Pierce wasn’t scheduled to be home for hours. But going through his computer, through every draw in the place, was going to take time.
He had to have notes, as well as the final copy. Hell, he’d been holed up in here for months working on something. Not to mention all the secretive interviews he gone off to. He’s been back and forth in a flurry of taxis for a solid year.
I relished the times he went out of town too far to travel back in one day and left me the house to myself.
But today was different. I wasn’t turning the radio up and dancing around like he didn’t live here, I was meticulously turning over every inch of his personal space to find what Maxim needed.
I knew he had a notebook that was always on him, and that I couldn’t get a hold of, but there would have to be somewhere else he put his findings down.
I gazed out of the window in despair after I went through the last draw of his desk to find nothing. I’d pulled out every single book from the shelf and put them all back meticulously. I hadn’t found so much as a bookmark.
Maxim had said he’d leave a light on, just as long as the coast was still clear. And it was reassuring to look up and see the glow.
Pierce kept the computer in here unplugged from the internet, strictly for writing only. The only paranoia he ever entertained was that someone gave enough of a crap about what he wrote to try and steal it. He’d been more concerned about plagiarism rather than anything else, and despite how inflammatory he’d been told repeatedly the information he held was, it never occurred to him that men like Maxim might be out there somewhere trying to prevent the truth from coming.
He thought he was the British Julian Assange. But he didn’t seem to take note of anything beyond how famous he was. Everybody apart from him seemed to see the danger in hurting Russia’s global reputation. He was too busy feeling good about himself for whistle blowing and unpicking the mess.
The boxy hunk of a computer was a relic, with an operating system that crawled, despite the only thing installed on it being a word processing program. It took an age for me to flick through the files, meticulously dragging them through to the pendrive Maxim had given me.
My foot jogged – an outlet for my nerves as I watched the files transfer painfully slowly, one by one, and I kept glancing up to the window, but from where I was at the computer, the heavy velvet curtain cut the angle off.
I had to hope that somewhere in amongst the man’s multiple attempts at some kind of fantasy novel was the information he needed. I didn’t envy Maxim the task of sifting through it. For his sake I hoped he had people who could look through it all, and check for codes of ciphers.
Not that I thought it was remotely likely Pierce would have done anything a sophisticated as that.
With the main files transferred, I noticed another couple of web pages saved, which caught my eye because Pierce would have had to go to the effort of connecting the machine to the modem in order to get them on there in the first place.
Which meant they were out of the ordinary. And that was just what I was after.
I clicked open the message just as the handle of the door turned, and I looked up from a receipt for a storage locker on the screen, right into Pierce’s face.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?”
His voice reverberated right through me as he powered into the room. I was off stance, too slow, and Pierce picked the paperweight up off the bookshelf right by the door, throwing it hard. It caught me square in the shoulder, and I stumbled back with a sharp shock of pain, losing my footing.
“Get away from my computer you sneaky little thief!”
I scrabbled back across the carpet, reaching for the paperweight he’d flung at me as he ripped the pendrive out of the machine.
“It’s over, Pierce. The Russians are coming after you. Did you really think you’d be immune? They’re out there. Right now, watching you.”
He started laughing, and I felt my breathing falter. “No one’s watching. You sad little girl. Did that tabloid fucker pay you? I always knew you were a little whore. How much? Go on, how much am I worth?”
“Not a damn penny. And I’d have fucking paid them to ruin you!”
Pierce growled and I flinched back as he launched himself at me.
“You will NEVER ruin me!”
His face was all but purple, the veins in his face bulging as he bellowed, spittle flying through the air towards me. I could only hope he’d give himself a heart attack if he kept going.