The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

“Relax,” I murmured, tiredly. The fight had drained out of me when that door slammed shut. “You find anything on that flash drive?”

He still looked nervous, but he said, “Uh, yeah…I mean…just a bunch of videos and stuff.”

“What’s on the videos?”

“A bunch of guys coming and going. Nothing too interesting.”

“Let me see.” I leaned over his shoulder and watched as the screen lit up. But what I saw was enough to make me speechless.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I saw myself staring at an older version of Tray, walking with a slender female.

They walked in, they walked out. And the rest was of security guards changing shifts.

“So, like I said, not much,” Props murmured. “The cameras were wiped every eight hours. So whatever else was on here was wiped clean. It’s a loop surveillance. It loops over and over, just recording over whatever was there before unless a new video is inserted. But you got this off the mainframe, so my guess is that this is all there was.”

But it was something.

“Make copies and send these to your safe accounts. I don’t want anyone else getting this information, you got it?”

Props sighed, but moved to the keyboard.

When I walked back in the kitchen, Amber was going off, “She’s such a bitch, Tray! I don’t see what you see in her. She just went off on Carter like a homicidal psychopath.”

But my cool was back, because I smirked, “Please. Just a homicidal psychopath? I would’ve hoped for a raging homicidal psychopath, at least.”

I didn’t miss Tray going rigid when I stepped back in the room. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t comment on it. It was warranted.

“Hey, Taryn,” Carter started, “I, uh…sorry. I didn’t mean to press your buttons like that.”

“Yes, you did.” Duh. “But it’s fine. You got me in a rare moment and I let myself go off. It won’t happen again.”

Carter blinked. There was no other description for his reaction.

Gentley must’ve been bored because he spoke up, “Can we get some business dealt with tonight? As amusing as this entertainment is tonight, Gardner and I didn’t come into non-friendly territory for the hell of it.”

I remarked, “We didn’t get anything.”

“But what about the warehouse?”

“What warehouse? What are you guys talking about?” Carter asked. The joys of being blissfully ignorant.

“Empty,” Tray clipped out, sighing deeply.

“But—”

“It was empty. Everything was empty.”

“So what—” Trent started.

Amber interrupted, “Who’s Props?”

Tristan was quiet, wisely. But she was watching everything.

“No one,” I said firmly.

Tray sighed, but he affirmed, “No one, Amber.”