Coyle’s fury was palpable—chest puffing and nostrils flaring. She made no move for the safety, and her men stayed in place.

  She poked the gun barrel into my chest. “You’re right, this is a copy. We’ll give you access to the original, but we’re not letting your friends go until you open it.”

  We stared each other down—a game I was getting pretty good at. I decided to press my luck. “At least let the injured people go and let all of us use the restroom. Otherwise, we do nothing.”

  “Good job, Winger,” Dad said. “Even though you’re scaring the crap out of me.”

  The stare-off continued until she finally took a step back, off of Dean, and lowered the gun. “Get me that phone I used before.” Goon One scrambled to fetch it from the floor. “What’s the code for this,” she yelled to Cullen, who was in shock and nonresponsive.

  “I can unlock the phone, but I’ll need mine to do it.” If I could hang on to mine once I was done it might be useful later.

  Coyle eyed me.

  My nervous voice from earlier was gone. I was far more worried for the team than myself.

  “Get it.”

  I helped Dean up before I made my way to my backpack on the table. Goon One kept close watch.

  “Winger, if you can pocket your phone that will give us additional tracking on you.” Defender and I were on the same wavelength. And he was back to sounding more like an agent than a dad.

  I looked at the team while going to the back table. Jessie looked slightly less scared. Everyone watched me like I’d grown an extra head. Could I justify my actions as some sort of survival instinct?

  I returned to Coyle and accessed the app I needed. I reached to take the phone from her, but she didn’t let it go.

  “I’ll hold it. You just do your thing.”

  The app screen displayed the map of the phones that were in range. As I unlocked Cullen’s, the screen flashed, and at the same time, I disabled its locking mode in case we needed it again.

  “Done.” I tried to pocket my phone, but she grabbed my hand.

  “That’s a fancy app. Where’d you get it?” She looked at the screen, which only showed the success message.

  “I made it.”

  “Hack people’s phones often, eh?”

  I shrugged, channeling Dean.

  She grabbed my phone and held it, placing it on top of Cullen’s.

  “Watch them,” she told Goon Two who still covered Jessie and Alice.

  Coyle put her gun into a shoulder holster inside her jacket and put her finger on the button at the bottom of the phone to exit the app.

  “Don’t do that!” I reached out for the phone, but it was too late.

  The screen went red, and a black circle with a slash through it appeared. With the unauthorized touch while the phone was in secure mode, it immediately bricked itself.

  “Why would you do that?” I whined for effect. It sucked the phone was dead, but not the end of the world either.

  “Unlock it.” She threw the phone at me. “I want to see what a boy genius keeps on his phone.”

  “It’s wiped,” I said, keeping up the annoyed tone. “I can only restore it from my home system.”

  That was a lie. It had to go back to the TOS labs to be rebuilt. For security, no one could resurrect a phone from a remote location.

  “Fucking teenagers.” Coyle threw my phone against the wall and it dropped to the ground near the team. “Get these two secured to travel.”

  “Wait. What?” Dean finally snapped out of his daze.

  “You’re coming with us—both of you.” She flipped through Cullen’s unlocked phone and tapped the screen to dial.

  “Sorry about the phone, Winger,” Lorenzo said. “Sounds like you’re going to be taken to the file, which is good. We’ll track you with your chip.”

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Goon Two yanked my hands behind my back. Before I could do anything, I was zip-tied.

  “Winger,” Dad said, “the plan is to let things play out. Crack the file so she knows it’s real and lets you go. We don’t want to crash the place while there are civilians present if we can avoid it. Your first job is to access the list so she can see it, and then to protect Dean and any other civilians in play.”

  I had my orders, and I was expendable in an effort to complete the mission and save others. I couldn’t imagine what it took for Dad to give me those orders.

  I watched Dean get his hands zip-tied and shot him a look to say this would be okay. I wasn’t sure I succeeded, even though I believed it. This scenario was a million times better than what I dealt with in Denver.

  “We’re leaving,” Coyle barked into the phone. “We’re bringing four of these kids with us and that’s not negotiable.” She paused. “We’ve only injured a couple so far, but we’ll do more if we have to.” Another pause. “That’s it. We’ll move when my driver is at the door.”

  “Winger, take the laptop you used,” Lorenzo said. “I’ve put the scripts on it in case you’re cut off from the internet. You can say you wrote them to speed up the work and it’ll be faster to have them than to rewrite them. Plus I’ve got tracker code in the laptop. If you’re on the internet, we’ll find it immediately.”

  Good thinking. That’ll give TOS the cam to watch through too.

  Coyle dropped Cullen’s phone on the table and pulled one from her pocket. “We’re ready. Come to the front door of the building.” Coyle looked at Dean and me. “All right boys, we’re going out the front door and to a black van. You’re going to give us no trouble. To ensure that, we’re going to take these two lovely young women with us.”

  Great. More civilians.

  Alice and Jessie got zip-tied. Alice squirmed, but Jessie talked softly and calmed her down.

  Coyle’s phone buzzed, and she looked at the screen. “Let’s move.” Dean and I were pushed toward the door.

  “I need my laptop,” I said.

  “We’ve got plenty of computers.”

  “I need the scripts I wrote. It’ll be faster to have them.”

  “Fine, bring the fucking laptop.” Coyle pushed us toward the door. Goon Two disconnected the cable from the laptop, closed it, and tucked it under his arm.

  The halls and lobby were clear.

  “Orion here in sector two. I’ve got eyes on Winger and the group.” I didn’t recognize that voice, and I didn’t see anyone but took comfort that someone saw us.

  The black van gave me pause. It’d only been a few months since I’d been snatched off my bike and stuffed into one. At least this time I was, sort of, going by choice.

  We got in and, surprisingly, they left Jessie and Alice on the curb. One less thing to worry about. We sped off and they blindfolded me. I assumed Dean got one too. They didn’t want us to know where we ended up.

  Twenty-Nine

  When the blindfold came off we were inside a house.

  Coyle was right about the computers. There were a lot. The living room and dining room had scores of laptops and desktops on folding tables. No one was working at the terminals. In fact, no one else was present. It didn’t take much imagination to see these machines manned by programmers, or hackers, to do Coyle’s bidding.

  Our zip ties were cut, and Dean no longer looked scared but rather defeated. I had no way to tell him why this was going to be okay.

  Coyle’s phone rang. “Get them set up,” she said to her men as she left the room. “Yes, ma’am?” was all I heard before she went out of earshot.

  Goon Two put my laptop on one of the tables while Goon One nudged us toward the chairs.

  “Get these ready to go,” Goon Two said. I opened the laptop and booted it up. Dean sat at one that was open and running.

  Coyle came back in a few moments with another laptop. She put it on the table in front of us. “The file is the only thing on here. Get to work. Our time is up. The person who bought the list is on the way, and we don’t want her waiting.”

  Why weren’t Dad or Lorenzo commenting? It was major that we could apprehend the person who bought the information.

  “We need to connect to that.” I pointed at the laptop with the file. “Should we use Wi-Fi or do we wire in?”

  “Ivan?” Coyle shouted. A guy who looked to be in his early twenties hurried into the room. He wore black jeans and a T-shirt for a band I’d never ever heard of. “Get these laptops connected.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ivan quickly made the wired connections through a router. It wasn’t clear if we were on the net or not. I’d know that soon enough if Lorenzo told me he could see the laptop.

  “Done.”

  I got to work. The sooner we opened the file, the sooner this would end.

  “Same as before?” Dean asked before I’d made too many keystrokes.

  It was a relief, like a bit of weight lifted off, when he spoke even with the quiver in his voice. At least he wasn’t off in shock somewhere. Hopefully he’d be able to keep his head in the game. While Lorenzo and I had done much of the work to hack the file before, Dean still had an instrumental role. I hated that he had to go through this.

  I examined the file and it looked the same as the one we’d hacked earlier.

  “You remember what you did?”

  He nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

  “You better remember, kid. You do not want Melinda angry.” Coyle moved away from us, muttering, “Life was so much easier when all you had to do was steal papers and kill a courier.”

  Still nothing from Lorenzo, Dad, or anyone else. Something failed. Dad and Lorenzo had talked to me during transport. They tracked the route with my chip and stayed far enough behind that Coyle wouldn’t know she had a tail. There was no apparent reason that comms would fail. But I’d heard nothing since we were brought in the house. Possibly they were being quiet so we could get the work done, but I’d still expect updates on the takedown plan. Something might be blocking the transmission, although the comms were supposed to be resilient to blocks. I had no way to check the connections. The laptop I worked on was offline too, so, until I knew otherwise, I had to assume we were on our own.

  Given the plans I knew about, however, I had to proceed and hope the chip worked to get them to this house.

  I turned to Dean. “Let’s do this.”

  We got to work. I activated the scripts and began the tasks I needed to do. With the clock ticking, I didn’t hook into Dean’s laptop to keep tabs on him. I simply checked in verbally from time to time.

  Just before the half hour mark, I had the file name displayed like we had before.

  current.dbs

  “It’s done,” I said. Dean gave me a nod.

  Coyle got so close she bumped my chair and I felt her press in against the back of my head.

  She reached around me and typed in the commands to open the file. Organization names, usernames, passwords, and other security information scrolled up the screen. The file contained a huge amount of data.

  “No,” Dean said quietly while he typed a few keys on his keyboard. “This isn’t right.”

  Sparks flew from the laptop we were connected to and the data on my screen disappeared.

  “What did you do?” Coyle bellowed.

  “Whatever that is, you’re not supposed to have it.” Dean was defiant and it made me proud, but this was so far off any script that I needed to think fast to catch up.

  The computer with the list continued to spark and hiss, and the power in the house flickered.

  Coyle raised her gun to Dean’s head. “Fix it.”

  “It’s unstoppable until that computer is fried,” Dean said, calmer than I’d heard him in hours.

  The smell of melting plastic filled the room and smoke rose from the laptop. I’d never heard a computer screech like that. Goon One unplugged it from the outlet, but given the laptop had a full charge, it didn’t turn off. Goon Two threw his jacket over it in an effort to control the smoke.

  Coyle’s thumb released the safety. “Don’t test me, boy.” Her voice quaked with anger.

  Flames crept around the edges of the jacket, and then a loud pop sounded, though it was muffled under the covering. There were several ways Dean could fry the laptop, and I appreciated he wanted to do something to stop this. The men worked quickly to put out the fire that had engulfed the coat.

  With Coyle’s back to me and the goons distracted by the fire, I slowly closed the laptop I’d used and detached the ethernet cable. In a burst of movement, I stood and slammed the laptop into Coyle’s head. It mimicked the move I almost used on Coach during the practice drill. This time there was no safety word. I hit her with everything I had. She stumbled, holding her head with her free hand. Dean stepped back so Coyle wouldn’t run into him. I dropped the laptop. Coyle staggered but I grabbed and spun her around. She needed to be disarmed. I took her wrist and twisted the same way she had Cullen’s. Feeling the bones crunch in my grip was horrible. She shrieked and released the gun. She wavered and I let her go so she’d drop to the floor. I kicked the gun and it skittered under a table out of reach.

  Her goons didn’t seem to know what to do—put out the fire or help Coyle. Maybe no one had ever challenged her quite like this before, so they were dumbfounded.

  The front door crashed in and people swarmed the foyer. The backdoor may have been breached too, judging by the noise elsewhere in the house. Dean yelped and went pale as if his courage from moments ago drained away.

  “Get down!” I screamed at Dean while men entered with weapons drawn.

  Gunshots rang out. I recoiled from a bullet hitting me in the left shoulder. I cried out from the pain and dropped to a crouch to shield myself behind my chair. I saw someone in a suit, standing in the entryway, collapse to the floor, holding his arm.

  “Winger?” Dad was back in my ear after the shooting stopped.

  “Winger, here.” I kept my voice soft, even though I doubted I’d be heard over the shouting. There were more gunshots upstairs and someone, who looked like he could’ve been another one of the goons, tumbled down the stairs. A police officer intercepted him.

  Dean hid under a table. He sat, knees pulled up and hands over his head. It reminded me of the way we were told to sit for tornado drills in elementary school.

  Goon One and Goon Two were disarmed and on the ground, restrained.

  Two officers were over Coyle, who lay unconscious, one wrist curved at an odd angle.

  “Eyes on Winger. He’s injured, but conscious.” I recognized the low voice as Orion.

  Cops along with women and men in suits swarmed the room. It was impossible to tell who was who.

  I adjusted to sit cross-legged. Warm blood trickled down my left arm and the smell gagged me. I breathed through my mouth as much as possible. I didn’t look at the wound because that would only make me feel worse. I had to know what Dean had done so Lorenzo could hear it.

  “Shit, Theo. You okay?” Dean was suddenly at my side. When did he even look up, much less move?

  “Been better.” I pressed my right hand against my shoulder to try to stop the bleeding despite the pain. “What’d you do?”

  “I knew you didn’t need me to hack the file. You mostly did it on your own before. So I worked up a way to destroy it. I s’pose it worked out good these guys decided to show up.”

  “Well done.” Wooziness hit me hard. Shock.

  “Heard that, Winger.” I loved hearing Lorenzo’s voice again. “We’ll secure all the laptops. We’ve got agents in there, which you probably already figured out.”

  “We need to get you guys out of here,” a cop said, approaching with his partner. He was on comms so I heard the voice with a slight delay in my ear. “We’ve got a stretcher coming in.”

  He kneeled and moved my hand so he could press gauze against the wound. His extra pressure sent shockwaves of agony down my arm and across my back. “I’m Officer Morrison. I’ll be with you at the hospital until your parents can get there.”

  “Winger, Morrison is Drummer Boy. You’re good with him.” Dad was on hand with the important information. Why did he sound distant, though?

  I looked at Morrison and nodded.

  “Let’s bag up these computers,” said an officer in a CSI vest.

  “Do you have jurisdiction here?” Morrison asked, looking up.

  “CSI Conolly.” She flashed a badge.

  “Winger, Drummer Boy, Conolly is also with us along with her entire team. She’s Dragonfly. She’s not on this comm channel to keep it clearer.”

  “Very good,” Morrison said. I leaned into him and couldn’t right myself. “Whoa there. Let’s lay you down.”

  Before I knew it, I was lying on my back. I craned my head so I could see Dean. I needed to keep an eye on him.

  “Which computers were you boys on?” Conolly asked.

  “He used, um, that one.” Dean pointed to the one I’d dropped after I’d hit Coyle. He stuttered over some of the words. “I was here. That one,” he said, pointing at the charred machine, “had the file on it.”

  I wanted to reach out. Maybe squeeze his arm to offer support. I felt too weak to lift my good arm, though.

  “Someone did a number on this.” She walked over and looked at the melted plastic.

  When was the fire put out? I hadn’t paid as much attention as I should’ve.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” Dean said with a slight smile despite the fact it looked like he was shaking.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” the officer with Dean said. He flinched when the woman reached for him. “Your parents are waiting back at the university.”

  Two medics brought a stretcher in. They lowered it and lifted me on to it.

  “Wait.” Dean stopped along with his escort. He came over as the stretcher was raised to take me out. “Thank you. You saved my life. She would’ve shot me for sure. It was insane you beaned her with the laptop.”

  “You were pretty insane too.” Dizziness rolled through me. I sounded weird. Slurred.

  “We should get him to the hospital,” someone said. Who was that?

  They rolled me out. Morrison was at my side. He got into the ambulance and sat next to me. I saw Dean get into a police car.