The hard plastic falls away, and she rubs at the red marks left behind.
“Thanks,” she mumbles, turning slightly so I can see her face. When our eyes meet, something passes between us.
Understanding, maybe? Recognition? I’m not sure what it is, but it’s here.
Tacoma clears his throat. “I have a proposition for you.”
Frankie shifts again on my lap, her head cocking to the side. “What kind of proposition?” she asks carefully.
“I’ll get you the answers about your father.”
“What’s the catch?”
Tacoma looks to Cyber.
The kid sits up straighter and looks at Frankie.
“I need help tracking a human trafficking network operating in our territory. These… These monsters are working with someone with serious resources and tech capabilities. Every time I get close to pinpointing their location, they reroute through a new series of proxy servers. They’re using a sophisticated botnet architecture that redistributes their network signature across thousands of compromised devices worldwide.”
“You’re dealing with a distributed network topology,” she says, leaning forward in my lap. “That’s why you can’t pin them down. They’re probably using a hybrid mesh network combined with darknet protocols.”
Cyber blinks. “LSB with a custom algorithm that varies the bit depth.”
“Shit.” Frankie runs a hand through her hair, dislodging her messy bun even more. “That’s actually impressive.”
The two of them start talking in a language I barely understand—something about packet sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities.
I glance at Tacoma, who looks just as lost as I feel.
Journey catches my eye and grins. Yeah, we’re definitely out of our depth here.
Finally, Frankie sits back against my chest and looks at Cyber. “It’s going to take time, and I’ll need access to your setup. Full access, not just user privileges. I need to see everything you’ve got—your logs, your tools, your previous attempts. Everything.”
Cyber looks at Tacoma, who nods.
“You help us find these fuckers,” Tacoma says to Frankie, “and I’ll tell you everything I know about your father.”
Frankie’s jaw clenches. She’s quiet for a long moment, her eyes moving around the table, taking in each of us and weighing her options, trying to figure out if she can trust us.
Finally, she looks back at Tacoma. “You get me the information about my dad, and I’ll help you find the bad guys. Once the job’s done, I walk away. No strings. No obligations, and nobody touches me.” I feel her body tense in my lap for a split second before she continues. “Nobody.”
Tacoma’s lips twitch. “Deal. But if you try to fuck us over, there won’t be anywhere you can hide. Understood?. And you stay at the compound until this is finished. You work with Cyber. You do what we tell you. ”
Frankie swallows hard but nods. “Understood.”
“Good.” Tacoma bangs the gavel. “We’re done here. Cyber, get her set up. Bane, she’s your responsibility. Anything happens to her, it’s on you.”
The brothers start filing out, and I watch Frankie carefully. She’s trying to look tough, but I can see the fear lurking beneath the surface.
She’s in way over her head, and she knows it.
But so am I.
Because somewhere between kidnapping her and her breaking down about her old man, something changed.
And that’s a problem.
A big fucking problem.
