Page 26 of The Wolf and the Monarch

He could tell that Benji was still skeptical but his hand slowly loosened on Sawyer’s wrist. “I don’t…get it.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s not. You shouldn’t be helping me. You shouldn’t want to help me. You’re with them.”

Sawyer shrugged. “I’m not them though. I never have been.” His parents weren’t great growing up, but they weren’t nearly as bad as Milo. They still had a conscience somewhere and would take jobs that weren’t just for the corrupt and easy payouts. Milo didn’t care. He would usually take the jobs from the worst of the worst because they paid well. Occasionally, he would take one from someone who wasn’t the scum of the earth, but it was rare.

He dropped his hands from Benji’s face and the man just laid back down. Sawyer watched as every ounce of adrenaline he had just fell out of him all at once. He didn’t say anything for a bit. He was clearly working out something in his mind. “Okay…” Benji eventually said, “I’ll be your something better.”

Sawyer smirked. “Yeah you will.”

“You’ll get me out of here?”

“Yeah. I will.” He didn’t know when or how. But he would figure it out. He still had a few days before Milo was too pissed off about the lack of information, he figured. “Just relax, okay? I’m gonna go look for some medicine or…something.”

Benji didn’t speak. He just slightly nodded his head and clenched his eyes shut tightly. The poor guy had to be exhausted. The hypothermia had settled some but now he was fighting an infection. Sawyer had no idea if the body could even fight both of things at once. But he was going to make sure it could. Gently, he ran his hand through Benji’s hair before he quickly pulled it back and stood up.

Without another word, he went back upstairs.

The bunker had a medicine closet filled with odds and ends. A lot of it was actual wound care but there were a handful of random medicine bottles in there from old infections that the guys had around there. He could probably ask Cole, his only friend and medic for the bunker, for something. But he didn’t want to get him in trouble if someone found out what he was doing. Sawyer sifted through them, looking for the newest bottles he could find. He did find a bottle of amoxicillin. Apparently one of the guys had some mouth surgery and needed it for that. He didn’t know much about medications, but he did know that was some sort of an antibiotic. Sawyer wasn’t going to question why he didn’t take it. He just took the bottle, bacitracin and some other basic wound care essentials that he learned over the years from Cole. That would have to do something, right?

Closing the door to the closet as quietly as he could, he was about to head back down to the basement when suddenly, an idea crossed his mind. Sawyer turned his head towards Milo’s office, gently chewing on his bottom lip. Benji had no idea what Milo had been talking about the whole time he had been there. He was genuinely curious how things had gotten so mixed up with who Benji was in the first place.

It was such an incredibly bad idea to go snooping around on Milo’s computer. Sawyer didn’t even have an idea of where to start to look…but his curiosity had gotten the best of him. Quiet as a mouse, he walked over to the office and snuck inside, closing the door behind him without making a single sound. He sat down at the computer and turned it on, waiting for it to boot up. Once it had, the first issue arose to him.

He didn’t know the fucking password.

Why would he know it? Milo didn’t trust him with anything confidential.

Sawyer sat there for a few moments, trying to think about what the password could even be but there wasn’t anything concrete coming to mind. And he was anything but a fucking hacker. He dragged his tongue across his teeth in frustration. The half baked plan he had wasn’t even mixed at that point.

Right as he was about to shut down the computer again, he remembered a book that he always saw Milo writing in. If there was one thing he did know, it was that his uncle was well organized. He had a backup plan for almost everything and he knew he had one in case of his untimely death. Which meant he probably had the password to just about everything written down somewhere.

Sawyer began to open up the drawers in the desk and strategically dug through them so he wasn’t moving anything too severely that would set Milo off. He pulled out and looked through a few different notebooks, all of which just looked like record keeping. Nothing of importance. However, in the very back of the drawer, he found a small notebook that appeared to be specifically hidden away from all eyes. Sawyer probably wouldn’t have even noticed it had he not been digging around.

He pulled the notebook out and flipped it open. The first several pages were blank. But in the middle of the notebook, he found exactly what he had been looking for. The password to everything he could need. With a grin, he punched in the password.

WA19773010

At first, it didn’t mean much to him but then it clicked. WA. Watson Atkins. His father. Milo’s brother. The number was his date of birth. Sawyer just sighed and shook his head. Leave it to Milo to use that for the password.

Once the computer had loaded up completely, he began sleuthing as well as he could (which admittedly, wasn’t very well. He wasn’t the most tech savvy person in the world). He checked the email first and searched for Andi Madison, hoping that something would pop up, but nothing did. Fair enough. It probably wasn’t a good idea to discuss the person you were going to kidnap in an email.

His next plan was to just search the computer in general for the name. It took him longer than he cared to admit to figure out how to do that. But once he had, he typed in the name once again. Unfortunately, nothing popped up. He then tried the initials AM and much to his surprise and excitement, that did bring up something. There were several encrypted messages in some hidden folder on his computer. Just by seeing that, Sawyer’s heart began to pound in his chest. He would have something to tell Benji about what the hell had happened. That would be good, right? Benji would want to know. Taking a deep breath, he opened up the messages one by one. It was some sort of an exchange between Milo and another person.

You’re a sneaky one over there. I had to do a lot of detective work to get your names from John. He sends his regards, by the way. Didn’t seem to care much about giving me what I wanted. Hopefully you’ll be the same.

Who is this? What do you want?

My name isn’t important. What is important is what you have done to me. About seven months ago, you took a job from John Raymond. You were to wire transfer funds from one account to another.

Those funds were mine. Those were funds from a job that I had done and I want my money.

I don’t have your money.

Oh, but you do, Matthew. It was reported to John that the funds had been rerouted. John didn’t particularly care that the money didn’t get to where it was going. He said, and I quote, that he just didn’t want me to have it. So, John got what he wanted. I did too in some small aspect, when I spilt his blood all over the floor of his dining room.

I just wonder where that reroute could have been linked to? I can only assume the person who took the job, took the money.