He turns the tablet so we can all see. Strings of code run over the screen, with a soft pulse of green in the corner.
“See? It’s answering,” Jake says. “Someone’s on the other end.”
CHAPTER NINE
“SHUT IT DOWN,” says Ryder, low and severe.
Jake types fast, his fingers a blur over the keys. “Trying. Whoever’s pinging it’s already got a foothold and it’s not letting me sever the live connection.”
“Then pull the damn plug,” Ryder snaps.
Jake yanks out the wire taped to the tablet’s case—the one running to the antenna taped to the window for internet reception. The screen glitches, then freezes. He holds down the power button until it dies completely.
For a second, there’s a collective breath of relief.
“Silas ran surveillance on the whole club,” Wyatt says, shaking his head.
“But Silas is dead,” Damian counters.
“Someone else could be taking over for him,” Ryder suggests.
Jake stands and rifles through a plastic bag pushed against the wall, pulling out a small drive and a bundle of cables. “Before I boot it back up, I’ll isolate it in an air-gapped system so there’s no network access. I’ll sandbox the drive and run it offline. If I’m lucky, I can trace the route through the cached packets. Might take a few hours.”
He plugs the tablet into his laptop, the screen blooming back to life, and starts typing.
“Or,” he murmurs, leaning in, “maybe not…it left a breadcrumb. Whoever tried to connect didn’t mask the returnhop completely. I’ve got an IP fragment and partial coordinates.” He zooms in, squinting at the scrolling data. “Shit. It’s coming out of Virginia. Prefix block starts with one-five-three. That’s federal infrastructure. Private contractor range.”
Ryder frowns. “Federal?”
“Yeah. Every IP address is assigned to a registered block. I used to audit some of them when I was still working defense-side. You see a one-five-three starting with that subnet, it’s either a three-letter agency or someone doing their dirty work for them.”
“But that doesn’t add up,” Ryder says, dragging both hands through his hair. “We knew there were government ties, but you’re talking about federal infrastructure. That’s different.”
“Yup,” Jake says. “High-level. Maybe somebody up the chain wanted their dirty data stored somewhere deniable.”
“I don’t understand,” I admit. “How does a dead guy’s tablet connect to the government?”
There’s a beat of silence. The men exchange a look.
“This is the job, Max,” Wyatt says finally. “This is what we’ve been chasing for two years.”
The government?
At first I don’t see what that has to do with the O.D. Why anything federal would be linked to a piece of O.D. equipment. But then a sinister image comes to mind—gray hair, slow smile, silver ring tapping against a glass.
Senator Jack Hargrove.
“Our job was never just about the bikers,” Ryder explains. “A private outfit, Keystone Tactical, hired us through a DOJ cutout. Basically a middleman so the government can outsource work without anyone being able to trace it back. The brief was cartel cash being washed through shell companies and fake charities, all of it feeding into the same pipeline. The warning was thatsomewherealong the pipeline, there were political fingerprints.Not who, not how high up, just that it touched government. We knew the O.D. was one of the major laundering hubs and that’s why Wyatt embedded. But what we still don’t know is who they’re washing the money for.”
Damian folds his arms, leaning back in his chair. “We figured it was some mid-tier bureaucrat or campaign treasurer. Some asshole with a slush fund.”
Jake lifts his chin toward the dead tablet. “And instead we’ve got a federal-contractor subnet pinging a shitty diagnostic unit from a biker clubhouse. That’s…not normal. Whoever mirrored this data built themselves a vault inside government infrastructure.” He looks at Wyatt. “You said Silas was running surveillance?”
Wyatt nods. “Everywhere. Hallways, offices, back rooms. Hidden cams, audio bugs. Billy showed me the setup once. Locked control room, monitors, routers, drives stacked floor to ceiling. He said nothing was short-term or recycled. That Silas kept everything. Not just the stuff he uploaded—he kept offline copies too. Months of footage archived on labeled external drives.”
“Hmm.” Jake’s brow furrows. “So he wasn’t just hoarding dirt. He might have been routing it to someone. But why?”
“Blackmail’s the obvious play,” suggests Ryder. “Insurance. If the club screws their contact, he’s got proof of every illegal thing they’ve ever done.”
