“Oh, come on. I’m not that reckless.” Cheyenne pursed her lips when Maleshi and Ember gave her skeptical looks. “Anymore. Okay, yeah. I promise I won’t go after them on my own.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.” The general clapped a hand on Cheyenne’s shoulder and gave the halfling a little shake. “’Cause I’m really looking forward to taking down as many of them as I can before it’s time to go border-hopping again.”
“Yeah, me too. And while we’re on that topic, I should get back to the apartment. Set up a few fun things to get ready for this meeting, you know?”
“Sure.” Maleshi gazed at L’zar and Venga, who were talking and laughing like Ba’rael Verdys’ betrayals and the time served in Chateau D’rahl had never happened. “I’ll fill everyone in later. Might as well make a clean break while you can.” The general stopped in front of a narrow alley between storefronts and summoned a portal into Cheyenne and Ember’s apartment. “Good luck with the colonel, kid.”
“Well, the chance that I’ll have to fight the guy is lookin’ pretty slim, but thanks. I’ll let you know.”
Maleshi turned away from the portal as Cheyenne and Ember moved through it and disappeared.
* * *
Cheyenne headed for the iron stairs up to the mini-loft.
Ember hovered behind the couch and watched her friend practically run up the steps. “You obviously already have a plan for this.”
“Yep.” With a quick punch of the power button, Cheyenne got Glen cycling up to full processing speed and dropped into the desk chair. “If I can find a few golden nuggets of traitor bullshit in the next few hours, I’ll at least have a bargaining chip or two.”
Ember floated around the couch and sprawled on the cushions. “There’s a visual.”
“Exactly what I’m hoping for, Em.” Cheyenne pulled out her activator and placed it behind her ear before vigorously rubbing her hands together. “I’m so ready to make this asshole squirm.”
Ember grabbed the remote off the coffee table, and the flat-screen TV rose out of the entry table with a soft hum. “However you end up doing it, you have my full support.”
“Thanks, Em.” Wish I could say I’ll be getting rid of Colonel Thomas tonight, but I have a feeling this is a practice run. The guy should’ve taken pointers from Sir. I don’t screw around.
Chapter Eighty
The activator guided her every step of the way as she searched the dark web for as much information on Colonel Les Thomas as she could find. What better place to hide his slimy friendship with O’gúl loyalists, assuming the man’s more tech-literate than Sir. Cheyenne chuckled. Not very hard.
Once the activator located Colonel Thomas’ personal drive on the FRoE’s multiple servers, she stopped to consider what she was about to do. Somebody should tell them they have a gaping hole in their firewall, but it’s not gonna be me.
She dove into the server and pulled up the IP address and physical location of Colonel Thomas’ operating system. Yep. Right there at the base.
His system hadn’t been used for the last hour, so she poked around in his files to see what she could dig up. The activator lit up in her vision with a flashing yellow light superimposed over the scrolling window of code across a folder labeled Friends of the Bull.
“Very cute, Colonel.” Cheyenne clicked the file open and was met by three more folders inside, each of them heavily encrypted, but she couldn’t focus on reading the folder names or the quickly moving code illuminating the encryption data. The activator let off an annoyingly persistent alarm in her head, not terribly loud but not quiet enough to ignore. As if that wasn’t enough, bright red letters flashed across her screen.
Unauthorized access detected. Do not proceed.
“Okay, okay.” Cheyenne grimaced and waved her hand in front of her to turn off the activator’s ridiculous alarm signal. “Jeez.”
“Find something?” Ember asked.
“Just a warning from the activator to—”
A hard, fierce knock came at the front door.
Cheyenne pulled out of Colonel Thomas’ desktop system, turned off her monitor, and stood. “We’re not expecting anybody, right?”
“Not unless you planned some kinda surprise.” Ember sniggered and stared at the TV. “Which honestly wouldn’t be that big a surprise if you think about it.”
“I didn’t.” Cheyenne was hurrying down the metal stairs when whoever stood outside their apartment knocked harder and louder. “Whoever it is needs to chill the hell out.”
She slipped out of drow form when she reached the front door, slid the deadbolt lock aside, and slowly opened the door to peer into the hall.
“Cheyenne.”
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes. “Matthew.”
“What are you doing?”
“Hmm. Well, I was minding my own business, but now I’m curious why you look like someone found out all your secrets and laid them on the table for the whole world to see.”
Their neighbor took a step back and ran a hand through his hair, breathing deeply through his nose. “If you’re still pissed at me, I get it. But this is serious.”
“It is, huh?” She cocked her head and gave him a fake smile. “What happened?”
Matthew tried to peer around her into the apartment, but she pulled the door toward her to block his view and only opened it again when he gave up. “I got a security alert on my phone, Cheyenne. Someone tried to hack into my uncle’s computer.”
Oops. Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “They must not have been very good.”
“I built that security system, okay? I know how efficient it is.” Matthew grimaced and stared at the door instead of meeting her gaze. “And it traced the user’s IP address right back here.”
“No way.” Cheyenne’s eyes widened, and she decided to pile on the exaggerated surprise. If he could prove it one hundred percent, he would’ve kicked me out of the FRoE server. All he has is
