Page 22 of Mile High With the Bikers (Screaming Eagles MC #10)

RORY

“No,” I grumble.

Shrapnel slides my coffee farther and farther away until I snatch it back. “But?”

Holding the warm mug in my hands gives me something to focus on.

I swirl the coffee gently, watching it move.

“Before I say anything, you guys have to realize that if my father finds out that I'm telling you any of this, he’ll… actually, I don’t know what he’ll do.

A couple years ago I would’ve said that he’d threaten to ruin you.

Find your loans and buy them up to kick you off the land. Stuff like that.”

Diesel bristles. “And these days he’d do what, exactly? We've gone up against tougher opponents than him, I fucking guarantee it.”

“Money can buy almost anything if you’re willing to use it in the right places,” Bull says in an uncharacteristically serious tone.

“That’s the thing. He’s always used money for money’s sake, but Dad goes through these phases. I was one of them, when he was trying to craft the perfect minion.”

“Did he succeed?” Diesel asks.

“What do you think?”

His pause makes my chest hurt. “I think we don’t know each other well enough to answer that yet.”

Shrapnel nods. “If you don’t like that answer, how about you start changing it? We’re on your fucking side until you prove otherwise, honey, but we didn’t even know your name until yesterday, Florence .”

“Oh God, can you not call me that?” I shudder.

“It was my grandmother’s name. Mom only picked it because she thought it would make Dad feel more obligated to—hey, wait a second.

I’m not going to get real name shamed by Bull, Diesel and Shrapnel.

My name is Rory. That’s the one I picked for myself and it’s what counts. ”

Instead of getting annoyed, he actually laughs. “Fair. I’ll give you that one.”

“Aaaaanyway, he didn’t really succeed, but I did well enough that it kept him entertained until the next thing caught his attention.

These days he’s obsessed with pulling humanity into the future.

He’s pouring money into so many different fields, and some of it is really great, but it frustrates him that things could go faster if everyone just worked together. ”

“And that’s bad?” Bull asks. His arms are crossed in front of his chest, showing off the thick muscles in his forearms.

“No? Yes? It’s complicated.” I take a long drag from my coffee mug, willing the caffeine to clear my head because there’s a lot to cover and not a lot of time. “Nothing I say goes past us, okay?”

They don’t look happy about that. Diesel is the one to answer. “I can promise that we’ll keep our lips sealed about anything that doesn’t threaten the club, those we’re loyal to, or the people under our protection.”

Shrapnel nods. “We know how to keep our mouths shut.”

“Think hard, angel. I’m going to be straight with you.

If your secrets are going to turn around and bite us in the ass, then you need to either tell us what’s going on, or we’ll go to Eagle-eye and explain that this situation isn’t working out and send you on your way.

We can’t protect you if you’re aiming a gun at our heads and we don’t even fucking know it.

” Bull’s voice is steady, and I don’t doubt he means every word.

I nod, more to myself than to them. If they were the kind of men who would watch their friends get hurt because someone they just met asked nicely, I don’t think they'd be the ones I wanted to confide in.

“Okay. The thing is, I have my own opinions and this pesky free will that annoys Dad so much, but my mother signed over custody to him when I was thirteen and he spent the next five years fine tuning my education. At first it was great. I loved having tutors that let me advance as fast as I wanted and didn’t make me spend all my time memorizing dates, or writing essays about pointless stuff.

I could focus on what I liked: math and computers.

I'm really good at visualizing advanced data structures and encryption algorithms.”

Shrapnel furrows his brows. “You just said a bunch of words, and I understood some of them.”

“She’s a nerd,” Bull clarifies with a snort.

“Thanks, I got that part.”

“More of a geek, really, but yeah.” I rack my brain, trying to explain it simply.

These guys aren’t stupid, but this stuff is like a foreign language.

If you don’t know Chinese, speaking slower or louder doesn’t help.

“Basically, it means I'm really good at figuring out how to build certain types of computer programs. The types that are good at shredding security software.”

“Aw, she’s a sexy little criminal.” Diesel ruffles my hair. “So smart, and yet she tried to drink toe to toe with two biker sluts at a bar.”

I swat his hands away. “No! It’s just that in order to learn how to keep things safe, someone needs to learn how to break them.”

“Angel, look around. I’m not throwing stones. We’re inside the fucking glass house together. The world doesn’t always fit into neat little boxes.”

“I—”

Bull’s right. I don’t know exactly what a motorcycle club like the Screaming Eagles does, but I know it’s not all parties and wild sex.

They were on my father’s plane in the first place because a literal mob boss called in a favor.

I was probably not supposed to know, but doing a little searching on the name Luca Giordano gave me enough to make some good guesses.

This compound might not be in the fanciest part of town, but it takes up an entire city block. That doesn’t come cheap.

“Okay, it all boils down to this theory that ultimately, society needs transparency and information to be freely available in order to achieve the type of progress that people like my father want.

About a year and a half ago, Dad put me on one of his personal projects.

He named it Hermes after the Greek god of messages and thieves.

We designed an algorithm that sort of sidesteps traditional cryptography, and rearranges the whole dataset of possible access parameters into a data structure that can be solved in a way where access is inevitable.

It's a similar concept to quantum computing, but we found a way to do it on more traditional hardware. In a nutshell.”

All three of them look at me like I just fell from the moon.

But then Bull cocks his head. “You made a fancy key that can fit into everybody’s locks.”

“Yeah, actually. Pretty much. See, with traditional encryption, you need to?—”

Shrapnel puts a finger against my lips. “I love that you’re smart, and if you wanna roleplay slutty scientist with me later, I’m all for it, but can we skip to the part where the club is at risk?”

“Dad really believes in this stuff, but power and money are games for him. The people on that plane were all given a taste of the damage Hermes can do. We walked into an investment firm and split it open in front of a bunch of rich tech people and powerful white collar criminals.” A shudder goes through me and my face tightens. “It worked well. Too well.”

“How?” Bull shifts out of his chair to right in front of me, putting his big hand on my thigh and squeezing in comfort.

I tell them the whole deal about Howard Westminster, how Dad’s need to send a little taunt to the company about our hack exposed Westminster’s secrets, and what it made him do.

I look away. “So I guess I am a criminal. I helped break into a secure network and was an accessory to a man’s death.

You have to understand. I spend my days in the lab, or at home.

I knew Hermes was dangerous, but it felt very theoretical until I watched it get aimed and fired. ”

Shrapnel runs a hand over his shoulder where I’ve seen and felt the scarring.

“It's not your damn fault. It’s what you were trained for. It’s how training works.

Puts layers between things, and then gets you so used to your part that you stop seeing how everything fits together until there’s blood on your hands.

We've all done things with consequences, but you’ll make yourself crazy trying to take responsibility for how other people react to shit.

That sour feeling in your gut? It doesn’t mean you’re guilty, it means you’re fucking human. ”

I nod, not entirely sure I’m ready to believe it. “Dad wants to run another demonstration. He believes it’s going to help him figure out who’s responsible for what happened on the plane.”

“And he needs your help?” Bull asks.

“The way Hermes works, it needs to have access to the network, and right now the production version is on my laptop, which is?—”

“In your room in the fucking clubhouse,” Diesel completes with a snarl. “And on our network.”

“Exactly. My laptop needs to be up and running, waiting for his signal.”

“Can't you leave it off? Disable it somehow? Tell him it broke.”

“Yes, but everyone there knows it works. We proved that. They just want to see it for themselves. Plus, humiliation would just make Dad unpredictable. He’s totally obsessed with becoming the face of the future, and I think he’s getting a weird thrill out of stepping outside the law to do it.”

Diesel shrugs. “If you can’t disarm the bomb, minimize damage, right?”

“Yeah, can we just take it somewhere else?” Shrapnel asks.

I can’t believe I didn’t think about that. Sometimes the simplest is the best. “Um, yeah. It just needs to be online and in range of a network I can point it at.”

“Then let’s get this damn thing out of here. If he absolutely needs to hack something, he can have fun with some shitty public network.”

“I'm still a security risk for you guys, though. Eagle-eye should know that Dad isn’t targeting you specifically, but he doesn’t care if you get caught in the crossfire.”

Bull’s smile looks downright scary. “Oh don’t worry, we’ll make sure to pass on the message.”