Best laid plans

Ryan's POV...

I put on some clothes and noticed the group awkwardly just sitting in the same room, not really talking. I knew the house layout well enough by this point to know she has to walk by then to get to the underground basements. I could only imagine what the angry blonde was compelled to do as she stormed naked past them.

They saw me and each gave me a different reaction. The look that united then however was the need for me to say something, to detract from the awkwardness. I sighed and sat down at the table, pouring some whiskey into a glass. "Fuck, well. I get that this whole situation together is weird. Even awkward. We don't know each other either. But if we don't want to end up a thousand times worse than you could ever imagine then we need to act. We narrowed all this down to a list of people. But that list is still huge."

I paused and noticed how they scoffed and agreed at the giant list of names. I frowned and continued after a long swig from my glass, I needed to establish control. If hope couldn't rally them, then confidence and power would. They waited on me to continue and I enjoyed my drink, making them wait.

After the pause I continued, "So we need to try to narrow down the list as quickly as possible. We need to know what these people have been up to, what these people did the day the book went missing, and try to keep track of where they are now. Any ideas on how we could do this?"

There was silence. Don spoke up, "Well the school actually has pretty advanced security. If we were able to access the security system, I could run some facial recognition software and some other neat little tricks of mine to track them down and see what they have been doing."

I smiled. Finally something. "Great, do your hacking thing and get into that system. The rest of us in the meantime can plan our next move."

Don shoon his head and interrupted me, "It only connects to external servers once a week. And it would be another five days to access it. Best chance would be to be there in person, so we don't have to wait almost a week."

I sighed, rubbing my chin. Nodding I knew I was conflicted. There stood Tom, a complete ass and pretending like he had just went to the washroom innocently. I smiled, "Well then Tom can help you get into the security room at school and do your tech thing to scout out anything weird."

The two came together and began talking. I looked to the ladies. I told them to keep an eye on social media. To keep a low profile and to not inquire too much about anything suspicious. I had a contact I really didn't want to use. If Tom was proving to be such a regret, I knew the contact could be so much worse.

It was decided Tom and Don would leave to go "study in the library". Don would then somehow temporarily disable the security system once the school was closed. All they had to do was avoid over night staff and deal with the security officer. I didn't know how they could pull it off. But narrowing a list of like thirty people down to potentially one was too big to ignore the risk.

We were about to fight back and I prayed that the pervert didn't catch on too early.