Teddy ignored the question. “So how do I go about finding that file? Or are you telling me it’s impossible?”
Molly bristled at that. “Nothing’s impossible. If it’s in a computer, I can get it. It’s just a question of difficulty.”
“Meaning?”
“Look, I recognize that code because I’ve bumped up against similar sequences. Occasionally, agents will download highly classified files onto their personal computers, even though it’s strictly against protocol—for obvious reasons. Nick doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would do something like that.”
“So where are those files stored?”
“On air-gapped computers in secure federal buildings.”
“Translation?”
“Air-gapped means the physical computer isn’t connected to the Internet. It’s like a vault. In theory, these highly secure, classified files can be retrieved only by agents with security clearance.”
Teddy felt her shoulders sag. Yates had made it sound so easy. “You said in theory.”
“In theory because you need someone good.” Molly said. “But if I’m going to do this, I’ll need to know everything—how you got this, why you need it—”
“That seems unnecessary,” Teddy said.
“I can’t hack blindfolded.”
Teddy had gone all in before. But going all in at a Vegas poker table? You risked money. You risked your reputation, your ego; if you were like Teddy, you risked your parents’ house and the ire of a Russian Mob boss named Sergei. But this was going all in like she’d never done before. Molly was asking her to give everything—her past, present, future.
Teddy thought about walking out the door and forgetting the whole thing. She could go back to a life of just focusing on school. Her deal with Clint. Keep her nose clean. Get her money. But Yates had told her that her birth mother was alive and that he could help find her. And that was something she simply couldn’t walk away from.
So she told Molly the whole story, about meeting Derek Yates at San Quentin, his mental attack, his insistence on his innocence—and his claim that Clint had been involved in falsifying the evidence that got him there. She told Molly about her parents, and Sector Three, and how they and Clint and Yates had known one another at the military facility. How Yates suspected that Whitfield had been compromised by his organization—that he believed the missing blood samples were proof of it. That they shouldn’t trust everything they learned at Whitfield; that the school itself was set up for ulterior motives. When she finished, Teddy braced herself for a lecture.
Instead, Molly looked deeply troubled. She stood and paced the length of the room. At last she turned and looked at Teddy. “Retrieving that file isn’t impossible,” she said. “But it’s not something you and I can pull off on our own.”
She went on to describe the necessary steps, which would involve breaking in to an FBI building—it was a California case, so the file was likely stored locally—hacking the agency’s internal server, and downloading remote spying technology. In other words, it would be a lot harder than talking her way into a professor’s room and plugging a flash drive into a laptop.
Molly gave a decisive nod. “Here’s the bottom line: we put everything in front of the rest of the group and decide how to move forward. You need their help, too.”
Teddy let out a ragged breath. She’d just done the hardest thing of her life. Put total trust in someone else. Told her everything. And now she was going to have to do it all over again. Believe in the unseeable once more and trust four more people with all her secrets.
* * *
In Casework later that day, when Nick announced that the Misfits had solved the crime, Teddy hardly cared that the Alphas looked miserable. She had bigger things to worry about. She barely registered when Nick announced that the prize would go to Teddy as the team MVP. She had won a tour of the FBI facility in downtown San Francisco.
Dara nudged her shoulder. “Molly told me this morning that you wanted us to all meet up tonight? Your dorm room?”
“Yeah,” Teddy said, shaking off her stupor. “Tonight.” After tonight, everything would be different.
Students began to file out of the room, and Teddy grabbed her bag, but before she could leave, Nick pulled her aside. “Hold on a minute, would you, Teddy?”
Teddy’s heart lurched. She forced herself to meet Nick’s eyes—which she had studiously avoided from the moment she’d entered his class.
“You left something behind yesterday,” he said.
For a second, Teddy thought he might lean in to kiss her cheek. Instead, he lifted the manila folder containing McDonald’s forensics report. “You still need this?”
She’d left his place in such a rush that morning, she’d completely forgotten the paperwork. “Oh. Um, yes, thanks.”
He studied her. Guilt stabbed at her insides. She’d slept with Nick—one of the first guys in a long time with whom she could actually picture herself—then taken off without a word. After she’d demolished his privacy by hacking in to his hard drive.
“Everything all right, Teddy?” He lowered his voice. There was suspicion in his tone. He was, after all, an investigator. And Teddy figured there were pieces of information that weren’t adding up for him.
“I’m not a morning person,” she said. She couldn’t bear to think what might happen if Nick discovered what she had done. The kicker was that her feelings were real. She liked him. The sucker punch was that she needed the Yates file anyway.
Out of the corner of her eye, Teddy caught Ava practically falling out of her chair to eavesdrop. Nick noticed, too, and quickly changed the subject.
“We found Corey’s Bruins hat. This morning. Guess you really earned that prize.”
She didn’t feel like a winner. “Yeah, guess I did.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ONE BY ONE THE MISFITS entered Teddy’s dorm room, until the six of them were sitting on beds and chairs and the floor. Teddy felt more nervous than she’d been that day she had bet it all at the Bellagio. Except tonight, her friends would be the ones to make
