An Eye For An Eye (Fast & Furious | Hobbs/OFC)

Chapter 13

"That's bullshit," Brian interrupted. He looked at Dom, Hobbs, then at Shaw. The odds weren't going to increase by way of them sitting on their hands. "You expect us to take all the risk while you—"

"Let me make one thing clear: I don't care what you think, O'Conner. The only reason you're here is because Toretto couldn't get the job done properly in the first place."

Owen snorted, proceeding to cough into his sleeve. By his recollection, it was Deckard who'd let Cipher escape. He had also been responsible for Toretto escaping with his life, but Deckard didn't like being reminded of that. If not for his failures, none of them would be sitting there right now.

"Shaw." Luke threw Deckard a look that said 'shut up'. If he and his brother didn't cut the bullshit, Luke would drag them both to a cell and carry out the mission without them. "Let him finish."

"What you're going to do is cover our asses," Dom said. That military training had to be good for something. SBS, SAS, MI6 — the Shaws should've been able to catch Cipher in their sleep. "Now let me make something clear." He stood, braced his fists on the table and looked at Owen. "You stay away from my wife or I put you back in whatever grave you crawled out of."

Owen gave him a cold, insincere smile and rose to his feet. "Oh I'd be more worried about keeping your wife away from me, mate," he said coolly, in that same emotionless tone he'd used with Oakes that night in London. "Perhaps you forgot but we have a history. I don't suppose Letty ever told you how she got that scar on her thigh."

"Nobody will be burying anybody till this thing's over."

"Speak for yourself, Hobbs."

After that, Owen left the room, passing Roman, Tej and Ramsey on his way downstairs. All three were on the second flight of stairs, looking toward the mezzanine and the glass room. Had they been listening, he wondered, or simply watching the show unfold?

His footsteps echoed on the metal steps, causing Elizabeth to look up from the diagram she was sketching out. Owen didn't seem to be in a hurry but the way he carried himself suggested the opposite. He bore a lethal grace, the stride of someone who easily fit in amongst the upper echelons of society, and a look that said the next person who got in his way would be moved.

"Okay," she muttered, and stood. Elizabeth carried the sheaf to her workstation and tucked it into the top drawer, tossing her pencil in with the papers. On any other day, she might've gone after him and poked her nose into Owen's business. Common sense said right now, she was better off not doing so. "That's Deckard's problem today."

As they moved away from the stairs, Tej asked, "So what you thinking? Cipher's communicating with telnet? Bulletin boards aren't indexed."

"It's the obvious answer," Ramsey conceded. "Without an address, we'll struggle to find it."

There were too many possible combinations of words and letters and no way to search or scan them. What they needed was access to Cipher's plane. if it hadn't been stripped down, Ramsey could decrypt the hard drives and access the old servers. It seemed whether Hobbs liked it or not, they were going onboard and kicking down the door to Cipher's office.

"Alright, I know I said I wasn't getting on that thing but . . . what if we did use Cipher's plane?" Roman interrupted, a smile on his face that said he'd just solved their problem. "It ain't like they blew it up so all the computers would still be logged in, wouldn't they? Ain't nobody gotta fly it. We just leave it on the ground where it is."

"Good idea, man," Tej clapped him on the shoulder. "We were just thinking the exact same thing."

"See? What did I say? Great minds!" Roman gestured between them. He'd told them in the car that there were two teams: the whole team and their team. Their team would be the one to catch Cipher, assuming Tej did his part. "The three of us together? Unstoppable. I told y'all we got this."