Page 83 of Tango
It’s ridiculous that, even given what we’re facing and the fact that my dead best friend is actually an enemy who is very much alive, Tucker still makes my heart race. “Maybe.”
He chuckles. “It won’t last long, but it should be enough to send an SOS.”
“You need network access, though.”
“Don’t worry so much,” he says. “I’ve got us covered.” A blue screen overtakes the monitor. Tucker types in an IP address then follows it with a few rows of code and a message.
Caine alive. A+T being held at Web Safe. BC.
He taps a few more keystrokes; then the screen fizzles and dies. Tucker lets out a breath. “Now we pray it went through before the laptop fried the life support.”
Lord, please let it have gone through.
“You signed it BC.”
“Bring cavalry,” he replies then shoves the device back into his pocket and shelves the laptop again.
“What now?”
“Now we look for something that can be a weapon.”
“We can’t fight our way out of here.”
“Sure we can.”
“No! We can’t!” I yell, panic strangling me. I got him into this mess. I walked him right into the hornet’s nest so they could tear him apart.
Me.
I got Logan killed.
And now I’m going to get Tucker killed.
If his brothers come—I can’t even think about that.
“How can you think that’s possible?” I open my eyes, barely able to see, thanks to the tears.
“Because just like you, I refuse to bow to the darkness when there’s so much light. We’re alive, Alice. Which means there’s still a chance we can get out of this.”
“We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and have no backup.”
“Which makes things a bit more problematic, but not impossible.” His hands go to my shoulders then slide up my neck and cup the sides of my face. “You need to think through how you can make it look like you’re doing what they’re asking without actually releasing any information.”
“I can’t do that. Ramiro is a hacker too, Tucker. He’ll know.”
“Remember what we did with Find Me?” he asks. “We hid it behind a wall. Do the same thing. Hide the important stuff behind a wall. They’re not going to risk spending the time it would take to sort through what they find. They’re going to grab and go.”
“And then what? They’ll discover what I did.”
“We only need to buy time for the cavalry to come,” he says.
“Why? So they can die too?”
Tucker grins. “You clearly underestimate my brothers.”
“There are only four of them. Five if they bring Nova?—”
“Exactly. Five of them.”
