“Mierda,” I hissed as I pushed back from my desk and rubbed my eyes. Goddamn contacts. I tipped my head back and squeezed some drops into my eyes.
We should have expected Volpe to booby-trap the club. That was on me for not watching the club feeds long enough prior to the meeting. I made a mental note to go back through the security footage to see how and when Volpe even planted them, but that could happen after I got a lock on his location. We thought we had the upper hand because of our coordination with Makarov and Byrne, but clearly, Volpe outwitted us. That was the last time I let it happen.
But that wasn’t even what I was the most pissed off about.
When he blew those explosives, the camera feeds had shorted. I was too goddamn distracted by worry and fear for Leona’s and Ryuji’s safety that it completely slipped my mind toget them up and running. First mistake. Ineverlet distractions impact my ability to do my job.
Then, instead of staying inside the van and paying attention, I ran inside with Caspian. I missed Volpe’s escape. So I sent Makarov on his trail instead. Second mistake.
When we got back to the van, and back to the cameras, Makarov had lost him. I’d gotten the surrounding feeds back up and running, but all their data was gone. Wiped.
Volpe could not have wiped that footage himself. He had help—and I swore to fucking God, that help would not outsmart me.
It had been twenty minutes at the most, and he slipped through my fingers like sand.
My hands returned to the keyboard, and I kept combing, widening my search radius outward from the club’s epicenter.
I should have known. I should have expected. My performance tonight did not match up to the skills I knew I had, and that was going to get one of us killed. If that happened, Leona wouldn’t trust me. My brothers would hate me. Everything would come crashing down.
Once I could locate even a hint of a trail, I could start thinking about who exactly was outmaneuvering me. Who did Volpe have on his side that could wipe these cameras faster than I could recover the data?
“Ciel?” A mess of red hair peeked its head inside my door.
“Leona,” I croaked. My throat was dry as fuck. I gulped down some of the third lukewarm energy drink on my desk. “Come in.”
Anxiety tightened my chest, and my leg started bouncing. I had failed her tonight. I was the weakest link. And my past had taught me that messing up had consequences. The scars on my back from being whipped for gathering incorrect data on a recon job for the cartel I grew up in had proven that.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I lied. She didn’t need to know I was going in circles. My eyes were crossing, my body was exhausted, but I couldn’t bring myself to step away from the keyboard until Volpe was found.
Her hip leaned against my computer desk, knocking some papers to the side with a yawn. “It’s 5 o‘clock in the morning.”
I glanced at the clock in the corner of my screen. Every second that passed was more time that Volpe had to bury his trail.
My eyes jumped across the windows I had open, but even after widening the search radius, I still couldn’t find any footage from the time of the explosion and the following thirty minutes. The files skipped ahead as if those thirty minutes no longer existed. But the file itself showed no signs of editing or tampering. Someone—askilledsomeone—had done extensive work to pull off this kind of data removal across so many camera feeds and so quickly.
The data wipes didn’t even follow any specific pattern—as if following Max’s trail. Sometimes people only wiped the literal path a mark took, making it exceedingly clear where to look. But nope. It waseverythingin the surrounding area. I’d started looking at city backup files, but someone had wiped even those.
“Have you slept?” Leona reached her hand up to my cheek and I flinched away. She dropped her hand.
“No.” I had to focus. “Have you?”
“Ryuji and I fell asleep on the couch. He’s still sleeping.”
“I’m glad you got to rest. How are you feeling?” Maybe some data got pushed to the state servers before it was wiped. I pulled up my backdoor and logged in.
She bit her lip, ignoring my question. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s twice now, Ciel.” Her tone went hard, and I looked up at her frown. The lamp on my desk paired with the light from my computers cast a harsh glow over her disappointed face.
I blinked. “What?”
“That’s twice you’ve lied to me since I came in here.”
My hand balled into a fist against my keyboard. If I could just focus, I could find him. I knew it. Nobody could outthink me forever. My brain felt like it was overclocked, but at the same time, my body couldn’t keep up. Everything was more sluggish than normal, yet my brain flicked from thought to thought.
