Diesel’s mouth fell open. He tried to ask a question, but nothing came out. He was indeed cracking the hashed values—the combinations of letters and numbers into which the passwords had been encrypted.

Michael looked delighted. “I’m right! Aren’t I?”

“You’re dangerous,” Diesel managed, but he was impressed. “How do you know about hash cracking?”

“I read. A lot. Not always books. I sometimes go to the library on campus at UC. You can always tell the programmers. I . . . shoulder surf.”

“You really are dangerous,” Diesel muttered, then remembered to sign when Michael frowned his confusion. “Sorry.”

Michael regarded him very seriously. “You’re a white hat.”

A good guy who didn’t use his hacking for personal profit. “You sound sure.”

“I am sure. You said you were going to keep us safe. Find the bald man who killed Brewer. Is that what you’re doing? What you were doing last night when you left Dani’s house?”

Super, super dangerous kid, Diesel marveled. So damn smart. “Yeah. So . . . what are you going to do with this information?”

Michael blinked. “I’m not going to tell. I keep secrets better than Greg does.”

Diesel laughed. “I should hope so.”

Michael smiled a little, then grew serious again. “I’m going to say thank you for keeping me safe. For keeping Joshua safe. Then later I’m going to ask you to teach me how to do that.” He pointed to the screen, then stilled. “It found something.”

Diesel’s attention veered from Michael’s face to his laptop screen. He no longer had his phone, which would have alarmed to let him know Ritz had finished. He’d had to give his phone to Adam when they’d been brought to the safe house, just in case it was being used to track them, although there was no way anyone could break into his phone to track them. Nevertheless, he’d wiped it first, resetting it to factory settings. He had the backup stored in safe places, so he’d be able to restore it later.

Michael was correct. Ritz had finished, finding Scott King’s password to the super-secret database, to which only he and casino owner Richard Fischer had access. KingOfTheWorld666.

Well, at least King was consistent. His e-mail password was GoodToBeKing666. The guy liked 666, for sure. Diesel wondered what his real name was. It wasn’t King. The guy had too much fun with the name. Plus, there was the real Scott King. The nursing home guard who’d disappeared from Indianapolis a year ago.

Stone had been planning to drive to Indy today to check the guy out. In all the excitement last night, Diesel had forgotten.

Michael had been staring at the screen, but now turned to Diesel. “It’s Scott King’s password, isn’t it?”