Page 88 of Rooster

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he knows my IP address. I'm sure it was something coordinated with New Mexico before we ever got to Vegas so we could avoid having to jump through digital hoops when help was needed in a timely manner.

"Fuck, you two look a lot alike," Wren says. "No surprise your guy was fooled."

I look up, hating the guilt in Heathen's eyes as if he still believes that he should've known it was Henry in the parking garage instead of me. I can't fault him for the mix-up. All of this rests on Henry's shoulders.

"Looks like he cloned your phone to make it look like the messages came from you," Wren continues. "Hell, that's nice."

"What?"

"He inserted a program into the phone system somehow. The texts literally came from your phone. Phone records and everything indicate you made the texts."

Another wave of guilt rushes through me, knowing this is the exact thing that set everything into motion yesterday with Morgan.

"How can you tell?"

"Did you text your teammate?"

"No," I say.

"That's how I can tell."

Trust.

That's what was missing from the confrontation with Morgan yesterday, and fuck if that isn't a huge damn betrayal.

I didn't trust her. I let everything play out. I let her leave, knowing I didn't trust her, despite knowing about Henry's ability to get people to turn on others with fabricated evidence.

"He's embedded some shit in your system that would make it impossible to find him," Wren continues. "I'll worry about clearing it out later once we find her. It's gonna take some doing. This guy is good."

"Too good," I mutter.

Wren scoffs, and if I didn't know his skill level, I'd be offended by his ego. But the man on the other line is literally the top hacker in the country. Hell, if you get technical with his different aliases, he could possibly be the top five hackers in the country.

"Anything?" I ask after a long moment of silence.

"Nothing yet," he says. "The only thing I worry about is the chance that he took her and then didn't use any form of computerization or anything digital to disappear."

"The non-trail," I say, hearing the defeat already tinging my tone. "I wouldn't put it past him."

"I'll find something," Wren quickly interjects. "It's just not going to happen as fast as I hoped it would."

"I appreciate all the help we can get."

"Leave it with me," Wren says easily. "We'll get your girl back."

The line goes dead, and I try my best not to let hopelessness settle inside of me. Now, it's a battle of who the better hacker is. Having been defeated repeatedly by Henry, I can only hope that Wren has a few aces up his sleeve.

Chapter 33

Morgan

I cried all damn night, and it seems the tears aren't over with as Robert lifts our clasped hands and presses a kiss to the center of my palm.

The action is so sweet, a way for us to connect while he drives us to our destination.

As angry at him as I want to be, I already know I'm going to forgive him.

I know how things look for him and his teammates. As much as I want him to have believed me from the start, it's hard to ignore concrete evidence when it's right in your face. We haven't talked about it, but I know he had to have done so much research in an effort to prove that I wasn't involved with Henry in some plot to make him fall in love with me only to break his heart.

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