Page 16 of Love for Thea

Carole shot him a warning look. “Keep it up, and I’ll castrate you and you know I know how.”

Fourteen years ago, under the old oak tree, Carole and Thea had devised a primitive polyalphabetic substitution code to hide their secrets from the prying eyes of four brothers and three nosy sisters. They’d refined it through high school and used it in college to send encrypted emails about everything from crushes to exam answers. To Mace and Logan, the Naval Intel experts, it had been a childhood joke. To the two girls, it was a private language that had now become a lifeline.

“She said to give it to Ben, but he’s out there with her,” Carole whispered. “She knew we’d help.”

Mace’s fingers flew across the keyboard, but the screen just blinked with an “Interference Error.” He slammed his fist onto the desk. “I can’t get a handshake. The jamming is too thick.”

Picasso leaned against the doorframe, watching the twins with a steady, knowing gaze. He reached into his tactical vest, pulled out a battered, nondescript burner phone, and tossed it onto the desk. It landed with a heavy thud on the oak.

“Call the priority-one contact,” Picasso said. “Tell him you’re with me.”

Mace looked at the phone, then up at Picasso. “Who is it?”

“The only man who can see through a wide-spectrum jammer from three thousand miles away,” Picasso deadpanned. “Tex.”

Logan’s head snapped up. “Tex? Picasso, come on. Tex is a myth. The NSA made him up to explain away foreign power-grid failures. He’s a program, not a person.”

“He’s only a myth if you’re the one he’s hunting,” Picasso replied, his mouth twitching into a faint smirk. “Dial the phone, Lieutenant.”

Mace reached for the burner, his heart racing. He had heard stories in the hushed hallways of Naval Intel about the “Boogeyman of the Beltway.” He was just about to hit the call button when the device suddenly pulsed in his hand.

The screen read: [DATA MASKED].

Mace’s jaw dropped. “He’s calling us.”

He swiped to answer. Before he could speak, a voice that sounded like gravel being ground in a digital blender filled the room.

“Picasso, didn’t expect to see the Adams Ranch light up my board tonight,” Tex said. “But then again, I didn’t expect a hostile PMF to drop a wide-spectrum jammer on a bunch of elk, either. You’ve been online with a Class-4 Navy handshake for exactly three minutes. What the hell is going on there?”

Mace cleared his throat. “This is Mace. Tex?” His voice sounded younger than he liked. “I was just about to dial⁠—”

“I didn’t wait for you to dial. I followed your signal pings back to your dad’s router,” Tex rasped. “It’s got a back door wide enough to drive a Humvee through. Fix it later.”

Logan leaned in, eyes wide. “Wait. You’re real? I mean, um… Picasso mentioned you, but we thought Tex was a myth. A program.”

Across the room, Picasso leaned against the doorframe, a faint, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched the identical twins stare at the burner phone like it was a live grenade.

“He’s got that effect on people,” Picasso said with a hint of sarcasm, crossing his arms. “First time Tex called me, I spent three hours checking my smoke detectors for microphones. Relax, boys. He’s on our side. Mostly.”

Mace cleared his throat, struggling to find his professional footing. “Tex, we’re in the middle of a decryption. The target sent a file through a childhood cipher.”

“I see it,” Tex’s voice lost its edge, replaced by a sharp, clinical interest. “The RobinsNest. It’s an offline code: unbreakable by standard AI because it’s based on a shared memory. Clever. I’m pulling the data as you unlock it.”

“Tex,” Mace asked, “how did you know to call? How much do you see?”

“I’ve been tracking the Adams Ranch’s private VHF burst since you lit it up two hours ago,” Tex rasped. “I saw the ‘Hard Entry’ signal Reef punched through. I also started skimming all the internal frequencies over Yellowstone and found Vanguard; they were talking about two interlopers in custody and a linear breach at a forestry cabin. When a SEAL team on vacation sends a ‘Hard Entry’ burst followed by radio silence and a wide-spectrum jammer, I don’t need a crystal ball to know you’re in the soup. “It’s a lightning strike in a powder keg, pure chaos waiting to happen.”

“Give us eyes, Tex,” Picasso commanded, stepping into the center of the room.

“Rerouting a KH-11 bird now,” Tex grunted. “You’ll have a thermal overlay in sixty seconds. And Picasso? I already pinged Wolf’s team. I cleared the rescue mission through Wolf’s commander by feeding him the raw audio I skimmed from Vanguard. I told him Grizzly was in the soup, and he didn’t wait for the Pentagon to sign off. They were wheels-up as of two minutes ago.

“Tex, thank you,” Mace breathed.

“Don’t thank me yet. Vanguard is running a localized jammer to kill your comms, but they are looking for encrypted military signals. They aren’t looking for a primitive, low-frequency cattle tag. One of your boys managed to dump a livestock scanner into their transport before they zip-tied him. It’s a dumb-tech device, too slow for their jammer to even register. I’m routing the pulse to your board now.”

On Mace’s secondary monitor, which they’d devised using the TV in his dad’s office, a tiny, erratic red dot began to pulse on the edge of the dead zone.

“I see it,” Logan called out.