone go in after me. When she said someone was in there, I just figured she saw someone go in while I was grabbing my drink. So you think Honua was trying to get Keanu to take her to
that
bathroom?” Mele asked.

“Yes,” I said before telling them in detail what Keanu had said about his father moving his office to the downstairs guest room. “Keanu said that Senator Hale’s office usually had a ‘fortress’ level of security,” I said, “however, as he had arranged for the doorway to be framed into the wall three days later, he had only turned the bathroom door around so that the lock was on the outside. Also, he did not know his kids were throwing a party. Honua broke into the office during a three day lapse in what sounded like near constant high security. She changed into a boar likely to mask her identity, trashed the office, and then took something. Which probably means—”

“Honua was working for or with someone.” Wyvern said, he did not take his eyes off the road, “This was planned out, extensively.” What Wyvern was feeling did not show on his face.

For a second, I considered touching him so I could read him, but I dismissed the idea.

“I agree, it was planned over a long period of time, and somebody had to have given her inside information,” I said. “Maybe one of the people who helped moving the boxes or setting up the surveillance system.”

Actually, as I had already come to that conclusion before I left the house, I forced Lorelei to promise to spend all of her free time watching the security footage of the office. I also told her to capture images of everyone who had stepped into the office since last Thursday. Lorelei had grumbled about the work, as she grumbled about doing almost anything, but I knew she would do it.

“I don’t get it,” Mele said, disbelievingly, “Honua has been going to our school for at least a year. Do you mean that she’s infected and has been pretending to be human for that long just to be able to break into Keanu’s father’s office?”

“She’s human,” Wyvern said, saving me from blustering through a response.

“Can you really be sure—?” I asked.

“Yes, I can,” Wyvern said, “It’s one of the aspects I inherited, I can read dracon power levels, and that includes infected humans.”