Page 251 of His To Erase
“I—I don’t know. He left right after he came out of your room. Took two men and the Suburban.”
I press the blade a little deeper, just enough to draw a line of blood. “Try again.”
He stammers. “I—I swear. He doesn’t tell us where. He just—he goes dark when he moves.”
That part, I believe. He’s a paranoid fucker who’s really good at covering his tracks. But I’m sure his people always forget something. I scan the console, looking at the twelve screens.
“I want the access logs. Show me every device that pinged this network in the last twenty-four hours.”
“I—I can’t. I mean I’d have to?—”
I pull out the Glock and put it against his temple. “You’ve got three seconds.”
He fumbles a bit but manages to pull up a list—addresses, IPs, and device types. Most of it looks like junk. Just security panels, guard-issued tablets, and burner phones that rotateevery day. But one of them stands out. It’s a private line with an encrypted access tunnel—it has to be Frank’s personal server.
“Can it reach external lines?” I ask.
The tech nods. “Yeah. But it’s locked behind biometric?—”
“Password?”
“I don’t have?—”
I slam his head into the console. Not hard enough to kill him—just enough to make sure he knows I could. Then I scan the desk. There’s a thumb scanner, a backup keyboard, and what looks like the internal shell code running behind everything. Frank built it tight, but not tight enough.
I move to the side computer, find the back access point, and reroute through it using the admin override—the kind you only know exists if you’ve torn apart systems like this before. It takes a minute. Maybe less. Then I’m in.
“Travis. Open line. Emergency protocol black.”
A prompt appears, then the chat opens.
[Unknown]: This better be you.
[You]: It’s me.
[Unknown]: How bad?
[You]: I’m amazing. He has her.
[Unknown]: You sure?
[You]: Same camera rig you flagged last year.
[Unknown]: Jesus. Okay. What do you have?
[You]: Hard drive. Personal access feeds. Looks like he’s setting up a transfer.
[Unknown]: Fuck.
[You]: Plan?
[Unknown]: Meet point Bravo in two hours. Bring the drive. Don’t die.
I kill the feed.
The tech is groaning now, dragging himself toward the radio like it’ll save him.
“Wrong move,” I mutter, and put a bullet in the base of his skull.
