Page 63 of The B-Team

“Aye, sorry,” Claire added.

Neither apology was sincere.

Ryan reached into his messenger bag and took out some pain meds. With the way things were going, a migraine would hit any second now. Thankfully, the kitchen lapsed into blessed quiet as everyone worked or prepared food.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.

“The lawyer called,” Belinda said as she walked into the room. She held Julia’s phone, and Ryan took that as a sign that Julia had fallen asleep. “Elle can’t remember anything about this Darian Fitzwater guy, so she has no idea where we should search for information on him.”

“Well, that’s a bummer,” Claire said, her focus on finishing off the sandwiches.

Ryan’s stomach rumbled. “She say anything else?” he asked Belinda because he could multitask.

“Yeah.” She looked worried. “Apparently, Elle can’t give anyone access to the codes needed to wipe the server, but she said that if we find a way to do it, that’s what we have to do. Ms. Patel’s working hard to get at least one of the people who has access to the codes out of custody as fast as possible.” She smiled at the American team boss. “I don’t suppose you have access to them, Rochelle?”

Rochelle and Rodrigo had turned up about half an hour earlier. After being kicked out of the embassy, they’dgrabbed some food and headed to Julia’s. Their report wasn’t encouraging. The embassy wouldn’t intervene in the investigation but said if it got to the pressing charges stage, they’d reconsider their stance. Rochelle had been quietly furious about their lack of support, while Rodrigo seemed unbothered. He was the same laid-back guy Ryan remembered from South America, meaning there wasn’t a whole lot that upset him.

Rochelle shook her head, looking as weary as the rest of them as she tied her curly black hair up in a knot on top of her head. “We never got to the stage where I was given access to the codes. I guess because Evan was authorized, that was enough for the American office.” She shrugged. “It makes sense. It’s not the kind of information you want floating around with too many people.”

“What are these codes, anyway?” Claire asked. “Are they like a special password, or is it a set of numbers that have to be keyed in at the same time—like they do in the movies to launch nuclear weapons?”

“I guess both?” Belinda looked around the room.

Ryan nodded. “As far as I remember, from what Elle told me, you log in to the server and command it to delete everything. Once you do that, it prompts you to enter the specific code, which is more complicated than your average password.”

Belinda nodded. “The lawyer said it’s a long string of letters, numbers, and symbols.”

“Oh!” Isobel dropped a mug. It bounced off the counter before hitting the floor. She bent and scooped it up. “Still in one piece,” she announced before looking a little embarrassed. “Uh, guys, I think I might know something about this code thing.”

The room fell heavily silent as everyone turned to face her.

Ryan groaned. “Please tell me this isn’t one of those passwords Callumdidn’twrite down and hide somewhere.”

Isobel smiled nervously.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Isobel winced and held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I swear, he doesn’t keep normal passwords lying around.”

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose, the tightness of a headache starting. “Just spit it out.”

“Okay, well, you see, Elle makes Callum put all his passwords in some cyber vault, and she changes them all the time.” She rolled her eyes. “Apparently, you can’t have the same password for everything, and you need to change them more frequently than every few years.”

“No kidding,” Rodrigo said, looking amused. He was the only one. Everybody else glaread at Isobel.

“Anyway,” she said, “to get into this password vault, you need to scan your face, answer some questions, and then get a code sent to your phone. But Callum kept forgetting the answers to the questions he set.”

There was universal groaning this time.

Isobel drew back her shoulders as she scowled at them all. “They had to be hard questions, not something anybody could guess.” It was a poor attempt at defending her husband, and they all knew it.

“Did he write down the answers to his questions somewhere?” Belinda asked.

“No.” Isobel looked nervous again. “But he was worried he’d get locked out of the password vault because he kept getting the answers wrong.” She licked her lips and shifted on her feet.

“Time’s a ticking here,” Ryan said wearily. “You want to get to the punchline?”

“Fine.” She scowled at him, which would have been more intimidating if she wasn’t the size of a Chihuahua. “He was concerned that in an emergency, he wouldn’t be able to get into the password vault fast enough to access the self-destruct code—that’s what he called it. He didn’t mention anything about wiping the server. So…” She twisted her hands in front of her. “He wrote the code down, and we hid it somewhere Elle wouldn’t find it.”