Page 19 of Laying Low

Reg gave him a small smile and took a bite, but he was actually thinking about something completely different.

Nuances?What kind of nuances?I would very much like to get to the bottom of that word.

Anthony winked at him like he knewexactlywhat Reg was thinking, but he kept eating.

It was almost like he was shoring up his strength.

AN HOURlater, as Anthony and Bailey helped with cleanup, Marcus and Dean watched over Reg’s shoulder as he wove his way through layers of security and pinged the leader of one of Mexico’s most feared cartels.

The result was instantaneous and violent, but Reg had been expecting retaliation, and he had safeguards in place to rebuff the virus that someone on the other end had shot his way.

He pinged again, but this time with ASCII art and a code phrase from Dean that he didn’t even want to interpret.

The ASCII art was a white flag of truce.

The code phrase wasGive me three steps.

He sent it, tapping furiously so his code would be in place to reject another malware incursion, and he almost squeaked when a message appeared, plain text format.

We are sorry about your plane.That was not planned.

Oh my God.Reg turned to glare at Dean.“This is the guy who shot down your plane?”

Dean and Marcus both sucked air in through their teeth.Given that Marcus was still in a wheelchair, with his leg held together by bolts and rods, and Dean had a hairline fracture in his skull that hadbarelyhealed from the same incident—a plane crash—the sound was less a wince of pain than a grunt of culpability.

“It was sort of our fault,” Dean said.“Giving orders on the fly.Our pilot didn’t understand a double reverse… here… let me—”

“Not on your life,” Reg muttered.An alarm sounded that told him a probe had been sent to figure out his whereabouts, and he hit a redirect beacon that rerouted his signal through twenty-six different places.

It gave him about three minutes.

“What should I say?”he asked when that was done.

“Tell him it was our fault,” Marcus said promptly.

Our bad, Reg typed.Bygones.

And there was another probe.Reg rerouted this one through another series, but he only had so many of those.

What can I do for you, Spanish-with-Russian-Accent?

“Well, he remembers us,” Dean muttered.“Are you sure I can’t—”

“Quit wasting time,” Reg said.“I don’t have unlimited protection here.”

“Okay.Tell him about Bratva and his son.”

Reg sort of wished for more direction than that, but he tried.

Your son is in danger—a Bratva tried to abduct him today.They failed because he has a friend in the same situation who kept the men from firing.

There was a long pause—but no more probes or malware, so Reg was hoping Gael Barerra was taking this seriously.

What do you suggest I do?

Reg glanced at Dean, who shrugged and sighed.“Tell him about ICE,” he muttered.

The Bratva tried to sic ICE on both boys, he sent.We have them safe.