One Last Rainy Day: The Legacy of a Prince(114)

ALWAYS BROTHERS


It’s the second we’ve never been able to get past.

“I don’t understand why he would make it so fucking hard,” Tobias groans.

“Why wouldn’t he?” I counter.

“I get that, but it’s something I’m supposed to know,” he frowns at the screen. “Tell me what he said.”

“We’ve gone over this, man. He said to put it in the right set of hands. Your prints are the only ones that fire up this fucking thing.” Just as a thought occurs to me, Cecelia speaks up from behind us.

“That’s Dom’s,” she whispers hoarsely, and we both turn our heads to see her standing just a few feet away, tightening a long, floor-length silk robe as she stares at the laptop like the fucking ghost it is. “That’s Dom’s laptop.”

“Did we wake you, Trésor?” Tobias asks, his eyes roving over her in the way they always do—a way that conveys exactly what she means to him—life.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she replies before bending to scratch her attention-seeking whore of a dog. “Today was . . . long.”

Understatement.

Today was fucking horrific. Cecelia’s body count climbed substantially in the months since she and Tobias left Atlanta, her wings spreading and strengthening by the day. The innocence of the girl I met at eighteen is long gone and replaced by a fiercely made, forged by fire fucking warrior.

“You’ve seen this?” I ask, nodding toward the laptop. She nods, her eyes traveling over the piece of Dom sitting on the table in front of the three of us.

“What’s on it?” She asks.

“We don’t know, Trésor,” Tobias sighs. “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. For too fucking long.”

“You can’t get in?” She asks, peering at the image on the screen—Santa holding a waving American flag.

Tobias grips her hip and looks up at her from where he sits. “Remember when we met, I told you Dom and I were having a lot of problems seeing eye to eye on his extremes?”

Cecelia nods as Tobias looks back at the screen, his gaze somewhere in the past. “He was in the midst of building files of incriminating evidence against a lot of the corrupt. Somehow, he’s tapped into what no one should be able to. I sent him this laptop to help put his list together.”

She palms his shoulder in encouragement as he searches his memory. “I was searching for Abijah, so it was not long after you arrived in Triple Falls.”

She nods again, sadness etching her features, concern in her eyes for him. I see it the minute he recognizes it, and his eyes soften with devotion.

Her focus darts back to the screen. “So, Santa means a list, right?”

“Right,” Tobias nods.

She reads the little square box inside the flag. “And the hint is N-enemy?”

“Yes, we’ve exacerbated everything we can think of in that respect. We’ve even called in experts to calculate a list of possibilities, but my fingers have to be the ones to type the answer. There’s no way around it, and I haven’t exactly had the time to devote—”

“Tobias,” she interjects, “the N stands for natural.”

“Yes, Trésor, we’ve considered that, but—”

“That’s what it is,” she presses. “Natural Enemy.”

“Jesus Christ,” I utter as I look between them, the inkling growing stronger.

They both turn to me, alarmed as the image of Dom scanning his room the night he died, his back to me, shutters in. He wasn’t looking—he was thinking.

Tobias speaks up first, hope sparking in his eyes. “What?”

“I’m such a goddamned idiot.” I turn to Cecelia. “Have you ever typed into Dom’s computer?”

She nods.

“Do you remember what?” I prompt.

She shakes her head. “No, it was just a bunch of his codes, letters, and numbers.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I say.

“Tyler,” Tobias snaps out of patience.

Gripping Cecelia’s finger, I press it to the newly darkened keyboard, and it lights up like Christmas. Tobias’s eyes widen in shock as I exhale. “He was encrypting your fingerprints and programmed them to this keyboard.”

“When?” Tobias asks.

“It’s all about timing, isn’t it?” I sigh, shaking my head.

Tobias nods, knowing exactly when he encrypted them.

“What am I missing?” Cecelia asks.

“The night he died,” Tobias answers for me. “He told Tyler that if anything happened to him, to get the laptop into the right set of hands.”

“The right set of hands,” I whisper, “As in two sets of goddamn hands.”

Tobias had the first passcode, she had the other, and even if he figured it out, Cecelia had to be the one to type it in.

“Do you know the answer, Trésor?”

“I do,” she replies as we both tense up. She positions herself behind his chair before running her palms up his back along the expanse of his raven tattoo. “He and I had the conversation in passing one day. I’m sure you’ve guessed a thousand government-based terms, right?”