Phantom
I’d been at this fucking thing for three weeks now.
I’d never had such a hard time breaking a fucking passcode. I tried everything I could think of, from random phrases to using my decoder. Nothing worked.
The only clue was the fucking picture on the screen.
It was driving me crazy.
I knew whatever the code was had to be related to me somehow because it was my identification picture I used on the dark web. The only difference was the extra weapon.
That was the only thing that made sense.
What was it about my identification picture that Kitty thought I would recognize? Kitty and I were only acquaintances. We never hung out. When we did see each other, we were polite and only ever talked small talk. Nothing serious. Though, she did seek me out when she needed help locating Nitro. I got to know her better during that time. She was truly a smart woman, head strong too. She loved her husband and daughter. She was a protector and didn’t give two shits who she had to walk over to get things done.
The fucked-up thing was that Kitty and I only met when I came to the Golden Skulls. I didn’t learn anything of her past until I came here. Nowhere in our combined pasts did our paths cross.
We had absolutely nothing in common.
She was raised in a motorcycle club, while I was raised in suburbia.
She went to college to become a nurse, while I dropped out, joined the CIA, and served in the military.
She grew up dodging rough and rowdy bikers while I played with dolls and went to ballet classes.
We were nothing alike.
Yet somehow, she knew something about my past.
Something about me that she didn’t want me to know until now.
I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
The majority of my life was classified. The rest I scrubbed from existence. I left no digital footprint, nothing that could be traced back to me. For all intents and purposes, I was a nobody, a ghost. I didn’t exist but she knew enough about me to use my own identification picture. Looking at the picture again, I could tell where she cropped and added the second weapon.
Two M-16’s instead of one.
She wasn’t careful with that, almost as if she didn’t care if I noticed that part.
Making it inconsequential. Or was it?
A knock at my door had me turning in my chair as Reaper walked in.
“Anything?” he asked, closing the door and sitting next to me.
“No,” I muttered, turning to face the screen again.
“Her letter was explicit. Only you could break the code.”
Throwing my hands up in the air, I shouted. “Well, I don’t know what the fuck you want me to do because I’ve tried everything. Nothing works. I’ve tried every possible passcode I could think of and even invented a few. Whatever the code is, she made damn sure it was unhackable.”
“Have you talked to Matrix or Sypher about this?”
I stared blankly at the idiot. He ought to have known me better by now. “Of course, I have!”
“Fuck,” he muttered, holding up his hands. “Sorry.”
“Look, I know you want whatever is on this thumb drive but I can’t access it without that fucking code. You knew Kitty. Any ideas?”