Page 87 of Fight or Flight
I watch as Jax confidently walks across the hall and pushes the door to Ben’s room open.
“And that’s how it’s done.” I switch to the feed for the body cam he’s wearing since there are no security cams in the private rooms.
“It must be nice to be the one hiding in a server room while I take all the risk,” he says.
“I’d switch places with you, but it’s not my fault I gotta be the one behind the scenes keeping your ass safe.”
He snort-laughs. “Only because you won’t let me into your system so I can play Oracle.”
“Does a master artist let his assistant use his finished canvases to make their own attempts at art?” I ask innocently. “Does a Michelin-star chef let a busboy plate his masterpiece before serving it to his adoring public? Does a?—”
“Are you about done singing your own praises so you can maybe focus on the job at hand?” he asks dryly.
“Never done singing my praises,” I tell him. “Who’s gonna toot my horn if I don’t?”
“So many jokes.”
“So, if I were the key to a secret safe hidden in a secret room, where would I be hiding?” I ask as I check the feed from the party again.
Shane’s dancing with a different girl now. I don’t like the way my stomach sours when she grabs his ass and gives the full globes a squeeze.
“Probably not anywhere as obvious as his desk, so that’s probably exactly where it is,” Jax says as he slowly circles the room, letting me see everything.
Just like the rest of the house, it looks like something out of a medieval castle with lots of stone accents, a massive fireplace, and a gaudy-as-hell tapestry on one wall. The modern furniture is a contrast, including a massive bed, a desk, some shelves, and a full entertainment corner complete with a projector screen and plush couches.
“Doesn’t look like there are any surprises,” he says. “Just a lot of questionable taste in decor.”
“Huzzah. Looks like this’ll be a quick in and out.” I snicker. “That’s what he said.”
Jax lets out a deep sigh that the mic in his earpiece perfectly captures and transmits to mine like he’s standing beside me. “You’re making it really hard to remember why making myself an only child is a bad thing.”
“Because if you did that, then who would be around to keep you humble and save your ass when you inevitably screw up?”
He snort-laughs as he pauses in front of the desk and pulls a flash drive out of his pocket. “When have I ever screwed up and needed you to save my ass?”
“What about that time you set off the panic alarm when you were looking through the head steward’s office in Myles’s dorm to figure out how those assholes got ahold of his room key?” I ask as he slips the drive into the slot on the side of the computer tower.
“You mean the time you tripped the panic alarm on purpose because you thought it would be funny to make me disarm it?”
“I didn’t justthinkit was funny,” I point out as the drive connects to the computer’s internal system, giving me remote access to it. “Itwasfunny. And I only did that because you were giving me lip and needed to be taught a lesson.” Typing in a quick command, I run a check of the system to make sure there are no trackers or security measures I need to worry about. Unsurprisingly, it comes back clear, and I run the program I built to scrape his files to see if there’s anything useful in them. “I’m in,” I tell Jax.
“Roger that.” He pulls open the top drawer of the desk. “Funny how your lessons always seem to involve putting me in mortal danger.”
“Gotta keep those reflexes sharp,” I tell him as he roots around in the drawer, looking between him and the programs I’m running to track their progress. “And you weren’t in mortal danger. It was the Boondocks. The alarm wasn’t even loud enough to penetrate the door.”
“If you say penetrate…” Jax warns and closes the drawer.
“Penetrate.” I drag the word out. “But back to your whining. The alarm wasn’t even loud enough to give your position away. If anything, you should be thanking me for giving you a real-world situation to practice what it would be like to actually have to deal with potentially being put in mortal danger, as you so dramatically called it.”
“You know.” Jax pulls the next drawer open. “If you run around in a circle fast enough, you could theoretically fuck yourself. You should try that and see how it goes.”
“So mouthy,” I say as he rifles through the contents. “And just an FYI, my patience is like a gift card right now. I have no idea how much is on it, but we can give it a try if you want to keep testing me.”
He snort-laughs. “You? Impatient? Impossible.”
“I know, right? I’m a bastion of calm and serenity.”
“You’re a bastion of something all right.” He closes the drawer and moves on to the next one.
