Chapter 8
Magnum
Storm started the conversation the second Skippy arrived, before we’d even headed to the office. “I’d like to figure out if the fighters live on-site, if they’re housed and trained there permanently, or just brought in for fight weekends and trained elsewhere. Ideas on how we can do that?”
It was a really good investigative angle, and I was suitably impressed.
I’d considered returning to the crypto logs today, since that’s kind of my forte, but her question needed answering before we could start planning how to rescue the fighters.
If they’re only there on fight weekends, unless we could figure out where they are taken between times, we’d have to go in for a rescue when the place was packed with people.
Also, when we arrived in the office, she sat in one of the extra chairs, pulling it so she could see the screen. She’d already worked out that however we went at this would likely involve hacking, and since that isn’t her forte, she wasn’t going to try to claim the keyboard.
I noted a few specks of dust on the monitor and resisted wiping it down. I hadn’t shown her the dusting protocol yet, but since it arrived on the schedule in two days, we’d have to do that soon. Hopefully she was better at dusting than she was at stacking shirts.
Skippy sat in the desk chair and brought me out of my reverie.
“Housing and training a couple of dozen or possibly even more fighters is a big operation. Rooms or jail cells? With that many, I figure no one gets the privacy of walls, so probably cells. Also, they can’t feed them cheap crappy stuff.
Athletes need real, quality food with the right amount of carbs and protein.
They likely have a doctor on the staff, or at least an RN, possibly a nutritionist. Let’s figure thirty fighters, and the trainers can also be security, so maybe five or ten men for that. Another half-dozen for feeding them.”
Storm pursed her lips. “Electricity usage would tell us something. Water might tell us, too.”
Skippy leaned back, fingers laced behind his head.
“Power for housing and training won’t be as high between fight weekends, but it’ll be more than just whatever it takes to keep the security systems running and the HVAC usage to keep the temperature even.
Water volume might not be relevant if they have expensive landscaping that needs watering, though I guess it might give useful data in the winter months. ”
Seconds later, he’d learned the name of the power company for that property and was furiously typing commands into a terminal program. First, he got an idea of general layout, and then sniffed all around the network.
I realized right off the bat that he was looking for databases that weren’t locked down instead of trying to hack in. I made a few suggestions while he typed, reminding him to look for access opened up to a third-party vendor, but mostly just watched him work.
He pulled up several databases that didn’t tell us anything, but about forty minutes after he started, he hit pay dirt.
Rather than look at a specific customer on their server, he browsed through the customer names, verified we wanted HFC Holdings, LLC — and then he downloaded the data for a range of thirty-six customers, to include data for the past eighteen months.
I watched him route the file to a server also in Virginia, to keep the lag times low, and then transfer it to the Caribbean, then Russia, and he sent an app to the Russian server so we could view the data in a 3d cube, sorting through it any way we wanted.
Storm leaned in, her shoulder brushed my arm, and the faint rosemary-peppermint from her shampoo hit my senses. She was completely focused on the data this time, so I was the only one affected by our touch.
I forced my attention back to the center monitor and analyzed what we were looking at. Fight weekends showed massive spikes, while hunt weekends were noticeably lower. Between events, the usage dropped to something that hinted at a small maintenance crew.
“No consistent draw around expected mealtimes,” Skippy said, scrolling. “I could be wrong, but I’m not seeing usage implying they’re feeding and housing a whole lot of people here full-time.”
Storm’s voice was quiet. “So they’re probably not on-site except during fight weekends, which makes sense. They’d likely have to be moved during the hunt weekend. May as well just keep them at the alternate location. Cuts down on how often they’re moved.”
“Looks that way,” I said. “Which complicates rescuing the fighters if we can’t figure out where they’re being kept between times.”
She sat back, arms crossed under her breasts, and the movement pulled her shirt tighter. I made myself look at her face instead of the way the fabric stretched across her tits.
My mind went back in time, though, remembering how she’d reacted the night before when I’d shown her the kitchen and bathroom procedures, and again this morning when I’d made her re-polish the front of the dishwasher because she’d missed a smudge on the lower left corner.
And fuck, the way her arousal levels had gone all spicy and hot while she’d bent over to redo her work had made me wish I could turn her ass red for needing correction.
I’d had the same wish while she’d rolled and re-rolled the damned towel, and had actually wondered at one point if she was screwing it up on purpose just to fuck with me — or because she wanted me to keep telling her to do it again, because it was clearly hitting all her kink points.
It hadn’t just been her scent telling me, but the quick little pulse fluttering in her throat, the way her hands shook ever-so-slightly, the way her breath caught.
Her reactions were like throwing motherfucking gasoline on my own arousal, and I was going to have to get that under better control.
Skippy was still talking about power signatures on hunt weekends versus fight weekends, and I forced my focus back where it belonged.
“We’re gonna need to bring Mad Dog in for the next planning steps,” I said. “Looks like the game plan will end up meaning we mount the rescue during a fight weekend. We’re going to need schedules, number of guards, property layout — tons of data before we can plan it out properly.”
“We can’t leave them there that long,” Storm said. “We’re two weeks from the next weekend, so we’ll have to do all of that gathering damned fast.”
I wasn’t of a mind to break it to her we’d likely need longer, meaning another ten weeks before we could risk going in. She wasn’t going to like that, but I couldn’t see a way for us to muster enough data and create a successful game plan in two weeks.
I needed to begin setting the stage for her to deal with that, though, so I said, “If we go in blind we risk not only ourselves, but the victims. We don’t do it until we’re certain we have a damned good chance of being successful.
If we try and fail, it’s possible they kill all the fighters and shut down until they’ve figured out how to kill everyone involved in the incursion, so it’s safe to start over. ”
She nodded once, sharp. She didn’t like it, but she knew I was right.
“We need hi-res satellite imagery of this place,” I said, “but I figure they have a program set to alarm them if it gets requested from the main vendors.”
“Agreed,” Skippy said. “I have a solution, but…” He looked at Storm and then back to me. “Club secrets, so we’ll have to talk about it later.”
Skippy is a raven. He was talking about shifting, strapping a camera on his body, and flying over the property. Their security would pick up on a drone, but not a raven.
“What has to happen before I can be trusted with your secrets?” Storm asked. “This isn’t going to work if I can’t know what tech you have.”
“You’ll probably just have to be happy knowing we have a probable way of getting aerial images without triggering any of their alarms,” I told her.
Her scent was the opposite of submissive now, and for some bizarre reason that made my dick hard, too.
She was an obstinate, hard-headed investigative reporter, and we were going to have to be damned careful she didn’t find out about supernaturals. In our world, the penalties for a human finding out without permission from some mighty powerful assholes can be death… or worse. A lot worse.
My mind went back to that morning, when I’d checked my closet after she’d done the laundry. The shirts were folded well, but the stack had been horribly out of line. Again, I’d wondered if she was doing it on purpose. I didn’t scent dishonesty or deceit, but I’d needed more information.
“Why are you having so much trouble making a simple stack of shirts that doesn’t look sloppy and is stable enough there’s no danger of it falling over?”
Her scent had gone to extreme irritation, but she’d kept her voice even to tell me, “I hang my own clothes. There are no stacks to fall over — and when I fold them into my luggage, the goal is how to get the most things packed with the least amount of wrinkling.”
And that didn’t really tell me anything for certain, so I merely talked her through restacking them, and damn, I’d wanted to cane her thighs at every fucking slip-up.
My inner Dom had wanted to push her and push her, but I’d reminded myself then of the same thing I was telling myself now: she was here to help us find Gears’ brother, and in exchange, we were going to do our damnedest to keep her alive.
While doing her job, she’d stumbled into something that could get her killed, and my job was to keep her breathing — not to treat her like a visiting submissive who exists purely for my entertainment.
The fact that her body lit up every time I gave her an instruction or pointed out a mistake didn’t change the mission.
I was stuck with a submissive who was as turned on by me telling her how to do a job as I was but watching her work so hard to get it right. The only solution I could come up with would be to tell her not to worry about helping out around the house, but there was no logical reason for that.
“Okay,” I told Skippy, trying to focus on next steps.
“Why don’t you and Mad Dog talk through some possibilities and begin working through a game plan?
Meanwhile, Storm and I can look through the crypto logs to see if we can find another nearby property.
I figure something within an hour’s drive?
I’d want it less than that, if it were me, but that’s likely the max.
No airports, not even for private transport.
A bus with blacked-out windows, or perhaps just a box truck, and they sit on the floor. ”
He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” He looked at his smartwatch. “I’m not going to stay and eat with ya’ll today. Gonna head back now. Won’t be able to come tomorrow, so I’ll see you the next day.”