“He’s gonna feel that for a while,” Indiana colorfully states, rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands tucked into his jean pockets. I know this move, I’ve seen it many times, he does this when he’s antsy and wants to get a few licks in but knows he has to hold himself back.
“Secure this fucker, take him down to the catacombs for interrogation,” Riptide orders. Icer and Shade volunteer for the job and zip tie his hands together at the wrist, slapping a torn off strip of duct tape over his mouth to keep him quiet. “We’ll stay with the bikes until you have him chained up. Meet us there once you’re done.”
Icer salutes Riptide as Shade nods his head and they cart him away.
“Does anybody think this was too easy?” I ask, thinking this man is too damn smart to be taken without some sort of backup plan in place.
“Tear the place apart, grab anything out of place and take it back to the clubhouse so we can go through it. You’re right, this was a little too easy, he’s got to have some sort of insurance policy in case we found him. Surely, he knew Britton would tell us he was spying on the club.”
“Which means he was anticipating this,” I add.
“And that means we need to scour every inch of this area,” Riptide resolves.
Like ants are in our pants, we rush to gather as many of his possessions as we can hold in our hands. Between us all, we should be able to get everything to our bikes without too much trouble. It’s when I come across some sort of router looking system, I pause.
“Uh, Rip. I think we’re gonna need Booker to come and take a look at this,” I advise, noticing it’s got some wiring hooked up to a MiFi gadget and connecting them together which means he has internet service out here.
Indiana, Riptide, and Renegade surround me, checking out my discovery. “I don’t know about you guys, but I think that goes to a live server,” Renegade implies.
“We need to wipe it then,” Riptide muses, pacing around us in circles.
“I’ll run to the clubhouse and grab him so he can look things over. It may take a minute because he’s going to need to gather his stuff so he can do a thorough diagnosis,” Rebel offers.
“Tell him everything we know so he can grab the right shit the first time,” Riptide edicts.
We all stand sentry while Rebel goes and grabs our tech guru. None of us are willing to step away for even a second in case a wild animal gets a hair up their ass and decides to chew on the wiring or casing. We need it intact so Booker can do his thing without any corruption to the equipment.
It takes thirty minutes before our four brothers come from the clubhouse. Icer, Shade, Rebel, and Booker walk shoulder to shoulder, all of them wearing scowls on their faces.
“What’s up?” I ask them as they close in on us.
“That fucker looked way too happy for someone who was caught and put in the crypt.”
“We have an idea of why that is,” Riptide announces. “Booker, check this out and see where it leads.”
“On it, pres,” Booker replies as he fires up his laptop, connecting some hardwire lines from his computer to the apparatus.
After it boots up, his fingers fly across the keyboard faster than the human eye can track. There’s nothing but indecipherable code popping up on the screen, I don’t even pretend to understand what all the lettering and numbering is, but Booker has no issue following along.
“That would give me a migraine,” Renegade claims, digging the tips of his fingers into his temples and massaging them. “It’s flashing so fast that I don’t catch the first part of the line beforehe’s moving to a different screen where the process starts all over again.”
“None of our eyes move that fast, I’m convinced he’s part cyborg,” Indiana teases.
“That would explain so many things,” I mutter.
“This is a live stream, I need to take this back to my cave so I can shut it down and erase it,” Booker announces.
“You heard the man, get this shit back to the club. Now!” Riptide thunders which has us all scurrying and doing his bidding.
If Booker can’t stop this and erase it before it gets into the hands of the authorities, we are fucked.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Britton
I wake the next morning,alone in bed. “He didn’t come back,” I whisper, feeling nervous about what that could possibly mean. “Please, please, please be alright,” I chant, over and over again, wrapping my arms around my stomach as queasiness sets in. I’m not sure if this is from my pregnancy or from the fact that my nerves are shot since I don’t know if Tanner is okay or not.
