When I slam the Tesla to a screeching halt in front of the secure building where we’ve stashed Ultra, Finn pops the door open before the car’s even come to a complete stop.
“Jesus,” he snaps as he hops out to stable ground. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so white. “I think I left my lunch back in Los Altos.”
“Don’t be such a baby.” I slam the car door shut. “You’ve driven sand rails off cliffs before.”
“Yeah, and that was a nicer ride than the one you just gave me.”
I ignore him—are we in a race against time or not?—and burst into the offices.
They look up in surprise, all of them gathered around Doc’s desk. Dark circles and tight brows mark them, the signs of long nights filled with too much coffee and anxiety. Well, they’d better get ready for a few more all-nighters.
“We are not selling to Corvus.” Doc announces that with a jut of her chin. She bursts out of her chair, ready for battle. “I don’t care what you told January, but we get a say too. And none of us want to work for that asshole.”
They form up behind the desk as if it’s a barricade, ready to defend Ultra.
Yep, January really did pick the right team here.
“We’re not selling to Corvus,” I say. “I swear.”
“Then why’s it in all the news sites?” Doc gestures with a fist to her laptop. “January never told us, and she’s not answering her phone or her emails. What did you do to her?”
“I love her.” I can’t think of any better way to say how I feel about January. Love covers pretty much everything in me that’s hers.
Several of the coders go “awww,” their posture loosening. Doc isn’t having it though.
“We love January too. Now, what have you done with her, asshole?”
In under a minute, I sketch out everything for the team, starting with Grace handing over the Corvus plans to January and ending with the Bastards’ meeting half an hour ago. They’re all smart women, and they figure things out about twenty seconds into my spiel.
“Okay.” Doc goes to a whiteboard and begins to erase it. “So we’ve got to get Ultra polished enough to demo it for Pixio tomorrow.”
I nod. “That’s the easy part, right?”
“Yep.” Doc points out three women. “You guys are on that.” She writes Demo on the board and underlines it. “We’ve got that handled,” she says to me. “But what about January? Has she signed the contracts already?” She looks Finn up and down. “And what are you doing here?”
Even though this is all deadly serious, I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing at Finn’s expression.
“I’m Finn,” he rumbles through his beard.
“Can you code?”
He blinks at her. “Can I— Are you for real?”
Doc shoos him toward the women working on the demo. “Go help them then. And try not to screw anything up.”
Finn gives me a look that says How the hell does she not know who I am?
I shrug. “You heard the lady.”
Finn sighs, then cracks his knuckles as he heads over to a terminal. He might be putting on a show of reluctance, but he’ll be happier than a pig in shit to get inside Ultra’s code.
Doc taps her marker against the whiteboard. “What about January?”
“She won’t answer my calls or my texts either,” I say. “I don’t know why. But she’s got to be communicating with Fuchs somehow.”
A light comes into Doc’s eyes, and I can tell she’s already skipping ahead of me. “It won’t be easy.”
“I know.” My smile is wry. “She’s probably running Ultra on her own phone.”
Doc’s smile is wider than mine. “Thank God I helped design it then. Can you help with that? It’s going to be a bitch to crack, even with my inside information.”
I nod. “Anything I can do to help.”
Doc gestures me to a workstation. “You can use that machine.”
“So, what are we doing?” one of the women still standing around asks.
Doc pulls a chair up next to me. “We’re hacking January’s phone. We’ve got to find everything she might have sent to Fuchs and figure out if and where she’s going to meet him.” She flicks her hand at them. “Get to it. We don’t know how much time we have, and this is going to take all of us working on it.”
Within five seconds, everyone in the room is madly typing away at a terminal, coding like fiends.
We’re coming for you, I promise January.