Ace would never get over it. He’d become…Liam. Closed off and terrified of being destroyed when he turned out to ultimately be the one responsible for putting someone he cared for in harm’s way.
Ah, shit.
It was impossible to be angry when he could relate.
Jordan looked as if he might press the issue, but instead he shook his head then turned back to observe their guest computer whiz, who was frantically scrolling through a text file that looked like it contained plain English notes rather than code.
“JRad—” A man of action, Liam couldn’t wait another instant. Ace got that too. He felt utterly useless without someone to fight. Without any way to take even a baby step toward reclaiming Ruby from the bastards who’d snatched her from right beneath their negligent noses.
“I’m on it, guys. Swear. Sent the plate info from the security cameras to the Men in Blue for them to run it, though I’m assuming it’s stolen.” JRad didn’t take his stare from his monitor for one nanosecond. “Now I’m working from this end. Right before you idiots started walloping each other and thoroughly sidetracked her, Ruby was about to tell me something she’d figured out. She fucking knew what was wrong with this shit and even how to fix it. She told me the code somehow led her back to the assholes doing this. I need to find what she saw and hope I’m half as smart as she is so I can interpret it like she did.” He pulled her screen up next to his.
“You’ve got this.” Jordan tipped back in his chair, seemingly unconcerned. Whether it was a show for Liam, Ace, and the rest of the Shields’ sakes, or because he had absolute faith in JRad’s abilities, Ace should have trusted his boss’s opinion.
Though Ace didn’t breathe for what felt like hours but was probably only five minutes, it wasn’t long before JRad hissed, “Yes!Fuckyes.”
“You see it too?” Kennedy sat up straighter from where she’d been leaning against Marcus while Knox hovered protectively over them both. She was as worried sick as the rest of them, even if they were trying to focus on the job at hand instead of the oily terror winding through their guts now that one of their own was in the hands of their enemies. Marcus squeezed her hand.
“Hell no. Our girl is brilliant. I never would have spotted something this innocent looking. But she documented it for us.” JRad beamed over his shoulder. “She doesn’t need us. She’s going to save herself with these notes she left behind.”
“Explain,” Jordan ordered.
More typing and a flourish of JRad’s wrist before he used his index finger to poke the enter key with enough force for a dozen returns. When he did, a series of numbers appeared on the screen as if that would illuminate them.
“What is that?” Ace relied on every bit of training he had to stay calm when he wanted to run, he wanted to rage…doanythingto reclaim Ruby. If he did, he didn’t intend to let her out of his sight or his bed for a long damn time. That was…ifshe wanted anything to do with him anymore.
“It’s sort of like a network address and it contains a unique identifier. Their sequences weren’t mutating every block they attempted to corrupt because there’s a location indicator embedded in here that didn’t match the one of the computer that wrote the original block. She pinpointed where she could make a change so that the code would mimic the variable, and essentially debug their virus for them.”
“I honestly don’t give a shit about that stuff right now no matter how many billions of dollars are at stake.” Liam had far less patience than Ace and he was running awfully short himself. “How can we use that to find her? Ruby is worth more than any pile of cash.”
“It can be tied to an IP, and though they did some fancy footwork to cloak their true identities and origins,thatI do know how to figure out.” He grinned as his fingers assaulting the keyboard caused a clatter. His approach was brute strength as opposed to Ruby’s grace. Now that Ace had someone to compare her to, he could tell how smooth and precise she was when she worked.
“So in non-geek speak, you’re telling us you know where they’re taking her?” Ace would have laid a wet kiss on the guy’s scruffy cheek if he thought his legs would hold his weight right then.
“Generally.” JRad pulled up a map. He grew still.
“What? What now?” Liam rasped.
“Maybe this wasn’t as random an attack as we thought. They’re not far from here. The odds of that are…”
“Implausible.” Jordan shook his head. “They were stalking her. Teasing her with that code, weren’t they?”
JRad nodded. “It was a trap. They knew who she was and where to find her all along. They aren’t as good as she feared. They’re manipulative bastards.”
“To what end?” Jordan asked JRad.
“They need her to fix it.” He flicked his mouse across the table before using his finger in the air and some technological wizardry to enlarge the map on the curved display so they could all see it clearly before he drew a neon yellow circle on the map, right over the campus of Middletown’s college. “She’s somewhere here.”
“Let’s go. I’ll kick down every fucking door in the place until we have her. Before they move her or realize we’re on to them.” Liam practically vibrated with unspent energy as he shot to his feet.
“Sit down. The last thing we want to do is scare them off. We need to be more targeted. We’re scalpels not grenades.” Jordan shook his head and paused until Liam grudgingly did as their boss directed. “What else can you tell us, JRad?”
“I’m looking at the code they used. Ruby was in the middle of typing out a note on how to turn it against them like they did when they invaded the Shields system. And if I can pull that off…we might be able to see inside their—”
Before he’d finished his sentence, a live feed from a shitty quality security camera occupied one of Ruby’s monitors. And there, far more chill than any of them, sat Ruby.
Her long vibrant red hair reached nearly to her pert ass and she slouched, one foot on her opposite knee, as if she was bored by being kidnapped.
“She’s a good actress.” Aarav sighed as they observed she was at least physically unharmed for the moment.