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“Man down!”
My heart stops a moment before it starts sprinting. I’m on my feet and marching into the tech room with my best friend. “Who is it?”
“It’s not good, Atlas. It’s Peeping Tom,” Gauge says in a hard voice.
Oh no!“The kid? What the fuck happened?”
“Tony was waiting for Tom to get done with his computer coding class when he heard gunfire. He raced inside the building to the kid’s computer lab and it was complete chaos. Kids and professors were running everywhere, crying, and shouting for help. Tony kept looking at the faces of the people fleeing, hoping to see Tom. When he wasn’t among them, he pushed himself into the lab and found Tom face down on the floor with two bullets in his back. Tom was wheeled into surgery five minutes ago. Tony is there waiting for an update,” Gauge says.
My blood runs cold. “Did Tony see anyone in the area belonging to Bianchi’s mafia?”
“Negative. Tony said he didn’t recognize any of the faces belonging to Bianchi’s men—just kids and staff,” Ziggy answers.
“Fuck!” I roar. “Are we picking anything up on surveillance?”
“I’m working on it,” Chase says with a stoic face. His fingers fly across the keys and his glasses reflect back the images on his monitor. His face tightens. “What the…”
I come to his side and bend to look at the screen. “What did you find?” I ask anxiously.
“I had an image of the shooter on the screen for a moment. I backed it up to slow it down, but the image is gone—like it was wiped clean.”
Chase, Ziggy, and Butch all pause for a heartbeat before racing around the room. Chase shouts at his team to hurry.
“What the fuck is happening?” Gauge asks.
“It’s the hacker. He’s trying to erase any footage of our perp. We’re trying to back up all footage before it’s gone,” Chase explains in hast.
“I’ve got the erased image, but it’s encrypted. It’s going to take forever to decode,” Butch shouts. It’s the most I’ve heard him say in one sitting. If he’s talking, it must be huge.
Chase’s fist pumps the air. “Thank fuck, Butch! Start stripping it down. Ziggy and I will handle the rest.”
I take out my cell and call Tony. “Atlas,” he answers, his voice tight with emotion.
Tony left the marines because of the bloodshed. Seeing the kid shot up could have been triggering a PTSD moment. “Do you need to be relieved, Tony? I can send someone else over to wait for news on Tom.”
Tony sniffs. “No, Prez. But I won’t lie, seeing the kid shot up…it’s not an easy thing.”
“The offer stands if you want to step away for a breather,” I say.
“I appreciate it, but I’m going to stick around. This doesn’t sit right with me,” Tony says.
I frown. “What do you mean? It had to be Lorenzo’s doing.”
“Oh, I’m convinced of that, but it wasn’t a hit done by any of Lorenzo’s squad. That’s not how they work. One, they don’t do public—ever—no witnesses and usually under cover of darkness. Two, if the boss asks for a hit, the target’s dead and not fighting for his life in surgery. Three, only a coward shoots someone in the back—Bianchi’s men want to be the last thing you see before you cross over, to see the fear in their eyes when the lights go out. This is far from procedure for my old family.”
Interesting.“If not the mob, who is it?”
“I don’t know, Atlas. I saw nobody other than kids and staff I’m familiar with. Tom sat in the back of the class. The hitman had to come in from the door in the back, popped off two, and fled out the back again. Is there anything on the cameras?”
Frustrated, I run a hand over my face. “The hacker already got to it. Butch was able to recover the footage, but it’s encrypted. It’s going to take time to piece together.”
Tony is silent.
“Tony? You there, bro?”
Tony breathes heavily into the phone. “Put me on speaker.”
I motion for Chase to connect Tony to our intercom. “You’re on Tony. What gives?”
