I Unintentionally Became Her Kitten

Chapter 43: Jess

I wanted to put the gun away as Alisha drove but she glanced over as I reached for the box.

“Keep it for today,” she said.

I looked at her. Her gaze was focused on the road ahead, an angry scowl on her face as the car zoomed past the greenery around us.

“I don’t like it,” I told her.

“I know. I don’t like you having to have it either, but… this is the price of coming with me for this.” We rounded a bend and I resigned myself to settle back against the seat, setting the gun in the door’s side compartment. At least I didn’t have to keep it in my pants while we were in the privacy and safety of the car.

Tye was behind us, following in an extremely average looking grey sedan, but he had no problem keeping up with Alisha’s fast pace. A while later, we pulled into the laundromat, and Alisha gathered her things to get out.

I picked up the gun and stared at it for a long moment. It was just metal, really. But metal honed to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Alisha opened my door as I was contemplating it and I realized Tye was waiting behind her.

He saw the weapon and his brow furrowed before he turned back to open his own car's door and rummaged around inside.

I got out of the Mercai and went to slide the gun back into the waistband of my pants as Tye approached me, holding something out.

I blinked clueless at some kind of black leather sleeve.

“It's a holster,” he explained. “It’ll make it a little more comfortable.”

I nodded and slid the gun barrel-first into it and then slid that sleeve back into my waistband. There was no belt or anything but the leather added a cushion between the harsh metal and my bare skin. 

Alisha approved of this, I guessed. She didn’t say anything in favor or against it before striding off to go in the building.

I adjusted my shirt again, hoping it was enough to keep things concealed. Tye followed us from behind, making me feel a little safer despite everything.

Alisha’s hips moved back and forth steadily with each stride and her hair flowed with the same rhythm, back and forth, in a soothing pattern that helped ease my anxiety. I knew her, even if she was in her boss mode at the moment, pushing doors open with authority and power, walking past the secretary, who did the usual glance up, see it was us, and turn his attention back to his computer monitors.

This time, however, we turned in the hall before the big office space and went to an elevator. 

Alisha selected the top floor, and the doors closed, creaking quietly as they did so. I felt the floor rise.

We then got off once the doors opened again and entered the office space, which was thoroughly different than the one downstairs. There was a different smell, coffee and cup noodles permeating every waft of air. The shades were pulled over the windows so the light was dim and there were the guts and pieces of various computer equipment scattered across every surface, including the floor. There were rows of desks like downstairs but no sign of any actual office equipment. Only the computer parts and clutter. A bunch of monitors hung along the back wall with a large pile of blankets next to them,

“Jess,” Alisha called into the dimness and blankets moved, a screen also turning on with her movement.

“Alisha?” she mumbled sleepily and rubbed at her eyes.

“I’ve got some tasks for you,” Alisha told her.

“Mnn,” Jess agreed and got up, her pile of blankets trailing behind her. Her hair was bedraggled, going every which way in thick dark curls as she looked us over. “You need somethin’ hacked?” she asked.

“No,” Alisha told her and held up the external harddrive and the bloody bag. “I need the data on these gone through.”

Jess reached over to take the items on her way to a coffee machine on one of the other desks. She hit a button and there were a lot of various sounds that came from it, some not so healthy sounding.

Alisha took a few steps back and pushed some computer parts off a couple chairs with a clatter and offered one to me before taking one for herself.

We waited as Jess went about opening a couple of the shades, making my pupils shrink tangibly. I blinked a few times to help make it not so abrupt.

Jess got her fresh cup of coffee and chugged it down before taking another look at the items.

“One of the distributing harddrives and a phone?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alisha told her. “I want to know the past few days worth of messages off the phone before I go. Then you can take some time to see the rest of it.”

“Mmhmm,” Jess said. She took an arm and, with a well-practiced sweep, cleared a desk off to put the items down. “This is a lot of blood,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get much from it.”

“Do what you can,” Alisha told her.

Jess pulled on some gloves before opening the bag and pulling the phone and wallet out. She put the wallet aside, smearing a trail of blood across the desk’s surface. I watched patiently as she investigated the phone, turning it this way and that before going back to her original nest and taking some pills from a bottle and flushing them down with more coffee, changing her gloves in the process. And then she grabbed a rolled sleeve and brought it back to her working table. It unfurled with another practiced movement, revealing rows of small tools, like I would expect a locksmith or a surgeon to use. She selected one and sat on the floor with the phone, sliding into a seam of the device and pried it off with a cracking sound. She set one piece down on the table and took a new tool to start digging around in the insides. “Looks like the memory should be intact,” she said. Her voice was more awake now as she stood and shook her blankets off before kicking them further from her.

“Good. I’m looking for any kind of meeting arrangement or anything that might imply he was doing business the past few days.”

Jess pried another something out of the phone’s guts and peeled a glove off before picking it out and dropping the rest to the table. She then removed the other glove and walked back to her desk area, giving the mouse a jiggle before signing in through the screen. Her web browser was still pulled up, revealing a paused stream of Enchanto she closed out of, along with about forty other tabs.

I could appreciate someone that passed out watching family movies like that. I used to do it with anime in college.

There was more rummaging around in her clutter next to the desk before she hooked that memory card in and let a program load the contents up.

She scrolled through a good amount of plain text.

“I’m not seeing anything from the past few days,” she said. “He didn’t send a lot. Mostly messages about his dog to… I think it was his girlfriend.”

Alisha sighed. “Alright. They probably would’ve taken his phone if there was something of interest on it.”

“I would think so,” Jess agreed. “I’ll get through the rest of this and let you know if I find anything.”

“Thank you Jess,” Alisha said and stood.

“Oh, the video feeds,” Jess said suddenly, and turned her chair around. “What did you need from them?”

“There’s an individual that drives up in a white sedan with tinted windows and gets out dressed all in black. I need to know if there’s a camera angle that captures their face or not.”

“Mm, that’ll take me a long time,” Jess advised.

“I know.” Alisha eyed the pill bottle on her desk. “Just take care of yourself and get it done when you can.”

Jess nodded and turned back to the computer screen. “I’ll have it for you soon.”

Alisha held a hand out to me, indicating we would be going.

I stood and immediately reached behind me to adjust the gun shoved in my waistband. I was getting annoyed at how frequently I needed to adjust it; especially since reaching behind me was very noticable, and the one thing I didn't want was for this firearm to be noticed.

Tye saw the movement and I could see some thoughts processing in his head, but he kept them to himself for the time being.

Why Alisha wanted me to continue carrying it, I didn’t understand. Tye was here and we were in a safe place.

I followed Alisha out of the room and down the elevator once again. 

She drove us in the car. I found I could sit with the holster at my back, it really was far more comfortable than the bare metal. I watched out the windshield as Alisha drove a bit calmer now and it was easier to simply exist.

“... that man was murdered,” I said after a long while.

“Yes,” Alisha said.

“You didn’t order him to be killed, did you?” I asked.

“No,” was her similarly dry response. She inhaled deeply, letting her chest rise and then fall. Her eyes didn’t leave the road ahead of us but I could tell there was rage in there. “Whoever did this is going against my will. That man told me Sergei was telling him to steal stuff. If that’s true then Sergei ordered him offed for being a rat. If not, the man probably refused to continue stealing for whoever is behind it and they retaliated by staging a murder to look like he’s a rat so I pursue Sergei and put the blame on him.”

Either way, someone still killed the guy in a rather brutal manner. I still remembered the wet sound the rat made when it slopped out of his mouth. That was going to be another thing that haunted me for the rest of my life. Alisha had addressed it with indifference and the way she spoke to Tye about it, it wasn’t the first time they’d seen it.

I reached over to Alisha’s free hand, resting on the shifter, and gently laid mine on top.

“Thank you, Kitten,” she said softly.

“I love you,” I told her. “I want to be here for you, and I don’t want you to have to worry about me.”

She was quiet again, deciding not to disclose her thoughts on the subject to me. At least not right now.

We stopped outside a small house tucked between two duplexes. It was about the size of a trailer and had probably been shipped in one piece like a trailer would have been.

Alisha got out and Tye joined us again, sticking even closer now.

This must be Daniel’s house, I followed. Alisha stopped halfway up the steps and looked back at Tye, who passed us to investigate. He barely touched the door and it swung open.

That was never a good sign, I knew. 

Tye went in first, drawing a gun from his waistband almost exactly where mine was currently resting against my back. I could hear him passing through the rooms one at a time and opening doors and cabinets as he went.

When he came back, he had a grim expression.

Alisha sighed and pushed in past the door, pulling her hair up again. I followed in and Tye pushed the door shut behind me, closing us off from the outside world.

“You can wait here, Kitten,” Alisha told me and followed Tye to a room in the back.

I leaned against the wall, feeling the emotional exhaustion starting to creep up again. At least this time I didn’t have to witness the body, but I still knew it was there. I needed to learn how to handle this kind of thing quickly… but that wasn’t the kind of thing I could simply ask one of them for advice on. 

For now, I simply had to take it in stride. I didn’t know these people, so it wasn’t really grief as much as disturbance that gave me trouble. If I treated the images that flashed into my brain as just images that meant nothing, it was easier to let them pass on their way… but I couldn’t be sure that was a healthy way to cope with this.

The room I was in looked so ordinary. I always kind of imagined Alisha’s lower associates living in crack houses and scummy apartments, but this Daniel guy had a very ordinary set up. The house was small, but it was a house and was obviously owned by a single man. A few beer bottles were next to the sink and some takeout containers stuck out of the garbage but the counters and stove were clean and the floor mostly clear with the exception of some empty boxes. Across the way was a living room area with a television and video game system. More beer bottles were on the coffee table as well as a bag of gummies I suspected were laced with something.

It was just a normal house, no evidence that the dude had ever hurt anybody or anything.

I heard Alisha and Tye moving something heavy in the other room, a loud thud following up after the scraping.

I looked up as they came out of the back room and both of them took turns scrubbing their hands in the sink.

When they were done, Alisha came over and pulled me close for a second before continuing to the door and leaving the house.

I followed again, Tye bringing up the rear and closing and locking the door behind us.

A small moving truck pulled up behind their cars as we left. Alisha gave it a knowing look and picked up her pace a bit to get out of the way.

I got in the car and waited expectantly for her to hurry off to get away from whoever that was. She pulled out and drove us away while the truck parked in front of the house.

I turned to crane my neck and see perhaps what was going on behind us but the best I could get was a couple individuals pulling out some plastic totes from the back of the truck.

“It's clean-up,” Alisha explained, seeing my concern.

“Oh,” I said. “They move fast.” It couldn't’ve been ten minutes since we entered the building.

“We have to. The longer things sit the harder it is to scrub them clean.”

I nodded. “Do you know who did this?” I asked.

“No,” was her simple response. “But there will be hell to pay when I find out.”

I believed her. There was rage behind her eyes. She was acting calm but there were the little ticks I had picked up on. Her eyes tended to glare at whatever she looked at, even the road and her hands never unclenched on the steering wheel. Part of me wanted to calm her down so the poor sap that did this wouldn't get brutalized… at the same time someone that went around cutting people's tongues out against a mob boss’s wishes had to be dealt with. Alisha had rules for a reason.