Page 26 of Jezebel’s Liberation (Hellfire Hackers #1)

“ W hat about Stewart?”

My gut clenches at Demon’s question. He’s trembling beneath my hand that’s on his back, and his unease is causing Jez to worry. Seeing the two of them like this makes my blood boil, and it takes everything in me not to let my rage show.

“Stewart?” Bela asks, but before anyone can answer, she snaps her fingers. “Oh, wait… Are you talking about Stewart Crane?”

“The one and only,” Demon snaps.

“What about him?” Jinx asks. “He’s a nobody.”

“Yeah, about that,” Jez begins. “He’s more than an acquaintance of Ted’s.”

Diabla narrows her eyes. “That sounds ominous.”

“He’s a fucking pedophile bastard who needs to die,” I say through gritted teeth, earning me a sharp look from Demon and Jez. “What? He is, and he does.”

“Prospect’s right,” Malice adds. “Whatever you thought you knew about good ol’ Stewie, forget it because the information you have is likely nowhere near the information you need.”

“Someone care to fill me in?” Soul asks.

“No,” Demon barks, and when Prez glares at him, he sighs. “Sorry. Um…”

“We’ll start doing a deeper dive into Stewart,” Jez begins, looking at her brother. “And you’ll just have to trust me that you’ll get the info you need.”

Grim lifts his hands, and Malice translates. “I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Jez snaps, her signing jerky. “But you have to respect it.”

The big guy stalks toward her, and when Demon and I move to stand between them, she puts her arms out to stop us. Grim narrows his eyes on us both, but I swear I see a ghost of a smile before he masks it.

“You trust them?” Malice says as Grim signs with his gaze on Jez. “You trust both of them with your life?”

“Yes,” she responds without hesitation.

He nods. “Good enough for me.” Then he turns and stalks out of the room.

Jez exhales and refocuses on her brother. “My team really needs to get to work, so if you don’t mind…”

Soul opens his mouth to argue, but Malice doesn’t give him a chance. “We’ll be around if you need us.”

“Are you se?—”

“You need to leave,” Demon says, his tone hard. “If I have any shot at making Stewart pay, then I need Jez and her team to do what they do.”

Soul stares at him for a long time, and I can practically see the thought bubbles rising from his head full of questions.

It’s clear that it’s not in his nature to take orders from anyone, and I get that.

He is the president, after all. But he must sense that he’s dangerously close to crossing a line he won’t be able to uncross because he strides toward Jez and pulls her into his arms for a hug.

“Just… Be careful, okay?” he says.

“Always,” she replies.

Once Soul, Malice, and the rest of the club leave the room, Jez’s entire demeanor shifts from a woman trying to prove herself to the confident boss-bitch I know her to be.

“Okay, hackers, time to work,” she states as she sits in her chair.

For the next two hours, the only sounds in the room are the clacking of keyboards and Demon’s occasional muttered curse when he can’t stop himself from looking at a monitor.

“I think I got something,” Jinx says, breaking the silence.

Demon rushes to stand behind her chair. “What is it?”

“Maybe nothing,” she says as she taps a few keys to mirror her screen on a larger monitor we can all see.

“But I did a search of church records to see if we could find any locations where Crane operated or where he might feel comfortable. Most churches have digitized their records over the last decade or so, and I found a church back east with Crane’s name on the roster. ”

“Okay, but how is this helpful?” I ask. “We know he finds victims in churches, so of course we’re going to find his name.”

“True, but I wasn’t expecting to find Stewart Crane and our friend, Agent Betts, listed as members of the same church.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I bark.

“Who’s Agent Betts?” Demon asks, his eyes darting from the screen to me.

Thrusting a hand through my hair, I reply, “Agent Todd Betts with the FBI is a target I was assigned to handle.”

“He’s fucking dirty, but we never found anything indicating he’s a pedo,” Diabla adds. “Most of his sins have to do with covering up murders and shit for the mob.”

“Like I said,” Jinx states. “Could be nothing. Just a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Demon snaps.

“Yeah, neither do I,” Jez agrees and lifts her gaze to mine. “When you went off book and messed with Betts, did you find anything that was suspicious?”

“Wait, you went off-book?” Diabla demands.

I shrug. “Sure did. And don’t give me any bullshit about lying because you do too when the mood strikes.”

“Well…” She huffs out a breath. “Yeah, fine.”

“To answer your question, no, I didn’t find anything that raised any red flags beyond what we already knew,” I tell Jez. “But I was focused on his office. Maybe there’s incriminating shit at his home.”

“Okay, so now what?” Demon asks, his fury overriding his earlier panic.

“Now we?—”

Music blares from the speakers, and my shoulders stiffen as the tune from ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ fills the room. When the lyrics begin, they’re being sung by what sounds like a child, but the voice is haunting.

“Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes?—”

The music stops, and every computer screen in the room goes dark. A split-second later, words pop up on the large monitor, and I grit my teeth at the message.

You’re gonna fall down.

Back off or the only ashes will be from the remnants of your burned bodies.

“What the fuck?” Loki mutters.

“I thought you said we were unhackable,” Bela complains.

“We are,” Jez snaps, her entire focus on her keyboard as she tries to find the source of the hack.

The others are doing the same. “Or we should be.” Rage laces her words, and I move to stand behind her at the same time Demon does.

When we each place a hand on her shoulder, she shudders out a breath.

“Fuck, I even changed all the biometric locks here at the clubhouse so no one but the seven of us could get into this room when it’s locked. ”

“What about my room?” Demon asks, and I have a feeling he’s trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, yeah. I did that, too. Only the three of us can get in there.” She tilts her head back and grins at us. “But I can’t think about that right now. We need to figure this out.”

“Uh, Jez?” Loki says, and all eyes shift to her.

“What?”

“I found some code, but I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Whaddya mean?” I ask.

“The code itself is pretty basic hacker shit,” she explains. “But there’s one line that seems to have more code embedded in the letters somehow.”

“What’s the line? Anything you recognize?”

“I recognize it, but not in this context,” Loki admits.

“What’s the line?” Demon asks.

“ Ring Around the Rosie.”

“They’re fucking with us,” Demon seethes, striding to the door as if he’ll explode if he doesn’t put some distance between him and… this.

“Yeah, but who’s ‘they’?” Bela asks quietly.

Jez and I watch as a piece of our souls disappears from the room. She goes to stand, but I urge her to remain where she is.

“We won’t be any good to him if we don’t have some answers,” I tell her.

“I know,” she mutters.

“How ‘bout I go check on him, and you stay here and keep working? I’ll come back as soon as I know he’s okay.”

She hesitates for a moment but finally nods. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” I say, walking to the door.

“Tell him…” When she pauses, I glance over my shoulder. “Tell him that we’re gonna get these bastards. We won’t stop until we do.”