Page 58 of Cipher

“Stowe removed the maintenance laptop assigned to his county contract,” Hawkeye finished as he enlarged an image of the black equipment case leaving the office. “Loaded it into the service van with three external drives.”

They were collecting the devices holding the parts of the conspiracy nobody could perform without leaving traces. Messages between the three of them. Payment history and client names. Local authentication tokens, cached case records, confidential attachments, routing commands, deleted call fragments, and whatever copies Stowe had kept in case Pike or Pritchard decided he was disposable. Pritchard losing his badge and system access had convinced them seizure was coming, and now they were gathering everything capable of burying them before Raines’s paperwork reached a judge.

“They’re going to destroy it.” I studied the separate feeds. “Not relocate. Too much risk carrying all three sets of evidence once warrants are moving.”

Stryker nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

I looked toward Judge. “Raines know?”

“I’ve kept him updated.” Judge’s mouth shifted with the faintest trace of satisfaction. “To a certain extent.”

“How generous.”

Judge crossed his arms over his chest. “If the sheriff’s people find them first, excellent. If we do, we’ll pass the location along.”

Hawkeye’s mouth twitched. “Eventually.”

While we waited for one of the surveillance teams to report where the three men were taking their evidence, I checked the time and pulled up the protected feed from dispatch. Bex sat behind her console with her headset in place. Wraith held the communications entrance and Smoke covered the employee corridor, while Raines remained inside the building.

I knew exactly how protected she was. The only safer place in Sable Canyon would have been our home or the clubhouse, with layers of brothers, gates, and controlled land between her and the outside world, but knowing she was safe on a screen had never satisfied me as much as putting my hand around her waist and feeling her breathe beneath it. I locked my tablet and stood.

“I’m going to dispatch.”

Hawkeye glanced toward the feed before looking back at me. “About time. You’ve been trying to touch her through that screen.”

“Wasn’t working.”

“First piece of technology you couldn’t make cooperate.”

I gave him a flat stare and headed for the door, but my secure phone vibrated before I reached the hallway. Nomad’s name filled the screen, and the low engine noise behind him told me the surveillance had shifted from waiting to movement.

“All three converged at a closed garden center outside town,” he reported. “Pritchard left his truck there and got into Pike’s Yukon. Stowe followed in the service van. They’re heading east on Old Quarry Road.”

I pulled the county map onto the office display while Stryker moved around the desk. The road crossed scrubland, abandoned county parcels, and one place isolated enough to burn evidence without attracting attention until smoke reached the highway. “Only thing out there is the old county burn pit.”

“Exactly,” Nomad answered. “We’re four minutes behind them. Falcon’s coming around from the north.”

Stryker was already issuing assignments before I ended the call. I opened Bex’s protected number while heading toward the motorcycle garage. She answered immediately, the radio chatter around her dropping as she stepped away from the active console.

“What happened?”

“Got movement. Pike, Pritchard, and Stowe are together, carrying the devices we need. We’re going after them.” I heard her breath catch, but she remained quiet while I continued. “Stay inside dispatch. Wraith and Smoke don’t leave your side, and you don’t step through an exterior door until I come back.”

“You’d better come back, Corbin Ralston,” she snapped.

The sharp demand pulled a rough chuckle from me as I reached my bike. My woman wasn’t pleading or asking me to be careful. She was issuing an order with enough love beneath it to make the impossible feel guaranteed.

“Always.”

24

BEX

Iwas three hours into my shift on Tuesday evening when I picked up a call that stunned me. “Sable Canyon 911, what is the address of your emergency?”

A woman’s voice came through the line, sounding shaky. “I…I locked myself in the bedroom. He left, but I don’t know if he’s coming back.”

I sat up straighter, my fingers already moving over the keyboard as I grabbed a pen to jot notes onto my pad. “Okay, I’m here with you. But I need to know your address so I can send help.”