Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries #11)(59)

Hutch had spent some time in juvie for hacking into places he shouldn’t have. Case thought he was being a bit dramatic calling himself a black hat hacker—a name that typically described someone who hacked high-level security for little to no reason beyond being a complete dick. “No one thought you were a black hat, but that lifestyle got you in trouble once. Those dudes can be malicious. If they knew who you worked for now, they would out you. Or use you. Ten was worried about you. He wouldn’t have hired you if he’d thought you were going to turn on him.”

“Yeah, well, I was pretty f*cking happy to get out of juvie. I’m never eating another baloney sandwich again.” Hutch stared ahead. “Is that it?”

The bank was outside the walled portion of the city. It was neat and nondescript. It wasn’t a chain, but a local bank. Older and established, but obviously small.

“Have you looked for any connections between the bank robberies?” Case slowed as they approached the bank.

Hutch stared at him, frowning mightily. “As I didn’t know about the bank robberies until approximately four days ago, and then there was the kidnapping and trying to track them down, and now there’s the ‘who’s Ezra Fain’ game I’m playing, no. I haven’t tried to connect the robberies I didn’t know about. Again, this is where Chelsea or Adam as backup would be helpful. I get that Big Tag wants to keep this op a secret, but we need them. I’m completely shocked he hasn’t gotten Chelsea on this.”

Chelsea Weston was not only Big Tag’s sister-in-law, she was also one of the best hackers on the planet. She’d been an actual black hat at one point in time. She’d been known as the Broker and she could get into any system. And now she had Agency clearance. “She’s working the problem from another angle.”

Hutch stopped, his hands coming out in that “why the f*ck didn’t you say that earlier” gesture of his. “She can take ten minutes to help me out. I’ll get her on the phone and she can handle the pilot and copilot issue. If I can bring Adam in, he can run the faces through his software. It’s better than anything I have on my system. I’ll deal with the bank robberies. I can also have her ask some of her contacts for anything they’ve got on the Gringos gang. Is that what she’s working on?”

He should tell him yes and throw him off this line of questioning, but he needed Hutch working on all of it. Michael could help him, but calling back to Dallas was out of the question. “No. Just get the job done. You can do it. You’re the only one I want on it.” He looked around for a convenience store. South American candy was supposed to be pretty spectacular. Maybe he could bribe his buddy. “Let’s get you some candy and some soda. It’s going to be a long night, right?”

Hutch had gone a pasty shade. “What have you done, Case?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s one reason you would leave Chelsea out of this. I’m not stupid. She’s the queen. I bow to her brilliance. I can match Adam on occasion, but never her. So if you’re leaving her out it’s because Big Tag doesn’t know we’re here.”

“He knows we’re here.” They’d gone over this.

“I know that, but if I screw this up, he’s going to be mad. Chelsea won’t f*ck everything up.” Hutch looked a little sick. His hand started to go for his cell phone.

Case had to shut that shit down. “Don’t.” He moved in close because he wasn’t having an open argument in the middle of the street. “You can handle this, Hutch. You can be every bit as sharp as Chelsea when you want to be. If you pick up that phone and get Chelsea involved, she’ll call Ian and we’ll lose Santos. I can’t afford to do that.”

“And I can’t afford to die the painful death coming to me the minute Big Tag realizes I could have handed this off to someone smarter than me and I didn’t.”

He wasn’t doing this. Not now. He glanced around, looking for a restaurant he could haul Hutch into, and he saw it. There was a park across the street from the bank. It was a tiny thing, but had a couple of benches and some pretty landscaping. It was the perfect place to sit and drink some coffee and plan a robbery.

“Hey, where are you…” Hutch’s question died out as Case took off toward the park.

He jogged across the street, careful to avoid traffic, but he needed to be there. Needed to be where he was sure Theo had sat and planned and plotted. Theo would have gone about it in a methodical fashion. He was a great planner. He wasn’t always great at executing the plan and could definitely make mistakes in the field, but his brother had been excellent at planning an op. He would have had that studious expression on his face that Case joked he had when he was either planning something or constipated. Then Theo would send Case his happy middle finger and they would both laugh.

He wasn’t laughing now.

“What’s going on?” Hutch asked as he caught up. “I’m sorry about what I said back there. I will get this done.”

“Ah, you come back,” a feminine voice said. “You like your usual? I have…missed you.”

Case turned and saw a young woman, likely around twenty, standing next to an ice cream cart. She was dressed in a white T-shirt with an ice cream on the front, her dark hair in a ponytail. “You know me?”

He knew the answer before she said a word, before her eyes flared in obvious confusion.