Page 62 of Victorious: Part 2
“No, Rip. That’s verynotgood.” Spinning on my heel, I head back toward the clubhouse, my pulse hammering in my chest. “Someone with serious tech skills was here. They knew exactlywhich cameras to disable and how to loop the footage to cover their tracks.”
By the time we reach my tech den, I’m in full paranoia mode. I start running diagnostics on every system, checking for signs of infiltration, digital footprints, and any trace of how they pulled this off.
“So, what’s the game plan, dude?” Rip asks, hovering nervously behind my chair.
“First, I’m upgrading every piece of security equipment we have. Motion sensors, thermal imaging, backup systems for the backup systems. Then…” I pause as my prison database search finally loads, and what I see makes my blood run cold.
“Holy shit.”
“What now?” Rip drones like he can’t possibly handle anything else.
I lean forward, studying the records that just populated on my screen. “Rip, remember when I was doing that system upgrade for the state corrections department last month?”
“Yeah, you were like, totally stoked about getting paid by the government for once.”
“I found something. Two corrections officers, Luke and Logan Martinez. Twin brothers. They filed report after report about suspicious activities, corruption, and patterns that didn’t add up. Look at the dates…” I point to the screen. “Every single report was buried. Ignored. And then they were forced to resign.”
Rip squints at the monitor. “That sounds sketchy as hell, man.”
“More than sketchy. According to their personnel files, they have military backgrounds. Specialized training in surveillance and security protocols. And look at this.” I pull up their resignation letters. “They didn’t just quit. They were pressured out after they got too close to something.”
I type as fast as I can, cross-referencing their reports with the patterns I’ve been tracking. Payment schedules that align with prison staff rotations. Communication logs that show coordination between facilities. Guard schedules that create convenient blind spots.
“Dude, your brain is like, totally firing on all cylinders right now,” Rip observes, but he’s also not wrong.
“The Martinez brothers saw it. They saw the same patterns I’m seeing now, but from the inside. Theyknowhow this system works, how it’s been compromised.” I turn to face him. “We need to find them.Now.”
“Okay, but like, how do we find two dudes who probably don’t want to be found and our goat at the same time?”
Ignoring him, I search for property records, credit reports, anything that might give us a lead. “They’re corrections officers with military training who got burned by the system. They’re not going to be hiding in plain sight, but they’re also not going to disappear completely. They’ll be somewhere they feel safe, somewhere they can lay low but still keep an eye on things.”
“Yeah, yeah, and Doughnut?” Rip asks.
Spinning in my chair, I huff and look at him. “We will find the damn goat, but honestly, Rip, the club is about to go to war. You have to prepare yourself for the fact we’re going to lose people, and probably goats in this fucking fight,” I snap, instantly regretting my temper when I see his face fall.
He steadies his shoulders, giving me a simple nod. “Got it.”
Fuck.
I roll my shoulders. “It’s a tense time, I know Doughnut means a lot to you, brother. I swear, we will try to find him. But right now, we have to focus on the Cartel, the breach, and the shitstorm raining down on us from every angle.”
Rip grips my shoulder. “I’m with you, bro. Let’s check these Martinez dudes out. Get all the hype we can on them, and we cantake it to Alpha once we have the 411. Put me in coach… I wanna help.”
I weakly smile and roll out my spare chair. He takes a seat, and I tell him what he can search for on my spare computer.
It takes us forty-three minutes of digging through databases, but between the two of us, we finally find them. Well, let’s be honest, it was all me, but I let Rip think he helped.
The Martinez twins are in a small apartment complex about twenty miles out, registered under an LLC that traces back to their mother’s maiden name.
Smart, but not smart enough to hide from someone with my skills.
I print out the address and also send it to my smart watch, then turn to Rip. “Rip, go get Alpha, fill him in, and tell him we need to take a ride.”
“What about Doughnut?”
I look at him seriously this time. “Whoever took Doughnut wanted us to know they were here. They wanted us paranoid and distracted. But they made one mistake… they gave us the motivation to dig deeper. And now we’re about to find some people who might have the answers we need.”
Rip takes off to find Alpha, and I grab my supplies, heading out of my Den to find Bea. She’s sitting at a table having lunch with Rhyan and Ellie as I approach. She glances up at me with her trademark gorgeous smile, and I lean down behind her and press a gentle kiss to her cheek.
