Page 29 of Jax
Then he was gone in another direction.
I glanced at my watch and frowned, torn between going back to check on Lark or getting straight to work. It was early, and she hadn’t had much sleep, so I was guessing that I had a couple more hours before she woke.
In my office, the servers were already awake, fans whispering, and LEDs blinking like a city at night. I sank into my chair and let the world narrow to code, cameras, and the yawning hole I needed to seal around her. Fingers flew. I cloned the compound feeds into a second cold store the feds could never subpoena because they’d never know it existed. I wrote a quick-and-dirty pattern matcher keyed to men who wore tactical shoes to public events—no civilians in Crossbend needed Vibram soles and straight-leg cargo pants. I added gait recognition tuned for men who trained to clear rooms, not stroll grandstands. The net tightened in my head as much as on the screens.
Then I pulled out an old phone from the bottom drawer—the one with five numbers on it and no contact names. Favors, not friends. Currency I’d hoarded like other men hoarded cash. I scrolled to the first number and hit Call.
“Yeah,” a voice answered that sounded like gravel and cigarette smoke.
“It’s Jax.”
A pause that said he was well aware of why I’d called. “Cashing in a favor?”
“Knocking one off the list of…how many?” We both knew it was pointless to try to count.
“What do you need?”
“Information.” I gave him some coordinates and a time window. “If a vehicle parks in any of those spots between now and dawn, I want the plate and the face of every person who steps out of it.”
“And if they don’t smile for the camera?”
“Make ’em.” I hung up and hit the next number.
By the time I killed the fifth call, a map blossomed across my middle screen—pins where new eyes just opened. I tied each to a signal path in the net and smiled without humor.Come on, motherfuckers. Blink for me.
Messages popped up on my phone.
Nitro
Strobed the tremor line and sent me the graph. Fury dropped a list of names that smelled wrong in the past month around Brake Point. Piston texted a photo of the 4Runner—sleek, anonymous, and ours.
Another ping.
Edge
North alley behind the tower has a blind. Lens two. Fix it.
Me
On it.
I fired my response back, rolling my chair to the secondary console, swapping the dead eye with a spare already married to the system. The feed came up sharp—dumpsters, chain-link, and a black cat that looked like an omen of bad luck.
Minutes bled into hours. I worked, breathed, and thought about the woman sleeping in my bed and the way she lived under everything I did. The instinct to go back and sit in a chair by thedoor until she woke was a weight I carried between clicks. But if I wanted her in my bed permanently, I had to keep her alive first.
She was bound to be up soon, though. And if I wanted to keep her out of this shit as long as possible, I needed something to keep her occupied while I worked.
An idea formed, and I picked up my normal cell and called Kane’s wife, Savannah.
“Hey, Jax. How’s my favorite hacker?”
One side of my mouth hitched up. She loved calling me that because she knew I hated that word unless I was using it to needle someone. It reduced years of genius-level skill to a cheap-ass label associated with basement criminals.
“Cute. But we both know I’m the guy they call when a hacker fucks up.”
Savannah laughed, making me smile, because it reminded me of making Alanna giggle. The prez’s old lady was like another sister to me.
“What do you need?” she asked.
