Clever snake. I chuckled darkly. “He thinks if he tries to turn this around, burn those who would hurt me, I’ll make this go away and help him. He’s that desperate that he’s got no other choice.”
“Basically,” Mel chuckled, several people in my packed kitchen amused as well.
I hadn’t even had a chance to catch a glimpse of them all when my phone rang, but I figured it was the usual everyone, and trustworthy, if they were called in for this. I smiled when I saw who it was, answering with hope in my voice. “You’ve got good news of me?”
“Always, chica,” Marisol Gonzalez greeted. She was a human hacker and tech genius Mel and I had always used, and still did, even if we were in the supe world. No one was better. “What have I done that you would doubt me? My feelings are almost hurt.”
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have made it a question, but assuming is rude. You can always call me just to talk or if you need something.”
“True, true, I do that too. Fine, you are forgiven,” she teased. “And yes, I have much good to tell you. They sprang all the traps you requested. I am getting so much information, it is more than my systems can handle.”
I snorted even as I pumped my fist. “I doubt that. You have a killer setup that I can’t understand in the slightest.”
“That is true. I should not tease my babies. They work so hard for me and do so much. But it is a lot, much more than you even hoped for. These are very, very bad men, chica. Who are you going after this time?”
“They’re coming for Mel and I. This time, it’s fighting those who found us and aren’t going away.”
She cursed an impressive assortment in Spanish. “I will find it all. You two must be protected, with all the good you do. The world needs fighters like you. We will do this extra securely then. I will put the first group of what I got on a secured drive and at the second drop box. And I will not notice how you always pick them up faster than is actually possible.”
I winced. So we’d been slacking in that area. “We have a few not far from you, now and again. We have one about an hour away working on someone.”
“Hmmm, good, good. Glad you have people to help you now. Stay safe, chica and we will talk soon.”
We said goodbye and hung up. I couldn’t even try to curb the huge grin as I turned to Mel… Except it faltered when I got an array of unhappy expressions pointed at me.
“What have you been up to with Marisol without even telling me?” Mel demanded.
“I would have,” I hedged.
“But?” she pushed.
I sighed. There was no getting out of this now. “But, it would have meant telling you that I’d dropped by the warlock elders’ secret meeting and estate after McGrath was arrested to have a chat and rile them all up.”
“You did what?” Lucca bellowed, getting through my ramble first. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, and it worked. Marisol said we hit the mother lode. Fine, we got trickles with the shit I started that night, but that led us to enough so we could—”
“Back up and start over for those of us who aren’t used to all of this,” Mr. Rothchild interjected. He wasn’t the most tech savvy, but he knew how to run an investigation. Maybe he didn’t normally trap people?
Maybe he wasn’t asking for himself.
Whatever, I sighed again and ran my hands over my hair. “We knew there was more. There is lots more the councils are dirty on and hiding. We all know this.”
“Yes, we’ve been having trouble fitting the pieces because the warlock elders use magic and technology to hide all their shit,” Mel agreed.
“Right, so the pieces we had, Marisol already had too, and tagged to trace. I asked her to focus on them before going and poking the bears.” I gave Lucca an apologetic look for the pun, but he was steaming about me being in danger. “I taunted them about McGrath in custody, and that he would flip, that the humans would investigate into everyone he had been in contact with, gotten money from—all of it.”
“Hopefully pushing them to check all their shit was clean and try to remove what they could,” Mel explained for the others. “We’ve pulled that lots of times. It’s instinct when someone says you’re vulnerable, or your doors aren’t locked, to go check them, even if you know you’re safe and they are.”
“Right, especially when you say you put kiddie porn on one of their systems too,” I added, shrugging when people looked ready to throttle me. “I didn’t, but it worked, and everyone checked at least something. They all peeled back another layer of the onion, and that gave Marisol lots of links and stuff to follow up.”
Mel slowly smiled her evil one. “And now that McGrath has flipped, they’re going to threat level oh fuck and checking everything. So she had enough pieces after you poked them to now get every-fucking-thing. Tell me that’s what’s going on?”
I smirked at her. “That’s what’s going on and apparently, it’s enough that she joked that her systems couldn’t handle it.”
Mel burst out laughing, taking a few moments to calm down so she could explain it. “Marisol has an off-site secured location full of more servers and tech shit, like you see in spy movies, than most people truly believe is real. We’ve seen it, and it’s worth so much money and just, gawd, so much tech.”
“She has her hard drives and other drives labeled with four digit codes, as there are that many,” I drawled. “She’s saying it’s a fuck
