Page 17 of Secret Redemption

Chapter Nine

They walked into Fortis to the sounds of Will screaming and shouting like a banshee. The normally cool-headed tech geek had totally lost his shit over the hack. He prided himself on his systems being impenetrable and had taken it personally if the fact that Dane was sneaking out of the tech room looking sheepish was anything to go by.

“Is it bad?” he asked his second in command.

“The actual breach wasn’t bad, a few files that Ava worked on were downloaded before Will was notified. His tantrum about it though is fucking epic. If you’re going in there you might want to suit up first,” Dane said indicating the door to the tech room.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Ava muttered and brushed past them, pushing the door open, her red hair flying behind her.

Zack and Dane followed behind. Zack watched with interest and not a small amount of pride as Ava walked up to a ranting Will and spun him around by his elbow, so he faced her.

Hands on hips she looked him dead in the eye with a look that would certainly scare the shit out of Riley’s future girlfriend’s. Poor boy, he would need his daddy around then. A smile played on Zack’s lips despite the dire situation.

“Will, stop being a child and calm down right now!”

Zack looked over at Lucy who was smirking from her chair at the other terminal.

Will just looked at her in shock and then scanned the room as if he was only just realising the others were there.

Ava grabbed his hand and led him to a seat.

“Now, have you plugged the breach?” she asked as she sat beside him.

“Yes, I’ve set a honeypot to see if we can catch them if they come in again.” Will ran his hands through his hair which was already sticking up in several different directions and started to pace. “I’m running a tracer tool to see if we can reverse trace to find the source.”

Ava smiled at him then. “Okay, so how about we have that in English for us non-geek speakers?” she asked, and Will flashed her a killer grin, that kind of made Zack want to throat punch him for looking at Ava like that.

Fuck he was becoming a complete tool! Moving closer he grimaced as he caught the smug look on Dane’s face and knew that his friend knew what he was feeling. Typical. Now the fucker smiles. His attention turned back to Will as he started to explain to Ava and the rest of them what was going on.

“The honeypot is a server with a deliberate flaw, that the hacker will hopefully access. The honeypot appears to have the encrypted files for the Divine Watchers books in it. Once opened the system will then hack them and they won’t realise it until it’s too late.”

“Right. So, we have to wait until they try again?” Zack asked.

Will looked at him and Zack could see the tiredness and stress on his face. “For now, but I do have a few things to try. My priority is to set up even tighter firewalls. This shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry, Zack.”

Zack grabbed Will by the shoulder and gave him a gentle shake, “Don’t. You’re human, and these fuckers are relentless.” He faced Lucy, Sly, Dane, and Ava then. “We need to end this. Last night my son was put in danger. A son I had no idea about until now, but one I’ll protect with my last breath now that I know about him, and I know you all feel the same about your families.” He saw everyone looking at Ava and stepped closer to her, feeling as if he needed her to know he was with her on this. They were a team now. He just needed to make her see it.

He looked at his team and saw no judgment aimed at her, only interest. He should have known they would never be like that.

“On that note, Dane get everyone’s asses in the conference room within the hour. It’s time we taught these fuckers who they’re dealing with.”

Dane nodded, turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Zack spent a few minute’s talking to Will about the honeypot he had set and then went to his office.

Shutting the door, he sat behind his desk and pulled out his phone. He looked at the picture he had snapped of Riley and felt what was becoming a familiar punch to the gut. He was still having trouble getting his head around it. A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.

“Come in!” he shouted.

The door opened, and Lucy entered, a massive grin on her face. Instead of stopping in front of his desk as she usually did, she went around the desk to stand in front of him.

“Congratulations boss. You’re gonna be a wonderful daddy,” she said and leaned in to kiss his cheek. He was a bit stunned and completely bowled over by the sentiment.

“Thanks, Luce,” he said quietly.

“Why so sullen?” she asked, as she sat opposite him.

He looked at her and tried to figure it out. In his heart, he knew what was wrong. It was fear. He was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to protect Riley and Ava and he felt almost paralysed by it. The desire to take them and hide them somewhere until it was all over was so strong that he had to white knuckle the arms of the chair to stop himself from acting on it.