Page 89 of Villainous Intent

“Status report,” I demanded.

“All systems nominal. No incidents to report. The data you requested on the Alliance’s security procedures has been compiled.”

“Give me an update on Bishop,” I said.

“Ms. Bishop went to her residence,” Twenty-Three replied. “However, she remained inside for less than ten minutes before going to the Tower.”

“And the secondary request?” I asked.

“Compiled and ready for your review, sir.”

A slow, cold smile stretched across my face.

I had laid out the terms clearly. I told Annie that the pathetic, unremarkable fucker, Finley Adkins, could keep his hands provided he actually managed to get her off.

He had failed. He didn’t even get her wet.

But incompetence wasn’t a capital offense. Making her cry was. I was going to make sure his final moments were spent understanding exactly whose property he had mishandled.

But the kill would have to wait.

I grunted an acknowledgment to Twenty-three instead.

“I’ll be in my lab,” I announced. “No interruptions. Not for anything short of the building collapsing.”

The doors of my lab sealed shut behind me, locking out the rest of the world. I decided Dread’s little encrypted chip could wait another sixty seconds.

I typed out a quick message to Annie.

You really shouldn’t have run

Three seconds later, the indicator beneath the text shifted to Read.

She was in the safety of the Tower, clutching her phone like a lifeline. I could picture it perfectly, the way her pulse was currently hammering against that delicate throat.

Let her spend every agonizing hour between now and our next meeting squirming. The anticipation of her reckoning would tear her apart long before I finally got my hands back on her.

I sighed and dropped my mask on the workbench.

The data chip felt impossibly heavy for such a tiny thing. I placed it on the analysis station and initiated a preliminary scan.

“Let’s see what’s worth a legendary artifact,” I muttered and began building a custom decryption program.

Minutes turned into hours. I built complex decryption routines only to watch them fail against the chip’s defenses. Each failure stoked the fire in my mind to keep going. I finally established a foothold in the outer layer of security. It was a small victory, but I programmed a more sophisticated approach and set it running.

Estimated completion time: 37 hours.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered.

I leaned back in the chair. More than a day just to get past the first layer and there was at least one more layer that I could detect. The chip sat there, silent and defiant, something I couldn’t control.

My mind drifted to the other variable currently outside my control. Annie. As much as I wanted to go retrieve her, I couldn’t drag her out of the Tower without causing an inter-organizational incident. Besides, I needed her to stew in her own panic a little longer. Let her marinate in the realization that she belonged to me.

But that left me with a surplus of adrenaline. If I couldn’t have my Keeper, I needed to break something else.

My gaze shifted to the third monitor where a dossier waited for me. Finley Adkins.

I had given the pathetic, unremarkable bastard a fair equation to solve. Touch her. Make her wet. Make her forget about me. He had failed spectacularly on all counts.