Page 10 of Our Tricks

“Right,” Ghost cleared his throat and sounded more professional. “What’s up?”

“If you ever repeat what I’m about to say, I’m going to hang up and not tell you the rest,” I said through clenched teeth.

“You have me riveted to your every word. Lay it on me, Wes.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. “I need your help.”

“Hold, please,” Ghost requested calmly.

There was a muffled noise like he was trying to cover the mic on the phone as he yelled, “You guys, Weston just called to ask for my help.”

I could hear the other two asking something, but they were too far away for me to hear.

“He hasn’t told me yet. Let me ask him. I’m sure it’s not going to get me shot again, Harper,” Ghost assured her. “If it will, then I’ll tell him no, I promise.”

More muffled sounds and some panting, and Ghost was back on the line. “Sorry about that, continue.”

“I hate you so much,” I grumbled, rubbing my hand over my face.

“Wait, I have to ask, will this get me shot? Harper laid down the law, and I can’t do something dangerous, or I have to sleep in my own bed alone for a week. She didn’t say it, but I’m also guessing that means I can’t pet the kitty either, and she knows I hate her to use sex as a weapon,” Ghost rambled.

God, I need a valium to deal with this man.

“I’m here at the headquarters for the De León Cartel, and their whole upper offices are sealed off. There’s a keypad looking for a nine-digit code, but I don’t have the right equipment to pull this off. Plus, this kind of hacking isn’t my strongest skill. You, however…” I trailed off, letting the compliment be implied instead of something I had to say out loud.

“Go on,” Ghost encouraged. “I, however?”

Fucking bastard.

“Can’t you just take the fact I called you as a win? Are you in or out?” I demanded.

“Okay, okay,” Ghost relented. “Give me five minutes to check with the missus, and I’ll get back to you.”

Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I decided to head back down a level and see if the server room down there had things I could make do with. Knowing Harper, I wasn’t sure if she’d let Ghost out of her sight, having been hurt. It was just a graze, but she never liked it when Dax or I came home busted up. At least now we didn’t need to make up shit when that happened.

Thankfully, the nineteenth floor was normal with office doors and everything where the map said they would be. I had to break into the server room, but that was way easier popping the control panel and splicing some wires to short-circuit the thing. An alarm went off which I shouldn’t be surprised about, but once in the server room, I found the control terminal and cut it off. Just to be safe, I texted Dax so she could tell Tommaso it was just me. She sent back a thumbs up so I continued.

Since I was already at the terminal, I started to root around, looking at how it was set up and what firewalls and other security were in place. It was high-end stuff I don’t see done all that often, and some I’d created myself, making me wonder who the hell they had doing this. As I searched, I kept an eye out for a signature. Us tech nerds couldn’t help but slip our name into the program so no matter who was using it, they knew who built it.

“What’s this?” I mused aloud, then jumped when my phone started buzzing. I’d been so focused on the coding that I forgot it was in my back pocket. “Yeah,” I answered without really looking.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Ghost informed me. “It’s gonna take me a sec to gather what I need. What can you tell me about the system, or are you completely locked out?”

“They have it split into two different server connections. One runs and backs up everything the business does then the other is locked in the room on the creepy floor. Whoever set this up is good, but thankfully, I’m better, and they didn’t skimp when it came to this shit,” I explained. “The keypad I saw upstairs is way more complex than the one down here, like something I feel I’d see in military bases or government buildings.”

“That all helps,” Ghost muttered distractedly. “Do I need to let you know when I’m here, or can I come right up?”

“Let me know unless you can hack an elevator keycard sensor on the fly,” I teased.

“I mean, I could, but they would have to replace it when I’m done, and I’m not sure that’s the tone we want to set with our new friends,” Ghost reasoned. “I’ll call you when I arrive. See you as soon as I can get there.”

Hanging up, I leaned back in the chair and stared at the code. It was bugging me that I knew who this felt like, but it didn’t make any sense. That was back in college when I’d written some of this code for a contest. It’s what caught the eye of some of the biggest three-letter organizations to recruit me. The thing is, the only people who knew this level of detail about the code were the organizers I gave it to and my roommate at the time. He’d also been going for computer science, but he flunked out of one too many classes, and his parents stopped paying for him, so he dropped out. There’s no way an idiot like him could write something this detailed. But he did have a wicked good memory when he found something interesting.

My project he absolutely found interesting, and I’d catch him looking at my shit when I wasn’t in the room. That’s when I started keeping it all with me whenever I left the room. The contest would help pay for the last year of college if I won, and I fucking needed it more than he did. I wouldn’t have put it past him to sell my work if he thought he could claim credit and make a buck. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to back up the work, but at that point, they had my code, and in someone else’s hands, who knew what they were doing? It could be bad.

Diving back into the network, I quickly sorted through the files looking more so in the shipping part of the company to see if I could find a pattern. They had a solid business, and there were many massive shipments that would allow them to sneak in extra product. What I was really looking for were tell-tale signs that they had been manipulated after the fact. I found a few that seemed questionable, and I pulled those files aside to look at more closely later. Tommaso landed himself an incredibly lucrative company that had been handled well, all things considered.

This time, I left my phone on the desk so when it went off, I spotted it right away. Glancing at it, I saw Ghost was here, so I stood and swiped one of the access keys I found in the desk and tested it on the mock sensor, and the computer said it was active. Jogging down the hall, I didn’t want to leave Ghost alone in the lobby for too long. I could only imagine what chaos he’d cause if he got bored.