Chapter 31

Thirty-One

Irocked the pen back and forth between two fingers as I stared at the feed from the bots. I’d released far more this time, sending them on a direct harvest for information rather than just a skim. A timer ran in the upper right corner. Every second seemed to reverberate with my pulse, adding an extra dimension to it.

Movement in the kitchen behind me served as a reminder that I wasn’t alone. The guys took turns. One of them was always awake. It had been that way since we arrived. The only two who left remained McQuade or Locke.

Remington preferred to be here. It was safer for me to remain out of sight and I was fine with it. With the exception of not being in my safe room or having the routine I’d once embraced wholeheartedly?—

Had they noticed I was gone? Jimmy, who brought my groceries and Vince, who often brought up my mail or packages?

Would they have reported me missing?

The home was already compromised. In no world had I ever thought I could return there.

“Lunch in fifteen,” Locke said from somewhere behind me. “It smells good, whatever it is.”

“It’s just a roast,” Remington said. “I was bored with burgers. You like making them too much.”

“Burgers are easy and they are quick. Also no one cares if you eat them cold.” Locke shrugged. “Liking fine cuisine and cooking it are two different things.”

“Clearly,” Remington retorted, his tone dry. “However, I draw the line at the persistent servings of ground beef. Or haven’t you noticed that the lovely Patch has not been finishing her burgers the past two days…”

“I noticed,” Locke grumbled. “I just thought maybe we were feeding her too much.”

“You two are adorable,” I said without looking away from the screen. “I get that you want to engage me in the conversation, but I didn’t finish the burger because I was simply full. I’d also had sandwiches about an hour before you made the burgers last night so I wasn’t hungry.”

A fresh set of numbers popped up on the screen. The first wave of bots returned. Quarantine programs immediately engaged. Someone had tried to attach a worm to one of the bots.

How sad for them.

I nuked that one immediately and kept it compartmentalized.

“If you want something different…” Locke began but I shook my head.

“Guys, this is going to go faster if we don’t need to keep tallying the calorie log. I haven’t eaten this well in a long time. I’m used to just cooking for one and?—”

Bingo. I forgot about the conversation as the details began to unfold about MD Outfitters. They’d been on my radar while I’d worked in the department. Military contractors, freelance and available to the highest bidder. They weren’t licensed to work within the U.S. Didn’t mean they weren’t based here.

“Do you ever feel like one minute she’s paying attention and the next we’re utterly superfluous?” Locke didn’t sound insulted.

“Yes,” Remington’s crisp reply also didn’t invite further conversation. “Then, she is doing her job and we should let her do it.”

I shuttered the conversation fully. They could talk, I didn’t need to focus on that. I needed to pay attention to what was happening on the screen.

The decryption programs were going to work. The keyword program flagged page after page for me to review and cross-reference. I continued to rock the pen as I read, only putting it down to type in new commands. Some files had to be destroyed.

A new security system, kind of like watermarking, had infected the files that had been skimmed. Not a virus, but also not a worm. It simply wanted to report back the IP address for the latest read.

Subtle, delicate work. Respect to the coder, because it was ingenious. It wouldn’t register on most virus scanners. Technically, it wasn’t even a trojan program. It was just a little executable that sent out a ping. One, tiny little ping so that it could log where the file had been opened.

Quarantined as the files were the secondary partition, the ping had nowhere it could go, but it kept trying to send it. I set the pen aside as I checked the auto logger to see where it was sending the ping to…

Sophisticated. It tried a series of addresses. When it failed to reach any of them, it started over. Sophisticated and persistent. I’d have to nuke all of it before I could open the drive again.

I created a dummy file and masked it as a server to receive the ping the file sent out and then logged the information it provided. Oh, that was clever. Now that it had logged the IP, or thought it had, it tried to add a couple of lines to the primary OS that would send another ping with updates the next time the system booted.

Insidious little program. Big brother was watching you, always watching.

It took me a few hours to find the thread of the logger, and pull it apart. The code was—elegant. It was only a handful of lines, but it took every advantage of the fact that whoever “stole” the file would have to encrypt then decrypt. So the decryption was precisely what activated those handful of lines.

Without the quarantine, there was every chance it would succeed in sending the ping without a trace. Well, the trace would have been there but only if you were looking for it. I was going to have to add another layer to the programs I ran specifically for code like this.

Instead of a poison pill it was a tainted cookie. That made me like it even less, even if it was clever.

I’d like to stab the coder in their clever little eye with my pen.

Piece by piece, I pulled out the useful data and began to build a timeline of sorts. The events I added were not defined beyond mission names unless they were target oriented. Combing through the other packets netted some details I could use to flesh out the framework.

The task took every ounce of my focus. Because of the little tags on the data, I had to go through each piece of it individually, extracting the core of what I needed before sending the actual file to be destroyed.

Tedious work. Absolutely tedious, but this was exactly why I’d built these programs, so I could locate and retrieve any file that might be related to my capture and subsequent incarceration. It also let me drill down on them to determine if the link was genuine or not.

McQuade appeared in my line of sight and I dragged my attention from the screen to look up. Since the day I confessed I had trouble sleeping, he made a point of staying in my room until I was asleep.

I hoped he did sleep, but so far I’d always woken alone. I could ask, I supposed, but—a part of me wasn’t sure I wasn’t already pushing it with these three men. Did they know they’d each kissed me? Did Locke and Remington realize McQuade stayed in my room most evenings until I passed out?

Did I even understand why his presence made sleep not only possible but something I didn’t dread? The nightmares were still there, I snapped awake from them. Maybe I should ask him to stay, it seemed even more difficult to go back to sleep after one when he was already out of the room.

Don’t go crazy. They are going back to their own lives and business soon enough. You’re going to have to do this on your own again.

As bleak a thought as that was, I knew I could do it. As soon as we dealt with the department and my kidnappers, I’d rebuild my life somewhere else, somewhere new, and disconnect from what came before—even this.

“Time to eat,” McQuade said and I had to blink rapidly as past, present, and potential future kind of collided. “You’re zoning out—that means you need a break.”

“No, it means I need to focus more.”

Then before he could argue because the narrowing of his eyes promised me the argument was coming, I raised a hand to hopefully forestall him long enough to get my point across.

“I’m close. Closer than I’ve been. I finally got past some of their external firewalls with this skim attempt. I’m finding files on me and on the open bid they are making for my acquisition.”

“If you don’t decrypt it right now, it’ll still be there,” McQuade said. “Right?”

“Well… yes.” That wasn’t the point. I frowned at him. “We need everything on these people so we can—well, so you three can plan, though I want to be in on that planning as well.”

“No one is keeping you out of it,” he answered with an easy shrug as if to say and no one would. “However, the work you”re doing requires you to refuel. You are putting that beautiful brain to work and you’re still healing, that means you need to eat and you need to rest. If the information isn’t going anywhere if you take an hour, then we’re taking that hour.”

I opened my mouth to argue then snapped it shut again as I glanced at the screen. The files were all quarantined. Because of the tracer program, I had to go through them individually. If I took a break, no they weren’t going to expire or disappear, but they were also not going to be decoded.

“An hour now might cost us more later.” As arguments went, it was a weak one and the bland look he gave me said as much.

“Then it costs us more later,” Remington stated from somewhere behind me. “I can’t imagine it will cost us much except for time. Time we’ll have because you will have healed.”

“If we’re voting, then we’re three for three on you taking a break.” Locke wasn’t going to be left out. One on one, these men were powerful enough. As a team though, they could overwhelm everything about me. Even my good intentions…

“I don’t want to vote.” That came out so surly that I wrinkled my nose.

“You don’t care about the vote.” Trust McQuade to call me on it. “You just don’t want to lose.”

“Does anyone ever want to lose?” Since they weren’t going to let it go, I pushed back from the computer and stood. Having learned my lesson the other day, I took my time and stretched. My normal routines used to involve walking or running in addition to daily stretching.

I’d not resumed either here because I was healing and while they may not be feeling the crush of time I was. If I wanted to reclaim any semblance of the life I’d made for myself, then I needed to cut all the ties to the past. That included these new ones.

I rolled my head from side to side, then turned away from McQuade’s too watchful gaze only to collide with the assessing looks from both Locke and Remington.

“Yes, I’m sore.” Might as well address it head-on. “I expect I will be sore for some time. My ribs feel better. I can take deeper breaths. The bruises are still pretty stiff along my back, but my legs are fine for the most part.”

When I trusted myself to walk without too much of a limp, I left my desk and headed for the dining table where they’d put out food. It was even set right down to the plates, glasses, and cutlery. The roast was on the table…

Remington pulled a chair out for me. “Problem?”

“I thought the roast was for dinner.”

“It is for dinner,” he said as I sat slowly and he pushed the chair in. “That’s why we’re all taking a break.”

It was dinner time. That meant… “I worked through lunch.”

“Hmm-hmm,” Locke said as he opened a sparkling water and poured it into my glass. Like me, they’d also refrained from alcohol, though I wasn’t sure it had been discussed.

“You guys let me.” I was still turning that over as McQuade took the seat across from me. He couldn’t take the ones to my left or right at the four seater table because Locke and Remington had already claimed them.

“You’re welcome,” McQuade said before he filled his glass from a pitcher. At my frown, he motioned to it. “Lemonade?”

That sounded amazing. The smell of the roast and the potatoes were all hitting me at once. They’d prepared a huge meal. It was divine and my mouth watered.

“Thank you,” I murmured as Remington served out slices of the meat then the potatoes were handed to me. I got the first serving of everything. It was a huge meal. Now that I was aware of it, I was starving. “Guys…”

All three of them focused on me and the air backed up in my lungs. There was no mistaking their attention, no matter how much I tried to ignore the meaning behind each of their kisses or the depth of feeling they aroused in me.

In their own ways, they were all predators. Apex predators in their particular fields. While they were extremely dangerous, they were also incredibly gentle with me. Even when I didn’t pay as close attention as I should, I could see that they were.

They also capped their own impatience with the process and me, instead, they looked after me in their own ways.

“Thank you,” I murmured, taking a moment to meet each of their gazes. “I don’t know that I actually said that in all of this. Thank you for coming for me and for getting me out. Thank you for—” I motioned to the cabin. “All of this.”

“You’re welcome,” Locke said easily, a sentiment echoed by Remington.

“Just remember that the next time you get pissy that we’re making you take a break,” McQuade said and Locke groaned.

“You really don’t have a sense of when not to push it,” he muttered.

“I don’t need to,” McQuade retorted. “She has you and the Brit here to hold hands with and skip merrily to her doom.” All at once his gaze locked onto mine. “That’s not what you want or need from me, is it, Sugar Bear?”

No, it absolutely wasn’t. I swallowed, unable to look away from the ferociousness in his eyes. The feeling unfolding in my chest sent waves of heat and cold to every extremity.

“Of course not,” I murmured, fighting for normalcy. “I would never ask you for something outside your wheelhouse.”

The corners of his lips twitched. Yeah, it wasn’t a denial…

“Nor skillset,” I continued and his eyes narrowed at the tweak. “It wouldn’t be kind.”

Some of the tension bubbling there eased and I could take a breath. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to talk to them. I always had.

“I’ll remember that,” McQuade reminded me.

“Of course you will.” I managed to look at Locke who seemed to be shaking his head at McQuade and Remington both. The latter lifted his chin as though encouraging me to continue. But I just smiled and saluted him with my first cut of the meat. “This smells wonderful, Remy. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said and a fresh shiver raced over my skin, leaving tingles in its wake. These guys were—a lot.

But I could handle it, I reminded myself. I knew them. I’d handled them for years. Maybe if I told myself that enough times the pragmatist in me would stop reminding me that for years there’d been miles between us with only the internet and a phone for contact.

Yep, the pragmatist in me was a real bitch because she highlighted the fact the only thing between us now were clothes and based on those kisses—that didn’t have to be a thing either.

Heat flushed me and I fixed my gaze on the plate as I ate. The food was wonderful, but all the air in the room seemed to escape as it filled up with their presence.

I really needed to get us the information we needed so we could get out of here in one piece.

All four of us.