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She shook her head. “Nah. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
I tried not to smile at the remark and mentally kicked myself for thinking how cute it was.
“What’s this about malware?” Viper asked.
Devon glanced at me from under her hood.
“Take the hood off,” I snapped.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “No.” She looked at Viper. “I was hired to put spyware on the human trafficking page to track visitors to the site. When I was called to help y’all, I didn’t know it was going to be that site he’d been visiting that caused it or I would have stayed out of it. It wasn’t until he showed me his browsing history. Lots of viruses and shit on the D.W., so I, at first, figured it came from elsewhere.”
“Yeah, but you had spyware on our shit. You could have tracked that he was visiting that site, right?” Viper asked.
“Yes,” I responded for her.
She half-grinned. “No, Face here was removing it too fast.”
“Why would you work for such human filth? You just do anything for money, or what?” Viper asked, his hands on the hips of his jeans.
“First off, they’re not humans, they’re vamps.” She pointed toward the scene. “Those are humans. Totally separate from the guys I work for. Secondly, I didn’t know it was used for human trafficking. I thought it was a buy-and-sell type site for illegal stuff, like drugs and blood for vamps. Other shit you can’t sell online legally.”
“I don’t know jack about computers, but how do you run a website and not know what’s on it?” Phoenix asked, his arms crossed in front of his cut.
Devon blew out a breath. “I don’t run the website. I implant malware into visitors to the site’s computers. I didn’t read what was on it, which was my mistake and I’ll own that. It was Parker who told me what kind of webpage it was. He told me he was calling the FBI and I had to tell him not to, then fess up. Since then, I’ve been cloning pages and saving them to a secure system, so if you want to call the supernatural feds, I’ve got most of it documented. It needs to be shut down ASAP, though.”
Listening to her explain it that way, my anger began to wane. If she was telling the truth, then she really hadn’t known. She had been careless, stupid, and money-hungry, though, and that was not cool.
“I’ll call them right now,” Viper said, pulling his phone from his pocket and punching some buttons on the screen.
“I’m gonna go see if I can eavesdrop on the cops,” Phoenix said, then walked off.
She watched them walk off then looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Parker. I didn’t mean to deceive you. I realized my mistake and was going to just get rid of all the garbage on the computer for you and then leave it at that. In fact, I have to thank you for pointing out the true nature of the site. I was careless and should have done more digging before taking the job.”
Her green eyes were glossy with regret, and she looked so apologetic, I was starting to soften at the sincerity in their depths. “It’s fine, Devon. Can’t change what happened. Did you tell them you were quitting?”
She shook her head. “No, figured once the feds shut down the site I won’t have to.”
“Lower the hoodie. Please,” I asked, exasperated.
Reluctantly, she used both hands to push it off her head. Her hair was down in long brown waves, and she immediately pulled some of it to curtain her face. I grabbed her wrist gently and lowered it. “You don’t have to hide from me.”
She looked down at the connection, and I pulled my hand away.
“Can you shut the site down yourself?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I could probably keep it up and block users from finding it, but to shut the whole thing down, I don’t think so. Not even with a nasty trojan horse virus. They’d just contact me to get rid of it, anyway.”
“Do they know who you are and where you live?” I asked, concerned.
“No, never met them or talked to them in person or on the phone. They just Cash App me the payment and I use a burner phone to contact them.”
“Smart,” I murmured. “But how do you know they’re vampires?”
“They told me they were and made me prove I was one as well.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How do you prove that without meeting them?”
“I had to send them a picture of my fangs and answer questions only real vampires would know.”
