be alone in Texas. The last time this happened, someone broke into the house."
"For horses," Agent Dalton pointed out.
Bradley huffed at that. "Encouraged by a member of KoG. They were being used; they just didn't know it."
"Shit," Alex breathed.
"But that message? Soul Reaper doesn't know about me," Jason told them all. "That's why I need to be there. He thinks he's chasing Knock and Riley. He thinks Ruin is who outed him to the authorities. He sees these strong women and is blinded by their success, and he's completely missed that I'm even a part of that group. To everyone on the outside, my fianc茅e is the tie. She's friends with Murder, and dragged me in along with her. He doesn't know I'm FBI. They think I'm just a retired and fucked-up military vet." He paused. "Sorry for the language, ma'am."
"I really don't care what language you use right now," Alex assured him. "Agent Raige, do what you need to. I'll talk to the prosecuting office and get us a delay."
"My wedding is a good one," Jason pointed out. "It's been planned for months now. Since I'm one of the key witnesses..."
She nodded. "I'll use it, but you can't do both, Jason. You can't take a honeymoon and work this case."
"Nope," he said. "I'm putting off the damned wedding. Zara will understand. There's no way I can take a vacation while my friends' lives are at risk."
"Don't make it personal," Bradley reminded him.
"It's fucking personal," Jason shot back. "That's why I'm so damned good at this. I know the Bureau doesn't like that, but it's how I've always worked." Then he looked at Agent Dalton. "And it's why I always 'barely' pass. Someone's life - either saving it or taking it - is a very personal thing. I don't ever want to forget that."
Chapter 31
Zara would never tell Jason, but she hated when the house was too quiet. Having Crysis with her helped, but right now, he needed his dog a lot more than she did. She also had a lot to do. If Soul_Reaper was back, then she was going to make sure that he went down too. In truth, Zara didn't care at all who went with which name. She wanted to do her part to make sure they all paid for what they'd done.
So after Jason left, she started calling people. First, it was Murder. She tasked him with getting a safe place set up for everyone to talk about this. He said that was really more of Knock's thing, so she had him arrange that and then get all of the gamers into the channel. Murder promised he'd do as much as he could, and that he'd text her when it was up and running.
Then she made the next call. This one was harder, but it seemed that Dez already knew all about what was going on. She assured Zara that yes, Jason had let her know, and right now all of Deviant was hunting the man down. Soul_Reaper had thrown down the gauntlet, but Dez had every intention of fighting his fire with a nuclear arsenal.
So Zara gave her the chat information for the TeamSpeak server, and told her that was where they were all centralizing. Not all of the developers knew all of the gamers, but Zara and Amy could work together to keep this running smoothly and make sure they weren't getting in each other's way.
With a plan made, things started happening. Zara logged in and was doing her best to sort all of the data the same way Jason did. It seemed the notorious "Server Three" was going to have yet another purpose. Records of old associates went in one folder. Ties to violence against women went in another. Amy had access to that, and she was tagging everything so it could be found quickly in a search.
By the time the sun went down, every last one of them were all online. A room on the TeamSpeak server had been re-named "Nuclear Option" and the whole crew was in there, tossing out ideas in the hopes of giving someone else a lead. The words were flying fast, and Zara could barely keep up with half of the tech talk, but it didn't matter. Her job was just to make sure all of this kept moving.
"Ok," Riley said. "I'm following the lead on Slime420. Looks like he's out on bail until the trial starts, which means the guy has full internet access. Looking