33. Calista

33

CALISTA

" I said to bring me the Black biker, not the woman," says the woman with toasted red hair that sits frizzily over her shoulders. It took me all of two seconds to recognize her as the woman in the black sedan.

A sweat blooms over my skin, even though I'm freezing. The farm building I'm in offers limited protection against the elements. A couple of small heaters are plugged in but do little to warm up the space of the barn. The floor is dirty, chipped concrete. The roof is tall.

There's a pungent smell too. Like gasoline and horse shit.

The cold and damp envelop me. Vex's denim shirt that I'm wearing over my jeans does little to keep the cold out. My body shakes involuntarily, and my teeth chatter.

I emerged from unconsciousness on the ride here to a man moving a hand scanner up and down my body. It beeped furiously when it neared the tracker in my locket, but I dropped back under, moments after the locket was ripped from my neck.

Learning I may not have been this group's intended target doesn't make me feel any better about my situation. My heart pumps so fast, I can barely breathe as I acknowledge this could make me disposable to them.

I'm not Vex.

And I know what the people in this room look like.

Their options are now limited. But the best outcome is they keep me alive to use me as bait. The worst? They have no further use for me.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Her description of Ti, while not untrue, makes me hate her even more. Because there is a tone on the word Black that expresses disgust.

And I want to kill her for that alone.

"She was the only one there," says the tall man with blond hair as he ties me securely onto the chair. The cable ties dig into my skin, so I capitulate and stop trying to fight.

The second man throws the scarf that covered his face down onto a table. "Who knows, maybe you can use her as leverage to get the biker to do what you need. We could send him a body part to inspire him."

I glance down at my fingers and make fists with both hands.

"If you want a fucking job done properly, do it yourself," she mutters.

"Next time, I'll let you," replies the third man, bald and squat. "She saw us. Couldn't just leave her there." He tips the contents of my purse onto the table. My heart sinks when I don't see my phone.

Blond guy is the reason why my sight is diminishing in my right eye. And the reason there is probably a large bump on the back of my head. He's got a mean slap with as much force as a punch. I'm grateful I'm not unconscious any longer.

The woman glances at me. "You can relax your fists. Who are you to the biker?"

I remember in the Bible, there was this whole story about one of the disciples who would deny Jesus three times. And while I'd like to be brave, to go down in a blaze of fire in the face of this woman who clearly went to great lengths to grab Vex, I can totally understand why the disciple went that route.

Part of me wants to deny all knowledge. To pretend he's a one-night stand I picked up in a bar.

But, if I tell her I'm nothing to him…that he's a vacation fling…that I'll be back home in California in a week, I'll have no meaningful value to her. She might dispose of me rather than deal with me.

Plus, she'll likely know I'm lying. She'll have seen Vex go into his parents' home. She'll have seen me go there too. And into Mom's.

The truth is supposed to set you free, so I decide to test the theory.

"I'm an old friend of his."

"Friend?" she asks.

"That's what I said. Grew up with him. What do you want with him?"

Scarf guy holds up my identification pass to our main office. It's on a lanyard with the company name on it.

"You work for this company?" the man says.

"Give it to me," the woman says. She studies it for a minute, then tips her chin to a bank of laptops on a table along one wall. "Look it up."

They aren't technical experts. Small things give it away. Their laptops are older, basic. They've got a large coffee pot on the same table. No tech person, or no sensible human being, really, would ever put a pot of scalding liquid on the same table as their electronics.

When the man sits down, he's indecisive. His fingers hover over the keyboard. And while his fingers are nimble, he's not touch typing but simply letter pecking quickly with the same four fingers.

He doesn't know hot keys and how to toggle between screens quickly. It gives me a moment to see what he's got open on his screens.

"What do you want the biker for?" I repeat.

"He owes me something," she says, watching the man type.

"What does he owe you? Money? How much?"

She glances at me. "Eleven million dollars."

The amount shocks me, and while I do wonder if Ti has actually stolen what she says, I also admire the fact that he stole from her at all.

"It's a huge cybersecurity company," the man at the laptop says. "And she's the CEO. The company alone is estimated to be worth two hundred million."

I dig deep beneath the thick layer of fear and find the confident reserve I often use when I meet clients, when I walked into the bank what feels like a lifetime ago. "It's two hundred and fifty million. That article is old. And I'm not just the CEO, I own it."

This persona is like a second skin. And pulling it on feels just as comfortable. It allows me to catch my breath, to feel like there is a chance of me gaining the upper hand.

All this is is one negotiation, with a level of game theory to assess and review all the possible scenarios.

I don't know whether Ti did or didn't steal this woman's money. But I won't be able to convince her that he didn't if she went to all this effort to find him. So, trying to persuade her is a waste of my time. My priority, for now, is to get myself out of this alive.

I can't rely on Ti coming to save me. He has no idea where I am or who I am with.

I need a plan of my own.

The first part of this is that I can give her what she wants.

Money.

I look around at what I'm working with. "I can free up that kind of cash if you let me use one of those laptops."

The woman laughs. "Yeah. Right. Like I'm going to give you access to one of them so you can message your boyfriend."

I shake my head. "I'd argue I'm probably a better hacker than Vex is. Plus, you can have someone watch me."

Because I know once I get onto that machine, I'll be able to send Ti clues he can't miss.

Assuming he's not already out on his bike looking for me.

She looks at me twice. "You know his business?"

"You think I got into the cybersecurity business because I went to some fancy grad school? I grafted. Fucking hard. I don't know anything about eleven million dollars, but I know this: There is no way that the money you want back is just sitting in a bank account waiting around for Vex to send back to you. If it was even taken, it's probably been spent or moved. He can't magic that money back, even if you try to hold me as a hostage to negotiate or whatever."

For an alleged kidnapping mastermind, she looks shocked at the idea. "He owes us."

"Yeah. Well. He can't give you back what he doesn't have. So, do you want eleven million or not? Because I can take what they have and top up the difference."

"The woman speaks sense, Marlie," the man who searched my purse says. "It's worth letting her try."

"The bikers need to pay," she says.

The man who tied me to the chair stands in front of her. "And the bikers will be on to us soon."

She stares at the man. "And whose fault is that? Who wanted to be the fucking caricature of revenge, leaving the tracker where my brother died?"

My confidence wavers. She's related to a man she perceives the Outlaws to have killed. Money is cold. It can drive a person to do irrational things. But the death of a loved one…I'm not sure there isn't any length Ti wouldn't go to for those he loved.

Perhaps this woman is the same.

"What would you do, if we let you try?"

"You can only hack a system one of two ways. A physical hack, where you manually put the virus onto the system, or a remote one, where you get them to open something suspicious. If Vex has even noticed I'm missing by now, which is unlikely because I didn't expect him home tonight, nothing will distract him except all his systems crashing. I can send him an alert that will look like a system failure warning or a virus hack. He'll click on it to clear it, and I'm in."

The woman looks at me curiously. "How long?"

"To set up? An hour, maybe. I'll have to install some apps on your equipment."

It's a struggle to stay calm. Or at least, act like I'm calm.

There's a tsunami building in my stomach. Nausea bubbles away beneath the surface.

I take a breath. Then, another.

"Do it," she says.

"I'll need my hands."

She tips her head to purse guy. "Set her free, walk her to the chair, then tie her feet."

One of the things I noticed earlier is that these guys are slow on their equipment. But I can toggle and flip and type faster than they can keep up with. The first thing I do is go to a search engine, type in an IP address identifier, then toggle off it before they have time to absorb what I'm doing.

I never stay on a screen for more than a few seconds, so they don't have time to take in what I'm doing. I remember Vex's old childhood email address. He always was a stickler for staying consistent, while I was always changing mine.

It's weird how we've come full circle. This all started with him trying to protect me from men who would hurt me. And now, I'm trying my best to protect him from a woman who would hurt him.

I'm fueled by the knowledge that as much as I'm saving myself, I'm hopefully saving Vex too.