Page 85 of Awry
“Right.”Doc probably isn’t going to be a fan of Coda going around crowing about her being an exceedingly rare type of shifter.But she wouldn’t have identified as mixed clan or joined up with Outcast MC if she were average.If any shifter could ever be considered only average.I wonder if Coda could call up Rath’s shifter designation as easily as —
I shut that thought down fast.Not certain where it came from, to be honest.I was pissed … am pissed at Presh’s pushy brother.I don’t care what creature resides only skin-deep within him.
I’ll just keep reminding myself of that.
“Doc Z has this device … a medical scanner …” I say, getting my beleaguered brain back on track.“And if someone on the cleanup crew used that type of thing on the berserker corpse —”
“You don’t have to spell it out, Zaya,” Coda grouses.“I’m already digging.I relish going up against AD again.”Referring to the Outcast’s personal hacker, Rought.
“I thought there were three ADs now?”I tease.
Coda grunts, then just says, “I’m still putting together my reports, sadly currently without dick pics so far.What dudes grow up with a camera phone practically surgically attached to their hands and don’t take any pictures of their cocks?You might need to reassess your harem building.”
“I’m not —”
The line goes dead.Not nefariously, but just Coda being done with the in-person conversation.I know because my screen — which remained black through that conversation — now flashes with a series of incoming messages.Five of which are from Coda.
Thankfully, the ice cream maker beeps.Because I need to taste-test the recipe and decide if it needs five or ten minutes more to churn, letting me ignore my new reality a moment longer.
Eight
ROUGHT
Three of mycode-breaking algos scroll across the monitor on my left.I’m five layers into the stupid levels of protection Reck has on his personal device — which is way, way more than just a phone.And yeah, I lifted it out of his suit jacket pocket before he shoved his way past me into the interrogation room.A room that he had no invitation to enter, and within which he has no authorization and no jurisdiction.
Reck — or rather, Sergeant Carlos Guerra of the Authority — shouldn’t even be on club property while wielding his badge, let alone pummeling answers out of the unaffiliated bikers Grinder escorted in before racing off hours ago.Not that the bikers were willing participants during that escorting.And no shifters are truly unaffiliated.That status just means they haven’t proven their worth to the club they’re pledging, or they don’t have a blood tie to the current leadership.
It’s Reck’s blood ties that allow him to blur lines.Like continually, in all aspects of his life.And it’s going to bite him in the ass.Real, real soon.
My workstation stands at the center of a concrete bunker under an outbuilding on the edge of the main pack property.Wires and cables thread down from the ceiling, with other connections running under the slightly raised dais the station sits on.The bunker is directly connected to the main house by a tunnel, and to the upper floors by an elevator.Both are accessed through a door to my far right.
I hate all of it.
We’re completely underground here, hidden from casual view.And I’ve got access to the three satellite dishes on the roof of the main house, and two more on the aboveground garage that look perfectly legit.The garage is used mostly as covered parking with access to the elevator.There’s also an equipment room, a weapons room, and a medical suite one floor above.But I fucking loathe spending any more time here than absolutely necessary, and I’ve been trapped in this space since I left Zaya still sleeping in the motel.
After cracking the third level of encryption on Reck’s device with minimal effort, I easily identified — and disabled — the monitoring our older brother was running on Rath’s personal device.I also easily uncovered and disabled the bugs Reck had embedded in various places around the main clubhouse and the main pack estate.
Rath is going to be pissed — at both of us.
The physical tech, likely Authority issued, hasn’t been detected in any of my biweekly sweeps — but there’s no way that Reck has Authority-issued requisitions for those taps.And illegal taps against a club like the Outcast are practically a declaration of war.The Authority definitely doesn’t want to come at us all messy like that.We make better allies, even if the relationship is seriously strained.Plus, even if Reck somehow swung the okay to place taps with his superiors, there’s no way he should be running any of it from his personal device.
Even more interestingly, though, after cracking that third layer of encryption, I bumped up against a fourth.Having no idea what Reck would want hidden that badly, I had to keep digging, obviously.
What could be more important to conceal than illegal wiretaps on his own family?
It has to be something tiny to be so well hidden.And it’s years old, possibly a decade.Literally before my time as the pack’s primary hacker.Or should I say primary tech.The age of the deeper layers of encryption meant that I needed to hardwire the device so that if my algos don’t make a dent in those layers quickly, Reck is going to wander out of the interrogation he’s unlawfully commandeered and find me fucking with his shit.
While I keep plugging in scripts to counter Reck’s ancient encryption, I’ve got multiple facial recognition programs running over a dozen vid feeds on the monitor to my right.I’m pretty certain I’ve scraped it for all it’s worth, achieving frustratingly little for all the hours I’ve put in.
I’ve finally got eyes on Chains, though— including the little meet-up he had with one of the three assholes Grinder picked up nosing around the motel after he and Zaya had left— and who are currently getting beaten down by Reck in interrogation.
The irony being?Reck doesn’t need to beat the truth out of his suspects.Shifters with heightened senses are pretty hard to lie to outright, but actual truth seeking — through utter terror, to be specific — is one of the aspects of Reck’s beast that carries over into his human form.
Finding and containing Chains might appear to be my current main focus — with my info-gathering efforts liberally spread across three of my five active screens.But that focus has been forced upon me by Rath and my undying commitment to the club.
Because as for me?All my focus is on trying to retrace the last thirteen years of Zaya’s life.Her life without me.And I’ve not found nearly enough to remotely satisfy the seething but empty vortex that occupies the core of my very being.
I’m always happy running algos and scripts — fixing anything and everything is my thing — but I don’t want to be confined to this room, for more than all the regular reasons I hate being here.
