Page 44 of Crave Me

She was just about to insert the stick into the system when a whirring beeping sounded, the monitor above the center console flashing with a blue swirling circle.

Caspian pushed away from us and ran to it. “That’s Bastian’s pendant,” he breathed, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “It’s just become active.”

“What?” Skylar cried. “How the hell?”

Damien came running over. “They must have escaped.”

“Or it’s a trap,” Asher cautioned.

“It could just be the necklace being moved after Elijah just discovered what it does or something,” Luke said.

“Why move it and not just destroy it then?” Damien said.

“To mislead you, redirect your focus and resources and, worst case, to actually bait you into an ambush of some sort,” Asher explained.

“No,” Skylar said. “It’s got to be them.”

Her and Caspian exchanged a pained look, then I saw him struggle to focus as he analyzed the blinking blue dot traveling across the map on the screen. “It’s moving fast. Definitely not on foot. The ground it’s covering, we’re looking at a speed of—”

“Seventy-three miles per hour,” I said.

He shot a look at me over his shoulder. “Exactly.”

“Don’t look so surprised, math is one of my fortes.”

Asher brushed past Damien who was more than happy about the brief physical contact, unfortunate lust filling his eyes, as he watched him walk to the second keyboard and fired up another monitor. A security message blocked him before he could get started on whatever he was intending to do.

“Caspian, grant me access.”

“King,” Luke warned.

Asher rolled his eyes at our concern. “I can blow right on past your security protocols, but it will slow things down. Your call. Full access if you want me to confirm if it is Sebastian and Caleb rather than some elaborate ruse of Elijah’s.”

I watched worriedly as Caspian made his decision.

And then he did what I’d hoped against.

He pulled from his keyboard and leaned over Asher, typing rapidly and giving him access. “Full access.”

Asher nodded, his fingers flying across the keyboard, command screens and hell knew what else being brought up rapid-fire. Keeping his focus, he told Caspian, “You might want to reach out to King-Tech. To do this fast enough, I have to forgo covering my tracks as well as I normally would.”

“Covering your tracks with what?” Caspian asked, his eyes on his screen again.

“One second,” he said.

Moments later, he had several traffic cam images opening up on the screen.

Then he was inside a couple of databases and pulling up yet more imagery, some even actual video footage.

“You’re backtracking the path of the vehicle?” I realized aloud.

“Several potential paths,” he answered, while still maintaining his focus. “Here we go,” he said in a few moments. Before we knew it, he was hacking into the police force itself, departments in and around the area he’d identified, gaining access to cop car cameras, and hell knew what else.

“There’s a new housing development there,” he said, pointing to Caspian’s screen. “Get me the name of it.”

We saw some of Caspian’s skills in action as he pulled up some real estate information for that area, and relayed the name to Asher.

And then he was delving into the records surrounding said development, construction information, permits, the whole nine. “There it is,” he said, as he brought up a home security company. “Each home was outfitted with top-of-the-line security by this company, part of a deal made during construction.”

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