At the end, Jax eased them to a stop, where hot air pelted the car.
“How do we know when the coast is clear?” Maizie asked from the back seat.
Zeyla unclipped her seat belt. “I’ll go check. And I’ll tell that kid back there not to call the police on us.”
She shoved open her door and climbed out, jogging back toward the employee.
Jax peered at the rearview mirror. “You okay back there, Maze?”
“Family outings with you guys are so fun.”
Kenna looked at her, and they shared a smile. For a long time in her life, she probably would have forced a confrontation with those men purely to find out who they were and what they wanted. But those days hadn’t lasted long, and in this season of her life, she had far too much to lose.
After years of solitary existence, she had invited these people and others into her life in a way that she would not be the same without them. As someone who knew exactly what it felt like to be destroyed by grief, she wanted to shy away from caring about them. But that wasn’t what family meant.
Not anymore.
Chapter Five
San Jose, California
Ramon Santiago ducked behind the tree, hiding in the shadows where he could see the ten-story office building. A square structure on the corner between two usually busy streets. This time of night, there was only the occasional car and more vagrants on the street than vehicles.
He listened, watching the building and the area around it. An older man had hunkered down for the night in an alcove away from the front door, where the security guard wouldn’t have seen him.
Ramon needed to avoid both of them—while attracting the notice of the private security team when they got here.
When he was satisfied no one would see him, Ramon moved silently along the tree line that ran perpendicular to the building, skirting a courtyard where office workers spent their lunch break.
He reached the exterior locked closet, where utilities connected to the building, and then jimmied the lock open withtwo picks. Once he had found the right connection point, Ramon unplugged the building’s internet connection for a second. Just long enough to add his own into the mix.
Maizie had explained the whole thing to him, but somewhere shortly after she’d started, his eyes had glazed over, and he realized he had no idea what she was talking about. But the bottom line was that he had to add his connector between the signal coming into the building and the building itself so that he could get through the building’s firewall and be able to monitor the activity. Otherwise, he would never get in without the security guard seeing him on one of the monitors.
She had written a program that would spoof the surveillance cameras and allow him to move around inside undetected.
Ramon checked that app on his phone, confirmed that the whole thing was up and running, said a silent thank you to Maizie, and headed for the door on the side of the building that the employees used when they needed to duck outside without being noticed. Or so they thought, anyway. Security monitored the whole thing—just not right now.
The lock on the side door took a little longer, but he got inside. Once he connected to the network in the building, he would be able to download everything on it. Hopefully, with that, he could trade the information for what he wanted. But not if he didn’t get there in time.
He crept along the hallway, found the stairs, and went up three floors to the level where the server room would be.
Sure, this whole thing would’ve been much easier with Maizie and the rest of the team here. But the point was that he had to fly solo in this. Whether or not he was more used to being part of a group on operations these days wasn’t the point. Just because something was normal now didn’t mean it was the best place to be.
Ramon had been on his own plenty of times in his life. Even when he was part of a group or supposed to feel as if he was.
The FBI. A cartel. Now Kenna and her team. He had landed in the best of those three, but given everything, it was time to solve this problem his way instead of watching them all face danger. Like seeing her standing in front of that table on a military base on the other side of the country. Facing off with dangerous men who thought they could do whatever they wanted. All Ramon had been able to do was sit on the floor against the wall, his hands tied behind his back. So helpless while he had to witness Kenna, an expectant mother, and her husband be the ones to take all the risk.
This was a gamble, sure. But everything in his life had been a game of chance for so long that he didn’t know any other way to play the game.
He emerged onto the third floor and immediately heard a voice. Ramon stayed by the door to the stairs, listening intently. The voice grew louder. A janitor in overalls pushing a cart turned the corner at the end and headed toward him, earbuds in. Ramon ducked back into the stairwell and held the door cracked, listening to the janitor speak in rapid Spanish—presumably talking to whoever was on the other end of his call.
The janitor told the story of how his girlfriend was currently actingloca,and Ramon found himself smiling at the normalcy of the conversation.
As soon as the janitor passed him and moved far enough away that he wouldn’t hear Ramon behind him, Ramon slipped out and held the door so that it didn’t click shut or make a noise. He headed down the hallway, the rubber soles of his shoes silent on the floor, and found the server room.
The connection he’d added outside should have wormed its way into the system by now, and he’d be able to accessthe network without being noticed. He checked his phone and pulled the tablet and cable from his backpack.
Later, he was going to tease Maizie that her job wasn’t so hard. But right now, he was grateful she knew what she did about tech because without her gear, he would never be able to pull this off.
