Axl was tight with the rest of the team—Jorge, Zane, Marques and Billy. But not as tight as he was with Mo, Mag, Boone and Auggie.
This was because Jorge was older, had seniority, was Hawk’s lieutenant when that was needed, was married with two kids, and he wasn’t ex-military. Jorge’s experience came from the street and a longtime mentorship with Hawk.
Marques and Zane were ex-military, but they were younger and newer to the team.
Billy was the newest member of their crew and his history was murky. Hawk didn’t share, neither did Jorge. Definitely not Billy. Even Elvira, who was a big fan of all kinds of sharing, hadn’t let anything slip.
That message was received so the men didn’t ask.
Now, Axl needed to brief with Jorge before he briefed with the men in the conference room.
This being before he left, went home, showered and changed for his date with Hattie.
And he needed to brief with Jorge because his crew was his crew, but it was also Hattie’s, and there were things about her the other guys didn’t need (and wouldn’t want) to know.
And Jorge would never share.
“’Sup?” Jorge asked when Axl stopped across the console from him.
“Day’s done. Debriefing with the team, then outta here,” Axl told him. Then he asked a useless question because he knew the answer. “Got anything?”
Jorge nodded.
Yep.
That was always the answer with Jorge.
You needed something, he got it.
Jorge gave Axl what he had.
“That porn site is run out of LA. They do all their filming in LA or around there. All their players are from there. They don’t contract out anything, film production, tech, IT or customer service. The site doesn’t have message boards. They don’t ask for reviews. Customer email in and out, that’s it. Unless someone hacked them. And I don’t have the intel yet if someone did. I’ve asked Brody at Nightingale’s shop to dig into that. But outside a hack, since no one involved is local, it’d be impossible for someone there to have had a personal sitch with Hattie. Not to mention, their players are gay. This is a shop by and for gay dudes. They have a mission statement about it, being a safe place for gays and kink, their actors and their viewers. I’m sure they get they have female and hetero male viewers, but I think chances are low there’s some insider who wants to dick with a woman.”
Axl had suspected there was nothing there.
That didn’t mean there was nothing there.
It just wasn’t an inside man.
“Do they require cell numbers for subscriptions?” he asked.
“Yeah. For possible tech support and payment issues purposes,” Jorge answered.
“Right, then for that to be the angle for how he got her info, the guy would have to know she’s into that,” Axl pointed out. “Which means he’s either hacked her laptop, or he’s been in her apartment, got into her laptop, and checked her history.”
“Already got Brody on a potential hack of her system. But for the other, we need to dust inside,” Jorge replied.
“I’ll tell Hattie. Any prints we can use on the rope or note?” Axl asked.
Jorge shook his head.
Fuck.
He’d hoped this was just some amateur asshole fucking with her, and because of that he’d screw up fast and they could get past this.
Then again, pretty much anyone knew not to leave prints.
“We’ll get inside, Axl,” Jorge said. “See if we can find anything. And we set up the cameras. Farmed out on that and they went in wearing a bogus uniform, just in case this guy is casing her, he wouldn’t know the cameras were put in. If he makes another approach, we’ll see.”
Axl nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jorge replied.
They tipped chins at each other, and then Axl headed toward the conference room.
He did this looking at the multitude of monitors on the wall in front of the workstations.
And yeah.
There was Hattie’s place. One monitor had a revolution of shots of the front door to her house, her apartment front door, the back door and her parking spot with her car. Another monitor had a revolution of sides of the house.
Of course, this meant, unless the dude could dematerialize and rematerialize in her apartment without getting anywhere near the outside of it, she was safe there. They’d know the instant someone tried to break in and they’d be able to roll out, not to mention call the cops.
But Axl preferred the added precautions his place could offer.
And walking in to see her in his kitchen.
“Anything new on Hattie’s sitch?” Mag asked before Axl sat down.
“Nothing,” Axl answered while he folded into one of the rolling chairs.
Mag gave him a Sorry, dude look.
Axl turned his attention to Hawk. “Thanks for the camera loan.”
Hawk just nodded.
Then he said, “I know we all wanna get home, so let’s get this out of the way. And as usual, there isn’t much. Lynn and Heidi aren’t budging. I talked with Mamá. She thinks they need time.”