Page 31 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
“And I won’t now,” Ryker assured him. “Anyway, I checked out our door lock, this works on it.” Ryker grinned and winked as Gideon opened the door.
“You really are an asshole, you know that?” Gideon chuckled. So, Ryker had accomplished what he’d intended. He hadn’t laughed since that spine-chilling call from Jada.
“I know, but you love me anyway.” Ryker’s whisper was barely audible as the two of them crept down three doors to Jada’s room. The modified key card got them into her room in seconds. When Ryker flipped on the light, Gideon’s heart sank. He saw her purse sitting on the desk. He hadn’t known dick about purse brands, or shoe brands for that matter, but in the little time he’d spent with Jada, he’d learned. That was her pride and joy, it was a Prada purse. With the money she spent on it, he could have bought a used dirt bike. The woman was crazy.
Another thing he knew—she hadn’t left of her own free will.
“Why are you staring at that ugly orange purse?” Ryker asked. He was gently pulling Jada’s stuff out of her ratty suitcase.
“Because it proves that she was taken against her will. This thing was practically glued to her shoulder the last time I saw her.” Gideon picked it up, smoothing his fingers over the exceedingly soft leather.
“When was that?”
“Sebastian’s son’s christening.”
“Sorry, you’re going to have to do better than that. I don’t keep track of time in baby christening increments,” he said with a smirk. “Is that purse expensive?”
“Oh yeah.” Gideon carried over to the unmade bed to peruse the contents of the suitcase that Ryker had just pulled out.
“She wasn’t dressing to impress. Check out these boots; these are some serious work boots. So are these gloves. It looks like she was planning on mending fences out on the cattle range with these, but then if you look at these,” he said pointing at a pair of very fine, thin leather gloves, “these look like she was planning on some dirty deeds.”
Gideon unlocked the decorative lock on her purse and rifled through it. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find her phone. She was talking to him when she got spooked. Was she at the desk? Sitting on the bed? At the chair?
He squatted down and looked under the bed. No phone. He went over to the desk and looked all around it and under it. No phone. Then he went over to the one sadly padded chair next to the window. Again, he squatted down. It wasn’t under the chair, but when he pushed back the curtains, he found it. He knew down to his bones that she’d turned it off and dropped it on purpose. She’d hoped he’d find her.
He thought for a few moments. Her iPad was missing, so hopefully, if they wanted info, they’d be going over that first. That would give them time to find Jada before they started on other ways of extracting information straight from her.
Please, God, say I’m right.
* * *
“HaveI told you how much I hate this part of a mission?” Ryker asked as he flipped the channel again. He was a TV surfer. Jesus, couldn’t he do that with the volume off?
“What part of a mission, McQueen?” Gideon mumbled the question as he sent another text, this time to Dex Evans, the comm/comp guy on the Black Dawn team.
I’m going to fucking rip the remote out of his hands!
“The waiting-for-you part of the mission. Isn’t there anything we can do? Even if it makes no sense, and it’s just chasing my tail, please let me do it.”
“Food.”
His phone rang.
“Food?”
“Not fast food. Decent food. Go now.” Gideon didn’t give a shit that he practically roared the last few words—anything that got Ryker out of the room was a blessing. What’s more, his friend knew it. Ryker knew he was useless at this stage of the game, and that’s why he was so damned antsy.
“Aye, aye.” Ryker grinned as he shut off the TV then bolted out the motel room door.
Gideon’s phone rang and he pounced on it. “Yeah, Dex, thanks for calling. I’ve got a situation.”
“I figured. What are you doing in Oregon?”
“Long story. A woman has been kidnapped. She called me and mentioned an anomaly in a system she was checking out. She’s doing contract work for a company that provides full cyber defense; she’s the one who looks for ways to break in. She said she was in trouble, big trouble. Then her phone went dead. I have her on the Princess Quest app, but her phone was left in her motel in Oregon.”
“Got it. Was she working on a project that resulted in her going MIA?”
“Probably, but she’s working on eighteen systems at the moment, so I don’t know which one could be the culprit. Some have similar scripts running against their security, but some are unique. I pulled down her information from the cloud, but without her actual laptop, comp, or iPad, I can’t tell which one she was working on at the moment.”
