Page 50 of Baby Take Me Home

Translation: There was good stuff in there, important information we needed. I wasn’t leaving the room without it.

Two backup hard drives were easy enough to find inside locked desk drawers. Unlike Ashlee’s inexperienced fumbling a couple of weeks ago, my lock-picking skills were quick and precise. It only took a few minutes for all three tagged devices to be copied and sent out to our cloud, where Alder was pulling in the data.

“Serious encryption,” she said. “We expected that. I can make out some phrases already, though. Shit, guys, this is the mother lode!”

“Does it mention the organization by name?” I whispered into my comms.

“No, but by description, and names of key players.” She whistled. “Shipping manifestos. Illegal bank transfers. God knows what else we’ll find by the time the offsite team gets it all decoded.”

We had Luka. If there was half as much incriminating data in those files as we suspected, we’d be able to issue arrest warrants by Monday, and the FBI would take him and other Carbonados masterminds into custody. Ashlee would be safe and free. And if all the stars aligned—and would move heaven and hell to make sure they did—we’d cut off the head of the Carbonados within a month.

I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. “Anything about Kovac’s high-level protectors?” I asked. That data was vital to drive a stake through the organization’s heart and kill it for good.

“No,” Jensen answered. “We expect that to be in the safe. It’s inside the closet.”

I pulled open the closet door. On the middle shelf, between stacks of office supplies, was a small and unassuming safe, but we knew it was built of reinforced steel, and we’d just learned it was protected by electronic security that was giving our world-class hacker a headache. Every indicator light on the safe’s front panel was still bright red. “Jensen—”

“Counting down to open in three, two, one.”

The panel lights turned green. I turned the knob and pulled open the door. I hesitated for a few seconds and listened for footsteps or shouting.

“Silent alarms were knocked out when we took down the power,” Jensen assured me.

I pulled out my pen light to inspect the safe’s contents. A couple of stacks of cash, a brick of something that was probably cocaine or heroin. None of that was on my warrant or my wish list. There were a few documents, though. I pulled out the papers and spotted a small, square metal disk they’d been covering. “I think I have the remaining hard drive.”

This time, Jensen walked me through affixing the plastic disk, which had to be placed very precisely on this particular device.

“Got it,” he announced, followed seconds later by, “Fuck me.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Problem?”

“Not for long, I hope.” He tapped on his keyboard so hard, I could hear it through my comms. “Embedded firewall. This must have some super-sensitive shit on it, given the level of complexity.” He was silent except for his typing for another minute.

I scanned the documents. Nothing earth-shattering, but I snapped pictures of them with my phone, transferred them to Alder, and then deleted them.

“Shit,” Jensen muttered.

I didn’t interrupt him again, but I glanced at my watch. I switched over to the private comms between Penn and me. “How’s my time looking?”

“Not good. I want you out of there in two minutes.”

I pressed my lips together. No need to argue until it was absolutely necessary.

“I can hear you thinking,” Penn said, “and while I’m not the boss of you, I’m strongly advising you get your ass out of there in one minute and fifty-five seconds.”

“More bad news,” Jensen said on the main channel. “This is not a quick job.”

I could hear multiple expletives in my ear. “How long?”

“Could be as long as an hour,” Jensen answered.

“That guard will be awake in the next ten minutes,” Penn said on the main channel.

“I can tranq him again,” I said. “Multiple times, if necessary.”

“You don’t have enough darts with you to buy an hour,” Samantha said.

I stared down at the hard drive that was about to derail our operation. “I’ll go with the good old-fashioned knockout, then. I’ll stay as long as it takes.”