“Copy,” I say, and hang up.
“So, Linkin,” Shiloh begins. “You think you can find her pendant without her clicking it?”
Linkin’s reflection in the rearview gives a single, sharp nod. “If Torres has the right setup? Yeah. I can brute-force the chip. It’ll scream back eventually.”
I angle him a look. “You… know how to do that?”
He bears a feral grin that promises both genius and property damage. “Umbra goes on break, every once in a while, and I get bored. Let’s just keep this between us, though. There are places and communities I am legally not allowed to be around. Besides, I learned to hack way before the music thing blew up.”
“But what you do isethical,right?” Shiloh asks, like she already knows the answer.
“I mean… It is now… Before Umbra, I used to be a little more… flexible. I might be on a watch list or two.”
The corner of my mouth twitches despite the panic twisting my gut.
I let their bickering fade into a low hum and focus on the road and on the single objective that matters: get to Torres, and get Celeste back.
The turnoff appears as a slit in the trees, a rust-pocked mailbox leaning like it’s given up on life. Gravel crackles under the tires as I guide the SUV down a long, winding drive swallowed by dark woods. The only light ahead is a lone porch bulb, haloed in moths.
A man steps into the light as we roll to a stop. He’s not the hardened ex-SWAT specter I’d built in my head. Torres looks aggressively normal. He’s in his early fifties, maybe, soft around the middle, wire-rim glasses catching the porch glow, a faded T-shirt tucked into jeans like he’s about to mow the lawn, not help us track a kidnapped woman.
He flicks his cigarette into a coffee can and gives a small, neighborly wave as we get out of my SUV.
“Orion filled me in,” he says, voice calm enough to lower my blood pressure by ten points. “Come on in. Quiet, please, my family is sleeping.”
Our footsteps crunch over the gravel as we follow him inside.
The house smells like fresh coffee and paper. A stack of mail leans precariously on the hall table next to a family photo.
“My office is in the back,” Torres says, leading us down a short hallway. “Got what you asked for, set up already. You have a desktop, a hardline connection, and a way to get into her phone. It should be enough for whatever you’re doing. A friend of Orion’s is a friend of mine. Let me know what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”
I follow them in, jaw tight but grateful for quiet competence.
Linkin is already folded over Torres’s desk, his shoulders are hunched over, his hair slips forward in a dark curtain, fingers moving so fast the keys barely register the abuse. We all go quiet around him, the only sounds the soft clatter of plastic and the low, steady hum of a server rack tucked in the corner, like it’s trying not to intrude.
Then he stills and exhales sharply through his nose, like something interesting just turned inconvenient.
“Okay,” he mutters, straightening just enough to crack his spine, eyes glued to the monitor. “This is gonna take longer than I thought.”
I stop pacing, my heart falling through my stomach. “Why?”
“Their security’s better than I expected.” His fingers resume a restless tap, like he’s drumming irritation straight into the desk. “These pendants aren’t just fancy panic jewelry; their code is layered like a goddamn onion. Encryption, rolling IP masks, and auto shutoffs if I sneeze at the wrong endpoint. Whoever made this wanted to keep out anyone trying to poke around.”
Shiloh folds her arms, weight shifting like she’s bracing for impact. “So what does that mean?”
“It means—” Linkin spins the chair to face us, eyes bright with challenge and annoyance. “—I can find her, but not in five minutes. I need, like, an hour. Maybe two. I’ve gotta build a bridge into their servers and spoof her device first.”
I drag a hand down my face, jaw tight enough to crack. My gaze flicks to Torres. “What can we do while he’s doing that?”
Torres sighs, the kind of long, practiced exhale of a man who’s seen too much and still has to pack lunches in the morning. “I’ve only got this one workstation,” he says, nodding toward Linkin. “But I can call a buddy. Ex-traffic control. He can pull DOT feeds and corner-store cams faster than I can.”
“Do it,” I say, sharper than intended, the edge of panic bleeding through.
Torres doesn’t blink. He just steps into the hall, phone already to his ear, voice dropping to a low murmur as he starts making things happen.
Linkin’s fingers are a blur again, the keys rattling under them like they’re trying to keep up. “If I can’t get a clean trace yet, I can still cage the search radius when it pings,” he says, voice low, focused. “We just have to be patient.”
Fuck patient.
