White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(76)

Bug cleared his throat louder.

“What?” Rogan asked.

“Voilà.” Bug tapped the key. The front of Baranovsky’s mansion filled the middle screens, filmed through the haze of rain and bordered in dark wet leaves.

David Howling stood to the side, smoking, that familiar smile on his face. He seemed to be perpetually calm and happy.

A limo slid into place before the front staircase. The driver dashed to the passenger door, opened an umbrella, and swung the door open, holding the black umbrella above it. Olivia Charles stepped out, walked up the staircase, paused for a moment before security and went inside. Fifteen seconds later David flicked his half-finished cigarette aside and followed her in.

Augustine’s face turned white. “Dear God.”

And it proved nothing. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t say anything to each other. Everyone in the room knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Howling had waited outside to make sure she arrived. And we could do exactly nothing with that knowledge.

“He’s right,” I told Rogan. “We have no direct evidence.”

“Then we should get some,” he said. “We need that USB drive.”

He looked at Bug.

“How?” Bug asked. “Baranovsky has a DaemonEye security lock on his network. I would have to get the kid to crack it, but even if Bern opens all the cyber doors, it won’t do us any good. You can’t hack something that’s not connected to the Internet. You have to physically access the computer. Someone has to walk in, get the computer, or at least the hard drive, and walk out with it. Every security person Baranovsky employed is likely at that mansion right now, not to mention cops who are swarming within the place. That house is locked up tighter than a clam with lockjaw. By now the gap in the wall is probably repaired and if it isn’t, it’s guarded like Fort Knox.”

“How did you film that footage?” Cornelius said behind me.

I almost jumped. He’d been so quiet I’d forgotten he was there.

“A drone transmitting the feed from its camera.” Bug waved his arm. “A fifty-thousand-dollar drone, which, by the way, I lost because some asshole wind mage knocked it out of the sky just as I tried to recover it. The last thing it transmitted was a tree, up very close.”

“If I understand correctly, you don’t need the entire computer.” Cornelius rested his elbow on his bent knee and leaned his cheek on his fingers. “You just need the hard drive.”

“Yes.” Bug spread his arms. Napoleon decided that things had gotten exciting enough to warrant his input and barked once to underscore the point.

Rogan glanced at Augustine.

“I suppose I could try to impersonate one of the security personnel,” the illusion mage said. “Assuming we kidnap someone with access to Baranovsky’s inner sanctum. That will take time and research.”

“What about a short-range teleporter?” I asked. Teleportation was a last resort. It usually didn’t go well, but among the three of them they had to know at least one mage capable of it.

“Too risky,” Augustine said. “The place is crawling with security. And two-thirds of human teleportations, unless the teleporter is a Prime, end up with the teleported party resembling an undercooked meat loaf.”

“Find out who is securing the mansion,” Rogan said to Bug. “Let’s see if we can throw money at them.”

“I’ll need another drone,” Bug said.

“Ferrets,” Cornelius said.

All of us looked at him.

“Ferrets?” Augustine asked.

“It’s a domesticated form of European polecat,” Cornelius said. “Closely related to weasels, minks, and stoats.”

“I know what a ferret is,” Augustine said, obviously making a heroic effort to be patient. “I’m asking how ferrets would help us retrieve the computer.”

“I assume the mansion has laundry facilities?” Cornelius asked, a mild expression on his face.

“Yes,” Bug reported.

“Industrial dryers?”

“Most likely.”

“And you only require a hard drive from the computer?”

“Yes,” Bug said.

“In that case, I can extract those things for you provided you can attach a very small camera and a radio receiver to a ferret harness. I have to be able to talk to them and I must see what they see. I have several harnesses at Nevada’s warehouse, but my camera needs to be replaced and I haven’t gotten around to it.”

“You want to send in harnessed ferrets through a laundry vent?” Augustine clearly had difficulty coming to terms with that idea.

“Yes,” Cornelius said.

I blinked. “Wouldn’t the vent be secured by an alarm?”

The three of them looked at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

“It doesn’t make sense to secure a laundry vent,” Rogan explained. “It’s too small and it opens into a dryer.”

“I’m curious, what are you picturing exactly?” Augustine asked. “A crisscrossing pattern of red laser beams and ferrets in harnesses slithering through it like ninjas?”

Ugh. He needed some of his own medicine. I dropped some cold into my voice. “Mr. Montgomery, contrary to what popular entertainment would like you to believe, laser beams are neither red nor visible under ordinary circumstances. I would think a man in charge of an investigative firm would know that.”