AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That didn’t mean anything…but her voice was soft and measured from the bathroom. No pleading or soothing, like the night before, so that had to be good. Right?
When she came out, there was a little smile on her face. “Elias did better today,” she said when she saw me. “He got through all of the testing without crying, and he told me that he wasn’t in much pain.”
I felt the smile grow on my face. “That’s great.” Some weight lifted from my shoulders, and it struck me how much I had been worried for the kid. I barely even knew him. Why did I care that much?
But the look on Nataliya’s face, soft and happy, made my heart race…and by the expression on Gabe and Zach’s face, they could tell. “Let’s talk strategy,” I said, forcing the fluttering away as forcefully as possible. “I want to get this over and done with.”
SIXTEEN
NATALIYA
“Are you sure this will work?” Adrian asked. “Having Drake on the phone?”
“Drake needs to know when to take over. It’ll be easier to do that while we have the line open than if I text him,” I said. “Once I’m into the system, he’s going to take over remotely so he can keep an eye on the security cameras and anything else we might need while I break through firewalls.”
Adrian thought it was risky—what if someone detected Drake in the system?—but I did my best to explain that it would be worth it. Having two eyes on the server would let us work twice as fast.
“Besides,” Drake said over the line. His voice sounded tinny and faraway; he had us on speaker. “I’m your in.”
“Okay,” Adrian said. “I get it. I’ll leave the computer stuff to the two of you.”
“I just need you to get near enough to be able to access their Wi-Fi,” Drake said. “Then I can remote-in.”
It meant having to go into the lobby, and that was the part Adrian was worried the most about. We both were. Being recognized by Hayes’s security team was the worst-case scenario. But we had a plan for if that happened. Gabe and Zach were parked in Zach’s car in the same lot. They were the cavalry, and they’d be waiting for any signal that we were in trouble.
Before we got out of the car, Adrian took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
They were just words, platitudes to calm my nerves, which would normally annoy me. But today, they were exactly what I needed—maybe because I knew how truly he meant them. I clutched his hand in return, took a few breaths. “I’m going to do my very best to get us what we need to bring him down,” I promised.
“Me too!” Drake chimed in over the speaker, making us laugh. It was enough to break the tension, and that helped to get us out of the car.
Adrian held my hand the whole way alongside the building and into the lobby. We were playing tourists who’d gotten lost; it was a common enough thing that happened in cities that it wouldn’t be immediately suspicious.
I stood at Adrian’s side, acting as if I was texting when I was hooking into their Wi-Fi, as he asked the front desk clerk for directions to the Coca-Cola Museum. He smiled and played the charming, if a tad hapless and overwhelmed, boyfriend trying to make our vacation one to remember. He laid it on thick, but not in an unbelievable way. It was honestly impressive; I hadn’t known he was such a good actor.
Drake and I couldn’t speak aloud, so I had to trust that he was doing what he needed to do…and right on cue, the fire alarm started to blare.
People screamed and started for the door, and in the chaos, Adrian dragged me down a hallway. Offices lined the corridor, and thankfully, it didn’t take long before we found one that didn’t have a gigantic glass window in the door where the computer was still on and logged in.
“We’re here,” I said to Drake as Adrian closed the door behind us.
Adrian kept his eyes and ears on the hall as I sat behind the desk. I could have crowed—whoever owned this office left their passwords on sticky notes beneath the keyboard. I was positive that it was against any regulation Hayes would have established, but from the pictures of grown children and a white-haired couple in the frames on the desk, I got the sense that this office belonged to someone older who might not be super keen on technology to begin with. Besides, a company like this probably required password changes all the time, and that could be a pain for anyone to keep up with.
“I’m into the system,” I said to Drake after a moment.
“The building is still emptying,” he responded, keeping an eye on the security cameras. “They probably have to wait for the fire department to show up and have the building checked before they’ll be allowed back inside.”
“How do we stop them from checking here?” I asked, looking up at Adrian.
“I got it,” he said. I didn’t watch what he was doing—my eyes were on the computer screen in front of me—but I heard a splintering thunk. “That’ll give us a few more minutes.”
I nodded, still not looking up. My fingers flew over the keyboard as I dug as deeply as I could into the server. Behind a firewall, I found access to a cloud server. It was password protected, but with a few maneuvers, I cracked it open. My stomach sank when I saw that everything inside was encrypted. On the one hand, that probably meant I’d found the good stuff. On the other hand, I had no idea which stuff would actually be useful to us.
“Shit.”
The alarms shut off. “Fire rescue is in the building,” Drake warned. “You need to be wrapping up.”
“I’m not done.”
