They were just going to ignore the growling bear at the door. Understood. “No, thank you. If I drink a full one of those, I’m going to be all jittery. You do not want me to be jittery while I’m hunting through the Russian black sites.”
“Yeah, let’s not do that,” Remi agreed. “How long did it take you to find that site in the first place?”
“Days,” she admitted. “And another couple to get acceptedinto the chats side of things. Then I had to find a password for the listings.”
“Do you have the password?”
“It changes every six hours.” She figured he wouldn’t find that abnormal. Criminals who didn’t want to get caught tended to be careful, anal even, when it came to security. “If you are dyslexic, you’d be screwed, as take an authenticator app password and multiply it by four and throw in a bunch of extra symbols you have to twist and change, then you’ve got an idea of what we’re looking at.”
“Dayum. And you broke it?” Remi sounded impressed.
“Not quite, I have a bot I built from some open-source code. It does the job for me.” She was under no illusions that she was the best computer tech out there. But she was damn proud of the fact that she could hold her own when it came to computers. Behind the screen she was comfortable. With people, not so much. Yet, despite how weird it was to be working alongside Remi, Jorja was able to lose herself in her work. It was almost enough to allow her to forget the elephant in the room, Remi’s older brother, Gunnar. Almost, but not quite. Maybe if she could get back into the damn list, then they could take it from here and she could go home. But somehow, she had a feeling that she was the beggar and the going home was a horse the beggar didn’t own and couldn’t ride. But she would get herself out of his jam. She’d learned how to be pretty self-sufficient over the years. This was just another hairpin bend in a twisty bumpy road that she had to navigate… right?
CHAPTER TEN
They were ignoring him completely.Gunnar glared at Remi and Jorja’s backs as they chatted among themselves.
Assholes!
Remi was an asshole for kicking back at him with the dig about him ruling in here in his room. It didn’t matter that he was correct, as head of Intel and Comms, his word was law when it came to making decisions related to information and intelligence. But it didn’t make the sting any less.
“Hey, Grizz. I got Dory on the line.” Tyrone stuck his head out of the office he shared with Levi. “He needs to talk to you. Want me to send him through to your office or your cell?”
“Office. Thanks, Zorro.” He sent one last annoyed glare at Remi and Jorja and headed for his own office. If Dory was calling him from Morocco, then something had happened. Commadore *Dory* Petrusek kept himself to himself, and pretty much handled that side of The Four X’s Group without much hand holding. He slammed his office door louder than was probably needed, but he didn’t care. He would do whatever the fuck he wanted in his own damnhouse. He picked up the phone and pressed the blinking button to answer the call. “Hello?”
“Hey, Grizzly. Dory here.”
He sat heavily into his leather chair and propped his feet on the corner of the desk. “I wasn’t expecting the pope. What’s wrong?”
“Jeez, bro, what fucking bit your dick?” There were very few people who would dare to call him on his shit. Dory was one of those people. They’d worked together long enough and been through enough firefights and battles to not get insulted or upset by the other one’s grumpy assholeness.
Gunnar massaged the side of one temple with his forefinger. “Same shit, different day.”
“My fucking ass,” Dory grunted. “How long have we known each other?”
What had that got to do with anything? “About fifteen years, give or take a decade.”
“Then quit blowing smoke up my ass and tell me why you are on edge and more of a bastard than normal, even for you. Want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“Not particularly.” If one of the bastards he called brothers and friends had called Dory to bitch at him, then he had some dry wall which needed hanging in the last remaining wing of the property to be put up. That would keep them out of trouble.
“Liar,” Dory said softly. “Bro…”
“Let it go, Commadore.” Gunnar rarely used his friend’s full name. When he did, Dory typically backed off, as he understood he was skating close to some imaginary line only Gunnar could see. “What’s happening in Agadir?”
There was silence for a moment before Dory did what Gunnar had hoped he would and went back to the reason he’d called in the first place. “I had a message from Dalton Knight. He’s sending Caleb Hunt our way.”
“Why? Does Nemesis’s man need backup?” He latched onto the hope like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood in the ocean. This he could do. Operations, planning, and helping old friends was something he could focus on. Something which wasn’t a five-foot-five with curves for days which made his dick ache despite having an attitude a mile wide. A woman who made him want to lift the self-imposed ban he had on inviting women into his life. “Last time Nemesis sent a man to you, he ended up married with a kid. Hasn’t Nem figured out what happens when he sends his people our way yet?”
“That shit doesn’t just happen in my house,” Dory interrupted. “If you recall, the last one of Nemesis’s men to stay in a Four X’s house, it was there with you at HQ, and Kilkenny ended up married too. Or close to it.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re a regular matchmaking agency.” Gunnar snorted. “All unattached operators, fill in this form and we’ll find you a bird in trouble to marry.”
“Hah.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t starting to become a trend at this point. The Black Ops community were a bunch of gossips. The last thing he wanted was The Four X’s Group earning a reputation for matchmaking. But he knew better than to bring it up or someone would put it out there just for shits and giggles. “What does Nemesis need from us?”
“Not sure yet,” Dory replied. “I had a message on my phone when I got out of the pool. I just wanted to give you a heads up that shit may fly.”
