“Did Kimani ever work for the San Francisco Tribune in any capacity? As an intern?”
“Not that I can find.”
“What about this Sam Green guy? Besides teaching one of her classes at the Berkeley journalism school, do they have any other connections together?”
“I’ll dig deeper, but nothing else came up at first.”
After ending his call with Stephens, Ben returned to the pen he held. It belonged to Kimani. She had looked upset when she couldn’t find it in Jake’s cabin. Because it wasn’t an ordinary pen. Inside, it had a USB, perhaps doubling as a flash drive.
He could simply stick it into the adapter on his iPad to peruse the contents. The only thing holding him back was a sense of decorum/decency. He shouldn’t invade her privacy. But then, he had—or Stephens had on his behalf—hacked into her student profiles at Stanford and Berkeley, as well as her documents with the Scarlet Auction. The latter had netted him a most delightful questionnaire listing a variety of BDSM activities ranging from petplay to anal fisting. Kimani had rated all of the activities a “5,” which meant she couldn’t get enough of it.
Based on the hesitancy she had exhibited at different times, he didn’t buy all her answers. But why would she lie?
She had also lied about Sam, trying to pass off the editor of the Tribune as a worried female friend, when Stephens had discovered Sam was a married gay man. Ben recalled the conversation he had overhead between Kimani and Sam when she’d borrowed his mobile.
They had talked about his family. About Uncle Gordon.
Fuck decency. There was something off about Kimani.
And when had he ever worried about decency? As a young man who had run with a gang, he had stolen things not because he’d needed whatever crap he stole, but because he could. When a rival gang member tried to harass his younger sister, he had beaten the guy beyond what was necessary. He didn’t have to break the prick’s arm, but he did.
They weren’t the most exemplary years of his life. His father’s plan to send him to boarding school in England had worked as intended, for the most part.
He was about to stick the pen into the USB adapter hooked to his iPad when the car pulled up in front of the coffee shop where Wong had parked. Setting aside the pen, Ben hopped out of the car.
“Wong can drive,” he said to Bataar.
“Better if I drive,” Bataar replied. “I can do my job that way.”
“How’s that?”
“I can keep an eye on you that way.”
“You don’t work for my dad anymore. You work for me.”
“Sorry, boss. Old habits die hard.”
Ben thought about how much he itched to get his hands on Kimani. He would have no qualms mauling her in front of his security detail. Nothing surprised or put off Bataar.
“But I’ll let you drive,” Ben decided.
Shutting the door, he walked over to where Wong stood in front of the SUV reading the Sing Tao Daily.
“Who’s she having coffee with?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know, Mr. Lee. The man just left.”
“What did he look like?”
“Medium height, yellow hair, late forties perhaps.”
Ben didn’t like hearing that Kimani was meeting with a man, but if he was in his late forties, it wasn’t as likely to be a date.
“Bataar is driving the rest of the day.”
“Yes, Mr. Lee.”
Leaving Wong, Ben walked into the small coffee shop.