Chapter Thirty-Two Alejandro
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alejandro
Eyes on my reflection, I stared into the mirror while washing the sweet smell of that woman from my hand.
How’d I let things go that far, risking Ryder walking in on us like he wound up doing?
I clearly couldn’t think straight when it came to her, as already established a few times back at the lodge. And what happened today was also the first time in a long damn time where I’d put my feelings above a mission. Also something I rarely did.
The problem? She was my mission. The priority had to be keeping her safe. Not exploring this thing between us.
Dangerous, all right.
There were half a dozen reasons why I needed to behave and focus up.
And none of them had mattered the second she asked me to take a look at her panties and touch her.
I turned off the water and dried my hands before slamming them onto the counter, shaking my head, needing to get a grip before I faced everyone.
It took me five minutes beyond the allotted thirty seconds Ryder had given me to get my ass to the den.
The TV screen glowed with overlapping data streams when I joined everyone.
Audrey was situated on the couch, and Ryder was on a knee in front of the laptop by the coffee table, an unreadable expression crossing his face when our eyes locked.
Yeah, I deserved a lot more than that look. And now I couldn’t remember if I’d had a chance to finish that promise I’d planned to make to him to stay away from Audrey. The morning had been a blur of lips, heat, pink lace, and now guilt.
Ryder stood when Gwen and Natasha appeared on the screen, and I was all for a distraction so I wouldn’t have to deal with any tension with my team leader.
Audrey was right. We couldn’t “anyway” our way through this when it came to what he’d walked in on. I was still reeling as it was.
“Hey, I think we’ve met.” Gwen waved at Audrey.
“I’d say it’s good to see you, but clearly not under these circumstances.
” She offered a small shrug, then shifted straight into mission talk.
“We figured it’d be faster to upload every relevant unredacted file we now have our hands on into a program I built instead of going through it all manually ourselves.
It’ll scan for patterns, red flags, recurring names—stuff like that. We’ll let AI do the heavy lifting.”
“So, we’re being replaced by machines,” I muttered.
“Would you prefer to go through Beth’s stuff from your boxes yourself?” Natasha asked, but not in a condescending way.
I gripped the back of the couch, noticing Audrey was a little too close to my hands now, but I couldn’t back away. I was already there. In deep. In over my head. All the damn things.
“I’ll take the algorithm, thanks,” I said, unable to erase the bitterness from my tone since we were discussing my ex. “No need to visit Betrayal Lane.”
I could feel Ryder’s eyes burn a hole through me at those words.
Did he feel betrayed by me now?
Shit.
“My husband went to get your boxes from storage.” Natasha’s announcement saved me from making eye contact with Delta One, and that was how I needed to think of the man right now. “When he’s back, I’ll scan everything into the program. No need for you to look at anything.”
Never thought I’d be grateful for AI when I wasn’t a fan of humans being replaced by technology, especially as rapidly as it seemed to be happening lately. But consider me a fan right now if I could avoid Beth.
I forced my hands to relax, keeping them on the couch without death-gripping it. “So while your program sifts through the haystack, what do we do? You start looking into Arlo’s background? Trace Mitch’s last steps between when Arlo died and Audrey’s rings disappeared before the plane crash?”
“Looking into all that now, yes.” Gwen smiled. “Well, my program is.”
“Could’ve used her last year when Mitch’s transport was hit,” Natasha commented, pride, not jealousy, in her voice.
“Well, you have me now. You all have the dream team with us.” Gwen winked, eyes on Audrey as she clutched the pillow to her chest like I’d seen her do a few times today. “So, while you two were, um, otherwise occupied, we did figure something out.”
Oh, she knows. How the hell does she know?
Ryder’s spine went straight.
And yup, he knows Gwen just read the tension in the room, too.
“Thanks to Reed,” Gwen continued, “we knew the cipher in the ring was incomplete, which suggested the key requires two rings to work.” Her fingers tapped across a sleek and colorful wireless keyboard.
“We also got lucky. Mitch’s ring appears to hold the second half of the code, not the first. The final four digits helped us pinpoint what kind of vault the keys unlock. ”
I stayed behind the couch, grounding my hands more firmly on the backrest. “Like a routing number? A digital signature tied to a specific vault?”
Gwen nodded, clearly in her element. I was glad we had her on our team, but I also had to keep in mind Mitch had a pretty damn good hacker on his side to pull everything off he had so far. We couldn’t get too comfortable.
“We narrowed it down to three possible vault brands, based on the sequence,” Gwen announced. “These types of vaults are designed to require not only physical keys but often a biometric verification.”
“So even if someone had the rings, they couldn’t open the vault without the original owner.” Reed gave us the shit news, confirming our concern as to why Mitch needed Audrey.
“So that’s why Mitch wants me.” Audrey said what we’d guessed back at the lodge. “But how’d he pull this off without me being physically present when he locked the vault?”
“Good question.” Natasha slipped on what looked like a pair of blue-light glasses as she studied a different screen off to her side. “And I don’t have an answer for you that won’t sound sci-fi.”
Audrey held up her hand. “I’m okay, then. I’ve had enough over-my-head stuff for a lifetime.” She folded forward a little as if the weight of those words had physically hit her. I stole a look over her shoulder to see her knuckles whitening around the pillow.
“These types of vaults come with expiration dates,” Gwen continued, eyes on something else and not on us, so she probably didn’t notice Audrey turning a little pale. “If the contents aren’t claimed and fees paid by then—”
“Wait, what?” I interrupted. Now they were losing me, and I was a sci-fi guy.
“There’s a date embedded in the cipher,” Gwen explained. “I found the sequence: two, twenty-seven, twenty-seven. February twenty-seventh of this year.”
I didn’t try to pretend I fully understood how she’d found numbers inside numbers, but sure. Let’s go with that. “So that’s the expiration date for the safe that the two rings will open.”
“We believe so,” Gwen responded. “The timeline fits.”
“Why would he take the risk to cut it so close to the expiration date, though?” I asked. “For that matter, why store evidence in a vault that expires? What happens if he misses the deadline? Does the vault explode?”
“Unfortunately not,” Natasha replied dryly. “That would’ve worked in our favor, especially in my father’s. Think of it like a layaway. These companies charge an exorbitant fee for every day they store someone’s assets. If the contents aren’t claimed and the fees aren’t paid by the deadline—”
“They keep it.” Audrey’s voice was hollow as she slowly rose from the couch, tossing the pillow aside. “Which means they must’ve seen what’s being stored is of value. They know it’s worth keeping if the owner doesn’t come back for it in time.”
“Precisely.” Not the news any of us were looking to hear from Natasha. “And I actually think the timing feels intentional, like Mitch really did plan all of this out down to the last detail and minute for a reason.”
Yeah, putting him five steps too many ahead of us.
“But in order to pay the fee, since last I checked he wasn’t rich, he’d have to sell whatever’s in the vault first, right?” Audrey asked while undoing her hair, shaking it free.
She slipped the band on her wrist before combing her fingers through her hair, distracting me at a time when I really shouldn’t lose focus again.
“But wait,” Audrey continued, “that doesn’t make sense. He can’t access the vault without the rings or me. Or without paying the fee first.”
What doesn’t make sense? I ripped my gaze away from her and back to where it belonged.
“He doesn’t need the vault open to sell what’s inside it.
He just has to prove he has what he’s promising,” Gwen explained.
“He’ll probably show something like he did to my grandfather last year about Stratos 2.
0 to attract the right buyer. Then he’ll bring the money, rings, and you, Audrey, to open the vault at the exchange. ”
“And guess what’s happening this Friday night?” Reed folded his arms, and Audrey and I turned toward him, clearly the last of everyone to catch up.
“There’s an auction,” Natasha filled us in. “It’s held annually. This year marks the twentieth anniversary. Same family, same location in New Zealand. They sell black market antiquities. Stolen IP. Government tech. Whatever Mitch has would fit in.”
“And one of the three vault locations you identified as a possibility is near this event,” I said in understanding.
Natasha nodded. “An hour’s drive in Arrowtown, on private land that was retrofitted with modern security. It’s smack in the middle of a historic gold rush town in the mountains, which makes it the perfect spot for a secret bunker or underground vault.”
Mitch really did coordinate this down to the last damn detail.
And now he was backing Audrey into an impossible corner.
If she didn’t help him open that vault, the intel would fall into someone else’s hands.
More than likely, dangerous hands. Either way, someone would end up with whatever Mitch had locked away.
“I programmed my software to search everywhere Mitch may have been in that timeline we pinpointed as important,” Gwen said. “And now that we know about this vault location, I’ve placed special emphasis in New Zealand to see if Mitch was ever there before he died. Well, fake-died.”
This was feeling more and more like a legit lead. Good.
“But why didn’t Mitch just sell what he had a year ago?
Why go to such lengths to do all this? He wouldn’t even need me, right?
” Audrey scanned the room; then her shoulders dropped as if it’d just clicked.
“Oh. Because he’d be a dead man walking.
For-real dead and unable to spend the money.
He knew he’d be hunted down forever. So he had to make sure everyone believed he was truly dead until the right time.
Meanwhile, it was hiding in plain sight with me. ”
“The only one he probably trusted, especially since you wouldn’t even know what you had,” I said, shaking my head, tense all over again.
“But if everyone now knows he’s alive, doesn’t that place Mitch back in the same predicament he’d have been in last year then?” Audrey asked.
“No.” I closed my eyes, the blood rushing from my face.
“This isn’t just about him becoming rich, it’s about him buying his safety, which he couldn’t do before.
He probably didn’t know who he could trust with the evidence, either, worried one of his low-life friends would stab him in the back and sell it themselves.
You know, something he’d do.” Which is why he picked you.
“And how does he buy his safety now?” Audrey’s soft voice had me opening my eyes.
“With our help,” I gritted out. “He’s playing us. Trying to use us as his own personal army in New Zealand.” I brought my hands to my hips, anger flying through me. “He knows about Chandler’s off-the-books teams. Maybe not about us since we’re new, but Bravo and the others.”
“You’re saying Mitch knows that after Stratos was shut down, new units were created by President Rydell and Will Hobbs in its place?
” Ryder asked, his gaze cutting to me. “He also somehow knows Stratos was relaunched at some point outside of government hands, and who better to take out a clandestine unit of Tier One operators who’d want him dead—”
“Than to pull in another group of the best operators in the world to handle his problem,” I finished for him. “Money. Safety. And Audrey. Then he’s off-grid forever.” I swallowed. “Will Hobbs had to have told Mitch about the new replacement units in 2013, Bravo and Echo.”
“But something clearly sent Mitch over the edge to start all this up when he did,” Gwen pointed out. “Unless someone else is calling the shots, and he’s just a puppet?”
“Like Arlo dying.” Well, if he’s really dead. “Or the puppet could also be looking to cut his strings and get control himself.” I couldn’t help but unleash that sick idea, too.
Audrey dragged both hands down her face. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“No.” Ryder reached for her arm, waiting for her to look at him. “This absolutely does not mean I’m putting you in the crosshairs of Mitch’s mess. Like hell are you going to New Zealand. End of damn story.”
“We have to get what’s in that vault, though.
And shouldn’t you help shut down this Stratos unit?
Who knows what kind of missions they’re going on and why.
I married this man, drawing you all into this, so I’ll be the one to help you get out of it.
” Ryder opened his mouth to protest, but Audrey was quicker.
Possibly even more stubborn. “So read my lips, mister.” She lifted her chin like a challenge, then echoed his words back to him in a slightly friendlier way: “I’m going . . . end of freaking story.”