“Yes, Mom.”
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for Kazik to change his mind—just three more teeth and a threat to gouge out an eyeball. Although it was actually Raban who did the work and decrypted everything because Kazik was crying too hard by that point. Dusk and the girls hung around until I verified that Nolan’s data was fully accessible again, and then she patted Kazik on the shoulder.
“You should find a new career. Maybe something with orthodontics?”
“Th-th-thcrew you, bitch.”
She laughed and snapped her teeth at him. He jumped.
While the team extracted, I turned to Nolan’s laptop. It was an old model, a piece of shit, objectively speaking, so I’d be better off transferring the data onto the device I’d left with him in California. An easy task to carry out from Vegas, but…
“It’ll almost be a shame to miss Nolan’s nightly porn show,” Storm said, powering down her drone system. “That man is fine. Tell me you kept a copy of his home movie?”
My cheeks heated. “That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, you totally did.”
I had to; no matter how many teeth Kazik might have lost, I didn’t entirely trust the now-defunct Dark Descent. I’d have to keep monitoring the web for Nolan’s dick, and for that, I needed the video to compare against. Plus it was as fascinating as it was icky.
“Shut up. Go launch missiles at a foreign country or something.”
“You realise I hardly ever do that, right?”
“Whatever.”
“So, when do you go back to California?”
“You realise remote access is a thing, yes?”
“So you’re not going?”
I scoffed. “Of course not. I’m going to Italy.”
“I thought you were going to Oregon with Janus next week?”
“Right, I am.”
We were constantly looking at potential locations for additional data centres, and he thought he’d found a good one.
“So you’re going to Italy, and then you’re flying back to Oregon? You don’t even like flying. Weirdo,” she added under her breath.
“I don’t like flying in case the airplane falls out of the sky, okay? And what I meant was that I’m going to Italy with Chase after the Oregon trip.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
“Shut your mouth.” I shoved my chair back and stalked out of the room. “Just shut it.”
I fired off a message to Nolan.
Me
Good news—I have access to your laptop. I can transfer the data whenever you want.
Although he hadn’t said as much, I could tell he’d lost faith in my abilities. And it had taken longer than I hoped to find the decryption key. But now the issue was resolved, and he’d know I was just as capable as I always had been.
I settled in at my laptop with the briefing pack from Jay and waited…
CHAPTER 12
