Page 24 of Russian Rescue

People who understood that my ability to get in that system with ease meant that I could get into other systems with ease.

Like systems that held nuclear locations and codes... the ones they’d been trying to force me to hack when they’d tortured me.

The thing I’d left out telling Piper.

They have your sister.

Amanda. My baby sister. Nothing but smiles and sunshine all the time. Now, because of my careless mistake, she was in the hands of some of the most dangerous people on the planet. And now that they’d lost me, who knew what they’d do to her.

I’d fought with Piper last night, begging to let me turn myself in as a trade for my sister, but Piper had refused outright. After going around in circles for the better part of an hour, she’d finally screamed she’d have to put a bullet in my head before she could let that happen.

I’d seen the sadness and the seriousness in her eyes when she’d said it, and finally, I understood the severity of our situation. She was right. In the hands of the Russians, I presented a threat to not just US security but world security. Under their control, I could hand them over nuclear codes and plans that would potentially wipe out billions of people. And what would stop them then? I had the skills to hack any organization on the planet, and in their hands, I was as fatal as a nuke itself... a nuke that kept going and going and going.

The truth of her words washed over me, tightening my chest. They would order her to take me out, and if not her, then another Elite Stealth Force team would be hunting me down in no time. And no one could hide from an Elite Stealth Force team.

No one.

Not even me.

I would have gladly ended my life right there if that guaranteed saving Amanda, but I knew they would just kill her and tie up loose ends. No. The only solution that made sense, the one Piper, Knox, Marcus, and I came up with last night, was to find her and bust her out. And in the meantime, dangle me out in front of them like human bait, so they had a reason not to kill her. They’d hold her, hoping to find me, and then use her against me once they captured me again.

But we wouldn’t let them get me, and we’d get her out too. We had to.

“Hey, you okay?” Piper asked.

I shook my head. “No. Not even close.”

“I’m really sorry about all this, Wes. I know how much you love your sister.”

Memories of her braced smile as kids lit up my mind. How she’d laugh at her own jokes, used to follow me around like I was her teen idol, and helped cover for me when I snuck out that one time to go to Timmy’s party... the same one I’d played spin the bottle at and had my first kiss. Amanda was good inside and out. She always ran twenty minutes late and burst in with a myriad of strange excuses that usually involved having to stop and help someone or something—a lost dog, an old woman needing help crossing the road, or a wounded bird she had to drop off at the sanctuary. And we knew she wasn’t lying... she truly cared about anything with a heartbeat.

And now her life hung in the balance... because of me.

“Yeah. She’s my little sunshine.” I smiled. “And she’s supposed to be getting married today. God, my parents, and Rick, her fiancé, must be beside themselves. First me and now her? I can’t even imagine.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Are you sure I can’t send them a message?”

Piper shook her head from her perch on Oleg’s couch. “No. We can’t risk it. And what exactly would you say anyway? ‘We’re alive, but Amanda is kidnapped... love you?’”

With a sigh, I agreed. “Yeah. Nothing I can really say anyway that will ease their minds. I’m sure they’ve got cops looking everywhere for us by now, but they’ll never find us here. We just need to figure out where she is and go get her.”

“Exactly. Now, you’re the guy who finds the people, so exactly what do you need to do this?”

“My computer system at home,” I answered honestly. “I can’t imagine being able to do this with just a laptop. I’m good, but I’m not that good. That was some serious cyber security I had to get through before.”

“You’re going to have to get creative, Wes.”

I started racking my brain about places that would house the kind of power I would need. My eyes lit up as I thought of something. “Can we go back to the office building they had me at? They had a whole computer room set up there for me.”

She shook her head. “Too risky. We can’t take any chances of them getting ahold of you. Not to mention they’ve probably scrapped that location now that it’s compromised anyway.”

Grumbling, I racked my brain again. After a moment, I sat up straight. “Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. They’ll have what I need.”

“Okay.” She grinned. “That works! They’ll never think that you’d be there.”

“We break-in and I use their computers to find her. I drop a clue that I’m there so they know I’m still in Moscow and they can catch me on the cameras, then we get out before they can get there and grab me.”

“I like it.” She nodded. “We’ll get this taken care of on our own, then get out of town and meet Marcus and Knox. They can come up with a plan to extract her with the info you feed them.”

“I want to be part of the extraction too.”