Page 74 of Hell to Pay

I walked with the Bastards toward Gage without asking permission. We were in this together and I had as much a right to know what Gage had found on the hard drive as anyone.

To say Gage didn’t look happy to see them — us — was an understatement. His expression hardened and he reached into a backpack at his side, pulled something out, and started down the beach without a glance to see if we were following.

It took me a minute to realize the object in his hand was the hard drive, and I had a flash of it plugged into the computer in theArtemis’ control room.

We followed him outside the ring of light that leaked from the bonfire until we were in the dark, the music fainter under the crash of waves as they rolled onto the beach.

He walked all the way to the cliff face. There was a dirt path that wound upward but he stopped at the bottom and turned to face us, thrusting the hard drive toward Rafe like it was poisonous.

And maybe it was.

“I never want to see this again,” Gage said. “Come to think of it, I never want to see you, any of you, again.”

“That bad, huh?” Rafe asked, taking the hard drive.

“I don’t know what kind of shit you’ve gotten yourself into here, but I told you I didn’t want any part of it.”

“And then you took our money,” Jude pointed out. “A lot of it.”

“And you know why,” Gage said. “But yeah, I took your money, which is why I did the job I was paid for, but I’m out. And don’t even think about asking Storm, because she’s out too.”

“Are you going to tell us what you found?” Nolan asked.

“It’s open,” Gage said. “I recoded the password with the amount of money you paid me for this fucking job, so you can see for yourself, but the TLDR version is that there’s a bunch of encrypted buyer profiles and numbers attached to inventory that — and I can’t believe I have to say this out-fucking-loud thanks to you assholes — seem to be attached to people.”

My heart stuttered in my chest. “What kind of numbers?”

He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time that night. “Nine-digit numbers. I don’t know what they mean and I don’t want to know.”

The numbers branded on the back of my neck seemed to burn, like some kind of sick muscle memory.

“Anything else?” Jude’s voice was tight and I wondered if he was thinking about the numbers burned into my skin too.

“Yeah, some GPS coordinates for something called the ‘MdM,’” Gage said. “Filed under other shit I wish I didn’t know about.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“No idea,” Gage said. “Filed under more shit I don’t want to know about. Unfortunately, I saw more than I wanted to see, including a date and the GPS coordinates for some estate in Paris, along with something about a catalog. And that was where I signed off.”

The information was bouncing around my mind like the little white ball in the old pinball machine at the pizza place my mom always took Matt and me for our birthdays.

“Thanks,” Rafe said.

“Don’t thank me,” Gage said. “Just lose my number and pretend you never gave this shit to me.”

He stalked off and headed back to the fire without a backward glance, leaving us standing in the shadows, Rafe still holding the hard drive.

“What do you think it means?” Nolan asked.

Rafe shook his head. “No fucking idea. But we’re going to find out.”

48

NOLAN

We stoodaround Jude at the computer, staring at the words on the monitor.

Not just words. Coordinates too, like Gage had said.

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