Page 37 of Into the Fire: After
Let me die
Fifteen
Brooks
Afreezingcoldraindroplanded on my cheek, and I flinched. I mentally cursed at myself as I pressed my back as flush against the outer wall of the cabin as I could, hopefully out of sight through the sliding glass door.
If I’d blown my cover in the first minute of the operation, Brea would actually slaughter me.
I stood statue-still under the eave for another minute, as much to avoid the downpour as to avoid detection. When Vikki the Dicki didn’t come charging out to bust me, I eased my head around to peek through the window. She sat at the kitchen table, her back to me(bless!). She clicked and dragged and typed like a fiend, downloading as many files as she could, then uploading them to assistant district attorney Gail Thorne’s server so her tech genius could decrypt them one by one.
Supposedly, anyway.
Our dear detective hadn’t gotten any less vague on the plans to extract our pack over the last several days of the down- and uploading frenzy.
No matter. Brea and I were laying our own plan.
Step one: Determine captives’ location.
Check. The Phoenix Lab building in Remington City. Officially, it was where they conducted their research and above-board clinical trials. In all likelihood, Taryn-in-utero had already visited that building when her mother participated in the original drug trials. We’d been fairly sure this was the place, then Brea had seen the location marked on Vikki’s maps. Jackpot.
Step two: Obtain getaway ride.
Check. Colin Green, a guy I’d gone to undergrad with a decade ago. Luckily, these dimples were hella memorable. Even more luckily, he worked as a bank courier now, used to driving a large vehicle with limited clearance. And, luckiest of all, those limited clearances included the very building in question.
Step three: Pick a date.
Check. Three days from now. That was the earliest Colin could swap shifts for without arousing suspicion. Brea and I weren’t willing to wait any longer.
Step four: Make contact to the inside.
In progress.
My view into the house was clear, thanks to the doom-and-gloom weather. Brea passed through the kitchen, setting a coffee mug in the sink and saying muffled words to Vikki on her way to the bathroom.
The bathroom that I had so rudely emptied of toilet paper over the last twelve hours, and even more rudely had never replaced. And, shoot, all the extra rolls were in the utility closet upstairs and down the hall.
What a careless asshole I was.
I couldn’t hear through the door and over the rain, but Vikki looked from her monitor toward the bathroom where Brea was likely calling out for help of the toilet tissue variety. Vikki’s shoulders tensed as she called out something in response. Finally, though, she stood and fast-walked toward the stairs. I waited until I was sure the coast was as clear as it would get before sliding the door open just enough so I could slide right in.
And—bingo!—the Mystery Phone sat unattended by her station. Brea had managed to creep on Vikki enough to get her passcode. So, with one eye trained on the stairwell, I input the code—298081—and navigated to the text thread.
V
Unsubscribe
V
Unsubscribe
V
Unsubscribe
Every hour, on the hour. And all in different text threads, like they were coming through to different numbers. That made sense, I supposed. If Vikki managed to clone her number to hide the fact that the guy on the inside—thisV, ironically enough—was texting one number over and over. And, well, who wouldn’t relate to trying to unsubscribe from text spam?
I screenshotted one of the threads with V’s number at the top and texted it to myself, deleted the evidence, and placed the phone back on the table right as footsteps sounded on the stairs behind me. I slipped out the door just as a distant roll of thunder heralded my victory.
