"How?" Mercury could feel her mind working; he could feel the confidence and certainty pouring out of her.
"Put Lawe on Horace Engalls. Rule on Phillip Brandenmore. Close quarters. Have Lionesses on their guests. Make certain there's no way to transfer information while they're here."
"Whoever's transferring information will know we're onto them," Mercury pointed out before Jonas or Callan could. But he was thinking, moving through the security that had been designed for both parties and working it out in his head. "They'll have to use the transmissions," he said then. "We'll have the program installed and ready to use. If they can't transfer information face-to-face, they'll have to use the transmissions quickly."
"Exactly. We pinpoint the computers these memos originated from. The Vanderale program can do that, and it can intercept and toss the emails, personal chat messages or memos back to Callan's program with no one being the wiser. Callan, Kane, Dane and Rye can set a schedule to monitor it without causing suspicion."
"True." Dane spoke up then. "We were invited to the party after all."
Mercury couldn't halt the growl that came to his throat as Dane moved closer to Ria. Dane grinned at the sound and backed away once again.
"You're going to have to let me get back in her good graces, Mercury," he told him with a chuckle. "Otherwise, she'll end up costing me a fortune in jewels."
"That's okay," Ria murmured absently as she continued to spread the papers around the table. "Bling is always nice."
She didn't sound particularly concerned about letting Dane back into her good graces or allowing him to distract her from whatever she was putting together.
Mercury moved behind her, staring over her shoulder, watching as she moved the pages, studied them, then moved them again. When she was finished, the code laid out began to look more familiar.
"Do you see it?" she asked him, shifting a page before turning it upside down. Another right side up.
"It's a Council code," Mercury realized as he narrowed his eyes at it. "Son of a bitch."
Jonas and Callan both moved in closer.
"What are you looking at?" Jonas bit out.
Mercury looked down at Ria as she turned her head and stared at him.
"This is why they wanted you out of the way," she whispered.
"I don't see a damned thing that looks familiar, Mercury," Jonas snapped. "And I know Council code as well as you."
"It's not just mating heat they're after," Mercury breathed out roughly. "This code was developed in one place only. The labs I was created in. This code," Mercury tapped several lines of the attached transmissions, "it's the code for feral displacement. They're attempting to duplicate it."
As he stared at the code, bits and pieces began to show a pattern. Numbers, glyphs, scientific formulas began to come together. He shook his head. Hell, it had been too damned long since he had done this. "It would take months to piece all this information together without the key to the code."
"We don't need the key to the code to stop them," Ria told him, turning back to the papers before glancing back at Callan and Jonas. "Whoever's behind this knows Mercury's lab history, the tests he excelled in as well as the experimentation done on him in regards to the feral displacement. Adult Breeds were killed when they began showing it. Mercury is one of the few they allowed to live. Whoever's doing this knows that."
"And Ely knows it," Mercury said dispassionately.
Like Jonas, he found it hard to believe the doctor they had depended on would be the one to betray them. But unlike Jonas, he had firsthand experience in just how far Ely would go to prove he should be locked up, confined, drugged.
The drugs for the feral displacement had made him easier to control, had turned him into an automaton. By time the drug therapy had taken hold, he hadn't even been certain which world he existed within, or rather which one he fought within. It was a world she would have returned him to.
"Can you slip Dane into the estate tonight to install the program?" Ria asked Callan. "He'll also need access to the main security terminal in the communications bunker."
"I can get him in," Jonas stated.
"We have about eighteen hours to get installed and running," she added.
Mercury was there when she turned to him. He backed up just enough to meet her eyes, to watch as her gaze moved from his just as quickly as she'd met it, then moved away again.
"You behave." She pointed to Dane as she moved quickly from the living room back to the bedroom. Mercury let his gaze slide to Dane's then.
Dane arched a tawny brow mockingly. "Feral displacement," he murmured. "Interesting."
Mercury glared back at him. "She's not in any danger."