“You want the chair?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I nod and start untangling my legs from beneath my ass as I rise, but Rafael wraps his arm around my waist and lifts me.
“Chill, man!” I protest. “I was getting up.”
“I may need you. You’re staying.” He drops onto the chair and sets me on his lap.
I stare at Rafael’s profile as he rolls the chair closer to the desk and picks up the phone again while keeping his other arm tightly wrapped around my middle. He hits the video call option and leans the phone against the desktop pen holder. A video feed of a man wearing a black balaclava, so only his eyes are visible, fills the screen. His location appears to be a swanky room, with luxurious furniture and paintings in the background.
“Continue,” Rafael tells the guy as he once again reaches for the mouse.
“The target pushed a hidden control of some kind, just before Allard executed him, and that sealed both of them inside the panic room.”
“You can’t get to Allard from the outside?”
“Negative. The door is reinforced steel, and we don’t have anything to break through it. There’s no other way in. We tried overriding the system from the main control board inside the house, but the panic room is an isolated network. Its circuits are not integrated with the primary house security.”
On the screen, two windows pop open side by side. The first shows a guy dressed in tactical gear, complete with several weapons strapped to his chest, lounging in an antique-looking chair with a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. I’m guessing he’s the one stuck inside the panic room. The other video feed shows Mitch, Rafael’s head IT guy whom I finally met in person at the Delta Security headquarters while doing a firmware update on the main server yesterday. He’s sitting up in bed, wearing a familiar-looking bright-green T-shirt. I’m pretty sure it’s Guido’s.
“What about overriding it from the inside? Allard?”
“Not possible.” The guy with the drink says. “The locking mechanism requires a thirteen-digit code to open the door. Only a single try is allowed, otherwise, an alarm is sent directly to their guard force.”
Rafael squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Mitch?”
“I’m inside the security company’s system, trying to find the access code for the door, but all their client data is encrypted. The decryption tools I’ve tried so far have failed.”
“Keep trying. How much time do we have?”
Mitch takes a look at his wristwatch. “A little over an hour. We need to get Allard out before the staff arrive at seven. Punctuality is like a goddamn religion in Japan.”
The pressure from the arm around my waist heightens. Rafael tilts his head, pinning me with his gaze. “How long would it take you to break a thirteen-digit code?”
“About four hours,” I say.
“Fuck.”
“It’s been an honor working for you, boss.” The man—Allard—takes a sip of his beverage and then sets it on the nearby table. “Tell the guys to retreat,” he says and cocks his gun.
“Allard!” Rafael snarls and hits the top of the desk with his fist so hard that I jump on his lap. “Holster your fucking gun!”
“We all know how Yakuzas handle those who kill one of their own. They take torture to another level. We can’t risk them finding me alive.”
I bite my lower lip, my gaze bouncing between Rafael and the trapped man on the video screen. No run-of-the-mill employee would be ready to kill himself to protect his employer. No matter what Rafael has told me, his men obviously care about him. And he for them.
“Is there a computer anywhere in the house?” I ask.
Three pairs of eyes snap to me immediately through the screens. I didn’t realize that the camera on our end of the conversation had been broadcasting, as well.
“Why?” Rafael’s voice rumbles next to my ear.
I turn to face him and bump his nose with mine. “Everything nowadays requires login credentials. Food delivery apps. Streaming services. Even the goddamned app to run a robot vac. No one can keep all that crap in their head.”
“I’m fairly certain the kumichō of the Yakuza organization doesn’t bother with vacuum cleaners, vespetta.”
“Sooooo not the point here.” I’d roll my eyes but the situation sounds precarious. “What I mean is, everyone has a secret file on their PC where they keep a list of their passwords and codes. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“There you go.” I look directly at the camera and direct my question to the guy wearing the balaclava. “Did you see a laptop or a desktop computer anywhere?”
“One. In the study,” he responds in heavily accented English. He sounds German. I assumed that the men working for Rafael would all be Italian, but based on the fact this conversation is happening in English, and the array of accents on the line, it appears that The Sicilian’s crew has been gathered from across the globe.
“Good. I’ll access it from here. Go there and get me the IP address.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“People are lazy,” I say. “Personal computer passwords are typically less than eight characters long. Connect your phone to the laptop and run the program. I’ll have Rafael send you the link. It should take no longer than ten minutes to break in.”
The balaclava guy nods and, in the next breath, he’s sprinting through the house.
As it happens, the owner of the swanky panic room must have been one of the laziest humans. His laptop password was only six digits, nothing more. My forwarded code breaker cracks it nearly instantly, allowing me to connect Rafael’s laptop with the dead guy’s in under a minute.
Finding the file we need, however, takes nearly a full hour. Generally, people tend to use the same word as their password in multiple applications. They vary it slightly with special characters, but the root remains unchanged. I first run a scan for the same keyword as the laptop login, then set up filters to search all files for documents that contain multiple repeated strings of letters. With narrowed-down options, I look through each flagged result manually, hoping that the next one I open will be the list of passwords. The fact that I’m simultaneously using the translator app in order to read each document, just to figure out if it’s what I’m after or a recipe for homemade miso soup, makes the whole thing more difficult. My eyes sting and my head is killing me from the constant strain by the time I finally find what I’m looking for.
“There.” I point at the number combination in the middle of the document, one that is right under the login credentials for a porn streaming site. “The panic room access code.”
A slight shiver runs down my spine when Rafael takes my chin and tilts my head to face him. His eyes bore into mine and, for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
“If you’re wrong, you’ve just signed my man’s death sentence.” His voice is low and slightly menacing, but the look in his eyes holds no threat. Just awe. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say, exhaling the pent-up breath.
Rafael nods and releases my chin, then turns and dictates the code to Allard. Bewildered, I stare at Rafael’s harsh profile. No further questions. He doesn’t ask me to confirm one more time. Does not demand an explanation of why I’m confident that my conclusion is correct, or has Mitch double-check it. He is simply ready to risk his man’s life on my word alone. He’s trusting me and my skills by doing so. Believes in me.
A sense of satisfaction and pride swells within me, invading every single cell of my being. All those times I’ve aced tests in college can’t compare to this feeling.
I look back to the screen where Allard is now facing the control panel at the door, his camera zoomed on the tiny narrow screen above the keypad. I suck air into my lungs and hold it, watching him input the numbers. When he enters the last digit, there’s a barely audible click, but it echoes like thunder through the line.
It worked.
Rafael reaches out to his phone and turns it off, then closes the lid of the laptop. In that instant, sitting on his lap completely still, I become hyperaware of every point of contact between our bodies and every sensation that each connection evokes. His thick, heavily muscled arm wrapped around my waist. The warmth that seeps from his chest as he presses it to my aching back. The faint tingling of my cheek where his stubble brushes my skin.
“I never would have thought of that.” Deep, smoky voice right next to my ear. “Have you found a list of my passwords, as well?”
“Yes,” I utter. “You really need something more creative than desanti1234 for your online banking app.”
