“We found him.” A smile broke out on my face, and my heart thundered. We found him, but he lookedreallyshitty. And now they were moving him? It honestly did not bode well.
Leona was so tense beside me that she was practically vibrating. I started bouncing my leg to help keep me focused on the computer instead of the heat she emanated next to me.
“Let’s go get him.” She started to pull away, but I reached out to grab her wrist.
“Wait, we need to know where they’re headed.”
As she watched the computer screens, anxiously shifting from foot to foot, I texted Wynn that we had a lock on Caspian’s location. He instantly replied that he was in the gym trying to talk to Ryu, but he’d be up shortly.
I locked the feeds on the convoy as they traveled through the city toward Long Island. We were watching a recording of past events, so I fast-forwarded everything until we hit real-time and landed on the SUVs parked at a mansion in an affluent neighborhood.
“He’s at my fucking house,” Leona breathed, the air tickling my neck. My jaw clenched. “He brought Cas tomyhouse. What the hell are they doingthere?”
“Let’s find out,” I said as I started typing. “You have wifi?”
She nodded. “I can give you the password if you need it. It’s supposed to be super secure.”
“I don’t,” I said, quickly breaking into the house’s security through the wifi network. Secure, my ass. This was child’s play. Not at all at the levels I’d expect for the head of a mafia, who should be taking much greater care of the security of his home. It was almost negligent.
Once I got the feeds from the house’s security cameras, we watched as the SUVs unloaded and they dragged Caspian inside. Max took a phone call, but I couldn’t lock on any audio. Couldn’t even get a ping on who he was talking to without directly hacking his phone, and so far, I’d had no luck.Heat least knew how to keep his shit safe. But it wouldn’t protect him forever.
Shortly after his call concluded, he disappeared inside the house, with two men following close behind.
Wynn opened the door to my room and walked inside. “Hey. Everything okay?”
“Wynn, we have to go get him,” Leona urged as she turned to face him. “We know where he is. It’s my house. We can get in and out quickly. Nobody knows that house better than me.”
I locked eyes with Wynn. I wouldn’t be the one who told her, so I swiveled my chair back around and pretended to look busy again.
“What?” She glanced between us. “What is it?”
Wynn braced one hand against his hip and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. “We can’t rush in there. Rescue missions require time and planning.”
“Cas might nothavetime.”
“I understand. And we will get him back, I promise,” Wynn reassured her. I stared at my fingernails, unwilling to make such promises. Broken promises felt like shit; I knew from first-hand experience. It was much easier to say nothing. “But we have to be patient.”
She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled sharply. “I am running out of patience.”
He looped an arm around her neck and pulled her against his chest. After a second, she relaxed against him and wound her arms around his middle. The easy contact between them filled me with envy. Not so much thejealouskind, but thefear of missing outkind.
“Just a little while longer.”
Wynn locked eyes with me over her head and mouthed,Run it.
I nodded.
“Run it” meantrun the scenario. Play out the options. Make a plan. Calculate our chances of success.
It was the first step in completing any contract we took on. We had to be assured of our success before we took action, or else we’d drop the contract.
First, I used my programs to form suggested plans of attack based on available data like entry/exit points, enemy combatants, known weapons, and more. We’d have a high chance of success since we had access to the cameras, but we would be significantly outnumbered, which usually skewed the results toward failure. Either way, once we had a plan, we’d go through every failure point until the program’s simulation ran flawlessly.
The problem was that it took time.
Leona would have to be patient.
“How long, Wynn?” she mumbled against his chest. His hand gently, almost hesitatingly, smoothed down her hair. My fingers twitched.
