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The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had as much right to be angry as Hux did.
Heck, I had more.
I ignored the sick twisting in my stomach calling me a liar and placed my fingerprint on the pad that unlocked my lair. The door opened with a quiet whoosh.
“Henry Cavill?” I demanded.
“Sire?” the AI replied smoothly.
“Pull up the record for the IP address I was looking at earlier. Also, please show me the camera feed from the second floor of the Silage Motel from the last twelve hours. Playback at two times speed.”
I was going to find out who Vince’s associate was. I was not going to let Hux’s bad attitude stop me from helping Champ’s team.
“Yes, sire. Processing now,” Henry agreed. “Sire, you have one unread email from Professor Homsy at Vanderbilt with the subject ‘Request for Project Assistance.’ You have one unread text from Carter Rogers that reads, ‘Come join me and Riggs for dinner tonight if you’re home.’ And you have one unread Horn of Glory message from Anomaly451 that reads—”
“Reply to Carter, please,” I interrupted the AI. “Tell him, ‘Not tonight, cuz. Home, but working. Thanks anyway.’”
“Yes, sire. Message sent.”
“Thanks.” The other messages could wait because I had work to do. “Oh, and Henry? Could you open…” I hesitated.
I’d been about to ask him to open the feed from my camera in the kitchen, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to watch Hux stomping around angrily. That would be pathetic.
“…I mean, could you, um, order me a pizza, please, from the usual place? I’m going to be here a while.”
“Yes, sire,” Henry replied gently, making it clear that even the AI thought I was pretty pathetic already.
It took eighteen hours to track the mystery man down, but when I finally did, the results were worth the effort. I raced upstairs and skidded to a halt in the kitchen. When my socks didn’t get the message, I nearly wiped out before grabbing at the kitchen island.
“Found him!” I gasped, waving my tablet in the air and straightening my glasses.
Five pairs of bleary eyes looked up at me. The giant kitchen table was cluttered with half-filled coffee cups and half-empty takeout boxes—an indicator that our housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Carmody, must have long abandoned her post—and through the window, I saw the sky was just beginning to lighten.
“Found who?” Elvo asked.
“Dude, why haven’t you answered Carter’s texts?” Riggs demanded.
“Is that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?” Jordan wanted to know. “Have you not slept yet?”
“Erm.” I looked down at my T-shirt. “Yes? And no. But it doesn’t matter because…” I paused for dramatic effect. “I found Vince’s guy. The hacker from the motel. The motel hacker.” My brain pulsed from a heady mixture of excitement, fear, and four liters of Dr. Pepper.
No one else seemed as excited as I was, though, and once I replayed my words, I realized they weren’t nearly as impressive as I’d thought.
“Shocker,” Hux said dryly, barely glancing up from his computer screen. “Did you find that he was… at the motel?”
I noted that Hux was dressed in the same tight-fitting black T-shirt and ass-molding cargo pants he’d worn the day before, but no one made snarky comments at him. Hmph.
I ignored him and focused on Champ. “The guy’s name is Linus A. Dixon of Rosecommon Drive, Falls Church, Virginia. And he is, as we suspected, a security analyst for the DEA.”
“Wait, you actually ID’d the guy?” Champ pushed back from the table and made his way over to the coffee maker, though his eyes remained fixed on me. “How’d you do that?”
Hux grumbled angrily, “And who the fuck authorized you to?”
Once again, I ignored Huxley. “Well, first, I spent hours and hours trying to enhance the security images from the motel that I forwarded to you, but that got me nowhere—”
“No shit,” Jordan confirmed, rubbing their eyes. “I’ve been trying the same. No dice.”
“And I ran plate numbers on every car in the lot—” Elvo yawned.
“Same,” I agreed eagerly. “But all the cars were tied to other rooms.”
Elvo nodded. “Right. Our guy must enjoy walking.”
“I tapped into the motel’s security cameras.” Hux closed his eyes and stretched his neck from side to side. “But other than getting a middle-of-the-night pizza delivery, our guy hasn’t moved. So how the hell did you get an ID on him?”
“Right. About that. See, I remembered a conversation I had with…” I darted a look at Huxley and licked my lips before giving Champ a nervous smile. “…with someone the other day. We agreed that the best way to gain access to a system isn’t brute-force hacking but social engineering…”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Hux’s head snap up and felt his eyes boring into my skull like lasers.
