"What the fuck do you mean this is a setup!" Riddick growled, the quiet fierceness in his voice startling even Kyle into silence.
They all sat around the table in the kitchen. It was early in the morning and Conte had just dropped a real bomb on all of them. Dom and his kid sidekick thought the whole ransom deal was a setup.
Cody Vale carefully avoided Riddick's icy stare, but Dom took it head-on.
"You heard what I said," the Con-X said, leaning back in his chair with a lackadaisical ease that sure as hell couldn't be the mark of a man who'd so recently lost a child to kidnappers.
"Yeah, I heard you, Conte. I heard you say you don't think this is about the fucking money..."
"Rick," Jack pleaded, laying a cool hand on his arm.
His eyes slid shut as he tried to check his temper—stop himself from snapping at Jack too. "Take Kyle upstairs," he finally said, his low voice falling to an even deeper, more dangerous pitch.
He expected her to complain, to argue, but she didn't. Things had become so rocky over the past two days, she obeyed immediately, as though afraid to enlarge the growing chasm between them, just when things had started to get a little bit better.
Dallas' sister, Ticey, followed. She'd become attached to Kyle as a playmate, even though a five year gap separated the two children.
"Why don't you come with us, Pace?" Jack offered while ushering Ti and Kyle ahead of her toward the stairs.
Conte's wife looked up at Jack and then shook her head. "No. I'll stay," Pace said, quietly determined to see the meeting through.
Brodell had the seat next to Pace, and he kept close watch over her. He wasn't the only one keeping a careful eye on her, Riddick noted. Conte didn't watch his wife the way Robert Brodell did, but the way his mood fluctuated in her presence betrayed him. Without Pace's influence to mellow him, the Con-X became all kinds of mean and nasty.
He's whipped, Riddick realized. Whenever she's in the room he keeps the attitude on a leash. Shit, that's weird.
Conte's eyes narrowed. "I don't think I have to explain the situation to you again, Riddick. I think you're smart enough to know if these people wanted money, they would've taken kids from people with money. We went over the encryption on that message half a dozen times, and came up with the same answer again and again."
Riddick laced his fingers together and tensed his jaw, biting back the stinging comments he would've liked to let fly. "Say you're right," he said, cocking his head. "Who the fuck would want my kids and yours if not for money?"
"The Task Force," Pace replied easily.
Conte turned an evil-eye on her. "Why don't you go upstairs and let the men talk, huh, sweetheart? While you're at it, take your little boyfriend with you."
"Just tell us what you found out, Dom. Quit being such a drama queen," Pace snapped back.
"I will," Conte snapped, motioning with his thumb toward Brodell. "Just as soon as that asshole gets the fuck out of my sight."
Pace glanced over at Robert. She bit her lip. "Rob, could you please..."
Brodell's calm exterior finally cracked a little, both corners of his mouth turning down in a scowl. "Pace, I don't see why you let him order you around. You hired him to do a job. He has no right to make demands."
"It's a matter of security," Dom cut in, his voice icy. "I work on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know, Sparky. Take a fucking walk."
That's going to get ugly, Riddick thought when Brodell finally made his exit from the room. Robert Brodell had his sights set on Pace and if he'd come this far with the woman, he wouldn't give up easy. Conte would have to deal with that sooner or later.
A heavy silence settled over the four of them--Riddick, Conte, Pace, and Cody Vale.
The Con-X crossed his arms over his chest, setting his jaw stubbornly. "You didn't tell him about us?" he asked Pace.
"I told him all about you," Pace said, cracking her knuckles one by one. "I just didn't tell him I hired you to find Dallas. He thinks my ex-husband is a guy three years older than me in his mid-to-late thirties. Since you spent all that time racing around the galaxy with your buddies you still look like you're in your twenties, Dom. Now quit stalling and tell us what you know."
After a half moment of silence, Conte nodded to Vale
Up until then Cody had kept his peace, trying to inch from the confrontation little by little. With the spotlight back on him, his military training took over and he sat up to debrief them.
"We studied the encryption prints until we found a near match in the Empire's database. The computer the message originated from was military issue, thrown out with the trash officially some five years ago. We located the wireless switch where the message entered the network and set up a mapped range of three square blocks around it. In that area we found five possible target buildings, and only one with more than an eighty percent chance of being the spot where the message was filmed. It's an old warehouse, abandoned after the fall of a mining boom and recently condemned. The location is approximately fifty kilometers from where we're standing."
"So let's go there, scout it out, see if they've got the kids there," Riddick said, knowing his plan would get vetoed.
"Negative," Vale continued. "I ran a risk evaluation this morning and there's a greater than seventy-five percent chance we would all die if we walked into that building. I've done a lot of decryption work over the past couple years, and I'm pretty sure an eight-year-old could've covered their tracks better than these jokers did. They wanted us to find where the message came from."
Dom got to his feet, and Cody followed suit. "Vale and I are going back to our ship to get some sleep, and do an inventory on what we've got for weapons. After dark we'll go over and recon the place."
"I'm coming with you," Pace informed him. "You could run into all kinds of security systems and locks and I can take care of them."
"So am I," Riddick chimed in before Conte could get started on an argument.
To his surprise, Dom only smirked. "Tell them about the other risk analysis you ran this morning, Vale."
All attention turned to Cody as he once again snapped to and prepared to give them a straight rundown.
"Based on the identities of the people in this room. Conte—Con-X, rogue Special Forces tactical weapon. Riddick—former Con-X, escaped convict. Pace Prize—former technology head of the Resistance Force against the Empire. Myself—AWOL Special Forces soldier.
"There is an eighty-two percent probability that the reason those kids were taken was to draw in and entrap someone sitting in this very room. Assuming that fact to be true, there is a ninety-five percent chance that if any part of the opposition's plan goes south, they will strike hard and fast at whoever's left to strike at, even if they're women and children."
Riddick felt the beginnings of a migraine sprouting just behind his eyes.
"Are you telling me that if you guys fuck this up, these people are going to kill Jack and Kyle?" he asked, amazed at how calm he sounded in spite of the rage boiling just beneath the surface of his skin.
Conte's smirk became a little smugger. "That's the gist of it. So, did you guys still want to come along and leave your loved ones unprotected, or do you want to let me and Vale do our job?"
Pace glared daggers at her husband, and Riddick couldn't help sympathising with her. He too wanted to see Dom get knocked over the head with a blunt object.
Didn't change the fact that the obnoxious SOB was right. They would have to take measures to protect the people they had left during their efforts to recover the ones stolen from them.