Chapter 24 Ghost
GHOST
The instant she relaxed in my arms, I realized that the plea for me to be in bed wasn’t for me, but for her. How I denied myself her in my arms last night while I watched her sleep was beyond me. But now that I had my arms around her, I never wanted to let go.
My brothers were right.
This woman crawled right under my skin and made a home.
When I knew she was asleep, I took a chance. I wove an arm from around her and pulled my mask down a bit, just until my nose was free. Then I buried it into the soft locks of her wavy brown hair. I inhaled her scent, lavender and jasmine, of all things. It made me smile.
My little firefly.
I wasn’t sure how long I laid there like that with my nose tangled up with her hair, but every breath I took, she infiltrated my lungs. My arms felt magnetized to her body. Every time she shifted in her sleep, she pressed back against me a little more.
My cock liked that a lot.
But when I heard footsteps out in the hallway, coming for the room, I quickly tugged my mask back up my face.
Ranger whipped my door open.
“Sh,” I hissed the instant he stuck his head in.
His eyebrows rose as his gaze darted to Jaz, and then back to me. “Sorry, man. Need you for a sec.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “It can’t wait?”
Jasmine shifted a bit, and the two of us froze until she settled. But then, Ranger said something that caught my attention.
“It’s her laptop.”
Shit.
Against my better judgment, and against my aching dick’s wishes, I unraveled myself from her. She rolled toward me, her hand reaching out mindlessly, even in her sleep. I picked it up and pressed a masked kiss to the top of her hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” I whispered, wondering if her dreamy thoughts would communicate the message from me to her.
I slid off the bed and marched out of my room.
“Show me,” I demanded.
“Come with me,” he said.
We made our way into Ranger’s room and a small whimpering sound came from somewhere in it.
My eyes darted around until I found that his closet doors were closed.
Ranger never closed his closet doors. Hell, he never closed any doors.
Drove us all fucking mad in the clubhouse.
If a door was ever left open, we knew exactly who it was.
Bathroom door. Cabinet doors. The fucking fridge door, you name it.
The whimpering sound happened again while I stared at the closet.
“Ghost,” Ranger barked.
It whipped my gaze to him. “What?”
He nodded. “Over here.”
I looked back at the closet, but he let out an ear-piercing whistle like I was a fucking Smoke.
I slowly turned to face him, leveling him with a look in my eyes that said, ‘try that shit one more time and I won’t care that we’ve got an audience.
’ He didn’t budge, though. He just motioned toward his desk, so I stalked over to the corner where he kept his shit.
I didn’t bother asking how the woman was.
It was clear from where she was tucked that she wasn’t doing well.
“So?” I asked as he sat down at his desk. “What gives?”
Ranger typed around on a keyboard hooked up to the laptop.
“I got into her laptop and found all of those minutes. There’s a fuckton of them, so I started with the most recent twenty since those meetings were pretty much back-to-back within days of each other.
Scout’s working on getting them decoded now, if there’s anything to decode. ”
I nodded as I leaned over his shoulder, crouching down. “All right, so what do you need me for?”
He continued typing around on her work laptop that was plugged up to high hell and back.
I wasn’t sure there was an empty port to stick anything into with the amount of wires he had flowing in and out of that damned thing.
I watched him open up files and close them out.
I watched black screens with white text pop up for mere seconds before a keystroke with his fingers pulled up something else.
I was getting impatient. I didn’t have a fucking clue what the hell this was about.
Until screens filled with moving black and white pictures popped up.
“Oh. Holy. Fuck,” I said as my jaw dropped behind my mask.
Ranger chuckled. “Glad I called you in here now?”
“No fucking way,” I said as I dipped lower and moved off to his side so that I could get a better look at the images.
Good fucking God, this was a bird’s eye view of the cameras in the fucking law firm.
Inside of the fucking law firm.
“This shit was on her laptop?” I asked as I looked over at Ranger.
He nodded. “Had to dig for it, but her laptop is hooked up to all of this shit. There are multiple cameras on every level of the building, but we’ve got access to all of them through her laptop.”
I stood and raked my hands through my disheveled hair. “You mean, her laptop had the capability and you figured it out? Or—?”
“Or,” Ranger said as he kept typing around.
“The system itself is pretty rudimentary, given the money that has to be wrapped up in all of this. Black and white. No microphones. Cheap shit on the market today. The DOJ contact we’re working with says that’s pretty standard.
The cheaper the footage, the less it can be used against them. ”
I nodded mindlessly as I watched.
“However,” he said as he stopped typing and swiveled his chair to face me, “her entire laptop is hooked up to all of these systems. She probably doesn’t even know she’s got access to shit like this.
It was buried, so I really had to dig for it.
But once I opened up the program, it was just a matter of figuring out how to toggle through the cameras. ”
“And you’ve got her laptop masked?”
He nodded. “Every single movement we make is masked right now. But even if they were to figure out that her laptop was active, it would just look like a dead piece of technology. That’s why I’ve got it all plugged up like this. They can’t track things like keystrokes this way.”
“Huh,” I said as I nodded and stood, straightening my back. “How long will you have her laptop masked like that?”
“Well, it’s been masked for about a day like this already, and nothing has been thrown. But I took precautions last night and unplugged everything to recycle the systems before I plugged it all up this morning and got back at it.”
“And this is what you found.”
He tilted his head back to look up at me. “Figured you’d want to know about it.”
I bent down. “I don’t want to just know about it. I want to know how in the hell I can get that camera footage on my televisions so we can have eyes on that place twenty-four-seven, for as long as possible.”
“Want to know what I’ve seen on the cameras this fantastic Monday morning?”
Oh, he clearly had more to say. I folded my arms across my chest. “Ready when you are.”
He clapped his hands and stood up, excited, like a kid at Christmas. “They’ve been scrambling.”
I tilted my head. “Scrambling how?”
“I mean it’s been a fucking madhouse in that place this morning. The bigwigs came storming in through the front door and didn’t stop until they got into the conference room at the top of the building.”
“The room across the hall from where the secretarial desk is out there?”
His eyebrows rose. “How did you know?”
“It was the same room they went into and came out of when I was there, infiltrating. Must be their main meeting room.”
“It wouldn’t shock me, seeing as it’s the only room on that top floor without a camera in it.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said. “And since we have Jasmine’s confirmation that she has both audio and visual recordings of those meetings on a server somewhere inside of the building, that means—”
“They use a different system in that particular room.”
He pointed at me. “Exactly.”
None of this looked or sounded good. “Would there be any reason for that, outside of the reasons we’re already working with?”
“GHOST!” Jasmine called out. “Ghost! Come quick! Please!”
I bolted like a bat out of fucking hell.
Everything in my body shut down, and everything was fine tuned to getting back to Jasmine.
To my little firefly. There was panic in her voice.
Did someone corner her in the room? No, that couldn’t be it.
The entire clubhouse would come down onto their fucking heads if that happened.
“Firefly!” I called out as I hopped over Ranger’s bed and turned a sharp corner down the hallway. “Jaz! What’s wrong!?”
I heard her crying as I slammed into the room and I withdrew the weapon on my hip, searching for the intruder that dared to harm my beautiful little firefly. But when I saw her sitting at my desk, her face in her hands, I realized why she called for me.
Those assholes were back in her apartment again.
“Ranger!” I called out. “You were right! They’re scrambling!”
I heard him rush down the hallway before he appeared over my shoulder. “Oh fuck.”
Jasmine rested her head on my desk and openly cried. It was a sound that broke my heart as I holstered my weapon and rushed over to her. I scooped her into my arms, and she didn’t fight me. I cradled her close and rocked her softly as her tears wet my shoulder.
“I’m never gonna be able to go hoooome,” she stuttered out in between sobs.
I turned and looked at Ranger. “Clone her fucking laptop. Now.”
Cap came rushing toward us, appearing like a looming shadow over Ranger’s shoulder. “Situation repprt. Now.”
“Got goons in her apartment again,” I said as I held my crying little firefly in my arms. “That makes three times this weekend alone that they’ve raided her place.”
“I’ve got eyes inside of the law firm on her laptop,” Ranger said as he peered over his shoulder at our president. “They’ve been scrambling since four this morning. It doesn’t shock me that she’s got men in her apartment again. They’re getting desperate.”
Cap stared down at him. “You mean to tell me her laptop has eyes inside of that law firm right this second?”
Ranger thumbed over his shoulder. “I can show you, if you’d like.”
“No!” Cap exclaimed. “Clone that damn laptop and lock it down so we can all see it! We’ll take fucking shifts while we watch the inside of that damned building!”
“On it,” Ranger said as he scurried back down the hallway.
Jasmine wiggled out of my grasp and made a beeline for the bathroom.