Page 16 of One Cry Too Loud
“A younger set of eyes?” Tag asked, smiling smugly again.
“Too young, if you ask me,” I muttered.
“Here’s the thing, Holls. I can call you Holls, right?” He asked. Then, not waiting for the answer, continued. “If you want something new, fresh, and different, you’ve come to the right place. If you want something that’s not built on Nefarious, though, I don’t think I can help you. But I also think that might be a good thing.”
“Explain that to me,” Nate said.
“Holls here might have grown up with Nefarious, assuming Nefarious actually is this Joe guy,” Tag said.
“He is,” Holly said. “He has to be.”
“Fine. Holls might have cut her teeth with him, but I cut my teethonhim,” Tag said. “Nefarious might know every trick you have, but I know everyone he has. I grew up watching him, emulating him, obsessing over him.” he shook his head. “I ate it. I slept it. I lived with it. Hell, I could have graduated college at twelve if I hadn’t spent so much time going over every aspect of that bastard’s art.”
“His art?” Kat asked.
“Itisan art!” Tag said. “It’s such an art. You have no idea, and this man is Mozart, but do you know who that makes me?” He left. “It makes me Beethoven; just a little younger, just a little more contemporary, and just a little better.”
“Do you really prefer Beethoven to Mozart?" Nate scoffed.
“Of course, but that’s not the point,” Tag said. “The point is that Holly and Joe might have built each other, but I was builtby what came after. I can do this, and I can do it better than anyone else on the planet.” He reached into his pocket. “And you couldn’t have gotten me at a better time. I’m assuming you guys haven’t been on the dark web lately.”
“Almost never,” I muttered.
“Well, you should,” Tag answered, pulling out his phone. “Because Nefarious just made his next move, and it’s a big one.”
CHAPTER 11
“You can’t have that here!” Kat yelled, nearly jumping out of her seat. It was the thought that was undoubtedly on all of our minds. That phone-any phone, was something Nefarious could trace. Good coffee and swampy ambience aside, not being traced was the reason we came all the way out here to this backwater coffeehouse/bar. In one fell swoop, it looked like this barely post pubescent cocky bastard had rendered all of our efforts mute.
“Damnit,” I said under my breath, also standing. I shot a withering look in Nate’s direction. “You didn’t check him?”
“Don’t look at me,” Nate said, staying seated, crossing his arms over his chest, and shaking his head. “He’s your ‘get’. I would have never called in the government if left to my own devices.”
“He’s not my get,” I said, huffing in Tag’s direction. “And since when did you listen to what anyone else has to say?”
“Since it seems like we’re in way over our heads,” Nate said. “Kat told me Tag was needed. She said his expertise could mean the difference between finding this girl and her remaining missing. So, I called Kat’s old fiancé and had this smugly irritating toddler on the next plane.”
“I’m not a toddler,” Tag said. No. He didn’t just say it. He chuckled as he said it. The sonofabitch was laughing at us after putting us all in danger. “And I’m not the government. I might be hired by the government, but I don’t think anyone in this particular conversation has any room to talk when it comes to that.”
“You’re an idiot. That’s what you are,” I said. “I assume you’ve had that phone the entire time. I assume that means Nefarious probably knows exactly where we are.”
“Of course I’ve had the phone the entire time. This is a backwater swamp. Do you think there’s an Apple store out here?” Tag balked in a voice so aggravating I very nearly punched him. “But that doesn’t mean that whoever is tracking you knows where we are.”
“I don’t understand,” Holly stated, narrowing her eyes. “Are you saying that, because Joe doesn’t know that you’re working with us that he won’t know to look for your phone? We don’t know the scope of Joe’s knowledge here. For all we know, he could be in the New Orleans CCU systems as well.”
“He’s not in our systems,” Tag said.
“How do you-”
“Because I’m not you,” he said, cutting Holly off. “I’m not saying you’re a relic. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t take long to become a relic when the systems you're working with change hourly the way ours does. I’m also saying that my firewalls are better than yours and my security and monitoring could run laps around that little ship that you think is so safe and sound.”
“Because an abandoned speakeasy is so much better?” Holly asked, referencing the New Orleans CCU base of operations.
“He wouldn’t have gotten into our systems,” Tag said.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Holly asked.
“I know it,” he said.
