Ignoring the remark, Aiden peeked at Nyle’s screen. A progress bar was displayed there, but he couldn’t say what it was of. “What’s this?”
“Data transfer from Raj’s earring. I’ve only accessed about five percent of it so far. Rick and I were trying to guess what it might be.”
“How long will the rest take?” Aiden asked, squinting at the screen as if the progress bar could tell him what the data was. Still, even if it was going to take some more time to figure it out, he was glad his hunch about the earring had been correct.
“A few days. Whatever is in there is massive. Several exabytes, if I had to estimate.”
A thrill rushed down Aiden’s spine. They were so close to finding out what the second part of the legacy was. All that was left was to get the ring from Marcus, and then Darren would have the entire legacy safely in his possession. Intheirpossession, because Aiden and the rest were part of it, too.
“Did you find out anything about the warehouse’s extra levels?” he asked, looking up from the screen just in time to catch Nyle’s head shaking.
“No. I’m starting to think that they are hiding something else there too, and whatever it is, they really don’t want anyone to know. It was partly luck I even stumbled upon those power grid readings, as much as I hate to admit it. Anyway, I’ll keep trying.” Stretching his arms, Nyle smiled. “But it’s not all bad news. Wedohave some good ones too, actually.”
“You do?” Darren’s sexy baritone rang from behind Aiden, causing all of them to turn around.
He was leaning against the edge of the wall with a mug of coffee in his hand. His eyes were on Aiden, and there was a softness to their dark depths now that had been only a flicker before, a glimmer Aiden had caught occasionally and then wondered if maybe he’d all but imagined it.
“Yes,” Rick responded, his eyebrow lifting the tiniest bit as he cut his gaze to Aiden. “I know someone who works at the warehouse. A shift supervisor. I’m meeting him in the evening.”
Aiden’s jaw tensed. “Rick, you don’t have to put yourse—”
“Iwantto help,” Rick interjected. He reached for one of the many and various devices lying about on the table and held it up. “All I have to do is get a read on his ID and Nyle will clone it.”
“Then I’ll extract the list of employees and voila. Pick two and you have your way in as soon as we render them out of commission. As for the security measures in the warehouse section”—Nyle flicked through a number of screens, bobbing his head and making his blond curls ripple—“what I could dig up gives me a pretty good idea what we’ll be dealing with.”
“Aside from what might be on the lower levels?” Darren prompted, pushing off the wall and coming over to sit on the chair next to Aiden.
“Yep. But like I told Kesley, I’ll keep looking. Just be ready to go in blind, because, unfortunately, that seems most likely.”
Aiden wasn’t surprised given that keeping things off the web was the only way to guarantee information you wanted to keep from the world would actually stay hidden. Some of the projects he’d been involved with during his time as an architect had included vaults or bunkers the existence of which was a secret to everyone except the construction and design teams and the client themselves. No online trail existed, and only a single paper copy of the blueprints was handed to the customer upon the project’s completion. Still, he had hoped Nyle’s skills would’ve been sufficient to bypass that annoying detailsomehow, but if Marcus had kept things off the internet, then there was very little a hacker could do.
“Don’t worry, you two,” Nyle piped up as the pause dragged on, a smile erasing his frown. “You won’t be on your own. I’ve tweaked the encryption and frequency of our comms so we’ll be able to keep in touch. At least for the most part… as I don’t know what extra jamming they might have in place.”
“Sounds good,” Darren said, pulling up the warehouse’s plans that they did have. “Shall we go over the layout now?”
The four of them spent the early afternoon working out the three potential points of entry to the hidden sublevels and the best routes in and out of the warehouse itself. They decided to check out the location near the data & power room first. With that taken care of, Nyle explained what systems he could disable remotely and how Darren and Aiden could handle any he couldn’t.
“I think that’s about as good as our plan will get,” Rick said, stretching his arms above his head.
“I agree. We’ve covered everything we could think of,” Darren chipped in just as Kristen showed up, telling them Bea had the Maine ready for departure.
Nyle clapped his hands. “Kris, babe, I’ll leave the earring and Sara’s AI to you. You don’t need to do much other than monitor for errors in the AI’s data files.” He turned to Darren. “Even with her help, we couldn’t figure out how to replicate her. I think it’s some kind of an intentional design choice. But she let me poke in her data sets, so once I’ve copied those over, we’ll be able to access the knowledge she has without having to hook her up every time.” He directed a smile Kristen’s way. “If you run into any issues, give me a call.”
“Will do.” Kristen smooched Nyle’s cheek. “Now get going. Bea’s waiting,” he urged and turned his attention to Darren. “She’ll keep the Maine in orbit, but I hope you won’t need hersaving your asses until after you’ve retrieved the ring. Good luck!”
Disguises donned, Aiden and Darren accompanied Rick to the restaurant in central Atlan where he was meeting his friend. They left a couple of tables between them, opting to blend in with the rest of the customers and listen in via the earpieces all three of them wore. Just as a waitress brought over their drinks and a sharing platter, a tall man in his fifties joined Rick.
“Hi, Tim.”Rick shook the older man’s hand, flashing a friendly smile.
“Rick. It’s been ages! How’ve you been? How’s the business?”Tim laughed, plopping into the chair across from Rick.
“Eh, you know. Getting by. On both accounts. Been up to much?”
Stroking his graying beard, Tim laughed.“Got married, settled down. You know, the usual. And, frankly, you are the last person I expected to hear from.”
“Yeah, well, I’m looking to do the same and could use the opinion of someone local.”
“Last time we talked, I got the impression you weren’t a fan of dear ol’ Mars,”Tim said, swapping the table as he laughed again.
