Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
FINN
I can’t tell if she’s Jinx or not. What I know for sure is she’s not like any fan I’ve ever met.
She glares at me as if my presence annoys her.
Yet, she kissed me hard and firm.
She switches between soft words and sarcastic barbs.
And she didn’t hesitate to elbow me right in the middle of my bruised ribs.
Her behavior is beyond erratic. She’s unhinged. Highly suspicious. And I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.
Not that I’m going to throw her anywhere. Who knows if she’d call that “manhandling” and get me back by slitting my wrists. Or trying to kiss me again. There’s no telling what her deranged brain will come up with next.
J slips on three-finger sleeve protectors. Programmers often suffer from carpal tunnel early, so the tiny compression braces help ease the ache in the hands.
Now that I’ve given her room, J’s more relaxed. Her shoulders are hunched over the keyboard, and her eyes are focused on the screen. She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth as she concentrates.
My eyebrows climb. “Are you doing cryptographic math?”
Her hair shifts up and down her back as she nods.
“Did the kidnappers send an encrypted ransom? Show me.”
If it’s that simple, if this is all just money, then I can see a happy ending in the near future. Dutch, Zane, and I would clear out our bank account to have the girls back safely.
“No, I’m not solving this to find them. I’m doing it to keep myself nimble.”
My astonishment shifts to disdain. She’s messing with me.
“Re-lax.” J holds down a few keys, and the second monitor fills with a new terminal. She makes a grand gesture to the screen. “I’ve got something loading.”
I’m surprised by the elegance of her code. “You hacked their—”
“No.” She holds up a hand. “Not that. I didn’t sit there and brute-force a server for three days. I didn’t rewrite an algorithm. That would be showy and stupid.” She scrunches her nose. “I’m not showy. I’m patient.”
“What. Did. You do?” I growl.
She slants me a look of censure but explains, “Encrypted programs protect what they know. But people still make decisions outside the program—who tags what, who syncs what, who reuses a login because it’s easy.
Those choices leave fingerprints. Tiny, mundane things that aren’t supposed to mean anything add up. I pulled those threads.”
I get what she means immediately. “Virtual breadcrumbs.”
Her eyes brighten. “Wow. Yeah. Finally, someone who speaks English.”
My lips curl up.
But I force myself not to smile fully.
She continues, “It takes more than one person to completely scrub someone from existence. It takes a whole lot more to scrub two people from existence. And when those people are linked to a band as high profile as The Kings, you definitely need an army to keep your victims hidden.”
“You followed an automated sync to the wrong mirror.” I lean over her desk again, parsing through the data.
“One old backup someone forgot to scrub. A weak link—completely by chance, I’ll admit. But it was bound to happen. Like I said, one person can totally erase their tracks. If it’s two or more people, they leave footprints.”
“So once the decryption completes, we’ll know who took them?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”
“You know”—she frowns—“it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. You could have taken more than a second to bask in my brilliance.”
I scowl. My family’s lives are at stake and she’s treating this like it’s a game.
J sighs heavily and loads a map on the third monitor.
“Once I got hold of the single thread in the haystack, I traced the patterns: interactions that seemed irrelevant to the system, rideshares, delivery confirmations, a calendar invite forwarded three times. Then I mapped how those external events mirrored entries inside the encrypted container. I stitched them together until the silhouettes resolved into names.”
“Like linking chords together to make a song.”
“Nothing so romantic.” She shrugs. “But it’s efficient. Also, less noisy than crashing a server and getting the attention of people who were paid to keep out hackers.”
She speaks with confidence, her eyes determined. She might have a delicate face and a slim build, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.
Is she Jinx or not?
So many signs are pointing to the affirmative.
Still, something itches my brain. This is too easy. What are the odds that I got Jinx’s location without having to blaze through layers of firewalls and error messages? One little program, and I’m in. Coordinates in hand. Easy as pie.
And why would Jinx allow me into her hospital room, into her bed?
Maybe I did find Jinx. Now what? Being in front of Jinx brings its own set of problems. Like why is she still hiding her identity? What does she want from me?
Based on her track record, I’m going to be offered a deal at the cost of something I won’t want to lose.
Trade a secret for a secret, Finn.
J leans back, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Why are you scowling? I’m seconds away from finding your family. Most people would, I don’t know, at least smile in this situation.”
I stare without comment.
She blows out a breath and her bangs fly up. “This is why you shouldn’t meet your heroes. They really don’t live up to the hype.”
“Will we have visuals when it goes live?”
“That’s kind of a tall order,” J says. “I was able to decrypt a communication line, but the program isn’t connected to any cameras. You won’t be able to see anything.”
“Let me.” I try to brush her aside so I can take over the keyboard.
She smacks my hand with a pen.
I hiss and pull my hand back.
“Don’t be rude. My computer. My rules. You don’t touch anything.” Her watch beeps. She looks down, sighs, and then looks back up at me. “Unless I get to sit in your lap while you do it?”
I reel back. Her voice is so dry and matter-of-fact while she says the most outrageous things. What is wrong with her?
The terminal pops out of sight, and we both turn our attention to the monitor. J swings her chair around and stretches her hands, a smile creeping over her face.
“Now we’re talking.”
Dutch and Zane will be thrilled to hear we have a lead. It’s thanks to a crazed fan who may or may not be the mastermind anonymous gossiper who has Redwood Prep by the throat…
But it’s a lot more than we’ve been able to produce on our own.
“We’re in,” J says triumphantly. “I’ll sync to the exterior speakers so we can hear and… voila.”
I don’t know what to expect.
We’re about to hear the voice of the kidnapper.
Is it Jarod Cross?
One of Kurosaki’s men?
Kurosaki himself?
“What do you mean?” a familiar voice hisses. “I don’t pay you what I pay you to hear excuses! Kick whoever it is OUT of the system. Do you understand?”
The floor rips from under me. “Mom?”
“Mom?” J’s head whips around. “The kidnapper’s… your mother?”
A giant red ERROR message appears in front of the terminal.
I lunge forward as if I can jump into the computer.
“These bastards are…” J scoffs as she taps furiously on her keyboard. “They’re trying to shut me down.”
My mind whirrs.
This can’t be right.
Why would Mom be behind this? I thought she loved the girls? Even if she doesn’t, she knows how much Dutch and Zane love their wives. Why is she involved with this?
I drag J’s chair away and take command of the keyboard, fighting the hackers on the other side.
J makes a squealing, protesting noise as she skids away from the computer. Her chair spins in place, and she plants her legs on the ground to stop it from moving.
“I told you not to touch that.”
Error! Access Denied.
“Dammit.” I slam my fist against the side of the table and merge my fingers to the keyboard again.
“Let me do it.” J scoots her chair next to me and reaches for the keyboard.
I push her hands again. “I got it.”
“It’s my computer,” she insists.
“It’s my family,” I growl harshly.
She inches back, her eyes wide and her eyelashes fluttering. A flash of discomfort wafts over me. It’s similar to the unease I felt when I realized I’d held her hand too tightly earlier and hurt her.
Sure, she kissed me as “punishment.” But a kiss can’t compare to leaving bruises on a girl’s delicate skin.
I pause a beat and then, swept away by the adrenaline coursing through me, I do something I almost never do.
I act on impulse.
J’s head lolls back as I lean forward, hovering over her. The plump pink lips that got my attention earlier part on a gasp.
I slide one hand around her waist, jerk her to me and then spin so I’m the one sitting in her chair. She’s light as a feather when I sweep her off her feet and deposit her—not so gently—into my lap.
J sputters. “What are you—”
“You said I could touch your computer if you got to sit in my lap.” I jerk my chin down to where she’s perched on top of me. Her hospital gown rides back, revealing pale thighs.
My chest constricts when I realize she’s not wearing tights under this makeshift dress.
I swallow down the heat rising in me and focus on what matters.
Bringing my sisters-in-law home.