He reaches a hand out for her, beckoning her closer. She hesitates for one . . . two . . . three seconds before she stands. He doesn’t get up. He simply sits there and stares up at her. I can see his face clearly. It wears an almost indifferent expression. He’s waiting for something.
And then she peels her shirt off.
“Damn . . . it’s one of these videos,” Zac mutters, dumping more mayo onto his half-eaten container of fries, his chair creaking as he leans back as if getting comfortable, watching her unzip and push her jeans down.
When Celine tosses her bra to the floor, I demand, “Shut it off.”
“We need to see this. There could be something important in it,” Doug explains.
Celine climbs onto Jace’s lap and begins unbuttoning his shirt. She leans in to kiss him and he responds, his hands sliding up her bare arms to grip the sides of her head.
I recognize that move. It’s the same way he kissed me, that day in the elevator. My stomach turns.
But then his hands slide back down her arms, to her thighs, and he breaks free of her mouth, turning just enough to make it clear that he doesn’t want that. He gently pushes her back, farther and farther until she yields and slides off to kneel in front of him. He undoes his belt and zipper, and pulls out his very erect dick.
“I’m going to be sick.” This is horrifying. I can’t watch this, and I hate that they’re watching this. I turn around and insist, “Can you at least fast-forward through it?”
“Fast-forward? This isn’t 1995,” Zac says. “If I speed it up, we could skip over key frames.”
I want to miss all frames, and so I remain with my back to the screen, my eyes glued to the digital clock across from me as it flashes through the seconds and minutes as Doug and Zac watch my best friend perform oral sex on Jace. “Are they done yet?” I demand to know at the four-minute mark.
“The first act, yeah,” Zac confirms. “But now they’re doing it on the couch. She looks like she’s enjoying it, at least. And, damn, is he givin’ it to—”
“Shut up, Zac,” Doug barks.
Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds later, Doug announces, “A1l right, they’re done.”
I turn around in time to see Jace sliding on his pants. Celine isn’t on the screen, so I assume she’s using the bathroom. The area looks like it’s been demolished—books shoved off the table and scattered over the floor, the side lamp leaning against the wall, flickering ever so slightly. Jace tugs on his shirt and jacket and, reaching into an inner pocket for his wallet, he pulls out a wad of cash.
He tosses it onto the table.
And then he slips on his shoes and walks out the door.
“And we have the governor of Illinois’s son paying for some hard-core sex on video,” Zac muses.
And my sweet childhood friend delivering it to him.
Celine appears again moments later, her pink silk robe tied tight around her, her thick mane of hair mussed. She stops in front of the couch, seemingly surprised as she looks to the door, then checks the bedroom. Did she expect him to stay?
She stops in front of the coffee table again.
Reaches down to pick up the money.
Looks back at the door.
And then crumples onto the couch, pulling her legs to her chest, her arms curled around her knees.
And begins to cry.
I hold my hand out. “Give that back to me. Now.” There’s no way I’m letting this tech geek beat off to Celine after I’m gone, and by the look of him and this place, that’s probably all the action he’s getting these days.
Zac glances first at Doug, who’s busy pacing laps around the cramped room, before unplugging the drive and handing it to me. “At least you have something to blackmail him with, if you need to,” he offers. I guess that’s the silver lining, though it doesn’t feel like it.
“Why would Jace have this video?” I demand to know, my voice shaky.
“We already know it was blackmail,” Doug says, kicking a box out of his path.
“So, what are you saying . . . that Jace hired someone to hack into Celine’s camera and videotape that whole scene, just so he could blackmail her?”
Doug frowns. “He’d stand to lose more than she would . . . And she doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“Would she blackmail him with this?” Zac asks.
“No,” I answer without thinking, at the same time that Doug says, “Maybe.”
I scowl at him. Would she? If so, it would definitely have given him motive for murder.
Doug shrugs. “She never looked up at the camera though . . . People who know they’re being filmed have a tendency to look at the camera. At least once.”
That brings me some small comfort.
Doug sighs. “We’re missing something here. There’s another piece to this puzzle.” He begins pacing again.
“Hacker,” Zac mutters, shoveling fries into his mouth with one hand while picking up the camera Doug took from Celine’s desk with the other. “Standard model. Cheap. Easy to bypass. A monkey with an SDR could do it.”
A sick feeling fills my stomach at the very suggestion. “But she took the camera down at some point before she died,” I say slowly, stating the obvious. “So she must have found out.”
“So she must have found out . . .” Doug drums his stubby fingers across the desk. He stops abruptly. “That someone had been watching her.”
CHAPTER 25
Maggie
Even though I’ve sat on Celine’s couch countless times—and slept on it once—I can’t bring myself to go anywhere near it right now. Not after that video. Not that it’s at all comfortable anymore anyway, surrounded by countless boxes that Hans and I have filled. Every last item of Celine’s collection is now ready for storage.
That is, except for the missing vase that I was so sure—so hopeful—I would find in Jace’s home but did not.
A part of me is desperate enough to knock on Ruby’s door and invite her over for some tea, but it’s after one in the morning and she’s long since fallen asleep. Another part of me wants to escape up to the roof, but I don’t think I can face Grady right now, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m still wondering who he had in his apartment yesterday.
So I hide the jump drive in Celine’s lockbox and curl up under the heavy duvet in bed.