Page 15 of One Cry Too Loud
“Yeah. Whatever.” Kat shooed her on and stood beside me as she walked away.
“You know, men have deep friendships too,” I added.
“I’m sure they do. I just wanted to get her told off before she got on the bus,” she said. “I’m sure you can tell, but I’m not a fan of Taylor’s current girlfriend.”
“Fiance,” I corrected him. “And as much as I hate to admit it, she doesn’t seem awful. She seems-she seems almost nice.”
“Nice people don’t steal their best friend’s love,” Kat said. “Trust me. I should know.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“A story for a different time,” She said. “Right now, with everyone off and safe, we need to get to the business of finding this girl and stopping whoever took her.” She sighed.
“What is it?” I asked, looking over at her.
“I talked to Holly and it’s going to be more complicated than I originally thought,” she said. “I have a solution.” She bit her lower lip. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
CHAPTER 10
“Seriously? This is your solution?” I asked, looking over at the barely post pubescent boy sitting at the coffeehouse table across from me. After we sent off the people who needed to be sent away, Kat and I hauled the lockbox of cell phones to a coffeehouse thirty miles out of the Southernmost tip of Miami. Seeing as how every piece of our system mainframe had been compromised, Kat thought it best for us to work off the grid. I agreed. If we were going to find this girl and take down Nefarious-who, even if he wasn’t responsible for Holly’s daughter’s kidnapping, had tried to kill us, threatened our families, caused thousands of dollars worth of property damage, and injured a young girl, we were going to need to make sure we stayed off of his radar. Given the fact that his radar seemed to be-well, everywhere, we needed to make sure we stayed in places we thought he couldn’t look.
That was why we were here, at Miller’s Coffee and Whiskey Sling; a backwater pit of a place that I would have loved even if it wasn’t actively keeping us safe. Sitting right outside the mouth of a swamp, Miller’s was the kind of one man shop that you could tell had been in his family for generations. You could also tell from the fact that there was still a payphone on the wall,the cash register made that dinging sound when it opened, and Miller wrote our order down on a notepad with a broken orange crayon, that the closest thing the man had ever seen to wifi when the letters swam around in his alphabet soup. It was perfect, even if the company wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting.
Kat told me we were meeting Holly, Charlie, and Nate here. We were going to regroup, and come up with a plan to get everything under control. So, imagine my surprise when walking in, I saw no Charlie. Instead, sitting in the place of the gruff Naval man was a kid who irritated me as much as anyone in the world.
“Certainly we’re not desperate enough to need Tag,” I said, looking from one of my teammates to the other. Tag worked with my brother-in-law Harry Lancer. He was the most insufferable part of the New Orleans branch of the CCU. He was a child prodigy who graduated college at sixteen and served as one of the most brilliant cyber experts on the planet.
God, I hate computers.
“Good to see you too, Jack,” Tag said, grabbing his coffee and taking a sip. I could tell from the way his nose turned up and his lips turned down that he didn’t much care for the taste of it. Tag was twenty one before I was taken. That would have made me close enough to twenty three now to split the difference. Still, he looked every bit like a snot nosed kid to me, smugly smiling as he sat the cup back down. “I heard about what happened to you-you know, with the kidnapping and torture and all. I have to say, you looked better than I expected. I kind of figured you’d be more-I don’t know, traumatized.”
“Well, this conversation isn’t over yet. So, I’m sure there’s still time for that,” I answered.
“And you didn’t lose a bit of that razor sharp wit,” Tag said. “Oh, Harry says hey. He told me to invite you back down toNew Orleans. Says he can crash with him. Miss Blanche said you could maybe even join a mission or two.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I answered. “Maybe when I’m not so busy.”
“Yeah. You guys do seem to have your work cut out for you,” Tag said. “I mean, I knew Jack Harrington brought trouble wherever he went, but pissing off Nefarious is a whole new level of clusterf-”
“We get it,” Kat said. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Because you need someone who actually knows what they’re doing to stop this guy?” Tag asked.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing. I was hacking government systems when you were still in diapers,: Holly said. “Which was what? Two years ago?”
“I do remember that you liked hacking into the government. That’s what got you caught and thrown in prison, right?” Tag countered.
“Enough with this e-themed pissing contest,” Nate said, shaking his head. “You’re here, tag, not because Holly isn’t extremely capable at what she does. I assure you that she’s the best there is at what she does. After all, there’s a reason I didn’t offer her hefty yearly salary to you.”
“Ouch,” the boy said. “It is a shame. Lord knows I could use a raise. It’s not like the government is throwing gold bars at me. Okay then. I’ll bite. If I’m such a second rate replacement, why call me here?”
“Because this-this one thing, is the one thing you might have an edge on me with.” Holly sighed and her eyes glazed over. “Joe and I taught each other a lot. We grew up together, for the most part.” She looked from me to Kat and back again. “You know about that. You know how that shapes you.”
“I do,” I answered, looking at Kat for a moment myself.
“So, he knows your tricks?” Tag asked.
“That’s an oversimplification,” she answered. “And it’s not to say I haven’t grown, because I have. But my skill set, the things I do and am capable of, is built on top of the things we learned together. I think we might profit from having a different set of eyes, a set of eyes that sees things in a way that isn’t shaped by Nefarious.”
