Brent looked at me as if he wanted to choke me. “Don’t tell me you’re considering letting this...” He clenched his fist.

“I’ll be right back.” I made my way across the room and caught James by the arm, pulling him with me into the hallway.

He let me push him against the wall, amusement filling his eyes.

“Are you sure you could do this, or do you think I’ll actually give you access to a computer and leave you in there unsupervised?” I leaned forward, our faces so close that I could feel his breath, which seemed to catch as I looked straight into his eyes.

“I can do this,” he said, his voice low. “The only question is if you’re too afraid I’ll do something.” He moved his head a little, his lips nearly brushing mine, and a part of me wanted to close the distance and just show him that he shouldn’t be trying to tease me. But he was an Ezzati. I wasn’t going to kiss my biggest enemy’s son. It didn’t even matter that Desmond was dead. His blood was running through James’ veins. That thought made me come to my senses immediately.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I said. “What I don’t want is for you to waste our time and lie to us.”

“I spent months cracking those codes. That was one of the rare interesting things I could do.” His face was deadly serious, and I knew he wasn’t lying about that.

“And your father never found out about it?”

His shoulders stiffened. “Do you want my help or not?” he all but growled.

“Fine. If you do this for me, I’ll give you a few extra minutes of conversation with your family. How about that?” I flashed him a wide smile. Everyone worked better with some kind of reward in sight.

“Okay.”

When I appeared at the door, I realized everyone was so quiet that the only sound was a low buzzing of the computers. Brent, Meg, and Felipe were watching me with expectant eyes, and I had a feeling they’d been trying to listen in on my conversation with James.

“You guys should see yourselves. Your faces...” I whistled.

“What’s going on? Is he going to...?” Meg asked.

“Yeah. James is going to help you decipher that code.”

Brent threw his arms up in frustration, turning around and almost kicking one of the chairs. “Am I the only one here who realizes how dangerous this is?”