Page 27 of One Cry Too Loud (Coastal Crime Unit #9)

T he exhaust fans roared above us, signaling a clock that was ticking down to our demise.

The air, as Nefarious had promised, was thinning out.

Each breath was harder than the last, and the hacker from hell was laughing over the speakers, his terrible voice searing into our ears and our minds.

None of that was what was haunting me at that moment, though.

The thing that hit me the hardest, the thing I knew would live with me for the rest of my life, should we survive this, was the look on Charlie’s face.

Charlie was an impressive man, one of the most impressive I had ever met.

That was saying something, as my life had been full of impressive human beings.

There was something about Charlie that differentiated him from the others, though.

Charlie, it always seemed to me, was as much a machine as he was a man.

He got the job done, he did it expertly, and he did it seemingly without breaking much of a sweat.

There was something else too, though. For all the high stakes and high pressure situations the man and I had found ourselves in, I had rarely seen his emotions come to the surface.

I could count the times he had raised his voice on one hand before all of this started.

He never broke. He always found a way to separate what he was feeling from what was going on around him.

That was, until right this minute.

The look on Charlie’s face now spoke only of defeat. He was no longer the man who worked his ass off to find his way out of whatever garbage heap had fallen in him that day. He was too distraught to fight. One look at that little boy had dashed all his resolve.

“I’m surprised you recognize him,” Nefarious said, going directly from his cackle to what was almost certainly a snide insult.

“He’s my nephew, you sadistic trash! Of course, I recognize him,” Charlie said, his terrified eyes following every move the child made on the screen.

“Don’t say that like you know him,” Nefarious said. “You’ve never been in the same country as the boy, let alone the same room.”

My eyes widened. It was not something that Nefarious missed.

“Does that surprise you, Jack?” The Hacker asked. “That your friend here would allow his own nephew to grow up without knowing him, without knowing his own mother?”

“That’s not how it is!” Charlie said. “That’s not-”

“Don’t defend yourself to him,” I said, placing a hand on Charlie's shoulder as I gasped for breath. The air was growing thinner by the moment. “You don’t have to do that.”

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” Nefarious asked. “He didn’t tell you what happened to the boy’s mother, to his sister?”

“He doesn’t have to tell me anything,” I answered, keeping my eyes on Charlie, whose own eyes were on the screens, on his nephew.

“You’re right. He doesn’t have to tell you, because I’m going to let you hear it for yourself,” Nefarious answered.

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, a dark, new horror filling his voice.

Again, instead of answering, the room filled with the sound of a ringing phone. Quickly, there was an answer.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

I heard a familiar voice after that. It was Charlie’s voice.

“It’s my sister,” Charlie said, his voice as booming as it was shaky.

“I couldn’t get her to answer the phone.

So, I came over. She’s unconscious on the floor next to some open pill bottles.

” There were tears in his words as he continued.

“She just had a baby and she was depressed about everything, but I didn’t think she would do this!

You have to help me! You have to help me wake her u-”

The call cut off just as quickly as I realized what was going on.

Charlie’s sister had tried to kill herself.

Given the way he always spoke about her in the past tense and the rawness around any mention of her, I figured that she had probably succeeded, and this bastard was playing the 911 call of that horrible night for all of us to hear.

“I’ll kill him Charlie,” Nefarious said.

“You’ll die first, of course. By my estimation, you’ve only got a couple of seconds, but you’ll die knowing that the last piece of your sister alive on this earth will soon follow you to the grave.

It’ll be the last thought that ever graces your mind.

” There was the slightest pause and then he continued.

“Unless, of course, one of you kills the other.”

Charlie looked at me for what seemed like an eternity but probably wasn’t even a whole second. He lifted the gun.

My body tensed, but then he turned it to himself. “Only one of us has to die, Jack. That boy’s name is Walker. He lives up in Alberta now with a good family who deserve him. You keep him safe.”

“Charlie!” I said as loudly as I could as the lack of air started to cause my lungs to burn. “Charlie, don’t do this!”

“And tell-” He gasped. “Tell Holly I’m so, so sor-”

“Hey there, party people. Ready to change the rules a bit,” a cocky voice sounded through the room. I had never been happy to hear Tag’s obnoxious twang before, but I was sure as hell happy to hear it now.

“What is this?” Nefarious asked, and for the first time, I heard hesitation in his voice.

“This is what happens when you underestimate me,” Tag answered. “Don’t feel sore about it, though. You’re not the only one. These guys didn’t think I had it in me either.”

“How did you get into my system?” Nefarious asked. Anger was taking the place of hesitation in his words now.

“With style,” Tag said. “You want any other information, you gotta pay for it. That’s proprietary.”

“Tyler Allen Garrison. You will pay for this,” Nefarious said.

“Big deal. You know my name. Gonna tell me my birthday next? Should I send you a link to the gift registry?”

“I’ll kill everyone you’ve ever loved,” Nefarious replied.

“Too late,” Tag said. “Besdies, if you really knew me, you’d know that the threat of a computer virus would be much more effective than-”

“I can do that too, especially since I just found out how you got through,” Nefarious said. “Let me close this, and fry your system.”

“Good luck, you piece of s-”

Tag’s voice cut off, and I knew with near certainty that Nefarious had done what he’d promised. He’d cut Tag off. He’d neutralized the threat, and it had taken him all of ten seconds.

“Where were we?” Nefarious asked. “Oh, that’s right. Either one of you was about to die or-”

“Just let me do it!” Charlie said. He was hunched over now, gasping for air. “Just let me end it.”

“No,” Nefarious said. “It doesn’t work like that.

Someone's hands get bloody from this. Either one of you kills the other or the boy dies. You don’t make the rules here.

I do, and there’s nothing your little second rate hacker knockoff can do about it.

Not now that I’ve absolutely decimated his system. ”

As Nefarious spoke, the steel wall lifted as quickly as it had slammed shut. Sweet, glorious oxygen poured in, filling our lungs, saving our lives.

Tag stood on the other end of the door, half in the elevator. His jaw was tight and his eyes held a seriousness I had never quite seen in them before. “I don’t need the system, you ancient moron. The lever’s manual, remember?”