I didn’t drop it, but suddenly felt like I was holding a poisonous snake. Cold iciness flooded my body and I suddenly wanted to hurl it against the concrete wall.
“What do you want done? You want evidence in case anything ever comes back to bite us or you want this destroyed?”
“Have you watch---”
“No. Swear to you, I haven’t. No one else has, either.”
“Destroyed, please Dare.” I said softly.
He gave me a nod and there was a moment of heavily weighted silence between us until I heard a door slam and then multiple sets of feet walking as well as the sound of something rolling down the hallway.
“One sec, baby,” Dare said.
He opened the door and two men stood there with a very large metal drum that was on a dolly.
“JC,” Dare greeted.
“Dario.” The huge dark-haired guy dressed in head-to-toe leather shook Dare’s hand in a bro handshake, “This is Hugo.”
Hugo, an equally huge blond man extended his hand. Dare shook it.
“Hugo, JC, my wife, Angel.” Dare gestured to me.
“Hi,” I said.
They gave me a nod and carefully wheeled the dolly in and one reached into a black satchel and handed us long gloves and a mask/goggle contraption.
I was speechless.
Dare put his on and I put mine on.
The two men gave us nods and left, shutting the roll-down door behind them.
No further smiles nor pleasantries had been exchanged. Those guys were evidently aware of just how serious things were.
Dare used a utility knife to carefully pop the top off of the drum. Inside was a seal that he slowly peeled off. I stood. The drum had a strainer basket and below it I could see blue liquid but only at less than the half way mark. The inside was white, made of a different material than the outside.
I handed him the laptop and he very carefully slid it into the basket and then put the shower cap-like seal back on and slowly cranked something on the side of the drum so that the basket descended slowly without splashing. He put the top lid back on and then took off his gloves and mask so I followed suit. We went outside and sat down on the curb.
“What now?”
“Thirty minutes. JC and Hugo went for a coffee. We check to make sure it’s dissolved. Should be gone, not a trace. Then JC picks it up and we go home and put this behind us.”
I sat there and my mind streamed visions from Kruna, from being broken, from being stuck with Mr. Frost. I ached. And then I felt numb.
And then the numbness evaporated when I felt the beautiful touch of the man who’d saved me, who brought me back from near catatonia, who’d kept his promise and made sure that Kruna was taken down and destroyed.
“You kept your promise to me,” I said.
He’d put one of his hands on the back of my neck.
“About Kruna. You took them down. You made them hurt. You saved all those girls. Thank you, babe. I still can’t believe it. Not only do I get all of those things, but I get you. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
Dare
JC and his employee came back and checked the drum and showed me, with a flashlight that there was nothing but liquid in it. No sign of that hard drive, no sign of a single screw or wire from that computer. It was an extreme method to get rid of it but it was thorough and I was taking no chances whatsoever that Frost’s hard drive would turn up somewhere.
JC’s clean-up services were worth the exorbitant fees he charged and he was worth keeping in our Rolodex.