Page 48 of Hack
"We have to be sure. I mean, we both know it's him, but we can't just rush there. We need to get eyes on the place. Figure out what we have." Archer blew out a long breath, then smiled at Carter. "We found him."
Carter nodded and laughed as he thought about his resources back at the STK house. He had everything he needed there. He didn't have the programs on his laptop to get into satellite images or hack into the other systems, but he did have that all back at the team house. "I can get us everything we need, but we have to fly home to do it. I can't do it from a remote location. I need my programs, my security systems." He hated that he was clear across the country.
He could call Trenton and have him look it all up, but there was a part of him that didn't want the team involved. He wanted to do this himself. He needed to. Having Archer with him was acceptable, but the rest of the team, they didn't need to be part of any of this. What he had planned didn't need to involve anyone else. In fact, he planned on leaving Archer back once the time to go in happened.
"What do you want to do?" Archer asked.
Carter didn't answer right away. This was where he needed to keep a clear head. Even though he wanted nothing more than to hightail it to North Carolina and rush in there tonight, and save the girls that Lyle had to be holding, he needed to wait. Just like any STK case they had, it was hard to hold back until they built a case, knowing kids were still being abused and hurt, but like those cases, there was no room for a fuckup. They had to get things right the first time, and that meant he needed to work the case just like he did any other. "We wait. Put the pieces together before rushing in. We still go tonight, just in case, and put those trackers on the cars. We need to know where the brothers are when we go after Lyle. The last thing we need is for them to show up there and add to the problem."
Archer nodded. "Or, we could just call the police—"
"No!" Carter's eyes flashed up at Archer. "He's mine. That was the deal when we agreed to work together. He's mine. No one else gets him."
"Okay. I was just suggesting. From here on out, you call the shots, but I will say it again, I'm not letting you go in on a suicide mission. We do this safely." He took Carter's chin in his fingers and looked him directly in the eyes. "You are not going to put yourself in danger with this. I don't give a fuck what your end game is as long as you come out of it alive and safe."
Carter didn't want to think about the emotion he saw in Archer's eyes. It was more than concern, more than worry. He couldn't handle whatever it was right now. His emotions were too high strung to think about what was happening between them. He needed his mind on taking down Lyle. Whatever he did or didn't feel for Archer would have to wait. He couldn't deal with it now. "Yes." He gave a gentle nod. "I promise I'll be smart about this."
"Good." Archer kissed him. "I want him as badly as you do, but I don't want either of us dead because of it."
"I don't either." Carter leaned his head onto Archer's shoulder, giving himself a few moments to think and calm down. His mind was all over the place as he tried to think of everything he needed to do. There was so much, but almost all of it needed them back in California. No matter how much he hated it, they needed to take a step back and work through everything. "As hard as this is for me to say, we stay here. We wait for our flight back Monday morning, and we work through what we know while we wait. We make lists of what we need to do once home, then we will see what we find and go from there. I can't rush this. I won't. I've waited too long for this day."
"You sure we can stay here and not have you tear the town apart waiting?" Archer wrapped an arm around him.
"You'll just have to keep me preoccupied or something." Carter smiled, his head still resting on his shoulder. "I'll be okay. This is how it needs to be. If I start rushing through things, we'll make mistakes, and I'm not putting either of us, let alone any innocent girls who might be on site, in danger because I didn't do this the right way. For years, I've always been the one telling my team to hold back, to wait and make sure we had all the information. I can't treat this any differently." Nothing was going to change in the few days it would take to pull all the information he needed, unless Lyle did another mass killing. If that happened, he'd never forgive himself for waiting.
"You're doing the right thing, and I'll be happy to distract you. We'll go place those trackers in a bit, then forget everything here. We'll grab dinner, then come back here and go over what we know. Once we've figured it all out, the rest of this is just a well-needed vacation that the two of us deserve." Archer smiled. "I don't know how I missed these links. I just never looked into the grandparents. I don't know how the FBI didn't track this."
"Because they didn't look back either. Honestly, if Dana hadn't mentioned Gerald having money, we might have missed it too." He owed that old lady a huge amount of thanks. He'd send her flowers once this was all over.
"True, but I should have thought about it. Should have looked. It's what I do." Archer shook his head. "We still have so many unanswered questions."
"We won't for long. Once we get home, I can use high-tech military satellites to see who is on the property. I can hack into any cameras on the property, any computer systems. We'll have answers. This is why Howard told you to get hold of me. I can do things that even he couldn't. Once we're home, everything will come together," Carter told him.
"Without you putting yourself at risk?" Archer stared at him. "I need to know you won't go to prison for what you are doing."
"I won't go to prison for any of the information gathering, but what I'm going to do inside that house when I get hold of Lyle, that could get me arrested if I get caught." He placed a finger to Archer's lips, silencing any objection. "I have no plans of getting caught. I know I haven't… I can't tell you a lot about my team, but we do this kind of stuff almost nightly. We're good at what we do. This is why I need to go home and plan things. Why we aren't already in the car and headed to North Carolina. We do this right and we both come out at the end with none of it coming back on us. It's also why, when I do go into the house, I want you somewhere that you have a strong alibi. People know you are actively looking for Lyle, and when he turns up dead, I want to make sure you are safe and there is no doubt that you weren't the one to kill him. No one here knows who I am, no one but you knows my name. I'll be the one to go in and finish this."
"Jesus." Archer pulled away. "How am I supposed to let you put yourself at risk like this? You can't go in there alone."
"I have to. I won't have you putting his death on your conscience. Right now, it's easy to say you don't give a fuck about him dying, but when it's over, are you really sure that you can deal with what I'm going to do in there? You know as well as I do, I don't plan on going in and simply putting a bullet in his head." Carter needed Archer to understand that he was going to make Lyle suffer.
Archer stood and walked over to the desk, taking a seat as if he needed to put distance between them. "Are you sure you can deal with it?"
Carter shrugged. "Torturing him will weigh less on my mind than knowing what he did to my daughter does. I've lived with the knowledge of what he did to her for so long that making him suffer couldn't be any worse." Carter scooted to the edge of the bed, dangling his feet off the side. "Listen, if you don't want to be part of this, you can walk away now. You don't have to go any deeper into this than you already have. I won't be upset. This is a lot to deal with and I wouldn't ask anyone to put themselves in this position if they weren't willing. Once we get back to California, you can pack up and go. You'll know when it's done. It will be all over the news."
Archer shook his head. "No. I need to see it through. I just worry—"
"Don't. I promise I'll cover every possible scenario. I'll make sure it's safe when I go in. If it's not safe, I don't go. I won't rush this. If we have to wait, we wait. I promise. If I look at things and find that there is no way for me to go in alone and do this, then we'll hand what we have over to the FBI and let them handle it." It was probably the smart thing to do anyway, but his need for vengeance wouldn't allow him to let Lyle rot in prison or sit on death row while he worked his way through appeals. He wanted the man to suffer like his daughter did.
Archer nodded, but said nothing.
"Listen, we're both tired, both stressed. Let's go put those trackers on the cars, get food, and call it a night. We can talk about all this for hours, but it's not going to change anything. We need to get home and get more information. Until then, there's nothing more we can do." Carter stood. "I'm going to use the bathroom, then we can go as soon as you're ready."
Figuring Archer needed a few minutes alone, he locked himself in the bathroom, hoping like hell that he could keep his promise to Archer and come out of this alive. The truth was, no matter if he lived, he was going to make sure Lyle didn't. If he died in the process, then he was fine with that. Being reunited with his wife and daughter wasn't such a bad ending to things.
