Page 22 of Our Tricks

“Tell me, my shadow, what was the perfect fail-safe you put in the program that won you the competition?” I asked, begging him to remember more than I did.

When building this program, he used to go on and on about it for hours, talking about every possibility that could be created from the foundation he was using. There was a night he told me when he figured out what the crowning feature would be, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’d been working on finishing an art piece for class and wasn’t really listening.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Wes blurted, heaving me off his lap and setting me on the desk. “Fucking goddamn shit on a motherfucking stick. Tell me I didn’t fall for my own trap. I can’t fucking believe I didn’t see it.”

Weston’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he worked furiously to undo or fix whatever he’d been about to do. Every one of my guys were now in the room, and I hoped that meant Tommaso was getting people out of the building. There was no way to tell if Wes caught it in time or if he could undo whatever was going on. Then there was the fact I still couldn’t remember what it was the trap was supposed to do once you fell into it.

A cell started to ring, and when I looked over, Cam answered it and stepped out of the room. That would have only happened if it was the FBI or someone of equal importance. That was another snag in the situation we needed to figure out. One thing at a time—right now, we needed to survive whatever was happening with Wes.

“Yes, okay, now we’re talking,” he muttered, leaning closer to the screen. “Where are you? Come on, I know I put it in here. You’d have to know just where to find it to remove it, and I don’t think you’re that smart.”

Looking at the screen, nothing about what he was doing seemed to make any rhyme or reason, but things certainly sounded more promising.

“Dax.”

My head whipped around at the sound of Magnus’s voice, and standing in the doorway was the rest of the crew. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, sliding off the desk and marching over to them.

“I asked them to bring me over,” Harper said in their defense. “I didn’t like that Ghost was here on his own without the other two, and they wouldn’t leave me alone at the house.”

Glaring at Ghost for a moment, I turned to my best friend. “You should have called before coming over. Things here have been a little intense and not going our way.”

“Stop it,” Harper snapped. “This is the life you live, and so do they. I know I freaked out last night and this morning, but seriously, I need to figure out how to survive in this world. Besides, if it turned out to be dangerous, he…” Harper paused to point at Ghost, “… was supposed to leave and come home. Clearly, that was never going to happen, so I came to him. The four of us are committed for life till death do us part and all that shit.”

Frowning, I looked at the other three. “I’m sorry, did you three officially get married without me knowing?”

“No, pretty sure I’d remember that moment,” Jaxson said with a dopey look as he stared down at Harper.

“That’s not what she meant,” Magnus pointed out. “She just means we’re all in this together, no one left behind, which includes you, by the way.”

“Yes,” Wes shouted from inside the office. “Fucker thought he could use my own code against me.”

Harper gazed curiously at the room and the man who was cheering himself on behind the computer. “What’s got him all excited?”

“Oh, you know, just stopped the building from getting blown up with all of us in it,” I answered with a deadpan voice.

“What?” Harper shrieked.

I raised a brow. “Didn’t you say we’d all go down together?”

“I was expecting to say that and then be Jack out in the ocean giving up the raft to save Rose. Give a woman a chance to adjust, would yah,” Harper ranted.

“Then it’s a good thing Wes saved the day now, isn’t it? When I told you that you should have called, I wasn’t trying to cut you out of all of this for no good reason. Just figured there was no sense in both of us dying. Maybe this will teach you to at least send a text letting me know so if I’m going down with the ship, I can save you the trouble of jumping out of the lifeboat,” I pointed out.

Magnus’s face was all scrunched up in confusion. “Are we still using Titanic references?”

“Told you that you should have watched it with us the other day,” Harper countered. “Then you’d understand what’s going on.”

“Gorgeous, you know he can’t watch movies with sinking ships. We’d never get him to go on a cruise after that,” Jaxson reminded her.

Scrubbing my face with my hands, I groaned, this conversation making my already overworked brain tired. “Okay, no more movie references. I need to go find out what the hell is happening with Wes.” Turning, I went to enter the office and pushed. “Oh, ah… don’t go into the third office on the left.”

“Why?” Harper asked like I knew she would, but I’d hoped she’d learned better. Apparently not.

“That’s because Dax and I tortured a guy, and his insides are slowly being eaten away by acid. He’s making quite the racket giving the headache that Dax is now trying to fight off,” Ghost answered.

Well, there goes any chance of Harper keeping her rose-colored glasses.

“Why? Why do I never learn to just not ask? If you don’t tell me right away, I don’t need to know,” Harper muttered to herself as she turned away from me, plugging her ears with her fingers.