Free Monster by Jessica Gadziala

fuck?”
    “You're supposed
to use words and numbers, you know. I mean... not that it would help,
but still...”
    I shook my head,
handing her a fork and watching her put the laptop on her lap and
balance a plate on the arm of the couch like it was something she had
done a thousand times before.
    “So what do you
got?”
    She reached into the
box, pulling a USB out by random and slipping it into the drive. I
watched as she punched in a passcode that seemed to have at least
thirty digits, her fingers moving over the keys so fast there was no
way I could even catch two of them put together.
    The screen popped up.
And there were folders upon folders, each locked individually. And
even when she opened one, they were coded. She was careful. I
appreciated that kind of attention to detail.
    “Just have to...
oh my god,” she groaned, her head going backward, her eyes
closing. “This is nothing special?” she asked, chewing
her food, rolling her eyes at me. “What the hell did you put in
the potatoes?”
    “Just onions and
spices, doll,” I said, shrugging.
    “If I live
through this, I need to learn to cook.”
    “We live through
this, I'll teach you.”
    Whoa.
    What the fuck?
    I'll teach her to cook?
    What the hell was that?
    I didn't teach anyone
anything.
    I certainly didn't let
women hang around and chop onions with me.
    Jesus Christ.
    “I might take you
up on that,” she said almost shyly as she turned her attention
back to her computer, brought up some kind of box and typed rapidly
until the page suddenly refreshed and the code was gone.
    “Holy shit,”
I said, dropping my plate back onto the coffee table and leaning
closer. “Is that what I think it is?”
    “I released a
nasty little bug on his cell and computer a while back. But not
before I did some digging around myself. This is a list of the dirt
he has on all the organizations in the area. This is how he keeps
them under his thumb.”
    “How the fuck did
you get into his system?”
    At this, she snorted,
shaking her head. “I sent him an email from an address that was
one letter away from one of his usual contacts so he wouldn't be
suspicious of it. And I sent him a link to a snuff film.”
    “A snuff film?”
I asked, my brows lowering.
    “Yeah you know...
like a porn where they kill a girl at the end. But it isn't porn.
It's real.”
    “Al, I know what
a snuff film is, doll. I just didn't think they actually existed.”
    “Oh, they exist,”
she said with such authority that there was no question in my mind
about the topic anymore. “Incidentally, I wasn't sending him
to a real one. All he had to do was click the link and the bug was in
his system. It actually sent him to a video about ending sexual
assault.”
    “So this is what
you got from him?”
    “This,” she
agreed, throwing the lock back onto the files and ejecting the USB,
“along with financial records and pictures.”
    “Pictures?”
    As soon as I pressed
the point, she looked pale. She reached for her plate and set it on
the coffee table only half eaten like she had lost her appetite.
    “Yeah, pictures,”
she said, digging around for the USB. When she found it, she held it
up toward me, but she didn't plug it in.
    “What are the
pictures of, Alex?”
    She swallowed hard.
“Women.”
    I was pretty sure I
knew where that information was heading, but I needed confirmation.
“Doll...”
    She took a deep breath,
looking down at the keyboard, typing into it.
    “Pictures of
women in varying forms of undress. Enduring varying forms of torture.
Most prominently, women in the act of being raped.”
    “Jesus fuckin'
Christ.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What can we do
with this kind of information?” I wondered allowed.
    “I was thinking
that while I was showering,” she admitted and an image of her
naked flashed into my mind before I very deliberately pushed it away.
    “Come to any
conclusions?”
    “I could put this
out there.”
    She said 'out there' in
a way that implied it had a