?Running With Scissors ?

?c h a p t e r 14?

"What," Luca snaps at the TV, "do you have for me."

"We found a connection-"

"Excuse me," Nick interrupts his brother. "There is no 'we'. I found a connection between the FBI and the email."

Nate puts one of his giant paws on Nicks face and pushes him out of the way. "We found the Email. The original one. There was a virus that piggybacked it which lead us on a wild goose chase but once we saw the decoy we were able to trace it."

"Yes! We know DeLeon sent it so who did he send it to?" Luca asks fervently.

Nick pops back into view and holds up a tablet. "Actually, he didn't send it. See?"

What I saw was NOT an email or any other type of evidence. It was in fact a video of girls rubbing, what I hope is chocolate, on each other.

"Uh," I raise a finger in the air. "That doesn't look like what you said it would look like..."

Luca buried his face in the palms of his hands mumbling curses under his breath.

"Idiot." Nate yanks the device away from him. "Can't you keep those nasty viruses on your tablet? I prefer mine to be clean of all these types of things, you salacious monster."

Luca says something that sounds either like It's going to be a long day or I want to go out and play. I deduced it was the former.

"Nate, what have you got?" I speak up.

"One moment. . .here. This is the email you sent us a picture of, Luca. The email was sent from the FBI headquarters to another server in the same building. DeLeon didn't send or receive this specific email. The question is why would someone go through all of the trouble to hide it. It doesn't seem to be anything important inside it other than the drug lords name. We've ran It through all of our programs, tried to find hidden ciphers but so far we got nothing."

I search the email and they are right. It's nothing special. No key words or random phrases you'd expect in an encrypted message.

"What's your point?" Luca asks with less force.

"Maybe you were wrong," Nick speaks up. "Maybe Handle was right when he said you were seeing something in nothing."

Luca looks like he's about to jump through the screen and rightly so. This is his life, what he risked his career and literally everything else for any nobody can seem to find anything. His frustration is understandable.

"We'll figure something out." I whisper to Luca.

He sends me what looks like a smile. Or maybe a grimace. With him it's hard to tell.

"What else is there?" He says to no one in particular.

"These papers," Nick jumps in before his brother can. "Are all of the receiving emails from every department of the FBI from the past year."

"The whole FBI? Isn't that kind of illegal?" I ask.

"So is killing people but Luca here seems to have that market personally cornered." Nick says absentmindedly.

"Nick. . !" Luca whisper-growls.

"What? Does she not know that you're marks are upwards of sev-" Nate put a hand over his mouth.

I don't know why they're acting like I'm a fragile flower. I knew he was a killer when the police told me and it didn't faze me then. I've seen my fair share of death to last a life time so some blood here, a body there isn't going to effect me.

"Anyways. . yes, it is illegal. If we find something from the email then we can use that same method to make an algorithm, input it in our system and use it to decode any other potential emails. If successful, it could lead us to the people behind your bounty." Nate, the calmer twin says.