Her eyes, his lies

Chapter 25

"You still got time to go back. You can still fix this," Joss said.

Jane hadn't been cruel enough to shove the cloth gag into his mouth, and she was quickly regretting the decision.

She glanced at Beatrice as she stood off to one side, her posture like that of a zombie, head hung and arms hanging limply at her sides. Jane could only wonder what exactly Ryder had done to deject her in such a way.

They were in Beatrice's room, arranged in a circle, with Jane and her laptop at the center. Joss had been bound and painstakingly hauled up from the basement as he hurled expletives at the three of them.

"I can still make you dead," Victoria hissed, rubbing her jaw. She had woken up as Ryder brought her downstairs, and was justifiably enraged at the way she had been treated while unconscious.

"I'm serious, man." Joss struggled to raise his head enough to look Ryder in the eye. "You keep at this, doesn't matter who your daddy is. The rest of us 'r gonna make you pay."

Ryder looked away. Though it was not obvious in his posture, Jane found that she knew him well enough to see doubt in his eyes.

"Can I put the pillowcase in his mouth? Let me put the pillowcase in his mouth," Victoria begged.

Jane noted red circles around her friend's wrists where the ropes had been pulled too tight. She almost agreed to gagging Joss, purely out of sympathy.

"Okay, looks like I was right," Jane said to nobody in particular. "The IMSI catcher managed to get most of the caller IDs and their locations."

Ryder was peering down at her screen from behind her, trying to make sense of the data displayed on it. He smoothed his hair back, brow furrowing. "So... you know who the group members are?"

"Only the ones that have been in contact with these two." Jane indicated Joss and the silent Beatrice.

"You're just too stupid to back off, huh? We warned you, beanstalk, if you ever-" Joss yelped as Victoria reached over and twisted the lobe of his ear.

"... uh, right." Jane glanced between the two as they glared at each other. "I've got most of the people who are low on the totem pole, but there's one number that's under a fake name."

Ryder nodded, understanding. "Let me guess, it leads to my house."

"Yeah," Jane said. She was examining him closely, eyes tracing the subtle ridges of worry around his eyes. She'd studied his face enough on her laptop that she could perceive something as subtle as his currently repressed uncertainty.

Jane wasn't sure he was capable of trusting her again, even if she dearly wished she could. Why hadn't she come clean about hacking him back then, on their first date?

Regardless, it was not the time to ask him about something that private, especially with zombie-Beatrice in the room.

"It's always a fake name," Ryder sighed. "My dad's too careful to be caught by something like that."

"He's gotta have a blind spot, right? Like, I don't know, a secret black-mail video tape or something?" Victoria said.

"Every system has a point of failure." Jane was quoting her father, though he had meant more in terms of electrical grids than criminal enterprises.

Victoria turned to Beatrice, eyes narrowed. "You're like his creepy secretary. What's his 'vulnerability'?"

Beatrice looked up, pulling her absent gaze from the floor. A semblance of her usual spite seemed to coalesce within her eyes. "Secretary, Allyson? Don't give me that. I bet you know everything about playing second-in-command."