Chapter Twenty-Two

Whatever special something Brax Patterson had, he could’ve made a mint from bottling and selling it.

“I told you he’d come through.” Luke grinned once his brother had confirmed success on the first step of this latest part of their plan. What would be the end of everything, if it all played out the way they needed it to.

No. The way she’d make it play out. It was all in her hands now, and Claire could almost taste victory. So long as Ballard kept acting predictably, she’d be fine. And if there was one thing she’d finally started to understand about Ballard, it was his lack of imagination.

Anyone could’ve predicted what he’d done so far, if they were willing to sink to his level and think like a power-hungry, greedy sociopath.

Her one advantage over him so far was that total lack of imagination. He hadn’t imagined her to be strong, smart or capable. He’d looked at her—or through her the way so many people had all her life—and seen nothing. Nobody.

Talk about a blow to his ego. How much of his desperation to find her stemmed from his fear of what she could do to him and how much came from his crushed pride?

Luke switched on the burner phone’s speaker. “You got it?” Claire asked. Khan took this as an invitation to leap into her lap, wanting all her attention as always.

She kissed the top of his head anyway. He was her spoiled brat.

“I got it.” It was clear Brax was smiling, proud of himself. “It was easier than I thought. The ladies at that company need to get laid. She was too glad to stop and chat with me for a little while on her way to her car.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “Or maybe you’re the most charming devil who ever lived and whoever she was, she couldn’t help but fall under your spell.”

“Stop. You’re making me blush.”

Luke snickered. “Okay, okay. Back to business. You have the key card, which means we have access to the building tonight. Weston secured the new laptop and is on his way with it. Claire knows what to do when she gets her hands on it.”

She nodded her agreement while wondering how true that was. There she went again, doubting herself when she’d been so sure, so completely certain. She saw it all clearly, each step, everything she had to do.

All that was left was actually doing it.

Weston had followed her instructions to the letter, finding a machine with the capabilities she was looking for. The power she needed, the speed. Speed would be their weapon. When the ball started rolling, it would have to roll fast.

And she’d be the one pushing it along.

The hardest part might very well have been waiting to get started. At least there was one task to keep her occupied—hacking into the security feed.

“You’re sure you won’t be noticed?” Luke leaned in behind her, squinting at the screen.

“This is the least of our worries, believe me. Nobody considers a hack to their security cameras—and even if they do, they expect the hack to shut down the system. I’m not shutting it down. I’m looping the same twenty minutes on repeat, so it looks like nothing out of the ordinary is going down while we go to work.”

“While you go to work, you mean.”

She took a second to kiss his cheek before turning back to the security feed. “You’re too sweet. We both know darn well you’ll be working, too.” No way would she walk into the building alone. Even if she had the nerve to go in on her own, Luke wouldn’t allow it.

“If you do your job fast, there won’t be anything to do on my end. I’ll be downright bored.”

She withheld her comment. It was nice to imagine things going smoothly, but a beaten dog still flinched when a hand came its way, even if it hadn’t been beaten in a long time.

It hadn’t been too long since Ballard had killed people who used to mean a lot to Claire.

She couldn’t shake the pit of fear in her stomach when she imagined Ballard taking the person who meant the most.

For his sake, she kept a positive attitude—on the outside, at least.

It was after midnight by the time they rolled out, taking two cars. She rode with Luke and Weston, while Brax and Chance took the second vehicle. If anything went south, it was better to have two cars involved, so whoever was in a position to flee might be able to.

However, she strongly doubted any one of the four Patterson brothers would leave any of the others behind. They might not have shared blood, but they were brothers in every other respect.

This would be the last time she’d ever visit Passage Digital. Rolling into the adjoining parking garage was like stepping back in time, reminding her of better days. She might never have exactly been thrilled to work here—it was always a means to an end, a stepping-stone, a paycheck—but life had been much less complicated then.

And lonelier. There was no Luke back then. He’d been nothing more than a memory.

In the end, it seemed like a fair trade-off.

“You ready?” He put the car in Park and turned to look at her. The hard set of his jaw and narrowed eyes spoke to his strain and his worry for her.

The least she could do was stiffen her spine. “Yes. I’m ready.” She carefully slung the pack onto her back, knowing Khan didn’t like being jostled around too hard. He’d already been through enough, the poor thing. They both had.

“You sure it was a good idea to bring him?” Weston asked in his “concerned dad” voice. He was such a cop.

Luke knew better. “There’s no separating those two. She’d sooner leave me at home than she would that cat-dog hybrid of hers.” She smiled, but didn’t bother correcting him. He wasn’t entirely wrong.

They used the key card that Brax had swiped from the girl he’d flirted with earlier to access the building without setting off any alarms. Though even with the easy entrance, there was no time to dawdle.

They dashed to the elevator and picked the floors in question, planning to split up. “You have your terminal numbers and access codes?” she asked, though she knew they would. They were professionals, not about to lose something so important. Still, double-checking put her mind at ease.

Brax took one floor. Chance, the next. Weston exited after him, leaving Luke and Claire to get off the elevator on the floor she used to work on. Again, the sense of past and present overlapping threatened to overwhelm her. She took a deep breath and pushed it aside.

Luke kept watch, using his earpiece to confirm his brothers were in place and had successfully logged into their machines. “They’re in,” he muttered. Claire took a seat, leaving Khan and the pack under the desk. She then opened the laptop and plugged in the precious drive she’d been guarding with her life—the one holding the files Julia had lost her life over.

Something inside her took over. Something bigger than her, some deeper intelligence in her subconscious. So long as she could relax and trust her instincts, she’d be fine.

It was the rest of them she worried about.

“Okay. Phase one.” She clicked the button and let the program run. Each of the computer terminals Luke’s brothers had accessed would appear to be the ones attempting to access the network, to dig deep into the files in which Claire had hidden the video of Julia’s murder.

Meanwhile, Luke used a tablet to monitor the building’s real-time security feed rather than the loop Claire fed to the security guards’ monitors. “They’re unaware,” he reported. “Business as usual.” She only half heard him, now facing the almost impenetrable layers of security put in place to stop her.

Almost impenetrable...but not entirely.

“Phones are cut,” she whispered. “There’s no communication out of the building. Radio frequencies jammed, too.” Luke reported this to his brothers, confirming the next phase’s completion. Even if the security guards caught wind of their presence, they wouldn’t be able to call the police or request backup from Ballard’s cronies. There wouldn’t be any communication among them, either.

However, there was the risk of one of them trying to check in with another for some other reason, and she knew it. They would probably confirm all was well at the quarter hour and more likely at the half, and they’d know there was a problem when their radios didn’t work.

It was twenty-four minutes past.

Was that sweat trickling down the back of her neck?

“How’s it going?” Luke whispered behind her.

She never took her eyes from the screen. “It’s going.” Even if the guards caught wind of something being amiss, the Patterson brothers had log-in credentials for four terminals each and directions for where to find them. They’d already planned out their next target, and the next. The point was to keep security thinned out, running from floor to floor, chasing ghosts. Luke was watching for any approaching guards so he could give his brothers the heads-up to start moving.

He muttered a curse. “Here we go.” She knew that meant security was onto them. “Chance, you need to move. Now.”

Her hands flew faster than ever. They were already running out of time.

“Brax. On to your next terminal. Move.”

Cold sweat ran down the back of her neck and pooled between her breasts. The progress bar inched, signaling the decryption in progress. It wasn’t moving fast enough, yet she knew it would only take a minute for the process to wrap up.

Which was the longest minute of her life.

“Weston, you’ve got two on you, approaching from above and below.” There was extra strain in Luke’s voice, which was more of a sharp bark at this point. She could almost taste the fear for his brother.

Come on, come on, faster. Weston will be trapped soon.

Luke’s hand cupped her shoulder. “Claire, you’ve gotta pause it.”

“I can’t. We’re too close.”

“I have to help Weston. I have to get them off him. They’ll kill him, you know they will. I’m closest, so it has to be me.”

He left the tablet on the desk next to the laptop. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back, I swear.” He took her by the back of the neck and silenced anything she might’ve said by pressing a hard, desperate kiss against her mouth.

She watched the live feed with her heart in her throat, tracking the guards closing in on Weston’s floor as victory slipped through her fingers like sand.