How About Seven? ✔

37. Last Of The Light

It was Thursday evening. Kids laughed and screamed as they chased each other over uneven lawns. A group of teens on bikes were chatting with each other on the sidewalk. Two Hispanic women were sitting on a porch, fanning themselves lazily as they chattered in blistering, rapid-fire Spanish. The weather was hot.

The door in front of me opened. I swallowed. I hadn't expected William to contact me again after our last encounter, where Damian's mysterious hacker had illustrated in not-so-subtle terms the amount of knowledge he had on William's family. But he had. And now here we were.

"You should probably know something," Damian said quietly after we'd knocked. "Ian Blackcroft and his three sons, Do, Re, Mi, knocked on Jasper's apartment door yesterday afternoon. They're the first Blackcrofts to have finally found out where we are, and I don't think they'll be the last. More will be coming to hunt for the will."

As I took a minute to digest this information, a pair of black frame glasses, the lenses slightly scratched - "Wesley," William had explained to me before, "once made a Lego sniper rifle that could spout mini Lego bullets." - peered out of the door. Then I heard the latch being pulled back, and the door opened. Damian and I entered.

"Who's that, William dear?" a voice called from the kitchen.

"Just friends, mom!" William ushered us up the stairs. The house was strangely quiet today, with no contraption-wielding boy running through the halls nor a girl setting up a fistfight between Barbie and GI Joe. I remarked on it, and William told me that the two chaos-dealers had been shipped off to their grandma's because Waverly had her French finals tomorrow and would not tolerate any disturbance. Even as we walked up the stairs I could hear Waverly reciting her French verbs loudly.

We sat in front of William's computer. There was a moment of awkward silence while it booted up. William hadn't exactly informed us why he wanted us here.

"I found a lead," he said at last. "On that hacker. Cognac."

Damian and I were alert at once.

"Remember how I was tracking the IP address before we got interrupted with an IM request? Well, after the conversation ended, and after - well, a lot of deliberating and hesitation on my part, I decided to resume what I'd been doing. Considering I didn't get another IM request, I assume I've gotten away with it. The IP address is located at this building, in the heart of the city - "

"Octagon," I finished for him. Everything is leading there.

William nodded. "Yes. A typical business building, one of many identical others littered across the city. So I looked up Octagon. It's about 8 to 9 years old, relatively new. They don't seem to do much; at least, they don't explicitly state it. All Internet entries regarding Octagon have the same vague keywords - investment, business, market transactions. From what I've seen, they do have some legal operations, so I guess - not all of it is illegal?"

I thought back to what Jasper had said, about it being a mix of real and fake employees. "What else did you find out?"

"They're doing some sort of clearance activity next weekend. Something about cleaning up the warehouse and reorganizing the filing system."

I frowned. "That doesn't sound good."

"Next weekend?" Damian suddenly asked. "What time and date?"