“You need to get laid, bro.”
He opens his mouth, no doubt to spout some more bullshit about how he’s not hung up on the stripper, but pauses when my phone starts buzzing across the bar.
Glancing at the screen, my lips turn down.
Cyber: Come to the Command Center.
Well, shit. Getting summoned to the IT room at eleven o’clock on a Friday night is never good.
Downing the rest of my beer, I slide off the stool.
“Where the fuck you goin’?” Journey asks from two seats down, his arm draped around a blonde who’s been eye-fucking him since we walked in an hour ago.
I dig in my back pocket for my wallet, pull out a couple of twenties, and toss them on the bar top. “Cyber wants to see me about something.”
Gator’s head snaps up, his ice-blue eyes sharp. “Maybe he tracked down the cocksucker who’s been stealing your money.”
My jaw clenches at the mention of my missing money.
Over the last month, someone’s been siphoning money out of my offshore account. Five grand here. Two there. Small enough amounts that I didn’t notice it at first, but it’s been adding up. I’m down over a hundred and fifty Gs now.
It’s money I’ve been saving for years to buy a place on the edge of town. Money I earned running product and risking my ass every goddamn time.
And some piece of shit thinks he can take it from me, and I won’t do shit about it?
Nah. Fuck that.
When I find the bastard, I’m gonna slit his fucking throat and watch him bleed out. Slowly. Then I’ll cut him into pieces and feed him to the gators in the swamp behind the compound.
Nobody fucks with the Kings.
I hold Gator’s stare and growl. “Let’s fucking hope.”
Shoving my wallet in my back pocket, I head for the back door. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Not with all the more important shit that Cyber’s been dealing with. I need to chill the fuck out and give him time to work his magic, but I can’t. Not with this shit hanging over my head.
Throwing open the back door, I step out into the humid Florida night. The air is thick, heavy with the promise of rain. Mosquitoes and moths buzz around the floodlights mounted on the clubhouse, and I hear the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the shore a couple blocks away.
Cyber’s command center is a small concrete building about fifty yards from the main clubhouse. It looks like a glorified shed from the outside, but inside, it’s as secure as Fort fucking Knox.
I stalk across the compound, my hands curled into fists at my sides. My pulse is pounding in my ears, adrenaline racing through my system.
Please let him have found this fucker.
At the door, I punch in the six-digit code on the keypad. The lock clicks, and I shove the door open, stepping into the darkened space. There’s another door ahead, solid steel and thick as hell. I punch in another code on the keyboard mounted on the wall, and the vault door slides open with a hydraulic hiss.
This is Cyber’s kingdom. His domain. Where all the magic happens that keeps our asses out of jail.
Computer monitors and TV screens are mounted across the entire wall, displaying everything from security camera feeds, to all our businesses, to what’s happening on Wall Street, to lines of code I don’t understand. The room is a chorus of cooling fans and hard drives whirring.
Hunched over his desk is Cyber with his eyes glued to the screens and his fingers flying across the keyboard. The kid’s only twenty-three, but he’s a goddamn genius when it comes to all this techy shit. Been recruited by every three-letter agency in the country before he said fuck ‘em all and patched in with us.
“What’s up?” I ask, closing the vault door.
He doesn’t look at me, just reaches over and grabs a piece of paper from the desk, holding it out.
I take it and glance down.
Frankie Hayes
