Chapter 15 #2
Then Striker freezes, his hand hovering above the keyboard. His eyes sharpen over a small line of text buried deep in the system. Something clicks in his expression, almost a shift in the air around him.
“There you are,” he murmurs.
Mica leans over to have a look. “What did you find?”
Striker doesn’t look up at first. He opens the file and the screen floods with strings of code. It takes him only a second to understand what they are. His mouth pulls tight with something close to satisfaction. “I found the golden ticket.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask.
Striker keeps going as his fingers speed up on the keyboard.
“I found an encryption key. One that unlocks everything on Christina’s flash drive.
This bastard had it stored where only a system-level scan would ever find it.
” He huffs a breath. “Christina copied files that were never meant to leave REACH systems.”
I stare at Neal. His face goes pale, and I can tell he is panicking on the inside. He knows exactly what Striker uncovered.
Striker links to the information he pulled off Christina’s flash drive and stored in his online cloud. He gasps as the layers start unlocking one after another. “Hold on. I’m almost there.”
A soft beep comes from the laptop. Striker lets out a short, sharp sound. “Access granted.”
He opens the new directory. The files inside populate in clean rows. Contract numbers. Digital signatures. Internal communications with metadata from REACH headquarters. A PDF marked priority. And then a set of image files.
Striker clicks the first one.
My breath stops when Christina’s face fills the screen.
It’s a surveillance photo of her walking around town.
Her hair is pulled back, and sunglasses cover half of her face.
She’s holding Katie on her hip. Only, my daughter is a lot younger in this picture.
Both of them look tired. Christina looks haunted.
The second image shows Christina alone, walking through a parking lot with a grocery bag. The third shows her car. The fourth shows a blown-up view of her license plate. This is clearly his documentation of his stalking.
Striker clicks into another folder and opens the document inside.
His eyes lift to glare at Neal. “You have a contract with REACH. It authorizes you to be paid for field operations under a discretionary budget. It includes payout tiers, completion clauses, and travel compensation. At the bottom is a sealed directive. It says ‘secure the stolen flash drive and deliver the subject alive’. You wanna tell me about that?”
“How much did this bastard stand to make from abducting my old lady for REACH?” I mutter.
“Her bounty was close to a million dollars if he got the flash drive and brought her in alive.”
Mica whistles, “That’s high enough to keep him engaged for several years.”
Onyx adds, “Men kill for far less.”
Neal speaks up for himself. “I’m a bounty hunter, not a contract killer.”
Striker scrolls down and mumbles, “That’s not quite true, now is it, Neal?”
“What else did you find, Striker?” I ask, needing to know it all.
“Christina isn’t the only job he’s done for REACH. He’s contracted with them for coming up on ten years. There’s a file on each employee. Would you like to know what Neal’s file says?”
“Spill it,” I tell him.
“Neal has performed twenty-seven jobs for REACH. Seven of them were hits. So, it looks like he is in fact a contract killer.”
Suddenly, everything makes complete sense. “It’s not just the money. Christina accidentally took personnel files listing everyone’s dirty deeds and what they got paid to do for each of them.”
Neal glances away before murmuring, “REACH keeps meticulous records because they use them to blackmail employees into doing what they want.”
I look at Neal and take one step closer. He flinches so hard the chair jerks under him.
“You hunted a woman with a child.” My voice sounds calm, but I can hear a hard, deadly edge to it. “You had her looking over her shoulder every day. You followed her into every state she tried to hide in.”
He tries to speak but his lips barely move.
I lean in, my hands braced on the arms of his chair. “You will tell me everything. Every name. Every directive. Every contact. Because I’m going to rip those fuckers apart.”
Onyx steadies himself beside me. Mica stands at the door with arms crossed. There is no doubt about what’s going to happen. We won’t hesitate to give this fucker a dirt nap.
I straighten and look back at the image of Christina on Striker’s laptop. The ache in my chest is so raw and deep.
Onyx knots a strip of black cloth around Neal’s mouth, tightening it at the base of his skull until the man lets out a strained breath.
Then he pulls the baggy hood of his hoodie over his head to make it less obvious that we’ve gagged him.
Onyx zip-ties Neal’s hands together in front of him and throws a jacket over his hands so no one can see he’s bound.
We haul him out of the chair and drag him down the narrow stairs.
The prospects already have the van door open. One of them grips Neal’s shoulder while the other positions himself inside, ready to manage the bastard during the ride if he gets rowdy. I don’t speak because there is nothing left to say at this point. We are all kind of lost in our own thoughts.
I climb onto my bike, and the others follow suit. Our engines fire to life one after another.
The images on Neal’s screen play on an endless loop in my head. Christina with Katie on her hip, the astronomical bounty amount, the casual way an international corporation put a bounty on her head, like they had a right to. It all stokes my anger to biblical proportions.
The knowledge that she ran from all of that alone for years.
When I think about how hard Christina fought these last few years to survive and keep my daughter safe, my fury and fear wrap around each other until I can no longer tell one from the other.
They could have been captured or killed so easily.
***
The ride is several hours long and it’s late afternoon when we get home.
By the time the clubhouse comes into view, I need to see Christina, to tell her I understand what she went through, why it was hard to trust even me and that I love her.
I need to hold my daughter close and thank God that she survived.
When we reach the gate, two prospects slide it open and wave us through.
Once the gate closes, I park in my spot right in front of the clubhouse and head straight for the family suites. I take the stairs two at a time. I hear brothers moving behind me as they haul Neal towards the basement holding room. Their voices fade when I turn the corner into the hallway.
I make it halfway to my door before Queenie steps out of another suite with a folded blanket in her arms. Her eyes widen when she sees me. Not in fear. In something closer to alarm.
“Slate,” she says carefully, “you’re back early.”
Something is off with the tone of her voice, and it sets my Spidey senses off. “Where’s Christina?”
When my mom doesn’t answer right away, I know something is up.
I take one more step towards her. “Ma, where is she?”
Her lips press together. Her expression already looks apologetic. “She left early this morning.”
Everything inside me goes still. “She what?”
“She said she needed to run down a lead on the case. Rivera went with her.”
My grip tightens at my sides. It feels like all the oxygen has been snatched from the room. “Are you telling me that she left the compound?”
“Yes. She said it was important and promised to be safe. She said she might be gone all day.”
The woman I love is gone. It takes a second for that to settle in my brain. At least we have the fucker who’s been stalking her so that’s one good thing. She’s safe now.
“What about Katie?”
“She’s in your suite, playing with her puppy.”
Queenie takes a small step towards me, smiling encouragingly. “I’m sure she’ll be alright.”
“She’s got a million dollar bounty on her head. We just found out about it.”
My mother’s face crumples. “What? How can that be? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, we got it straight from her stalker’s computer. We also got the asshole, he’s downstairs in the cells. Gonna be having words with him later.” Taking a step backward, I say, “I’m going to go see my daughter for a bit.”
When I walk into my suite, Tessa is sitting on the floor playing with Katie and her puppy. She shoves up from the floor when I walk in. Catching the look on my face, she frowns.
“Everything okay, Slate?”
“Yeah, long day. I’ll be pleased when Christina gets back. I’ve been an asshole and I need to make it up to her.”
Her expression turns sympathetic. “I’m sure she understands. It must have been a shock for you learning about Katie.”
My eyes go to my daughter who’s giggling with the puppy. Despite my mood I start smiling. “I was mad about all the years I missed. But looking at her now, I realize the important thing is the years I still have to enjoy with her. And with Christina, as a family.”