He reached for the compact keyboard and hit a few buttons. Sure enough, the system lit up. A few keystrokes after that, and I felt my whole body tense. Near as I could tell, I was watching footage from inside the house.
Bedrooms only.
And fuck, the master bathroom, too.
That son-of-a-bitch had been filming her.
I turned to Bishop. "What the fuck?"
"Hey, don't look at me," he said. "I didn't set this up."
I gave him an annoyed look. "Iknowyou didn't put this here, but what is it? I mean, where does it go?"
He glanced at the thing. "You mean the footage?"
"Yeah, the footage." I had visions of somebody watching Chloe's bedroom, even now. Yeah, I knew she wasn't currently in there, but shehadbeen. For weeks. No. Months. And tonight,I'dbeen in that bedroom, too –allof the bedrooms, in fact.
Had someone been watching me remotely? If so, that wasn't good. I'd gone through every closet. I'd looked under every bed. I'd grabbed everything of Chloe's that I could possibly find, and I'd stuffed it into a couple of garbage bags, not caring if anything got wrinkled or wrecked.
And then, I'd gotten the hell out of there, ignoring the two guys – now tied up – who happened to be half-dead, courtesy of me. Well, they'd been half-dead the last time I'd checked. Hard to know their status now.
Bishop was still working the keyboard. When he finished, he circled around the thing, tugging on wires and seeing where they led. Finally, he said, "It's just here."
"What do you mean 'just here'?"
"It's local only. No wireless. No other connections, except for the line that ties into the house. The way it's set up, the footage downloads to a hard-drive, probably retrieved every few weeks or so."
Every few weeks, huh? Well, that explained a lot, didn't it?
I recalled the douchebag and all those so-called electrical problems. I recalled the other stuff he'd offered me – freaky pussy with bald chicks and what-not.
The guy wasn't a pimp. He was movie producer, of the secret variety.
I felt my blood pressure rise, thinking of the footage he probably already had. Chloe naked on her bed. Chloe taking a shower. Damn it. Chloe on the toilet.
I felt my hands tighten into fists. The next time I saw him, I was going to kill him.
"So that's why you called me?" Bishop asked.
I shook my head. "No. It's something else."
His eyebrows furrowed. "Something else?"
I gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened inside the house and finished by saying, "So, what do you think? Should I just burn it down?"
"You serious?"
Hell yes, I was serious. But as an answer, I only shrugged.
"And about the two guys?" he asked.
I gave another shrug. "I haven't decided."
He lowered his face and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. "You're nuts. You know that?"
When I said nothing, he added, "You're not a killer. And trust me, you don't wanna start now."
So I wasn't a killer, huh? Well, that made one of us.
