Chapter 5
Storm
When Squatch finally left, Magnum asked me if I wanted a room facing the water, or the woods on the other side of the house.
I considered it a few seconds before telling him, “Water. It isn’t likely I’ll happen to see a pro team coming out of the woods, so from a security standpoint, I don’t think it matters.”
“A safe room came with the house. I’ll show you how to get into it. If we get found out, we’re in the shit, but it’ll give us a little time to get help here. Can’t hurt to try.”
The safe room was practically across the hall from the bedroom he put me in, which was lovely, with a huge picture window.
“There’s a coating on the glass so people can’t see in,” he said. “Even if you have the light on and it’s dark outside.”
Part of me was relieved and part of me disappointed when he left to go to his room.
I was exhausted and needed sleep, but I wanted to get started.
Also, I wanted to know more about the man tasked with keeping me alive.
He’s this emotionless wall I can’t read, and yet he’s also full of life and energy.
It’s almost like he’s more wild animal than human, which is ridiculous.
And it bugged the shit out of me that I couldn’t research all the people I’d met today. Knowledge is power, and I felt powerless without the ability to dig into their backgrounds and learn everything possible about them.
But those thoughts didn’t haunt me for long, because I was asleep within minutes of washing my face and putting my hair in a messy bun.
I slept like the dead, but woke to the smell of bacon cooking at six-fucking-thirty in the morning.
And then argued with myself over whether to go downstairs with or without makeup.
In the end, I brushed some powder over my face and eyes, reworked the messy bun, and made my way to the kitchen in shorts and a T-shirt.
It was cool in the house, thank goodness, so it was a full-length tee rather than a halter top, but I’d change into one if he wanted to go outside.
Georgia and Alabama are fucking brutal in the summer.
Magnum assured me he had breakfast under control, so I cleaned his prep dishes, and he pointed me where to put them away once I’d dried everything.
I was a little surprised by Skippy when he showed up while Magnum and I were eating breakfast. Every biker I’d met so far is literally larger than life, but Skippy was only a few inches taller than me, and I’m five-eight.
With three-inch heels, I’d have an inch on him, easy.
And he’s skinny. Just looking at him, you think computer nerd.
But he was somewhere between adorable and gorgeous, despite all that. He kinda looked like a model — an underwear model, and that made me think of the Harry Potter geek who grew up to be hot and model exactly that.
But I like brawny strength, which was proving to be a problem with Magnum, because fuck, his muscles have muscles.
Instead of offering to make more food for Skippy when he arrived, Magnum told him, “Eggs and bacon are in the fridge.”
Skippy said he’d already eaten, but he sat and slapped some blackberry preserves on a biscuit, then another, while we finished our meal.
I popped our dishes into the dishwasher when we finished, and then we all went to Magnum’s office — a large square room without windows, which seemed odd. Why live on the lake and not take advantage of the view? Maybe he didn’t want the distraction?
But I didn’t ask any of that because I was floored by his setup.
I had a feeling there was way more to Magnum than he was letting on, and I once again chafed at not being able to research him, because his setup was serious — five large monitors, with three on the bottom and two above, and a system I knew just by looking at that he’d built from the ground up.
There were some extras you see with gamers, like the glass mousepad, but he didn’t come across as a gamer, nor did this setup.
This man worked online, and whatever he did, it was serious.
But here’s the kicker — he hooked a laptop up to a dock on his desk and skipped the huge liquid-cooled system sitting beside his desk, glowing in purples and greens.
And when the laptop booted, it was Linux. Only geeks use Linux.
And why the laptop? Logic said either he didn’t want me seeing what was on his main work computer, or he didn’t want to risk exposing it to the dangers we were about to dive into. Or both.
It all added up to him being way more than muscle for the club, and as I’d learned the night before, even the actual muscle, big as a fucking earthmover, had brains.
Magnum signed into the laptop and then stood and motioned Skippy into his chair.
The smaller man plugged a USB in, opened a browser on the USB’s file system, looked through some settings I understood and some I didn’t, and told us, “As long as you use the browser on the USB, you’re going through tunnels and proxies.
I’ve automated the kill switch — if my protocols detect anything fucky, it cuts the connection and shuts the browser down.
If you hear the alarm and see warnings, hit the kill switch anyway, and kill the router.
Pull the plug, don’t waste time shutting it down. ”
“I need more information,” I told him. “I need to know you aren’t going through commercial proxies, and bonus if you’re obfuscating our traffic to look like streaming or another protocol.”
He smiled. “Chick who knows her shit. Yeah, I’m chaining privately controlled servers — some VPN, some not — with a few tunnels, but I can’t share the servers with you.
Club secrets. No one’s gonna subpoena these, and they’re rock solid.
Nothing is impossible to compromise, but these are as close to it as you can get.
” He leaned back and smirked. “Small data packets will look boring and normal, large downloads will look like a commercial stream.” He lifted his brows.
“Not many people know that’s an option.”
“She’s full of surprises,” Magnum said, and I wasn’t sure how to read his tone — grudging and… not angry, but not necessarily pleased about it, either.
“So I see,” Skippy said, and he stood facing Magnum.
“USB drive goes in your safe when it isn’t being used.
Mad Dog says both of you go online together, as a unit.
And I’ll add that you need to use your computer as you normally do without the USB.
Check email, browse the sites you usually go.
Nothing that alters your normal habits.”
“Yeah, got that. You gonna hang out and help us dig? Or do you need to be somewhere?”
“I’m yours for the day. From what Mad Dog said, today will be about the chicklet showing us what she’s found, and us digging farther if we see a spot where we can.”
- - - ? - - -
Magnum
I was ready to get to work, but when I motioned for Storm to sit in the chair Skippy had just vacated, she crossed her arms and said, “I can’t get a read on you. Tell me five things I’d find if I could do a background check on you, and I’ll tell you five similar things about me.”
I could only stare at her, because what the fuck?
“You don’t need to know anything about me other than my club is keeping you safe, and we’re working together to bring down the people who’d just as soon see you dead.” I crossed my arms right back at her. “And once I step into this, they’ll want me dead, too. That’s all you need to know.”
“I went to jail for three weeks once because I wouldn’t give up a source. He eventually went to the judge and outed himself because he felt so bad about me being in jail for him.”
“Jail, or prison? And do you know the difference?”
“Jail, the place you go while awaiting trial. Not prison, the place you go once you’re found guilty.”
Well, fuck. Now it felt like I needed to give her a similar fact. Shit.
“I nearly killed a man with nothing but my fists. Was supposed to do ten years in prison, but got out in three years and a handful of months — combination of good behavior and…” I’d started to say paying off the right people, but no way in hell was I admitting that to an investigative reporter.
She lifted her brows, but I didn’t scent fear, or even surprise. “What, money changed hands? We all know it happens.” She shrugged. “Want to share why you nearly killed him? Because I’m guessing he probably needed it, based on my initial impressions of you.”
“He punched a too-thin, very-pregnant woman in the face, knocked her to the ground, and he was raring back to kick her in the stomach when I tackled him.”
Her eyebrows might be the most expressive thing about her, and they drew together in adorable little concerned furrows.
“And a jury sent you to prison for that?”
“She lied. Said the motherfucker hadn’t hit her. Said her shiner was from a tree limb rebounding while she was cutting a small tree off her flowerbed that’d been knocked down by a storm. She had pictures of the tree and everything.”
“Bites,” she noted, clearly angry on my behalf. “That kind of thing might keep you from wanting to help others. I promise I’ll do my best to keep you from having to pay for helping me.”
Well, that was refreshing. “I appreciate that you aren’t making promises you can’t keep. We both know if this goes to shit, we could both end up dead.”
“Right, but you’re smart, Skippy’s smart, and I’m a fucking genius, so… we’ll figure it out.”
“Or we won’t, and we’ll all be dead,” I noted, and motioned her — again — to sit down.
“I can’t think of anything else bad to share,” she said, rather than sitting down. “Everything else big would sound like bragging. Ask a question and I’ll answer it.”
“And then I’ll have to tell you something. Sit your ass down and let’s get to work.”
“I have a question,” Skippy said. “Where’d you learn about network security?”