Chapter 25 Diego
DIEGO
“Fuck!” I slammed my fist against the desk, letting my frustration get to me.
I had been working on trying to break this encryption for hours now and I kept hitting walls at every turn.
If not for how important this was, I’d be kind of excited.
I’d never come across someone who was as good as I was.
The challenge would be fun under different circumstances.
“Wait, maybe I’ve got something here,” Ari muttered, mostly under his breath. “Hang on . . .”
It had hurt my pride some, but I’d called Ari two hours ago, when I’d realized I was getting nowhere and I really needed a fresh pair of eyes. It was hard for me to admit, but he was also good—not as good as me but still—and even though we hadn’t figured it out yet, his help had been huge.
I’d come across something that seemed suspicious enough to look into when I’d been hanging out after the .
. . moment with Skye. That whole thing had left me wanting to stay close, so I had gone back to my spot on the beanbag while Skye and Brooks had dozed off.
But then I’d found something that had my hackles rising, so I’d quickly left the room so I could utilize all my gear in my office.
The suspicion had panned out. Somehow, while Belding had been collecting evidence on everyone and everything, he had gotten information on where Crimson Rose’s electronic data was stored.
He hadn’t known what to do with that, so it sat with all the rest of the evidence Tanner had been gathering, completely useless to him.
But I knew exactly what it was, and it was better than gold to me.
It was the key. And if I could break past all their firewalls and encryptions, I could get into their system. I could fucking find everything.
The problem, of course, was getting in. I was going to throw my keyboard out of the window if I couldn’t get an answer soon.
“Shit . . . D, I think maybe I found a way. Look at this.” It was weird sharing an office.
At first, I’d figured he’d help remotely, but then Dominic had shown up to his shift with Ari in tow.
It had taken a beat for us to get a rhythm together, but over the last hour, we’d gotten in sync and were really working well off each other.
I got out of my chair and walked to his desk. He’d taken over the one I usually keep for Brooks, even though he never used it.
I looked at Skye’s screen. He might have found a back door inside. I ran to my chair and immediately joined him. Just a bit more and I’d have it…
My phone buzzed at the same time as one of the property alerts went off. I couldn’t look away though. I was so fucking close.
My phone rang again, and I answered without even looking down.
“Hello.”
“Angel, did you open the entryway alert?”
“No. Fuck! Wes, we’re so fucking close to getting into Crimson Rose’s main servers. I can’t look.”
“Someone dumped a body at the front gate. We’re on our way over there.”
The words were English, I was sure of that, but I couldn’t really process them. Not now. Usually, I could multitask, but not with this, not when we were this close. Ari hadn’t even acknowledged any of this conversation as his fingers flew across the keyboard.
“You keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve pulled up the feed. Mav and Luc are already there. I’m on my way now. We’ll keep you updated.”
“Okay, yeah, sounds good.” I disconnected the call without really understanding what Wes had told me. It was important, I was sure, but not nearly as important as this. This could be everything.