McCoy shot me a sideways look. I knew that look. It was the same one he once shot at me when I'd insisted the crazy chick I'd just slept with was nothing to worry about. Just six hours before she lit my fucking car on fire.
Of all of us, McCoy was the most observant, the most likely to read between the lines. Though what he thought he was seeing now was beyond me.
"Vivid Harmon-y," Che repeated, looking at her channel name.
"Her name is Harmon," I supplied.
"She can really make money like this?" Che asked Remy who was tapping out of the video so he could tuck his phone away.
"With her following, a couple grand a month. Lets her work from home. Can't imagine why she'd move all the way out here, though," he added, tapping his legs for the dogs to follow him back into the kitchen.
"That's a good question," Che agreed, turning back to me.
"Yeah, not that I don't trust Remy's research," McCoy said. "But you've got to wonder if it stopped when he caught sight of her on that video. Might be worth looking into."
"I'll get on it," I said, moving past them, going toward the stairs.
As I walked past, I pretended to ignore the fact that McCoy murmured, "I bet you will."
I wasn't someone who lied to myself.
I knew that when I went into my room, pulled out my phone, and started looking into Harmon, it wasn't all to figure out if she possibly had any contacts that we would want to know about.
We knew how these organized crime guys operated now. While they didn't directly include women in their dealings, they would use them to do certain types of surveillance or information mining. Especially if the women had an in at a spa or school or women's group where chicks would talk shit about their men, which would, in turn, give the wives something to bring back to their husbands, little tidbits of information they might not be able to get otherwise. Like if someone's husband is fucking his maid, if there was some secret vacation house in the west or something. You never knew what could be useful. And we'd come across a few women who sat around in higher crime areas, clearly listening for any information they could relay back to their more recognizable husbands.
So it wasn't outside the realm of possibilities that Harmon had a connection to some group that decided she would be useful to suss out information about us.
It was suspect that she would be a single woman with no car who willingly moved next to an outlaw biker clubhouse Not all MCs had morals. Some didn't give a fuck about hurting women. You didn't know. Unless, of course, you did. You came prepared with that knowledge . Because you came here on purpose.
Maybe that was paranoia speaking, but we had endured more than our fair share of trouble in setting up our hustle. We didn't want to run into any other issues because we weren't being careful enough.
That being said, as soon as I opened up one of her videos, I forgot all about actually looking into her connections. I could suddenly see how she made a living from streaming herself playing her games.
Sure, it didn't hurt that she was beautiful, that she usually came to her desk with her makeup done—lips red, eyes dramatic, hair styled. But it was more than that. She had a tendency toward inventive cursing, since, I imagined, the advertisers would pull their ads if they found her language inappropriate. She was also sharp, having quick and scathing, yet hilarious, comebacks to whoever was razzing her in the game.
On top of her ad revenue, she also had something set up that she linked below her videos where people could pay her for more access. Personal videos, chats, even one-on-one gaming. Each level cost more and more money. Patronage-Only.
After six or seven videos, I found myself scrolling through that patron side, considering leveling up. When I didn't fucking play video games. At least not anymore. Life was too busy. I found other ways to play that were more satisfying. Namely the kind of play with another person of the opposite sex.
According to her account, she had a thousand monthly patrons. Which, even if they only paid the lowest level of five bucks, meant an added income of five grand each month. That was nothing to sneeze at.
And, really, if she was mobbed up, why would she need to get so inventive to make a living?
"Pretty chicks with a side hustle can still be the enemy," McCoy's voice declared, making me turn to find him standing in my doorway, shaking his head at me.
"I realize that," I agreed.
"Did you even check out her social media?"
"Heading there now. I think it's a long shot though."
"Come on, Huck. It's suspect. She's got a car phobia, but moved out here where she would need a car. It's just suspect. Worth a deeper dive than Remy did. Just in case. I don't feel like getting another tooth knocked out because we weren't as prepared as we could have been."
As a whole, morale had been decent. I mean, considering we were all walking around with part of us aching that had never bothered us before.
It had been a hell of a year since we'd slipped on our cuts, and got this chapter going. I had to understand if the men wanted a couple months that didn't involve bloodshed and bruises. They'd certainly earned it.
"We will deal with our guest later tonight. Then we will have a little break," I assured him.
Of course, as it would turn out, I was just talking out of my ass when I said that.
Because life had other plans for us.
And, it seemed, Harmon.
Chapter Three
Harmon
Patrick was up to his old tricks again, it seemed.
The one thing they didn't really say about joining the gaming community, being one of the few girls toward the top of the gaming channels, was that people would feel like they owned you.
I'd been prepared for the rampant sexism—some things never change—like when guys who heard you liked to game, they felt the need to rapid-fire quiz you on every infinitesimally small detail about said game and its history, things they would never expect a fellow guy to know, things they'd probably needed to Google themselves, to take you even half as serious as they took the male gamers.
But, once I got myself past that, earning my place and the respect that came with it—at least for the most part—then came the guys who thought they had a right to have access to you, to get answers from you, to demand things from you, just because they consumed your content.
I guess I didn't understand it because I'd started out as a fan as well, as everyone usually did. I found game streaming channels when I was in my early twenties, finding them soothing, using them to help me calm down on hard days.
But I'd never felt like any of the content creators owed me. I never felt like we had some kind of "connection" just because I watched their channel.
I guess that kind of shit always came back to the patriarchy, though. Men who thought they had a right to you and your time just because they wanted it.
I'd actually banned Patrick—whose avatar was a picture of Patrick Star from SpongeBob—from my Patronage-Only because I thought that was why he'd been so pushy. He'd had the highest package for a while, which meant he got to game with me on occasion. And it had just started to get too weird. So I'd banned him from that site while claiming I had no idea why he couldn't be a part of it anymore.