Rafe obediently picked up his chair and turned it to face the whitewashed section of wall at the back of the building. Gray looked up without moving—or taking his full attention from the rifle components in front of him.
After another few seconds of fiddling and some muttered curses, Conall flipped his handheld projector upright, and the surveillance footage from Knox’s glasses appeared on the wall. The video from the night-vision camera was tinged with green, though Conall color-corrected it with a few keystrokes.
On-screen, Nina arrived in the alley. The video washed out the gold undertones of her skin, and the angle of the shot left her face in shadow. She surveyed the trap she’d walked into with no apparent alarm as the four men drifted into the frame.
Knox had almost intervened then. The instructions he’d received had been very specific—if he wanted his biochem hacker back, he was to deliver Nina to the designated coordinates, alive and unharmed.
He’d seen so much death in those four shadowy outlines—first Nina’s, when they overpowered her. Then Luna’s, when Knox failed to provide her ransom. Then each of his men, one by one, as their degrading enhancements slowly poisoned their bodies. Without a biochem hacker to regulate their implants, the Silver Devils might as well put bullets in their heads right now. Or go crawling back to the Protectorate.
Knox would prefer the bullet.
“Holy shit!” Conall’s shocked exclamation drew Knox’s attention back to the surveillance footage. Four bodies were already on the ground. It had happened that quickly—so quickly Knox hadn’t even had time to vault off the roof to help.
Rafe shoved his spoon into his bowl of rice and braced his elbows on the table. “Go back and play it slow.”
Conall obeyed. Even at half speed, Nina was fast. She dodged a fucking bullet before commandeering the man who’d tried to shoot her as a human shield. Then she used his gun to fire on two of his friends while the weapon was still in his hand.
Knox was good, the best the Protectorate had ever turned out. And even he wasn’t sure he could have pulled that off.
Gray sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin, his brows drawn together in a contemplative frown. “Who is she?”
“Fuck that,” Conall retorted. “What is she?”
“Trouble,” Rafe rumbled. “Hot, sexy trouble. Does this mean we go with plan B?”
Rafe always wanted to go with plan B, where he deployed his charming smile and his big, beautiful brown eyes, and everyone melted for him. Knox had relied on the man’s natural charisma on plenty of missions, but the thought of Rafe using sex to lure Nina into a trap …
“No,” he said, too curtly. “Plan A was to pick her up off the street. That clearly won’t work. Plan B would be to sedate her, not seduce her, but we don’t know what she is or whether our tranqs will work on her. So we go with plan C. She’s an information broker. We’re going to make her an offer no broker could refuse.”
Gray scrubbed one hand over his face with a rough sigh. “Maybe we should focus on figuring out another way to get Luna back.” He gestured toward the makeshift screen. “I already wasn’t crazy about kidnapping someone. I’m really not crazy about getting killed during the attempt.”
Knox wasn’t wild about the kidnapping, either. When he’d first joined the Protectorate, it had been with wide eyes and dreams of heroics. He’d decided that he would accept the biochemical enhancements. He’d train day and night, if that was what it took. And then he’d go back out into the world and do some damn good. Help people like his father, who’d died protecting a neighborhood store from petty thieves. Make things better instead of worse.
His eyes hadn’t been wide in a long time. The world wasn’t interested in being saved. And the only allegiance Knox owed now was to the men in this room, men who’d followed him into battle and the depths of hell and now into treason, where a ticking clock was counting down to their slow, painful deaths.
“We don’t have time,” he reminded Gray. “Conall couldn’t trace the communication. We don’t know who took her, or what they’ll do if we show up at those coordinates without the payment they requested. And every day we stall, our side effects are getting worse.”
“It’s Luna,” Rafe declared, as if that answered the moral dilemma. “Helping us is what got her into this mess. And sure, the lady is hot and all, but…” He waved a hand at the paused video, showing Nina frozen in the act of delivering her silent coup de grace. “You don’t get that good at killing by being a sweet little pussycat.”
Gray relented, holding up both hands in surrender. “Understood. Still not too keen on dying, though, so this ruse of yours had better work, Knox.”
It would, because Knox had been saving this weapon since the day Conall had offered it to him. His game-winning ace. An information broker’s ultimate fantasy.
“Conall?”
“Hmm?”
“How thorough are those files you have on the Rogue Library of Congress bunker?”
Conall tipped his chair on two legs so he could snag a small data pad off his workstation. “Old Uncle Aiden was a little cracked, but he was fucking meticulous. So I’m guessing pretty thorough.”
“You’re guessing?”
“I never actually decrypted most of them. Seemed a little reckless.”
“How long would it take you to decrypt it and redact any references to location?”
Conall tapped his leg as his eyes darted back and forth and his lips moved in silent calculation. He’d always sparked with barely restrained energy, but now he was restless and fidgety all the time.
“Twelve hours?” Conall said finally. “Maybe twenty-four, if some of the files have multiple encryptions.”
Too long, but it was still the best chance they had. Knox slid an empty tablet down the table. Conall caught it. “Do it. We need schematics, paper trails. Proof. Redact anything that would lead her to the real location. Load it all on there.”
Conall raised one brow. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just throw together some dummy shit? I can make it look good enough to sell the con.”
Knox turned back to the video frozen on the wall. He’d underestimated her physical strength. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake with her mind. “This isn’t the time to take chances. Use the real data.”
“Yes, sir.”
And that was that, as far as Conall was concerned. He settled into his task, trusting that Knox would spend his family secret wisely. That he’d save Luna, save them, keep them all out of TechCorps torture cells, and probably score them enough credits to settle down to blissful lives of leisure.
Knox had worked hard to earn that trust. To deserve it. Somehow, he had to pull this off and be worthy of it.
* * *
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
Recruit 66–615 survived the implant procedure and is responding well to biochemical adjustment. He’s already broken our standing strength and stamina records. I advise expanding testing of the latest-gen implant with 66–615 as a control subject.
Recruit Analysis, May 2060
* * *