Page 61 of Mile High With the Bikers
I make a point of laughing at her. “Are you looking for sympathy? What, isn't Hermes doing his job?”
“Honestly, if it wasn’t causing as much trouble as it is, I’d be impressed. Not even Connor knew how much control you had over the project. You should've seen how frustrated he was.” She shakes her head. “Tantrums aren’t very becoming on grown men, but they are quite emotional, aren’t they? In any case, Ihave a schedule to stick to and having to run around collecting you has put me quite a bit behind. Now that you're here, let's get on with it.”
I don’t know if I should be relieved or terrified. Both probably. Mary obviously wants us to see what Hermes can do on a military network. Weapons, plans, spies, who even knows? Area 42? I can’t be a part of this, and so long as Shrapnel has the dongle, they can do their best, but it just won’t work. “Where's Dad? I'm not doing anything for you until I see him.”
“And here I thought you two didn't get along. Come on, then. This way.” She takes me deeper into the office.
Oh no.
There he is, cuffs around his wrists and ankles binding him to the chair he's sitting in. His head is slumped, and his body tilted to one side. He looks barely alive, never mind conscious.
“What did you do to him?” I run to the chair, no one bothering to stop me. I lift his head, and his face is bruised and bloody. Ugly cuts that look very deliberate streak down both arms. His eyes are swollen and closed, but when I crouch in front of him to see, he manages to barely open them.
“Rory,” he whispers, and blood mixes with spittle that runs down his chin.
If he’s calling me Rory, I know things are bad. “Oh God, Dad. We're going to get you out of here, okay? I'm going to figure it out, and then we'll have you patched right back up and good as new. You just have to hold on a little longer.” I feel sick. I always knew that Mary Haney was ruthless in business, but Watchsmart is very successful. Well respected in the industry. So why this?
I turn to her. “What do you want from me?”
She's standing behind an office chair, holding the high back of it and drumming her fingers. “I think it's obvious. Don't you? I thought you were a genius.” She points at the laptop on the desk behind Dad. I recognize it as his, with his monogram embossed on the lid. He paid a lot of money for that design. “Your father failed to make Hermes work. I'm counting on you to do better, for both of your sakes.”
Haney seems stressed. She's constantly looking towards the door, and there's this edge to her voice, just under the surface, that's not quite panic, but heading in that direction. My guess is that our time here is limited until someone discovers what's going on. Is that something I can use? Because I'm about to disappoint her, and she's not going to like it.
“Why are you even doing this? You’re throwing everything away, and for what?” I run a hand through Dad's hair, wincing at the lumps I feel.
“Money, obviously. Honey, I know you're still young, but I’mtired.At the end of the day, a girl just wants to be able to get herself a private island, a yacht or two, and the knowledge that she's never going to have to work a day again for the rest of her life. That can't seem so strange, can it? Now get on that laptop and start opening up some servers for me.” Definitely stressed. And almost as big a narcissist as my father, if she's still willing to do her villain speech at a time like this.
“What are you after, exactly? Do you know? Once I'm inside this network, there's bound to be nearly limitless data to go through.” Just have to keep her talking until I figure out how to get out of this. “If we let it run on its own, it could take days.I usually aim it manually so we don’t waste time on useless information.”
She scowls. “We can decide that when we see how successful this is.”
“And then what? You think you can just walk out of here and no one will know?”
She laughs harshly. “Oh, people will know, but I’ll be long gone and who do you think they'll find in here? You and your father, with the program you developed. But none of this can happen until you start working your magic. I want to see what I saw in the demonstrations. Emails, prototypes, naval movements. Everything. Anything. Get going. We're running out of time!”
I pull out my laptop and set it up next to Dad’s after a quick glance to make sure he's still breathing. It doesn’t take long to bring up the right programs, starting them with the right switches, in the right order. All the little details that Dad's always been happy to leave to me.
It should get Hermes up and running perfectly.
That is if my dongle wasn't still in Shrapnel's boot and nowhere near here.
32
BULL
“You fucking sure?”I ask Snark.
“If you keep asking me that, I’m going to start taking it personally,” he snaps. “Yes I’m sure. They’ve been in there for about a half an hour now.”
U.S. Navy?
I can't fucking imagine the shit that'll come down from messing with the actual government. We've handled cops, the mob, the occasional crime lord, but fuck, if the National Guard comes rolling to the club, that might be it. There are fucking limits even for us.
But if Rory's in there, we have to at least try, consequences be fucked.
The roar of the bikes echoes off the buildings like a pride of hungry lions, but that can't be helped. It’s well past office hours, so hopefully we won’t catch too much attention too quickly. Tonight we're showing in force, rather than in stealth. We pull around to the back, looking for the entrance to the courtyard. I check the gun in my belt. Fuck, if anyone's hurt her…
Shrapnel’s riding bitch behind me, and I’m never going to let him live it down, but any of us would do the same if the choice was that or sitting out the rescue. He’s wiped off most of the blood so at least his face doesn't look as fucking ruined as it did when we found him, but it’s not pretty and neither is his mood. He obviously blames himself for losing Rory back there, and we gotta make sure he doesn't fuck himself up by doing something dumb to make up for it.
