“Did you booby-trap the treasure?!” I ask, standing as stock still as possible for my dear life.

The Whiz smiles. Smiles that Blaise and I were this close to being blown to kingdom come.

Thank Goodwin I earned her trust and she saved me.

She walks in a wide arc in the direction of the giant rock wall at the back side of the dome, crazy careful where she lands her steps.

I watch from my safety zone as she steps over a nest of spiky bushes, crouches down, and disappears into a narrow cave opening, just big enough for a child-sized body to crawl into. Ten seconds later, the Whiz returns, signaling to us with a thumbs up.

A chunky rectangle box is in her hands.

The hard drive.

The three of us sit huddled around a makeshift hacking station Blaise set up in the back of my car, parked in a dark alleyway somewhere in Crabapple, Texas, five miles outside Enchanted Rock.

We’ve got the drive connected to our home network, but we just ran into a major roadblock.

Of course. I mean, so far, it’s just been too easy, right?

I wish.

All the data the Whiz copied over from Roth’s shadow network servers is AES encrypted. Unintelligible without an encryption key to unscramble it.

“Son of a governor,” Blaise curses, troubled eyes glued to the computer screen. “We’d need a quantum computer to break this cipher.” He turns to the Whiz, thick brow raised in hope. “Unless you have the key written down somewhere . . . ?”

The Whiz shakes her head.

“This whole operation means diddly-squat if we can’t read the damn messages,” I say, wanting to dropkick myself in frustration. I knew the kid didn’t have an encryption code stashed on her person—I searched her in the hospital—but I was betting on the key being taped to the drive itself or hidden somewhere on the rock. Stupid.

My knee bounces up and down, and I take massive deep breaths, fighting to not lose my composure. Or my head. “The closest supercomputer is all the way back in Dallas at Guardian Tower,” I say.

It’d be another half day at least before we could unlock Roth’s location. By that time, it could be too late to help Team Takedown.

In wartime, every wasted minute could mean life or death.

The Whiz puffs out her chest and clears her throat.

“Good thing I memorized the private key.”

My jaw drops to the wood floor.

“No way,” Blaise says, turning to face her.

Committing to memory a sequence like that would be impossible for practically anyone. Hell, I don’t even think I could do it. The key to that level of security encryption involves a mind-boggling amount of random letters and numbers. It’s genius level.

“You want to do the honors?” Blaise asks the Whiz, handing her control of his keyboard.

She nods, her fluffy curls bouncing with an energy that matches her newfangled spunk. She’s lost all her fear. Her fingers dance across the keys like a maestro at work, breaking down the encryption’s initial wall in a matter of seconds.

Next thing I know, folder after top-secret folder pops up on the screen.

“Holy Whitman, you did it,” I say, smirking like a pirate who has just unburied the mother of all treasure troves.

“You are a govdamn Whiz,” Blaise says, tipping his black hat to her.

Seeing Roth’s server files right in front of my eyes—It’s real; I was right—shoots adrenaline straight through me, buzzing me into overdrive.

It takes all I’ve got to not sprint back up that rock and shout from the mountaintop: We’re going to get you, Roth!

Calm, deep breaths, remember? We have to see what we’ve unlocked first.

“The Salazars are hosting an international trade meeting . . . ,” the Whiz paraphrases the message exchange. “At their stronghold in Mexico City . . . Roth confirmed his attendance. The capo looks forward to the deal tomorrow night . . .”

What are they trading? Nothing good for anybody.

“Wait,” she says, sifting through the files. “I found some folders that require a secondary password to open . . .”

Roth’s most valuable secrets have got to be on those. Like what he’s planning to get ahold of in the southern capital.

The Whiz looks up at Blaise and me, shamefaced. “I was never given the code . . .”

“We’ll break it, no problem,” Blaise says, clapping her on the back. “You’ve done more than enough.” She cracks a smile, a wobbly one at first, but then it sticks.

While I’m pumped that we’re now dead sure of Roth’s location, my immediate follow-up thought is, Where’s Ava headed?

Mexico is a massive country, and the Salazar cartel has a whole slew of strongholds. If Team Takedown’s first stop isn’t slated for the capital, they’re going to risk the mission—and their lives—for nothing.

And they’re going to miss the trade.

We can’t let Roth get his hands on whatever destructive goods the cartel is trafficking. If it’s a weapon like I’m guessing, it could be catastrophic. Apocalyptic.

We could lose the war in a single day.

“You’re going to Mexico, aren’t you?” Blaise says to me. “You’ve got that look in your eye like you’re about to do something crazy.”

“I can’t let the others chase after Roth blind,” I say to myself as much as to Blaise.

“Mira said crazy is just another word for brave,” the Whiz points out.

“Right,” Blaise says with a reinforcing nod, wasting no more time. He grabs a flash drive from one of his pockets and sticks it into the hard drive, syncing the still-passcode-protected folders. “You go find Alexander and the Goodwins. The Whiz and I will get to Emery.”

“But—”

“You can brute-force attack the locked files on your way to Mexico,” Blaise explains as he plugs the flash drive into Duke, downloading the data onto the car’s computer system. “And we’ll keep trying to crack these files in Dallas.”

Blaise and the Whiz disassemble the hacking station in no time flat and are suddenly out of the car, standing at the edge of the road.

“Two birds, one stone,” Blaise says, shouldering his jam-packed messenger bag. “As your girl likes to say.”

Ava’s not my girl, I think, but I keep it to myself.

The Whiz hugs the hard drive close, holding her spindly body with a dignified hardiness that makes me think she really is going to make it out of this all right.

“When you find my old bosses,” she says, “tell them Tess said goodbye.”

Tess grins, looking at me through the window with those full-moon eyes of hers. They glow yellow against the night. “I think you’re just crazy enough, Owen Hart, to vanquish them.”

Brave was Rayla Cadwell’s middle name. Maybe it can be mine now too.

“Wait, I can’t just ditch you two on a deserted highway—” I start to protest, but Blaise cuts me off with a dismissive scoff.

“I’m afraid you’ve been too habituated to my talents.”

True. The world-famous black-hat hacker can steal any autonomous car, even one hundreds of miles away, with just a few taps of his fingertips.

He’ll have a new ride delivered to them in no time.

I turn my focus to the Whiz. Tess. “The Common will repay you for what you’ve given,” I say. “Blaise will keep you safe.”