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“Which is most likely where Rylie and anyone else Hunt has is being kept. He seems to be the kind of person who would like the whole dungeon thing,” Rip points out.
“Good point,” Ace replies, “anyway, we should be able to get the jet ready on pretty short notice.”
Jynx nods, “Yeah, Carter is on standby anyway, so as soon as we’re ready, we can head off.”
“She sent another message,” Pete interrupts suddenly, his words surprising me, as he adds, “It’s a photograph.”
“Of what?” I ask, infinitely curious.
“Erm, a duck, on a pond,” he replies.
“What?” Lyric asks and then looks at me, “Is that some kind of hidden message between you two?”
I shake my head, “Not that I remember.”
Ace frowns, “Can I try something?”
Handing the phone over to Ace, Pete replies, “Yeah, of course. It could be a coincidence, but from what I’ve learned about Rylie so far, I don’t think it is. The signal has now gone as well, so I’m pretty sure she sent the message and then turned the phone off.”
“Did you manage to get her location?” Trick asks.
“I managed to get a rough location before it cut out, and it’s fairly close to where the house that Ace found is, so we can assume that she’s there and has somehow managed to get a communication out to us,” Peter replies.
“I thought so,” Ace mutters, gaining all of our attention again.
When he doesn’t continue, Jensen smiles and asks, “What did you find?”
Ace looks up and winces slightly as he replies, “Shit, sorry, guys. The photo has information embedded in it. It’s not a simple photograph. It would probably be best if I try to decode it on a big screen.”
“Use the one in the front room. At least we’ll all be able to see what you find on it then. It must be important if she’s risked sending it.” Atlas suggests.
We all get up and follow Ace into the front room, taking seats where we can while he sets everything up so that it’s showing on the TV, and then getting to work. We stay silent, not wanting to disturb him as we watch him work, and admittedly, it does take him a while, with Pete making quiet suggestions that seem to be helping, and he’s obviously the only one who actually understands what Ace is doing right now.
Eventually, a little box appears over the picture, and even I know that it’s asking for a password.
Ace looks up and around at us all as he says, “It would save us quite a lot of time if any of you who knew Rylie could suggest a password suggestion. Otherwise, I’ll have to run a codebreaker, and that could take a few days at least to find the right password.”
Atlas frowns, “And, Rylie obviously deemed this important for us to know now so, we don’t want to make a move on the location until we know what information this photograph holds. Which means it could hold everything up if we don’t know the password.”
“Fuck,” Cash mutters with a frown.
A couple of the guys start to suggest passwords, none of which work, and Jynx even suggests a couple that don’t work. I stay silent, thinking over everything that I know about Rylie. We know that she wants us to gain access to it because it was sent to us, specifically, it was sent to me, so that would make me assume that it would be something that was reasonably easy for me to guess.
“Try Red Girl,” I suggest randomly. When I get curious looks, I add, “It was sent to me, so I assume it’s something that I can easily guess since she wants us to have this information. Red was the name of her girlfriend, and she always called me girl. In fact, she even said it in the first message that she sent. It’s worth a shot.”
“You make a good point,” Ace replies as he types it in and presses enter. There are a few seconds where I feel the flood of disappointment as I think that it's not going to work, and then Ace cheers as loads of files start popping up on the screen, “We’re in. Good work, Ever.”
“Alright, what are we looking at?” Lyric asks, scooting forward in her seat and squinting at the screen.
“If I were a betting man,” Rome starts.
“Which you are,” Jynx points out, making him smirk.
“Which I am,” Rome concedes, “then I would be willing to bet that it’s the information that she was supposed to get to Mr R before she went missing. She’s obviously found a way to get it to us.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but that makes sense,” Rafe replies, and I nod in agreement.
“Well, let’s see what is in it. We don’t need to go through everything, but it will give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with,” Trick suggests.
