"Deviant gave me a gender-change party," she admitted. "The first few weeks I worked here, I cried almost every day. I had never imagined so many people being so over-the-top nice to me so often. It was almost overwhelming." She squatted down before him. "And I can't help but wonder if that's where you're at. You're so blinded by all the bad shit KoG has done that you're missing the good that comes from it."
"Dez getting raped wasn't good," he reminded her.
"Not at all," Rhaven agreed. "But she said something to me, and it kinda hit home. This stuff that happened to us? It killed off the old versions of us. It was a murder, sure. It sucked, definitely. But neither of us would trade what we have now for an easier path. No, that doesn't make it ok, but it makes it kinda bittersweet."
"You ladies deserve a lot less bitter," he told her. "Rhaven..." He leaned forward and grabbed her hands. "I'm so tired of seeing people get hurt and not being able to help until it's too late. I never wanted to work in law enforcement, because that's all this job is. It's doing something after the fact. I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to keep the peace."
"It's kinda hard to make wild animals play nice," she pointed out. "And I'm not talking about KoG, Cyn. I'm talking about us. Riley, Dez, and even the guys. Hell, me! I'm the tame one of the group, and I'm still not willing to sit back and wait to be saved." Then she squeezed his hands. "No one ever said that the damsels in distress can't fight back."
He paused, looking over at the clock. "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"
"Mhm," she agreed. "I stole Braden's car and decided to come talk to you in person. Wasn't sure if that server should ever be mentioned online or over the phone."
"Phone's fine," he assured her. "Secured connections, like the TeamSpeak channels, should be safe. I'd rather no texts about it."
"Can do." Then she stood. "Zara wants to talk to you about the job contract, but she's not going to interrupt. So, I'm taking her out to dinner tonight. We're meeting up with Kate. Adam's doing something with his family, so he can't come, but said he will next week if you're still here. Means you're stuck alone with Braden tonight."
"And too much data," Cyn grumbled.
"Break it down into groups," Rhaven suggested. "Print copies. Multiples if you have to." She pointed at the corner where there was a printer. "Pin it to the walls. It's how I work through my mods. If-then. That's all this is. If A then B, but if C then D. Line it up, break it down, and you'll see it. Don't get so lost in the mess that you can't figure out where to start." She turned for the door. "And if you need help, you have all of us. Deviant and your CIs."
"Thanks, babe," he said as she left.
But she was right. Fucking coders, he thought. They didn't think like normal people. Instead, they categorized, or shuffled, or had their own way of making an insane amount of data become something they could manage with their human minds. He was more of a hacker, looking for the easy solution - the back door to the treasure - but that wouldn't work for this.
So he made notes and then printed them out. Piece by piece, he sorted it all into piles. Each one was based on a theory. If Black Snake had been kicked out, then who had been in charge? If White Wolf knew what happened to Black Snake, then what did that mean? What had Arturo - White Wolf - done when he was in Pueblo? Who were the other three men?
Hours crawled past, and Jason kept going. He alternated between his notes and hitting the internet in the hopes of finding some random piece of information that would help. Searching Arturo did nothing. He checked the man's bio on the magazine he worked for, but it was the standard crap that said basically nothing. So he hit the DMV records, looking for any tickets that might stand out, or a list of past addresses.
One caught his eye: Plano, Texas. That was the city Void had lived in. The same place where he'd once traced Soul_Reaper's IP address. Of all the information he could get, Arturo Ganza