Chapter 14 #2
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 just think it was funny,” I point out as the drive connects to the computer’s internal system, giving me remote access to it.
“It was funny. 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.
“Anything?” I ask as he flips through it.
“Negative.” He pushes the drawer closed and tugs open the bottom one. “Did you start copying his files?”
I glance at the screen to check the programs again. “I did, and the download is about eighty percent done.”
The bottom drawer yields nothing, so he tries to open the long, skinny one on the underside of the desk. It doesn’t budge.
He kneels to take a better look at it. “Interesting,” he mutters.
“What?”
He taps on the lock with a gloved hand and leans closer so I can see it through his body cam. “This.”
“What in the Kentucky Fried fuck?” There’s something clear and viscous in the lock. “Is that glue?”
“It looks like it.” He bends down, presumably to take a closer look, and I get a view of the wall under Ben’s desk.
“Why would someone glue the lock?”
“Probably so people think there’s something wrong with the mechanism.” He pulls his lockpicking kit out of a hidden pocket sewn into his sweater and takes out the ones he needs. “And to make it look like there’s nothing important in it if someone is snooping around.”
“Did Ben look up the dumbest ways to try and trick people when hiding important information and just do all of them?” I ask as Jax gently taps the fine point of his pick around the glued lock.
“Like, what did he think he was accomplishing here? This is basically the same thing as pointing a giant neon sign at it that says ‘Look in here for secret stuff.’”
“Literally couldn’t be more obvious if he tried,” Jax agrees and carefully fits one of his lock picks into the space where the edges of the lock and drawer meet.
I watch as he gently uses the pick to twist and wiggle the lock until it pops free from the cabinet like a button being released.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” I say quietly as he gingerly pulls the lock free. Underneath it is another lock, but this one is built into the drawer instead of being a separate unit like the one he just removed.
Jax slips his picks into the lock just as a notification flashes on my screen. “The copy program is done,” I tell him and type out the commands to disengage the drive from the system and erase any traces that it was there.
“And so am I,” he says, giving his picks a little twist.
There’s a loud click and the scrape of metal on metal. Then Jax pulls the drawer open.
“These morons have zero imagination,” I say as he moves the piles of office supplies and random objects aside. “Let me guess, it has a false bottom, and not even a hidden one?”
“Ding ding ding.” Jax uses the little half-moon-shaped opening tucked up against the front of the drawer to pop the false bottom.
Under it is the key we’re looking for.
“So uninspired,” I comment as Jax pulls the key out of the drawer. “But at least it makes our lives easier.”
“Is the drive done?” he asks.
“Yup.”
He tugs the flash drive out of the computer tower and takes the key over to the far wall where the hidden door should be. I watch as he feels around, his gloved hands skimming over the stones until one of them moves under his palm. Carefully, he pulls the stone out of the wall to reveal the keypad.
“Got the code?” he asks, putting the stone on the floor.
“Yup.” I pull it up on my screen. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
I rattle off the thirty-digit code, and Jax types it into the keypad.
The light on the pad goes from red to green, and another door-shaped section of the wall pops open.
“Whoever designed this place really went hard with the secret passages and hidden doors. Not gonna lie, I’m jealous we don’t have anything like this in our house.
Imagine how much fun we could have if we could literally move through the walls to fuck with people?
” I muse as Jax pulls the section of wall away to reveal a heavy metal door.
“It would make life more interesting, that’s for sure.”
“Do you think the architect was a voyeur, or paranoid?”
“Probably both.” Jax taps on the door. “Are you going to open it, or am I cracking it?”
“I should make you crack it,” I tell him, already typing away. “Since you’re already doing all the heavy lifting and all.” I tap the final key to input my modifications to the code that controls the door. “But since I’m such an amazing and thoughtful brother, I did it for ya.”
“My hero,” he drawls as the lock disengages, and the keypad goes offline.
A box appears on my screen telling me that my program worked and the safe room is under my control. “Cameras inside have been neutralized,”
He pushes the door open and steps inside.
The space isn’t much of a room and is more of a closet, but right in the middle, like we’re in some sort of Hollywood movie, is a huge safe sitting on a metal table.
Using the key he got from Ben’s desk, Jax unlocks the safe. Inside is a hard drive, and nothing else.
“Do you think each leader has a secret safe room?” I ask my brother as he swaps out the hard drive for the decoy he brought with him.
“Knowing them, they probably do.” Jax locks the safe up. “Anything going on that we need to know about?”
I check the hallway feeds. “Nope, it’s deader than a doornail out there.”
“If you ask why that’s a thing since doornails aren’t sentient and can’t die…”
“I’ll stop asking when you give me an answer.”
“You can’t look it up yourself?” he asks as he closes up the safe room and goes back over to the desk.
“I could, but it’s more fun to annoy you into doing it for me.”
“Why didn’t I eat you in the womb?”
“Because you knew you’d be lost without me even then?”
“Yeah, that’s definitely it.” He puts the key back in the drawer, then replaces the false bottom and puts everything back where he found it. When the drawer is locked again, he slips the lock casing back into place. “Done.”
“Then get fuck out of there.”
“Roger that.” He strides over to the door. “Is it clear?”
I flick my gaze to the screens where all of the nearby video feeds are. “All good,” I tell him.
I watch the video feeds as Jax slips out of Ben’s room so he can retrace his steps. I reset the cameras and the key log sensors once he’s cleared them and track his movements until he’s back in the corridor.
Then I pack up my equipment and do the same.
“Think anyone’s noticed you’ve been gone for a while?” Jax asks when we’ve met up at the trapdoor where we first parted ways.
“Probably, but I’ll deal with that if it’s an issue.”
“How’s Shane doing?” he asks as we backtrack through the corridor.
“Great, and so are all the chicks he’s been dancing with,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Do you think you’ll have any trouble getting the card back to Ben?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.”
We don’t talk again until we’re back in the staff kitchen. “Make a copy of the drive before you hand it over.”
“Any other stupid reminders you want to give me?” he asks as he takes my backpack from me.
“Yeah, don’t get caught scaling the nineteen-and-a-half-foot wall.” I hand him my phone. “It’s still logged into the camera network, so you can use it to get out.”
He nods and gives me a look I can’t decipher.
“What?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.
“Nothing.” He slips my backpack over his arms so it’s sitting against his chest like a baby carrier. “Don’t get caught.”
“I never do.”
I wait for him to crawl through the doorway to the pantry, then quickly backtrack through the corridor and into the cleaning closet.
When I’ve got everything back where it’s supposed to be, I gently press on my earpiece to unmute it. “We got the files, and I’m on my way back to the party. I can’t see you right now, so use the signal to answer. Press on it to let me know you hear me.”
A soft whine fills my ear.
“Awesome. See you in a few.”