Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Argus Panoptes
September 5th, 2011 3:22 PM
"Nah, I really don't think I wanna play another spellcaster type right now," Max mused. Across the table from Chloe, Brooke's face fell a little and she seemed to contemplate what to do. Rachel did her best to stifle amusement at the eagerness with which the brunette looked up suddenly and declared that she had an idea.Was she even this eager over the phone last night?
"Maybe I can play a spellcaster then," Brooke offered, adjusting her glasses ineffectually. There was nothing wrong with the way they sat on her nose, she just seemed to do so as a matter of course, as if she needed to have something in her hands. Rachel would have thought it was nerves if Brooke wasn't practically jumping out of her seat at the thought of the coming session. "I was never super big on playing a paladin." Steph's favorite picnic table in front of the school shifted slightly as the girl in question turned to face Steph. "What about you?" This was met with a far too earnest shrug and thoughtful expression.
"I'm thinking Rogue," Rachel chimed in. "I've just always wanted to run a Rogue and never got to." This was the explanation she offered publicly, but the honest truth was that she had spotted a bookmark sticking out of Chloe's copy of the dungeon master's guide that suggested she was spending some time with a section on traps. If Chloe was thinking about designing an actual dungeon then they would need a Rogue to handle those traps, to scout ahead and generally be a sneaky bastard. Rachel could play a sneaky bastard: she had plenty of people to model that kind of behavior off of in her life. Her eyes trailed across the table to Steph.
She knew the girl was having some difficulty adjusting to life without her best friend around. The sheer amount of time she and Chloe had spent with Steph (especially Chloe) had done some good, but there was only so much time in the day and in the end it didn't do a ton to quiet the hurt of missing a friend. Rachel was relieved to see, though, the deepening friendship between Chloe and Steph. To be honest, until that had begun to unfold she had been concerned about Chloe's ability to hold deep friendships with anyone she wasn't inclined to kiss. At least, I don't think she's thinking about Steph that way. Given Steph's prior feelings for both her and Max, it would have been a kind of cruel irony.
"Well," Chloe said, suddenly chiming in as if she had not been pretending to stare at her nails in disinterest, as if she had not been listening intently to their planning and bartering with each other about characters or their theorizing as to what Chloe had in store for them. If the girl was attempting to mimic Steph's 'DM face' she was doing a good job. It was enough to make Rachel a little more eager for the game. "Think about your characters a bit before Friday, and I'll be working to adjust the plan for the campaign as it goes. It's going to be a bit reactive anyway." This time Chloe looked up at them all, pulled her beanie down over her head in a 'let's get down to business' manner and added, "I really don't want it to be an on-the-rails' type thing."
"I'm impressed you're feeling so ambitious," Steph said, quite suddenly. She had been rather on the quiet side for the last few minutes. Rachel tried to get a read on her. While it was true she occasionally seemed a bit downtrodden at Mikey's absence she typically did not let it show outside of the confines of her exceedingly lonely home. It was one thing to have a big house essentially to one's self, but it was another entirely to spend so much time in isolation.
"Well, if I end up flat out sucking at it, we can always make Friday a 'tv and cheap beer' night," Chloe offered. "I just wanna give it a try. I think I have things set up with just enough openness to keep it fresh and just enough control to either keep the campaign short if people aren't thrilled or let it go on if everyone's down." Rachel wasn't a fan of the doubt tinging the girl's voice but one glance at her phone showed that time for their little meeting was running down. They would need to get a move on very soon. "Anyway," the punk added, "It's about time for the three us to take off."
"Mhmm," Steph muttered. Almost immediately Brooke and Steph shot 'knowing' glances at each other. On that same side of the table, Max saw this and took on a shade of red. "Of course you do." I think I'll play along.
"Yes," Rachel declared, lowering her voice. "We need our private time, after all." Fixing a smirk on Steph or Brooke won her no sign of embarrassment, but beside them Max was beginning to retreat away from matching anyone's eyes. I'm going to pay for this later, Rachel thought, but it's going to probably be a 'seriousface' kind of day after this. Beneath the table, her right foot stretched and pressed against Max's ankle. The very moment it began to rise along the inside of her calf, the brunette sucked in a sharp breath and stood so fast that the bag with her camera in it toppled from her lap and to the grass. Her face did not lose any of its color. A much wider smile settled on Rachel's, though. Chloe's suddenly shifty side-eye netted the blunette no explanation more detailed than that grin.
"What's wrong, Max?" Steph suddenly asked, her face the very picture of innocence and concern. "Does something have you bothered?"
"Either way," Chloe said, suddenly, as if cutting across the situation and robbing Steph and Rachel both of the various forms of fun derived from Max's surprise. The photographer stood a step or two away from the table, at this point positively glaring at Rachel. She'll forgive me later, Rachel thought, assuredly. "I'm glad you're getting into it," this time their DM-to-be was speaking directly to Brooke.
"Didn't think I would be as into it as I am, but I'm down."
By the time Rachel pulled up behind Chloe's truck at the end of the Madsen house's driveway, Max had all but forgiven her for her earlier transgression. There hadbeen a bit more to it than that, but Rachel didn't like to kiss and tell. Plus, to be honest, Max had been sated a bit by her willingness to pass the aux cord. Though the two of them hadn't left the parking lot for a couple of minutes after Chloe pulled out of it, when Rachel shut the engine to her car ( huh, I actually have a car, now) off, the punk was still behind the wheel of her truck, wrapped up in some conversation on her phone. Leaving Max to unhook her MP3 player and that sort of thing, Rachel shut the driver's door as quietly as she could and attempted to approach Chloe's door without giving herself away.
"I don't know, I've been trying to figure it out ever since I found it," Chloe was telling someone. Rachel slowed a little as her voice became clearer. She could see the girl's eyes narrowing in the mirror, though not due to having spotted her, more in concentration. "So it needs some kind of key?" Whoever she was talking to was not set on speakerphone so Rachel had little to no opportunity to actually hear what was being said. That at least piqued her curiosity enough to keep listening. "Uh, okay, so we tried people already, right? Places? Seattle, Arcadia Bay, um…. Pirate Fort? Don't laugh at me, Mikey. I'm freaked out about this shit." Okay, so what in the hell is she talking to Mikey about? Chloe's voice suddenly lost its edge and she said, quietly, "try Portland." Almost as soon as she spoke, Chloe's eyes shifted to glance at the mirror.
I've been found out, Rachel decided, and dropped all pretense of sneaking. No sooner had she made that decision than a hand came down on her shoulder and made her jump. Fucking Paranormal Activity jumpscares, she grumbled, turning back to Max. The photographer smiled at her with all the grace of someone who had won a great victory. So much for not holding grudges, Max. Rachel watched the girl almost swagger past her toward the front of the truck, where Chloe had excused herself from her conversation with Mikey and was climbing out of the truck. Filing that away for later, Rachel watched Max stop short of her.
The two exchanged something that she could have heard had she wanted to, but it seemed to be an attempt at comfort from Max to Chloe. She's awfully confident in her theory. It wasn't as if the idea that David was working with the Prescotts sounded out there. David Madsen, whatever else he was, was an awful little shit. Max was loathe to explain her suspicions, but Rachel could make a few inferences herself: first and foremost, David never spoke up against Nathan, regardless of what he did and what David had seen. Moreover, there was the question of the Madsen wedding. Chloe had confided to her once that there was no way that they could afford a wedding like they had gotten after their short time together.
Rachel followed them into the house, hoping that Joyce was not taking a rare day off from the diner. It was probably better that they got things done today and buried this question of David's complicitness in protecting Nathan once and for all. Well, whether he's working with the Prescotts or not, he definitely protects Nathan. Something has to change that. Feeling grim, she picked up her pace once they hit the inner hall and shut the door. She wanted to be close to the girls and hear what, if anything, she could do. The nosing around and learning things about other people was certainly their forte, but if she could be of use, why not?
"So, we can start by looking around the closets and shit," Chloe said after a second of silence. She was one or two steps short the stairs before Max stopped her with a reaching hand.
"Where does he spend most of his time alone?" Max asked her. This seemed like a fair enough question. If he was getting up to something, he wasn't likely to keep the evidence of it around where Chloe could stumble over it, not the way he genuinely seemed to distrust her. Wordlessly, Chloe gestured toward one wall. It took Rachel a second to realize she was trying to suggest they check the garage but not Max. She had transformed into a woman on a mission from the moment they shut the front door behind them. It was often impressive to watch the shorter brunette exercise her willpower. Then again, Rachel thought as she hurried to follow,it's also like she knows she's going to find something.
The garage was much as Rachel remembered it from the one or two occasions she had had reason to go in there. On one of those occasions it was because that had been the only place she could back Chloe up against a wall and- not right now, girl. Max stood in the middle of the floor, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees slowly, eyes passing across the room with a kind of precision. When Rachel glanced back, Chloe was watching her with a dubious eye. Rachel couldn't blame her. Though, on her end, she stopped a couple of steps behind Max and, without trying to look too absurd, did much the same as she had. Rachel couldn't remember ever actually looking around the garage before. Last time, I was kind of distracted.
The area they were in was dominated by tool boxes, benches and various chests of drawers. A set of cabinets overtop one workbench looked a little newer than the rest, even with its 'I Get Hard When I Shoot People' stickers. Speaking of, a large cabinet sat in one corner of the room that someone had converted into a gun case showing off all of David's home defense weapons. On the aforementioned workbench sat a laptop which Max strode over to, opened and immediately saw come to life. She nodded almost grimly and then knelt down to start digging through the cabinets.
Chloe, for her part, stepped up beside Max and began to look through the upper cabinets, though Rachel wondered if she had any idea what she was looking for.Does Max have any idea what she's looking for? Paycheck stubs maybe? A hidden cell phone like James had? Rachel stepped to the farthest end of that bench and glanced up. As if she had followed where Rachel was looking, Max spoke from where she knelt on the ground.
"Are those manilla folders?" the brunette asked, pointing almost straight up from where she was kneeling. Rachel glanced down at her in confusion and then looked back. The cabinet she was about to pull open had something on top of it but it was a little surprising that Max had seen whatever it was. She barely could from where she stood.
"Uh, might be," Rachel answered. It felt a little too perfect. Maybe Max actually does know what we're going to find and wants Chloe there to see it? It took Rachel more than a second or two on the tips of her toes to get a hand on whatever was sticking just over the edge of the top of the dark brown cabinet, but when she pulled them down Max's prediction was proven accurate. A manilla file folder was firmly gripped in Rachel's hand as she eased back down onto her feet. Turning it over once revealed that there were several pages inside it and it was almost completely devoid of dust. Whatever was inside, David apparently had frequent use for it. I mean, Rachel turned suspect eyes on Max. Max wouldn't plant some kind of evidence on David, would she?
Max was never vicious for the sake of being vicious. When it came even to Nathan Prescott she seemed more intent on avoiding him or getting someone else to handle him than finding some sort of revenge. Still, Rachel couldn't shake off the mental image of the short, hooded girl standing over Damon Merrick's prone form, promising Frank Bowers that he was next if he so much as thought about touching Chloe again. She wasn't sure she would ever forget the twisted smile on the girl's face, the way that it had inspired Rachel to crawl backwards away from her despite potentially owing her life to this then-stranger. Max might not be capable of violence for violence's sake but what would she do to someone who hurt either of them?
She would do this and worse, and David did hurt Chloe. It hurt to feel distrustful of the photographer who was moving toward the file, muttering about trying the laptop later. The problem was that Max held too many secrets. Rachel had seen it in Chloe's eyes before, too, the wonder that whatever Max was keeping from them might truly be so world-changing as to shake their faith in her. No, fuck that! This is Max. I need to be better than this. Rachel reached out to open the folder for Max, when Chloe spoke for the first time since they had stepped into the house from the other end of the bench.
"Mother fuck !" Both she and Max stopped in their tracks and turned. Chloe had the top cabinet on that end of the bench wide open, revealing a small, older tv monitor. That was strange enough, but it was actually plugged in and on. Part of Rachel knew what she was going to see before she and Max even repositioned themselves to get a better look. Beside her, Max muttered something in shock, something which sounded suspiciously like, 'this is early.' Whatever that might mean, no concerns or suspicions about Max lying about David being capable of anything, even working with the Prescotts, hung around as Rachel took in the sight of the various camera feeds displayed on the screen. There were about six in all. She opened the cabinet beside the television and saw wires feeding through to some sort of hard drive.
'Mother fuck' is right, Rachel thought as Chloe leaned forward against the bench, as if not sure about supporting herself on her legs. On the screen a feed of the Madsens' bedroom, the living room and the kitchen sat on the top row. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a view of the downstairs hall from the ceiling, one of the garage which showed the three of them from the back and finally, as if it was supposed to be an afterthought, a camera capturing Chloe's bedroom from through her closet door. It was angled just enough to catch half of the bed and Chloe's computer desk. Rachel slowly placed a hand on either of Chloe's shoulders and turned her around. She was not entirely able to suppress the urge to recoil from the disgust and rage twisting familiar pale features from their soft and caring norm. Was this how Chloe felt when Rachel got angry?
"I'm sorry, Chloe," Max started, genuinely sounding shocked. "I know this is fucked up." The photographer looked disturbed, herself. Why is he spying on bedrooms? The kind of things that could have been done with those video feeds, especially Chloe's, immediately struck her and pulled a shiver from her. The punk pulled away from Rachel and made as if to turn off the television, before pulling back as if she didn't want to touch it, as if it would burn her.
"Okay. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that David's working with them, because they're all sick, sick, sick fuckers." That seemed to be all Chloe could say, but it was also all Max needed to continue. While the bluenette shivered, Max seized the file Rachel had pulled down for her. Rachel's doubt in Max evaporated as she paused, turning to the other two. Chloe was watching the folder like a hawk. If Max doesn't open it in a couple of seconds she's going to take it from her.
"I'm pretty sure I know what's in here and it's not going to make any of us happy," Max declared, gesturing with the folder.
"What do you mean?" Chloe asked, though the question was rhetorical. "I want to know what else this shithead has. Maybe he kept a file of his favorite stills for his own, sick fucking spank bank?" Max shook her head, frowning deeply.
"David's totally followed all of us at one point or another, right?" Max asked them. They had all recounted separate moments when they'd caught David lurking near them or strangely in a place he had no reason to be at the same time they were. Rachel had never expressed how sometimes she suspected he was following her around with a camera. "Best case scenario? This is him playing detective and these are his files." I hope the best case scenario is what we've got here, Rachel thought as Chloe suddenly snatched the file from Max's hand and pulled it open. The girl's breath hitched and she pulled that hand back. Rachel caught the flash of red from a fresh cut and winced. Max did not say anything about it, instead choosing to close her fist and hide it immediately behind her back. Chloe was not aware enough to notice.
"Fuck me, you're right," Chloe eventually sighed and Rachel liked to think it was in relief that her earlier suspicion was not quite right. The punk slapped the file down on the bench and Max stepped closer to it, right hand still behind her back as if trying to hide the cut. Rachel did not immediately join the two of them, instead hanging back to catch a good look at Max's hand. Whatever had happened in that moment, it was bleeding enough to trail down her closed fist and to the floor. Clean that up before you leave, she reminded herself. "He's got two or three pages on all of us… and Steph."
Rachel eased behind them. Chloe's papers had a physical photo of her paperclipped to them and anyone reading the things David had written about his step daughter would think she was not only a juvenile delinquent capable of anything but the ringleader of a local drug ring. The only thing amusing was David's compilation of all of Chloe's online aliases: it was funny to imagine David actually writing some of these names down. As the three of them hurriedly shifted through the pages, (Max never touching the paper so as not to get it bloody, Rachel figured) a story began to unfold itself before their eyes. In this narrative, David was the woke hero and these three girls were hiding behind their gender and age to get away with all kinds of crimes. The majority of their purported behaviors were either faulty assumptions or based on complete falsities.
One thing became clear to Rachel that day: whatever they did, whenever they did it, David Madsen was able to find some way to spin their behavior to make them out to be shitty human beings. According to his notes, David was aware of the amount of time she and Max spent together in each others' rooms and suspected those nights were the two of them doing business of some sort. Why didn't he ever bust us for it? Put into context with the rest of it, he seemed to think they were producing or distributing something harder than weed for Chloe and Frank. Frank's on his radar , Rachel realized, her stomach growing heavy in her body. Evidence pointed to some informant in the student body, but none of them could pull out an idea on who that might be.
"Did you see this shit?" Chloe hissed, pointing to a line in Steph's files. "He thinks our tabletop nights are literally when we go out dealing. Steph and Mikey apparently help us. This guy is totally fucking delusional. I mean, I once collected money for a dealer, but that was ages ago."
"You did what?" Max asked, her head lifting.
"Not proud of it, never did it again, not the point," Chloe shot back. "David is off his fucking head insane. This isn't just being a sexist sack of shit, he's clinically fucked up." Rachel wasn't sure she could disagree with that amateur diagnosis after today. The whole thing from the files to the cameras smacked of a paranoid psychosis but she was beginning to think that all of his behavior was his own and had little to nothing to do with the Prescotts. Then again, if there was anyone who might want an eye kept on the three of us, it'd be Nathan right? And he could get daddy Prescott to do anything. Max and Chloe's concerns were starting to rub off on her .
"Look, I don't think there's anything to be gained from reading all this shit," Max said, waving a dismissive hand. Chloe's wandering gaze locked onto that hand and the punk released the paper, grabbing at Max's wrist with one quick, precise movement. Max did not react with pain, merely surprise and Rachel watched Chloe examine a long, thin papercut she had accidentally left behind.
"Damn it," Chloe muttered. After a moment of matching Max's eyes and seeing what she had done in them, Chloe tried to pull the girl into the house. "Come on, let's get that cleaned up and hit with peroxide or something. Fuck knows what's on that folder." When Max turned toward the laptop with hungry eyes, Rachel gave her a light shove.
"It'll be there when you get back. Chloe's right." It took the girl a couple of seconds more to be pulled off the scent she was tracking but, eventually Max let Chloe lead her into the house. Rachel hung behind them and watched the scene. Neither one spoke to the other but the way Max's eyes remained almost fixed on Chloe's face told Rachel everything she needed to know. Max was only a step or two from freaking out about how significantly Chloe had been affected by their discoveries so far. Whatever Max thought she was going to find on David's laptop, Rachel wasn't sure it could possibly be more damning than the contents of the hard drive hidden in the cabinet.
"For the most part, this is what I expected." Max was rinsing the blood from her hand-or more precisely, letting Chloe rinse the blood from her hand- in the bathroom sink when she uttered this proclamation. Chloe's eyes sharpened a bit, concern draining from them. "Not the cameras," Max continued. "I didn't see that coming." Rachel rather thought Max's shock was fairly convincing evidence of that. "But the rest of it is right in line with his personality: convinced he's right, convinced his moral compass is absolute, convinced the world is conspiring behind his back." That also sounds about right.
"Well, I can get into his laptop. Saw him entering his password last week." Chloe followed this announcement up by turning away from them and opening the cabinet above the sink. The cut across Max's hand was long enough that a simple bandaid probably wasn't going to do much for it. It also wasn't super deep, but if they were going to be fucking around a garage for a few more, Rachel was glad when Chloe pulled out a bit of gauze. She didn't have much to say about Max's sudden perking up at first. When the photographer's hand was wrapped, then Chloe looked into her eyes. "If you think this is going to do anything good, then I'll get us in."
"I mean, we've found plenty so far. What might he be keeping on a computer he thinks is safe?" Rachel nodded at the sound reasoning and let not Max, but Chloe lead them from the room like a general marching off to war or someone about to step up to speak their truth into a microphone through cracked lips. Max was having some difficulty not reaching across herself to grab the strap of her bag as she usually did, judging by the way she continually did so and then winced immediately. Rachel, for her part, reached out the second time Max did this and took hold of the bag, lifting it off of her shoulder.
"What?" Max asked as they hit the bottom stair, turning blue eyes on her questioningly, if anxiously.
"Gimme, I'll carry that. You do that Max thing you do so well." There was no further hesitation and shortly after Rachel came to understand why Max would feel compelled to grab hold of the strap despite pain in her hand: the bag was heavy. Whatever was in it was more than just a laptop and a camera. Rachel's interests were more piqued than she wanted to admit, but they had a mission of sorts and she had a feeling that on top of it, Chloe was not yet done with this whole camera thing. If she was, then Rachel wasn't. No way in hell is he getting his peep show on.
Once they were firmly in the dusty, oil-smelling box that was the Madsen family garage, Rachel stayed out of the way. She was useful when it came to making decisions, to getting in peoples' faces, but this kind of thing was probably best left to Max and Chloe. The laptop came to life and Chloe read out a string of numbers which Max entered in rapid, practiced keystrokes. Out of curiosity, she stepped forward to get a look at the screen. The background was a photo Joyce, with Chloe lurking somewhere on the edge of the image. Still curious, Rachel leaned in between the girls to get a better look at Chloe's image in the photo. Before she could ascertain how long ago it had been taken by judging the girl's appearance, Max turned her head and placed her lips on Rachel's cheek so quickly and unexpectedly that she pulled back in surprise.
Max's self-assured chuckle was enough to cut through the tension of the moment and make Rachel's cheeks flame briefly. Mother fucker, she thought. Most impressively, though, Chloe laughed. That's a good sign, she told herself. That's the best news all day. To say she was worried about Chloe's reaction to the video feeds was an understatement, however realistic the response was. The computer's browser popped up and just as quickly his history list. It was, Rachel thought, leaning back in, at least not full of porn.
"What are the odds he's dumb enough to use his computer password for his e-mail?" Max asked herself aloud. A moment later, an inbox propagated itself on the screen in front of them. "Or that he's dumb enough not to log out before he leaves." Instead of joining Max in her search now that his emails were fair game, Chloe seemed to take a step back from the computer and then another and another. Rachel followed until they were standing quietly against the closed garage door on the opposite side of the room. She stayed close and silent by her girlfriend's side.
Chloe's momentary good mood seemed to have drained from her face very quickly and though Rachel kept a few inches of distance between them she rather thought she was doing more good right beside Chloe than she would have been hovering over Max's shoulder and interrupting her work. The brunette across the room was muttering to herself. Eventually, Rachel reached over and began to rub Chloe's back, trying to distract her from whatever horrible scenario she was imagining in relation to David's cameras. Seeing the combination of disgust and fear on Chloe's face was reminiscent of watching Max's eyes lock on Nathan Prescott for the first time since he had drugged and kidnapped her. Something was going to have to be done about David Prescott before it was too late.
No one else knows what to do. I'll have to be the one to do it.
"Do you think these cameras are actually him being a sick fuck?" Rachel finally asked, deciding to put the question in Chloe's vernacular. She didn't personally think so, but if Chloe had reason to believe otherwise that was going to alter the form and severity of her response. "Or is it just him being a fascist and completely embracing the surveillance state?"
"It's probably his paranoia and shit but," Chloe stopped and seemed to lean back into Rachel's rubbing hand. "I'm not okay with it no matter what," she declared. "Max, can you clear the videos on that fucking hard drive or do I need to take it away from him?"
"I can," Max said, turning away from the laptop, "but I want you to think about something."
"What would make you not want to put a stop to this if it was you?" Chloe asked her suddenly, challengingly.
"Nothing," Max replied, her voice lowering to sound soothing and reconciliatory. "But that hard drive is only so big and that's a lot of cameras. That means he probably reviews and erases it every night." Rachel didn't think the laptop Max was looking at had much storage space, so that made more sense than the idea that David was storing tons of footage. "If you think you can stand to leave it in place to do something that's really going to stick in his craw, I've got a better idea." Unsurprisingly, the thought of pissing David off made Chloe brighten right up.
"I'll lend you my ears, Marc Antony," Chloe said by way of agreement.
"Well," Max continued, turning back to the laptop. "He'll have to check the footage tonight, probably. Tomorrow at the latest. I say we go upstairs, find the camera in your room, knock it out and hope it was expensive. He can't say anything if we do that without giving away what he's doing. We take the whole hard drive and that might be escalation enough that he says something." She's thought about this, probably ever since we saw the feed. "I'd rather fuck with him right back than escalate things. Especially since he's being so much more unpredictable- so much more unpredictable now, I mean." Beside Rachel, Chloe stayed silent in contemplation.
"It's probably a pinhole camera, something small. So you go upstairs, call me or Rachel and we'll guide you to it." Without even bothering to respond the bluenette pulled the garage door open and slammed it behind her on her way into the house. "She's freaked."
"She's really freaked," Rachel agreed, crossing the floor. "I'm freaked."
"Yes she is which is why I want her to have a chance to fuck with him and- no, no you're not," Max replied without looking away from David's e-mail inbox. "Keep an eye on the video feed will you?" Okay, let's set aside you feeding Chloe's 'rebellious' side and focus on the 'no you're not.'
"What do you mean I'm not freaked?" Rachel asked, frustrated. Max always did this shit, speaking cryptically when things were important. On the small vision at the other end of the bench, Chloe had not yet gotten to her room.
"I mean you're pissed off, not freaked."
"How do you know?"
"Because there are only three moods I've seen you get in that make you warm up like this and none of them is freaked out," Max declared, turning away from the screen finally. Rachel hadn't notice the room heat up, she usually didn't until it was already a bit excessive. The photographer moved her hands from the keyboard and stepped closer to Rachel in a sort of aggression that had nothing to do with violence. "And I don't think it's either of the others. At least, I really hope not." Rachel's reddening face did so without her permission. "Okay, well maybe you're pissed or embarrassed, but either way, it's not the third." With that Max returned to her work, leaving Rachel to do her very best to think about anything other than the third emotion which could turn her into a walking, talking space heater. Chloe came into frame on the television and Rachel turned away. "Besides, when you're freaked out you do much bigger, more noticeable things."
"I do?" Rachel asked her as Chloe approached her closet, right hand clenched around her cell phone and left around something long and thin.
"Sudden winds and rains," Max continued. Before she could explain further, Max changed the subject. "Sometimes I wish you remembered your rebellious side." Rachel blinked and waited for some sort of explanation. "When I first met you you would shout down a drug dealer in an empty junkyard even knowing no one was around to hear you, you'd sneak off to punk shows and get into all kinds of trouble and get away with it. Besides, you were the person who saved me from whatever Nathan was- yeah."
"I just think things through more," Rachel insisted. "Probably your influence."
"You're being careful and I get it. I wasn't careful once and now I have to live with the consequences. Lots of consequences." Is she thinking about Merrick? The idea that she might have made it easy for Frank to kill someone? "At your core though, you're a good person who does what's right, so maybe it's time to trust yourselfwithin reason. " Max let out a sudden 'ahah!' Rachel wanted to push her, either to hear what she had found or to find out more about the supposed winds and rains that Max was blaming on her, but at that point Chloe called her, looking visibly frustrated. She only hesitated for a second looking between the sight of a triumphant Max in profile and frustrated Chloe from a slight angle before she dug her phone from her pocket and answered its insistent buzzing.
"Tell Chloe I'm about to forward a whole bunch of emails to all of our addresses," Max told her as Rachel answered.
"I can't find this damn thing," Chloe insisted. "It's probably like Max said, really fucking small."
"Max has something," Rachel decided to lead in with good news. "She says she sent us all a copy."
"What?"
"What do you have, Max?" Rachel asked. She moved closer to the girl and held up her right hand so that Max could turn and speak into the phone while she typed.
"Emails from David and Sean Prescott going back to last year, talking rates, talking about keeping Nathan out of trouble, a few emails from Wells that makes it sound like he knows. I was right. It's all here, or enough to be damning if not enough for a court of law." Rachel felt a different kind of warmth in her stomach as she watched Max's eyes brighten and practically sing. The girl continued to forward one email after another. "I'm gonna delete all record of sending these to us, but we should all have a copy and I'll get them onto the flash drive later. I'm gonna have to leave taking care of the camera to you and Rachel."
"Go fucking get them, Super Max," Chloe responded over speakerphone, her voice an odd mix of grim and relieved. Rachel could understand that. It was unfortunate that all of their worst fears about David (and then some) had come to fruition. It was, however, good that they had proof. Speaking of which, Rachel was going to take a few pictures of David's storage set up before they left, for good measure. "Now let's cost Sergeant Douchecanoe some money."
"I thought it was douchefaucet," Rachel insisted, taking the phone back but not bothering to take it off speaker. She left Max to do her work positioned herself in front of the television. It took she and Chloe no more than a minute to find the exact point spot where the camera was hidden. Chloe wasn't sure in the end whether the end of the long screwdriver slamming into the camera simply knocked it back into the wall it was set into or actually broke it beforehand, but Rachel didn't think it mattered. It would no longer be giving David any access to Chloe's antics in the confines of her own bedroom without her consent.
When Chloe joined them in the garage it was with a look of smug satisfaction covering every inch of her face and making Rachel more than a little regretful that they were not somewhere more private than a house which was being recorded. It became quickly evident by the heavy bag over Chloe's shoulder that she was planning on spending some time away from home, again. Probably at Steph's, she's practically taken over the guest room. That would, at least, make Steph happy as long as she did not know the context of the visit. I wonder what Steph would do if she did find out? Rachel wouldn't like to be David in that case.
Then again, she wouldn't like to be David very soon, anyway.
At one point, Max finished her work on the emails and set about erasing the footage of their time in the garage from the hard drive, explaining that she would rather David not know just how much they knew until it came time to use it against him. Let him think we just found the cameras, Rachel thought as she watched Chloe gently grab and cradle Max's injured hand before nudging the photographer to the side to let Chloe do the job. Whatever I've got to do to put him in his place, I don't want him to see it coming.
Max wanted her to trust her sense of right and wrong more often? She was going to start with Drill Sergeant Madsen and his immediate need to be taken down a peg. It was only a matter of time, but time was running out.