Page 90 of Deserving Ryleigh
“I’ve still got,” she looked at her watch, “three minutes before it’s time for his stupid game to start. I’m looking into the camera feeds. The ones around the cabins he blew up first. I want to see if I can find anyone lurking around.”
Tiny held his breath as she scanned the camera footage. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but he trusted her. He didn’t need to be the one to study them, Ryleigh would find what she was looking for.
It didn’t take long. “Son-of-a-bitch!”
Leaning forward to see what had her sounding so concerned, Tiny saw that a message had popped up on the computer screen. He had no idea who it was from, assumed it was her dad fucking with her. All it said was,Camera 3; 10/16; 2:26am.
Without hesitation, Ryleigh began to click on the keys,pulling up the link to camera three on the property and pulled up the time and date indicated in the message.
“Holy crap! Look, Tiny! See that?”
He did. All he saw was trees. The footage was from one of the cameras facing the woods. One of the cabins that didn’t exist any longer was in the right-hand corner of the screen. “What am I looking at?” he asked when he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No one skulking through the woods. No birds or other animals. Nothing.
“There,that? See it? That branch falling? It shouldn’t be there. It fell two minutes earlier. He looped the footage so it shows the same thing over and over. And since all we’re looking at is trees, it was easy to miss. Shit, shit,shit!”
She hit a few more buttons on the screen, and the current view from the camera came up on the screen. The cabin was no longer there, just the foundation and some burning debris in the middle of it.
She switched to another camera, and they both watched as Spike helped Reese climb down into bunker 111. She pulled up all the bunker cameras—ofcourseshe knew which ones were placed so they could see the bunkers—and they saw all their friends entering, the doors closing behind them. All that was left once they were inside was a pretty forest scene, nothing anyone who saw the feeds would think twice about.
“I need to look at the other cameras. I also have to see if I can find the missing footage. See if I can figure out who placed the bombs after he looped the footage,” she muttered. But then a digital timer popped up on her screen, over the camera feeds. It started with the number twenty and began counting down.
“Take a breath, sweetheart. I believe in you. You’ve got this,” Tiny said, feeling helpless. He hated this. Almost wished this was a mission where he could use bullets and knives to protect his teammates. Because Ryleighwashis teammate. His everything. But he couldn’t do a damn thing other than stand next to her and let her know he was there.
“Bring it on, Dad,” she muttered.
The numbers counted down to zero, then line after line of code began to scroll on Ryleigh’s laptop screen.
“Fuck! That asshole! He’s targeting Albuquerque,” Ryleigh said as she frantically typed code Tiny couldn’t even start to understand. Her fingers were pounding the keys as she muttered under her breath.
“Oh no you don’t,” she mumbled as she hit the return key extra hard. “That hole’s closed, find another way in, assjack.”
In any other situation, Tiny would’ve smiled at her ferocity. But not now. Every time she swore, he held his breath. Praying she’d be able to get the better of her father.
“Shit, what now?”
He saw another message had popped up on her screen. It was another time and date.
“This can’t be my dad,” Ryleigh mumbled with a small shake of her head.
To Tiny’s amazement, the lines of undistinguishable code disappeared when she brought up the camera views again.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly.
“Someone’s feeding me intel, and it’s not my dad.There’s no way he would’ve told me exactly what time and camera to look at to figure out that the camera feeds were looped. Whoever it is wants me to see whatever is on this specific time and date. While Dad’s working to get through the latest hole I plugged, I have a minute or two to check out this video,” she told him.
Tiny was in awe all over again. She was multitasking. Fuckingmultitasking. She was amazing. No,scarilyamazing.
She went back and forth a few times, from the camera to the game. Then she swore. “I just sent you a video,” she said, going back to the code scrolling by. “See if you recognize the guys in it.”
Tiny’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Clicking on the link she sent, he squinted and enlarged the video. There were two men dressed in camouflage walking through the woods. Try as he might, he had no idea who they were. He didn’t recognize them at all.
“Their names are Archer and Arthur Anderson. And yes, those really are their names. It looks like they were kicked out of the Army. Dishonorably discharged. My dad found them by hacking into government files. He probably looked for the most assholey guys he could find. Offered them money, then killed them.”
Tiny knew he was staring at her with his mouth open, but he was completely shocked at what she was saying. He knew she was good, butthis? Finding all that out while playing a mental game of chicken with her father? It was fucking unbelievable.
“Are yousurmisingwhat he did, or telling me?” he asked her.
“Telling,” she kind of grunted. “I’m in his system. He’smore worried about winning this stupid game than protecting the back doors into his hard drive. I see where he transferred ten thousand dollars into Archer’s bank account. Then he did a search for their names three days later and hacked into the coroner’s reports. Their deaths were ruled a murder/suicide, and the day they died, that ten thousand dollars was transferred back out of the account.”
