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Still chuckling, Hawes bumped his shoulder against hers. “I’m better and faster than she is with a blade. Trust me.”
Trust. She was in a room full of strangers, still unsure who were the good guys and who were the bad, but the one thing she was sure of was that she wanted to get Jax back.
“I’m trusting all of you,” she said, gaze sweeping the table before landing back on the boss lady. “After that Render review, whether it was real or not, and after all the others that have come in, I need to be able to open my doors next week. This is the wave we’ve been waiting for, and I need to ride it, preferably without bullet holes in my ceiling this time. And I need my bartender back. I get that they have a job to do with you, but at least until I can find a replacement, Jax stays on at UTT, assuming they want to. Those are my conditions.”
Mel stood, a hand stretched across the table to her, a smirk hitching up one corner of her mouth. “We have a deal, Ms. Winters.” Shaking on it, Feb thought maybe, just maybe, the boss lady had recognized another in her too.
EIGHT
“Do you always eat in the middle of the night?” Jax asked as Ariel slid a steaming bowl of pho onto the table beside them. The noodle soup’s gingery, beefy aroma woke the cat that had been snoozing in their lap the past few hours. More sleep than Jax had caught at any one time the past—they glanced at the time onscreen—fifty hours. The Friday deadline Ariel set had left them no choice but to hack all day and night for the answers he needed.
“Think of this time like that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when conventional rules of society just disappear.” He flitted his fingers in the air, and Jax laughed.
“There has not been nearly enough cheese for that comparison.”
“Noted,” he said, grinning as he carried his bowl to the adjacent den.
They hit Return, the final missive sent through layers of spoofed IP addresses. “Well, that’s that,” they said as they shooed Sugar off their lap before she got into their soup. “You’re either going to have a dinner party of many, of one, or of none.”
“Let’s hope for the right one.”
They lifted their bowl of noodles, slurping a bite, and nearly groaned aloud. The soup tasted even better than it smelled. While the cheese had been absent the past two days, delicious dishes had not. From the first night’s shakshuka to tonight’s soup, Ariel had fed them well—and kept them in good coffee. The benefits of being held captive by a foodie, though held captive seemed more a strong accusation than the truth. Jax was fairly certain they could’ve left at any time. They’d stayed for Feb, and for Fletcher, and because it was their job. And hacking was the part of it they could do.
“You know,” Ariel said as he folded a leg under himself on the couch, “the Agency knows about you, your mentor, Holt, and your other associates, at Redemption and otherwise.”
Translation: Madigans. “Of course they do.” Jax angled in their chair toward them, bowl still in hand. “And the CIA can do nothing about us on US soil.”
“No, that’s for the FBI, which is in your pocket.”
They shrugged. “Or we’re in theirs. Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.”
He laughed, his smile transforming him into the charming man Jax had gotten to know a little, the one they could see bringing Fletcher out of his shell, until Ariel’s gaze landed on the laptop and tension rushed back in. “Go over it again.”
They took another slurp of soup, then set the bowl aside. Standing, they grabbed the laptop off the dining table and carried it to the den. After lowering themselves beside Ariel, laptop balanced on their knees, they opened ten different CIA profiles. “These are the ten CIA employees who have had the most contact with the Camino cartel over the past five years.” Another strike of the keys and half the photos disappeared. “These five are the ones I can prove took money from the cartel. May not have been intentional, or even knowing, but money flowed from point A to point B.”
“I’m going to need that list to send to the Agency.”
“You can hand it to Fletcher and the FBI yourself.”
“I can live with that.”
Two more keystrokes and only one person remained onscreen. “Officer Caleb Fitzpatrick, who was following you as you were following Fletcher. From Miami, to Boston, to California.”
Ariel set his bowl on the coffee table. “He was on me before I even left Fletcher in Miami.”
“Looks like it.” Jax closed Fitzpatrick’s CIA profile and brought up a running list of email addresses. “And these are all of his alias emails.” Jax highlighted one midway down. “Including this one that subscribes to the Render RSS feed.” They highlighted the last one on the list. “And this is the alias he used to feed the Agency that tip about you selling secrets.”
“Fuck.” He raked a hand through his short, dark curls. “It’s gotta be him. That’s too many dots connected.”
Jax handed the laptop to Ariel and retrieved their bowl of pho. “Do you know him?”
Ariel clicked Fitzpatrick’s photo forward again, took a good long look at him, then shook his head. “I’ve never seen this guy in my life. Don’t even remember hearing his name.”
“Why not just prove you didn’t do it?” Jax asked after another few bites. They’d spent days finding the mole but in doing so had also turned up evidence to support Ariel’s innocence. And while they barely knew the man, they were fairly certain he was innocent, on all counts. Guilty people didn’t set themselves up to be caught so easily. “I can help you get whatever additional proof you need.” Doing so would get them both what they needed. Redemption the bounty delivered; Ariel the evidence to refute the charges against him.
Ariel didn’t buy it, his laughter cold and bitter like it had been the other night at UTT. “My last name is Camino. The Agency knows that—recruited me for it—but to them, it was only a matter of time.” He set the laptop on the coffee table, then reached down to pet the orange ball of terror that wove around his ankles, sniffing for his bowl of barely touched soup. “Question is, why now? And why Fitzpatrick?”
“Money.” The most obvious answer, but it was rarely all there was. Working at SFPD, then for the Madigans and Redemption had taught them that much. “Probably some sort of leverage at play too.”
