Page 20 of Twisted Revelations

“If GI Joe and The Tech King stick around and don’t get us all killed, I think we will be fine.”

I stood, dragging Beverly up with me. “What I won’t do is sit by with my tail tucked between my legs.”

Bev yanked me back when I started to walk toward the men who hovered over the laptop.

“Laura, they hunt bad guys for a living, I think,” Beverly declared with uncertainty. “Let them work. If they need us they will let us know,” she continued as her pleading gaze continued to speak after her words had stopped.

“Bev, how long have you known me? The only reason I wasn’t out there helping Megan was because she was smart enough not to tell me where she was going. The shit killed me. I couldn’t even help my own damn friend.”

I threw my hand around Beverly’s waist and dragged her along with me, causing her shoes to scrape against the shiny floor. She could say what she wanted. I’d noticed the eye-heat she shared with the tech geek. She was attracted and likely fighting every instinct to avoid giving in to temptation while he did nothing to hide his attraction.

“What are you guys talking about? What are we about to do next?”

Dax glared upside my head, straightening his stance. “We are going to chill for a day or two until we have a solid plan. Think you can stay calm that long?” The sarcasm dripped from his voice. His smirk and tone hadn’t been missed. Surprisingly, instead of my nose turning up at him, my lips decided to bend into a smile. Why the hell was I smiling? Deciding I needed to ignore Dax, I concentrated on D.

“So, what have you found out so far? Do we have any more actionable intel?”

The men cast each other a quick glance before they turned their gazes on me. After a moment of us staring each other down, they decided it was better to let me in on what they were saying or risk me running off at the mouth. It was day one, and they had already latched on to my personality.

Ten minutes after my question, my damn mind was in shambles listening to D talk in his tech language to Dax who apparently understood every word. He spoke about digital mapping and using encryption manipulation data to corrupt firewalls like I had a damn clue as to what any of it was. Bev had long ago left the conversation, not caring about deciphering any of it.

They’d chosen to talk in their cyber code to throw me off, but I had caught enough to get the gist of what they were saying. I’d also latched on to the fact that they were planning to use digital technology to find out how our target moved if they could find an accurate snapshot of his face. Also, the group chasing us was tied to Santino. In my opinion, this wasn’t necessarily good. It meant we had to take out Santino before we zeroed in on the specific men coming for us.

Something I’d forgotten hit me, causing me to tap D on the shoulder in the middle of a sentence about grayware and a series of numbers I think was code for certain words. I placed the object I’d pulled from my jean’s pocket on the table next to the keyboard, nudging Dax in the side as I squeezed between the two men. I sensed Dax’s gaze boring into me until it fell on the brown wallet.

“I took it off one of the stiffs we killed at the warehouse. That should get you more clues, right?”

D’s smile came first. Dax stared between the wallet and me, likely sorry he hadn’t come up with the idea.

I glared up at him. “You took a body. I took a wallet. Brains versus brawn, Dax,” I teased, enjoying another chance to pluck at his nerve strings.

He shook his head before a smile crept across his lips, his head tilting sideways. “You’ve had that the whole time and waited until after we’d tortured, killed, and disposed of a body before giving it up?”

My shoulders lifted before I turned away from Dax’s eyes that were squinted in curiosity.

“This is huge. Smart!” D exclaimed. “I could kiss you for this,” he expressed before cracking the wallet open and immediately pulling out the contents. He was giddy like a kid at Christmas, a smile wide with excitement animated his every move.

“Please, keep your lips to yourself if you want to keep them,” I warned in response to his comment. He smiled at my retort rather than take offense, letting me know we would get along fine.

D lifted a hand. “I know. I know. I’m the wrong gender. But, this is great and.…” His words stopped when he extracted a keycard from The Greenbrier Hotel, the same hotel we’d tortured a man to find it was owned by Santino Dominquez.

A quick glance at Beverly showed her playing a game on her phone. She couldn’t care less about chasing down bad guys. She was a girly girl who didn’t mind a man fighting for her. She was the kind of woman who allowed a man to carry her heavy shopping bags or open a pickle jar. I didn’t hold it against her because the world needed women like her to tone down the testosterone buildup that would suffocate and kill us all if it weren’t controlled.

I, on the other hand, had a chip the size of Texas on each of my shoulders and couldn’t care less about stroking a man’s ego. I had my own ego.

D placed the credit cards down but kept one pinched between his fingers. When he started peeling off the skin of the card, I noticed it wasn’t a credit card at all. It was a digital storage device.

As I prepared to ask how to read a device like that, he came out with a small black box, the size of a deck of cards, that he attached to the computer. He stuck the card into the reader, but all that popped up were numbers and letters, scrambled and roving across the screen like tiny fast moving insects.

“This is amazing.” He’d converted the large fancy desk into a mini computer lab, two laptops attached to three larger monitors along with equipment I couldn’t name.

“I’m glad you think it’s amazing. It’s a jumble of letters and numbers,” I pointed out, not understanding the amazing part of it. Dax’s wide smile suggested he knew what we were looking at?

“It’s going to take time, but I can crack this. Hopefully, its DG6 secrets we can use against them.”

Okay, so these men were more than testosterone-driven killers and egos. They were intelligent, leading me to believe we might make our next birthdays.

“Hey, guys,” I called to them in a low and humbled tone, awaiting their attention. “Thank you for stepping up and helping us. Not everyone is willing or crazy enough to help strangers like this.” It wasn’t as gracious a thank you as I’d aimed to give, but I was trying.

“You’re welcome,” D smiled up at me. Dax nodded once in my direction and turned away, but I sensed him side-eyeing me.

---