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Her shoulders slumped. “Shit.”

“Any idea what your sister would use?” Nate asked.

“Knowing Rita, it wouldn’t be anything easy. The last time she gave me a password, it contained numbers, upper and lower case letters, and symbols. For something like this, she probably added a haiku, a gang sign, and the blood of a virgin.”

Pinto snorted. “Hatch is here, so the virgin blood won’t be a problem.”

Hatch cuffed the back of Pinto’s head, while the rest of the guys laughed.

“We better let Larissa take care of it.” Nate removed the flash drive from the port and tucked it in his pocket. “I don’t want to accidentally trigger some kind of self-destruct software because we entered the wrong password too many times.”

Dorcas shot him a skeptical look. “That’s really a thing outsideMission: Impossible?”

“Oh, yeah. You’d be amazed at some of the stuff Larissa can do. One time, she created an anti-hacking program where all of the data imploded if the wrong password was entered three times.”

The skepticism on Dorcas’s face was replaced with genuine concern. “What if this has something like that on it? Do you think Larissa can break past it?”

“I don’t know, but if anyone can do it, she can.” That was the truth. The woman was amazing with computers. One time, some asshole in Romania tried to hack her email, and she retaliated by infecting his computer with a virus that wiped out his files and replaced them with pictures of goats. What could he say; she had a weird sense of humor. And justice. “I swear, if she wasn’t my sister, she’d scare me sometimes.”

“She scares the hell out of me. No offense.” Navarre shoved a forkful of pancakes into his mouth.

“None taken.” Nate shifted his focus back to Dorcas. “What do you want to do now?”

She opened her mouth but her answer was cut off by the sound of Austin’s ringtone.

Shit, he’d meant to call his brother first thing this morning to see how Serena was doing, but he’d gotten distracted by the guys, and the pancakes, but mostly by Dorcas. She had a way of scrambling his brain, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

For now, he’d deal with Austin and figure out the rest of it later.

“I better take this.” Nate stood, walked to the edge of the room, and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hey, man, how’s Serena?”

“A little rough around the edges, but I think she’ll be okay.” Austin sounded tired, edgy. The usual. He could really use a vacation. “We cleaned her up last night, and Luther drove out with her this morning.”

That was a relief, and one less thing for Nate to lose sleep over. He only hoped Serena grabbed this opportunity with both hands and ran with it. “Thanks, man. I appreciate you taking care of her.”

“No problem. That’s two you owe me.”

“Two?”

“Yeah. This cat’s an asshole.”

Okay, that wasn’t anywhere on his list of things he’d expected his brother to say. Dorcas had asked Nina and Austin to take care of the kitten while they were out of town. How bad could it possibly be? “Why, what did he do?”

“He sleeps all day and then runs around the house like a spaz all fucking night. And when I got up this morning, he clawed the shit out of my feet as soon as they hit the floor.”

“Maybe he’ll calm down once he gets used to the place.”

“I doubt it. When I fed him, he knocked the bowl over and scattered the food all to fuck and back. Don’t get me started on what he did to the litter box.”

Nate tried to hold back the laugh—but it came out as a snort. “Sorry, man.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just let me know when Dorcas plans to take this demonic little shit home. You’re back in town today, right?”

“Yes and no.” Nate grabbed his can of Coke off the kitchen table and took a swig. “We ran into trouble overnight. I need someone to pick up my truck.”

The line went quiet for a second or two. “What kind of trouble?”

If Austin didn’t know, he hadn’t spoken with Larissa yet. Nate gave him a quick rundown of the prior day’s events, starting with what they found in the storage unit and ending with their stay at Jackson and Navarre’s house. The only thing he left out was the kiss, because that was between him and Dorcas.