Tracking the Wolves (Madison Joshi and the Wolves series- Book 3)

Chapter 40

"You've got good security," Bruce commented as he looked around the room with an impressed look on his face. They had entered the jail-building and were waiting for the elevator. Bruce had the same look on his face that Maddy had when she first entered the building. Actually, Maddy didn't think her expression had changed much since the first time she had visited.

Soon, the elevator arrived and they all got inside. Once they reached the second floor, they stepped out. There were five cells of which two were occupied. The previous Beta was sitting in one of them and the tooth-necklace lady was in the cell to the right. To the left of the cell where the Beta was sitting was where Mack had been kept, but the Alpha decided to let Mack roam around freely around the headquarters since he had helped a lot and had proven his loyalty, although he was still under surveillance. You could never be too safe.

"We've never had so many prisoners," Jeremy said as he stared at the cells. "This was to be a precautionary set up. Who would've thought that we would be having two prisoners? Three if you're counting Mack."

"Well, I think Maddy should be in one of those cells," Xander said as he swung his arm around Maddy.

"Why would I be in a prison?"

"Because you stole my heart," Xander said with a smile that definitely didn't make Maddy's stomach flip-flop.

"That is such an overrated line. Use something more creative."

"Fine. Are you a murderer?"

"It depends really," Maddy said as she pretended to think about Xander's question. "I mean I have killed someone, but would you count it as murder if it was for defense?"

Xander frowned. "You are supposed to say no."

"Can you both stop flirting? We are in the middle of an important interrogation, you know?" Alexa said.

Maddy threw a withering look at Alexa. "We are not flirting."

"We totally are," Xander responded with a cheeky grin.

Maddy nudged Xander. He was supposed to be on her side!

Alexa raised an eyebrow at Maddy. "The last time I checked, friends weren't supposed to be practically draped over each other, talking about who stole whose heart."

Maddy scowled but chose not to say anything. Instead, she focused on Bruce who was now talking to tooth-necklace lady. The cell door was open and Justin and Bruce were inside. Bruce was asking tooth-necklace lady about what the boss' next moves would be but tooth-necklace lady as usual had a poker face on. She just sat there, strapped to her chair and stared at the ceiling. Maddy had even tried injecting her with the 'Adenosine Triphosphate', but tooth-necklace hadn't even looked remotely scared. She just shrugged and returned back to staring at the ceiling. Maddy would have seriously respected resilience if she hadn't been so evil. Now it was just pissing off.

After fifteen minutes of trying, Bruce and Justin came out. Bruce had a defeated look in his eyes. Bruce locked the cell door once again when all of a sudden, Maddy saw some fog sort of thing wrap around the cell door. Maddy blinked her eyes and the fog was gone, but Maddy was sure she had seen something. Had tooth-necklace lady done something? Maddy rushed forward and checked the prison cell door. She tugged at it but it stayed firmly in its place. So, the door hadn't been charmed to open.

Maddy turned to Leia. "Did you see that?"

"See what?"

"Never mind."

All of them went back to the elevator. Maddy reminded herself that tooth-necklace lady wouldn't be able to escape the building even if she did manage to escape her cell. As the elevator landed, Bruce stepped out. "Did you try tracing Elvira's location when she gave the phone call? That might be the house she lives in and that might be where the boss is."

Everyone stopped in their tracks. How had they forgotten about that? It was so obvious but then Maddy remembered that no one here knew how to code properly. Sure, they could figure out the general location from where tooth-necklace lady called, but then what? They would need the exact location.

"No one here knows how to code," Maddy said with a frown.

Bruce cracked his knuckles. "Well then, it is a good thing that you have me."

Justin grinned and thumped Bruce on his back. "Bruce is amazing with all this technology and whiz. He'll get the location in no time."

All of them hurried into the computer room. It was in the first floor. There was only one room on that floor. The computer room was huge and had several computers and wires all over the place. It was as messy as Tristan's office, and that was saying something.

Bruce went over and logged into one computer. For the next few minutes, Bruce went from computer to computer, typing something, looking for results in some other screen while he muttered to himself. No one knew what he was saying or doing so everyone just stood in one side while he worked. Finally, Bruce looked up with a frown. "There is a problem."

"What happened? Shouldn't you have the location by now?" Justina asked with a frown.

"That's the thing. There is no record of a call in Mack's call history. I assumed that he deleted the call history. You had a tracker on so I could trace every move he made. He never deleted the call history. I have checked several other places as well but there are no records of a call. It's as though the call history deleted itself."

Everyone stood their dumbfounded. "How is that possible? That needs some serious level of coding," Maddy said.

Justin took out a phone from his pocket. "This is Elvira's phone. I'll try calling Mack's phone. Check what happens that time."

Justin called Mack's phone. Everyone crowded around the computer which tracked all the moves that Mack made in his phone. Mack picked up the phone. You could see it clearly on the computer screen, as though he had sent a screen recording of himself picking up the phone. Justin told Mack that he was doing a test call and ended the call.

The moment the call ended, Bruce took control of Mack's phone and hurried over to the call history. It showed that the lost call had been two days ago. There was no trace of the call from Elvira's phone.

"Even I won't be able to break the code until I have access to the original code. The code would have to be integrated into the phone's chip and it will take me a long time to separate the boss' code from the original code."

Justin sighed and handed over tooth-necklace lady's phone. "Take this and try your best. If you do find anything, call me."

Bruce nodded and pocketed the phone. All of them left the building resignedly. For a second, there had been actual hope that they could have caught the boss but of course, the boss had to be too darn smart to cause a slip-up.