MIKE SHOULDN’T REOPEN the screen. He knows that she is safe from harm, there is no need for further spying. But he does. He lasts fifteen minutes before logging back in, fingers tapping impatiently as the screen loads with maddening pauses for processing. It appears that Deanna, Internet minx who has fake-sucked his dick to countless orgasms, has fallen asleep, her body sprawled out over the man she has just stabbed to death, in a manner that seems wholly unconcerned with his demise. More than unconcerned, she seems blissful, her ear-to-ear grin visible from the webcam’s eye more than ten feet away. Mike opens a second window, taking a moment to follow the money trail—for no purpose other than to know if his own life is also in danger. If the money was moved, divvied up and sent out into the world, then his might be the next dead body Dee lays atop of. A pent-up breath whooshes from his chest when he see what he wants to see, $1.3 million, safely in the business money market account of RDC Enterprises. Not a cent touched. His fingers get to work, moving the money back, scattering it over thirty different transfers, to ghost accounts, accounts they barely touch green foot in, skipping it across the world, occasionally joining forces only to separate again, the process long and tedious, any oversight meaning that thousands might be overlooked. When it is all back, settling in and making its home in her account, he relaxes. Turns off the feeds to her cams. Sinks back into a pile of pillows, his shoulder still stiff, an unbandaged hand finding a bottle of painkillers, washing them down with a Bud that is a good half hour away from cold. He swallows the pills and relaxes, leaning his head back, a drug- and exhaustion-fueled sleep seconds away.
He is so confused by her.