The Enforcer's Cam Girl

Chapter 13 - Encryption Keys

I hated needing him. Hated feeling small. Hated being alone and terrified. I couldn't breathe right. My breaths came in shallow, ragged pants.

The back door clicked shut, and for a moment, my heart shuddered inside my chest. The bolt slid home with a dull thunk. I stayed crouched under the table with my laptop bag in front of me, my knuckles turning white.

My ears tracked the sound across the cabin. Boots on wooden planks. A pause.

"Good girl," Reaper whispered. "You stayed put." The soft clatter of wood on wood when he set something down by the door hit my ears.

“You kill the lights?” I said. It was the first thing that entered my thoughts. "What about the..."

“Shot the lights out,” he said in in a matter-of-a-fact tone. “Driver's still out there. Kid's not.”

I looked up then. Reaper stood inside the doorway with his shoulders filling the frame. Mud streaked up to his knees. Blood darkened his right hand to the wrist and tacked between his fingers. He wiped his palm on his jeans and left a smear. In his other hand, he held a bolt-action rifle with a cheap scope, the strap hanging loose.

My mouth went dry. “Whose?” On my hands and knees, I crawled out from under the table.

“Bodie.” He leaned the rifle against the wall by the back door and pulled his pistol from his waistband. He set it on the table beside the laptop bag, grip toward me. “He came around the east side. I cut him off in the trees.”

He said it flat, the way other men said they'd changed a tire. I stared at the blood drying in the creases of his knuckles and thought about how warm it must have been a minute ago.

My stomach turned over and settled.

“You're hurt?” I asked.

“Not mine.”

He crossed to the stove where the coffee pot sat on the burner. He turned on the sink faucet. Water ran over his hands into the dented basin. He scrubbed with a rag. Pink water hit the metal and ran toward the drain hole. The generator thumped outside the back wall, loud enough to vibrate up through my socks.

Needing to keep my mind busy, I pulled out the laptop, and then started a new test run The progress bar hit ninety-four percent. I turned my full attention back to the keyboard.

Dennis’ vault had fought me for several hours. Layered passwords, a key file split across three dummy directories, a wipe trigger tied to failed attempts. I'd rebuilt the environment in a sandbox and fed it false successes until it stopped checking. Now the main container yawned open file by file.

Wallet exports. Swap logs. A node log with timestamps that matched the night Calvin died.

“Talk while I work,” I said. “How many outside? And what’s next?”

“Two came up. One left walking.” He dried his hands and came to stand behind my chair. His shadow fell across the screen. “Truck's blind now. Driver pulled back to the tree line when the beams died. He'll call it in or he'll wait for dawn. Either way we have hours, not days.”

“Great. Love a deadline.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

The last six percent crawled through the rest of the night while he held the front window. By the time the shutter seams went gray, the truck in the trees had backed out and had gone.

Mid-morning, the decrypt finished with a soft chime. Folders populated the window. LEDGER_MASTER. MIXER_LOGS. And at the bottom, separate, a single file with a lock icon beside it. INSURANCE.DAT. I double-clicked it. A second password prompt bloomed, different encryption, longer key. I tried Dennis’ known strings. Nothing. I tried the wallet seed fragment. Nothing.

“f**k,” I muttered. I ran a dictionary attack in the background and left it chewing. “Main ledger's open. The insurance file sits behind another wall. I can't crack that one yet.”

Reaper pulled out the other chair and dropped into it. Wood creaked under his weight. “Show me what's open.”

I turned the laptop so we could both see and scrolled through LEDGER_MASTER. Rows and rows of entries. Dates, amounts in BTC, wallet addresses shortened to first and last characters, notes in Dennis’ shorthand.

At first it looked clean. Invoices marked IV. Regular transfers out to the same cluster. A hundred eighty thousand here. One seventy-nine there. The cartel skim Iron had built, moving through Dennis to Monero and into the IV wallet.

Then the pattern broke.

“There.” I tapped the screen with a fingernail. “See these? Same dates as the IV payments, but second withdrawals. Smaller. Twenty. Fifteen. Thirty. Marked MD.”

Reaper leaned in. His arm pressed against mine on the table edge. Heat came off him through his shirt. “Marcus Doyle.”

“Marcus,” I said. “Dex dropped that name on me on the phone. I didn't know his last name.”

He nodded. “What are the destinations?”

I followed the transaction hashes into MIXER_LOGS. My own code stared back at me. My routing logic. My fee structure, down to the half-percent I charged for rush mixes. My throat closed.

“No,” I said. “No f*****g way.”

The MD withdrawals funneled into a Finch Bail Bonds holding wallet, then split and bounced through three of my mixer addresses. Edgar Finch's name sat in the memo field on two of them, plain as a signature. EF HOLD. EF PASS.

I sat back so fast the chair legs scraped. “That's my mixer. That's my service. I washed this money.”

Reaper's eyes didn't leave the screen. “Explain it.”

“Marcus skimmed extra off Iron's skim. He pulled side amounts beyond the IV payments and pushed them through Edgar. Edgar fed them to me as a normal job.” My voice climbed. I forced it down. “That job the night this all started. The one Edgar said was a private client who needed clean coins fast. That was Marcus’ money. I mixed it. I took my cut. I sent my mom part of the fee that month.”

The coffee boiled over on the stove with a hiss. Neither of us moved to grab it. Brown foam spat over the rim and sizzled on the burner.

“So I'm framed with my own work,” I said. “Iron thinks I stole two million because the trail leads to my addresses. But I only ever saw Edgar's deposit. I never saw Marcus behind him.”

Reaper stood. He walked to the stove and yanked the pot off the heat. Coffee sloshed over his thumb. He didn't flinch. He set the pot on the trivet and stared at the mess.

“Edgar sold you,” he said.

“Edgar sells everyone. That's his business model.” I laughed, short and ugly. “f**k me. I told myself I was smart. Compartmentalized. No names, no faces, coins in and coins out. And all that time I was laundering the exact money they're going to kill me for.”

“You didn't know.”

“I should have known.” I shoved up from the chair. The laptop bag strap caught on the armrest and I ripped it free. “Dennis knew. That's why he kept an insurance file. He saw Marcus double-dipping and saved proof. And now Dennis is dead and I'm holding his proof with my fingerprints all over the crime.”

Reaper turned to face me. “You were used.”

“Don't.” I pointed at him. My finger shook. “Don't do the pity thing. You used me too. Admit it. You came to my apartment to find the leak. You kicked in my motel door. You put a gun on me. You dragged me out here because I'm evidence with legs.”

“I kept you alive.”

“You kept me useful.” The words tore out. “If I hadn't thrown Calvin's name in your face, you'd have put a bullet in me on that motel carpet. Don't rewrite it now because watched me in the shower and you feel weird about it.”

He stepped away from the stove, into the middle of the small room. The cabin felt smaller with him angry. The gun cabinet loomed behind him against the north wall, glass front cracked from an old impact, rifles locked inside.

“Iron pointed me at an innocent man,” he said. His voice dropped low. “Calvin Mercer bled out on that floor because I followed orders. I don't get to rewrite that.”

“Good. Then don't rewrite me either. I'm not your princess. I'm not your asset. I'm the i***t who washed Marcus Doyle's theft and charged him a discount for it.”

“You didn't know it was his.”

“But I took the money.” I advanced on him. “I spent it. I sent cash to St. Johns and told myself I was a good daughter. Turns out I was spending cartel blood money filtered through Edgar f*****g Finch. So who used whom here? Marcus used Edgar. Edgar used me. You used me. Iron wants me dead. The only person who didn't get anything out of me is me.”

Reaper caught my wrist when I tried to push past him. His grip closed hard around bone. Blood still stained under his nails despite the wash. His thumb pressed into my pulse.

“Stop,” he said.

“Make me.”

I shouldn't have said it. I knew it the second it left my mouth. Reckless and furious and shaking with it, wanting him to shut my brain off because my brain kept replaying those mixer logs with my own code signing my own death warrant.

He saw it. His eyes went dark and his mouth pulled flat.

“You want me to f**k the thinking out of you,” he said. “That it?”

My breath came fast. “You talk too much.”

He moved. One step drove me back against the gun cabinet. Glass rattled in the frame behind my shoulders. His body pinned mine, thigh between my legs, chest crushing my breasts flat. His hand left my wrist and clamped around my throat, fingers spanning my jaw, thumb pressing under my chin to tip my head back.

I grabbed his cut with both hands and held on.

He kissed me like he wanted to punish us both. Teeth crashed against teeth. His tongue forced into my mouth, hot and demanding. I bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood and he growled against my mouth and squeezed my throat tighter, cutting my air to a thin thread. My p***y clenched, wet and aching, soaking through my panties. I rocked against his thigh without meaning to, seeking friction through denim.

“f**k,” I gasped when he tore his mouth away to bite down my neck. “You bastard.”

“Language,” he muttered against my skin. His teeth scraped my collarbone. His other hand palmed my ass and hauled me harder against him. His c**k stood rigid behind his zipper, thick and pressing into my belly. I could feel every inch of him through our clothes.

“Touch me,” I demanded. I yanked at his belt. “Stop talking and f*****g touch me. I need—”

He bit my earlobe, sharp. Pain lanced bright and clean through the noise in my head. His hand at my throat held me still while his hips ground into mine, c**k dragging against my c**t through layers that suddenly felt like too much.

“Beg better,” he said.

“I'll beg when you earn it.” I dug my nails into his neck. “You want to own me? Prove you can handle me. f**k me against this cabinet until I forget Marcus and Edgar and that f*****g file.”

His fingers tightened, then released my throat. He stepped back half a pace, breathing hard, his mouth wet and swollen. My lips throbbed. My n*****s peaked hard against my shirt, aching for his mouth. Wetness slid down my inner thigh.

“No,” he said.

I stared at him. “What?”

“You heard me.” He wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. His c**k still tented his jeans, obvious and straining. “Not like this. Not when you're trying to erase yourself.”

Rage and lust tangled so tight I couldn't separate them. “Coward.”

“Smart.” He grabbed my chin and forced me to meet his eyes. “You want my c**k, you'll have it clear-headed. You'll ask without shaking. You'll take what I give you and you'll remember every second. You don't get to use me to go numb.”

The laptop chimed behind us. Dictionary attack failed. The insurance file sat locked on the screen, keeping its secrets while mine spilled all over the floor.

I shoved him, palms flat to his chest. He let me move him this time. I stalked back to the table with my mouth bruised and my underwear sticking to my p***y and my hands still fisted in fury.

“Fine,” I spat. “Crack your own f*****g ledger.”

He stayed by the gun cabinet, watching me with hunger and control warring in his face. “We crack it together. Then we hunt Marcus.”

The promise hung between us, hotter than the kiss.

I turned my back on him because I couldn't stand the way he looked at me like he understood the math in my head.

The laptop screen threw white across the table. FAILED in red under the last dictionary run. The fan whined under the keys. Behind that, the generator knocked through the back wall.

I shoved the laptop aside. It scraped wood. The insurance file icon sat there locked and smug and I wanted to smash it.

“You want to hunt Marcus together,” I said. “Prove you're with me.”

I pulled my thermal over my head and dropped it. The air raised gooseflesh down my arms. My bra went next. My n*****s tightened in the cold cabin air. I hooked my thumbs in my leggings and shoved them down with my underwear in one push, stepped out of them, kicked them away. I stood naked with my wet p***y exposed and my mouth still swollen from his teeth.

Reaper's eyes tracked down my body and stopped between my legs. His hands curled at his sides. His c**k still pushed hard against his jeans.

“If I’m yours to protect, then act like it,” I said. “Put your mouth on me.”

He crossed the space in three strides. He grabbed my hips and lifted me onto the edge of the table. Wood bit into my ass. The laptop rocked beside my thigh. He pushed my knees wide with both palms. His fingers dug into my inner thighs and held me open.

My slick shone on my skin. I could feel it cooling where it had slid down.

He dropped to his knees in front of me. His cut creaked. His shoulders wedged between my legs. He looked up at me once, eyes dark, mouth set, then he licked me in one long stroke from hole to c**t.

My back arched. I caught the table edge behind me. His tongue was hot and flat and certain. He circled my c**t and sucked it between his lips. Pressure built fast, too fast, because I was already soaked and angry and half-mad with it. He slid two fingers inside me without warning. My inner walls clamped down. He curled them and rubbed that spot that made my thighs shake.

“f**k,” I breathed. “Yes. There.”

He worked me with his mouth and his hand in rhythm. His stubble scraped my thighs. His fingers pumped in and out, wet sounds loud in the cabin. My c**t throbbed under his tongue. Heat built low in my belly, tightening, climbing. My legs started to tremble around his head. I rocked forward to chase it.

“Don't stop,” I said. “I'm close. I'm—”

He stopped. He pulled his mouth off me and slid his fingers out. He kept his hands on my thighs, holding me spread while I pulsed empty around nothing.

I stared down at him. “What the f**k are you doing?”

“Learning you,” he said. His chin shone with me. He wiped nothing away.

My p***y ached and throbbed. My c**t stood swollen and sensitive. I tried to close my legs. He held them open.

“Again,” he said.

He put his mouth back on me. No warm-up this time. He sucked my c**t hard and pushed his fingers back inside me, deeper, faster. He f****d me with them while his tongue flicked side to side. The coil wound tighter than before. My breath came in short gasps. My nails scratched the wood. I lifted my hips off the table to grind against his face.

“Please,” I said. The word tore out of me. “Please, I need to come. Let me come.”

He bit my c**t lightly with his teeth. Pain sparked and melted into pleasure. My vision blurred. I was right there, right on the edge, my whole body tensed for it—

He stopped again. He sat back on his heels with his fingers still buried to the second knuckle, not moving.

A sound came out of me, furious. “Reaper.”

“Princess,” he said. His voice stayed level. His c**k strained so hard I could see the shape of the head through denim.

I tried to move my hips to work myself on his fingers. He pulled them out completely. My wetness coated them. He looked at his hand, then at my open p***y.

“You taste like you want to fight me,” he said.

“I want to come,” I snapped. My thighs shook. My hands gripped the table so hard my knuckles ached. “Stop f*****g with me and finish it.”

He stood. He towered over me where I sat spread on the table. He grabbed my jaw and tipped my face up. His thumb pressed into my lower lip and dragged it down.

“Third time's the rule,” he said.

He bent me back with a hand between my shoulder blades until my back hit the table. The laptop edge pressed into my side. He pushed my legs wider, up, my heels hooking over the table edge. He went to his knees again and ate me like he had all day.

His tongue speared inside me. He licked and sucked and groaned against me. The vibration shot straight through my c**t. He added his fingers again, three now, stretching me, filling me. His other hand pressed flat on my belly and held me down when I bucked.

I couldn't think. Marcus and Edgar and the mixer logs burned off under his mouth. There was only his tongue and the pressure and the wet slide of his fingers and the ache building and building until my legs locked around his shoulders and my back bowed off the wood.

“Yes yes yes,” I chanted. “I'm gonna— I'm gonna—”

He ripped his mouth away. He yanked his hand free. He stood in one motion and stepped back out of my reach.

No. No no no. My orgasm hung suspended and then crashed. My p***y clenched on air, empty and spasming. Slick ran down my ass onto the table. My c**t pulsed with need so bad it hurt. I collapsed flat, chest heaving, legs still spread, shaking all over.

I pushed up on my elbows and glared at him through tangled hair. “You sadistic bastard.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at the wet shine he left there, then at me, naked and panting and furious on his table.

“You wanted me to shut your head off,” he said. “I just showed you I can put you where I want and keep you there. Edge three times and you begged pretty on the third.”

“Finish me,” I demanded. My voice cracked. “You don't get to leave me like this.”

“I do until you hear me.” He pulled his chair out with his boot and sat. He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees, eyes locked on my p***y. “You want my c**k, you want my mouth, you want my protection, you take my terms. You obey me in this. You don't run. You don't lie about jobs. You don't go numb and call it survival. You're mine to protect and mine to f**k and mine to keep breathing. Say it.”

I slid off the table. My legs almost gave. Wetness stuck my thighs together. I stood in front of him naked with my hands fisted, my whole body screaming for release he refused to give, and his ultimatum hung in the air between my needy body and his fully clothed control.