The Hacker

by Herkness, Nancy

  “Some guy from a delivery service brought it in. Said to make sure you got it as soon as possible.” The receptionist shrugged apologetically. “You were with clients all morning and I know I’m not supposed to interrupt.”

  “That’s fine. You did the right thing.” Dawn decided to take the box back to her apartment to open it since she didn’t know what it contained. A crazy thought struck her. It couldn’t be a bomb, could it?

  She shook her head at her paranoia and applied logic. Ramón and/or Vicky couldn’t assume that she would take the carton out of the gym to open it. They wouldn’t want to blow up their own building and the weapons that might possibly be stored in it.

  When had life become a James Bond movie?

  “I guess I’ll run it back to my apartment and then get lunch.” She should have just enough time if she got a smoothie instead of a salad.

  Dawn hefted the box off the desk. It wasn’t particularly heavy and she couldn’t resist shaking it a bit. Something shifted inside it but only slightly. She was pretty sure it was from KRG but what on earth were they sending her so mysteriously? No one had said a word about a package yesterday.

  Back at her apartment, she sliced the tape with a box cutter and flipped open the flaps. Nestled inside the carton were the two extra pairs of shoes and the designer clothing she’d given back to Leland at the pool, wrapped in tissue paper.

  She pulled a Balenciaga sneaker out of its box and sat on the sofa with it cradled in her hands. Was this a farewell gift? Something expensive to say Thanks for the sex?

  Or maybe it was just too much trouble for the concierge to return the clothes to the stores where they’d come from.

  No, she was being mean because she was so hurt. He’d wanted her to have these, but he knew her well enough not to argue with her when she handed them back. So he’d found another way to give them to her. It made it all the worse that Leland understood her well enough to slip in his gift with such subtlety.

  She put the shoe down on the coffee table and rummaged around in the carton in the hope that there was a note of some kind. She hadn’t seen one but maybe it had fallen between the shoeboxes. Instead of an envelope, her questing fingers found a small box hidden among the folds of one pair of jeans.

  Prying open the lid, she tipped a cell phone onto her palm. The square black device wasn’t any brand she recognized. A yellow sticky note covered the screen and read: “Use private cell number to unlock.”

  She frowned, wondering what the heck that meant. Then understanding hit her. Leland had a private cell number that he’d given to her. She turned the phone on and keyed in the number.

  The screen lit up with a text message.

  I knew you would figure out the unlock code.

  A blip of pleasure pinged in her chest that he thought she was smart enough to catch on to his cryptic note.

  This phone is encrypted so we can communicate without security concerns. It locks down after 5 seconds of inactivity so keep touching the screen. Text me as soon as you can.

  The pleasure was no longer a blip. It was a full-on tidal wave of joy that she would be in contact with Leland once again. That was bad.

  He hadn’t exactly written her a love note, had he? She searched for some clue as to whether he wanted her to communicate about the arms dealing or on a more personal level, but there was no subtext in his message that she could find. Only his request to contact him soon, which could mean anything or nothing.

  The package arrived, obviously. Thanks for the clothes, even though you were supposed to return them.

  Now he could try to discern the subtext. A new message pinged in almost immediately. Evidently he wasn’t sweating over hidden meanings.

  The clothes will look better on you than me. Are you all right?

  She chuckled without being able to stop herself. That disarming humor of his got her every time. But how was she supposed to respond to his question? She didn’t know the answer.

  Back to skimming the surface.

  No one has pulled a gun on me yet. One note of interest . . . there must be a new security camera somewhere in the basement. Vicky sort of alluded to our visit down there. Which is weird because the reason the trainers go down there was the previous lack of security cameras.

  This time there was a substantial pause before he responded.

  Not good. I’ve told Tully. Can you talk now? I want to know what else Vicky said.

  She glanced at her watch. If she skipped the smoothie she could hear Leland’s voice pouring into her ear. She tapped in his private cell number.

  “Dawn! Thank God! I hate not being there with you. Talk to me.” He sounded more worried than distraught but maybe she was just being sensitive.

  “I’m at my apartment now, which I assume means that Tully’s guard dog is somewhere around.” She had tried to spot her shadow this morning without success, and the package had distracted her from the bodyguard on her way home.

  “Her report says no suspicious activity but that makes me feel only marginally better. Why was Vicky discussing our tryst with you?”

  She tried to remember how Vicky had introduced the topic of Leland. It had shocked her so much that she hadn’t really focused on the reason for it. “Um, the cell phone. She wanted to know if you’d found it.”

  “Which means that she knows we were in her office. Shit! Then what did she say?”

  “She was doing her gym-owner thing, checking up on how much I was fraternizing with my client. She mentioned us being hot and heavy at dinner at Carmella’s. But we weren’t. In fact, we barely spent any time there, so she must have seen us in the basement. That’s the only explanation. Anyway I told her it didn’t work out and not to give you a refund.”

  He gave a ghost of a laugh. “Damn, that’s a hundred and fifty dollars down the tube. But the rest of it is no laughing matter. She’s suspicious enough to keep tabs on you.”

  “Yeah, but the fact that we really were hot and heavy works in our favor.” She put an emphasis on the past tense to see if he reacted.

  “Granted, but it’s still a problem.”

  Maybe he hadn’t noticed the past tense. The edge in his voice was growing sharper and sharper, which meant he wasn’t thinking about their relationship. He was thinking about the arms dealers.

  “I had a thought about the basement,” she said, following his lead. “It’s huge and no one goes down there, except in the part where we were. Wouldn’t it be the perfect place to store guns?”

  “Not only perfect, but all the gym members coming and going provide an excellent cover for any customers. Tully got hold of blueprints of the building. Luckily, the college had them archived. There’s a hell of a lot of potential storage down there.”

  “But how did they get all the guns in there without anyone noticing? That’s a big delivery.”

  “In multiple small shipments. Or one truck late at night. There are several ways it could happen without creating a scene. That’s assuming the weapons are really there, which we can’t be sure of until we see them. It’s useful to know that there are security cameras down there now.”

  She decided not to mention her plan of grabbing a case of water from the basement to scope out the camera location. Leland wouldn’t approve.

  “Are you really all right?” His voice changed from clipped consultant to southern charmer, his honeyed drawl whispering through her body. “It sucks that I’m not there with you. This can’t be easy.”

  Hope fluttered its wings. “Seriously, I’m fine.” She decided to go out on a limb. “I miss you, though.”

  She heard a voice in the background and realized someone, probably Tully, was there with him. “Ditto,” he said. “In a big way.”

  The wings fluttered a little faster, just like her heartbeat. “I guess you can’t talk freely.”

  “Not about that. What time do you finish at the gym?”

  “Seven. My late appointment canceled at the last minute, the inconsiderate jerk.” Leland ha
d been on her schedule for seven thirty that evening.

  “Yeah, I hear you on that.” He did not sound like he was smiling. “I’ll call you later.”

  He disconnected before she could tell him to stop worrying about her.

  However, she did a little jig at the prospect of talking with him when she got off work.

  Leland set his own encrypted phone carefully on the desk. He’d had to browbeat Tully into allowing him to ship its counterpart to Dawn. His partner hadn’t wanted to chance spooking the arms dealers and thereby putting Dawn in danger. But after Leland asked him for the tenth time if the bodyguard had reported anyone following Dawn, Tully had relented, mostly to get Leland off his back.

  “I’m not blind,” Tully said. “I know you wanted to whisper sweet nothings into that phone. You didn’t have to hold back on my account.”

  Leland scowled at him. “I wanted to tell her not to go anywhere near that damned basement but that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

  Tully raised his eyebrows. “Takes one to know one.” He turned serious. “I like Dawn. She’s a strong woman.”

  “More than you know,” Leland said. “But that won’t stop a bullet.”

  “I meant that I’m glad you and she are together.”

  Leland held up a hand to stop him. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Where the hell else am I supposed to talk to you about it? You never leave this office except to swim or—thank God for Dawn!—to go to the gym in New Jersey.” Tully bent forward, his forearms on his thighs. “She’s good for you. You should try to hold on to her.”

  “Right now, I just want to make sure she stays alive and unhurt,” Leland said, irritated at Tully’s interference in his personal life. He had enough concerns about Dawn without adding the future of their relationship to the mix.

  “Fine. I’ve said my piece. You just think about it.” Tully straightened up. “I’ve gotta get in there tonight before they move the goods.”

  Leland jumped on the change of subject. “The data traffic is still going through the gym node, so why do you think they’re going to relocate the guns?”

  “Gut instinct. Dawn said customers have been complaining for a little over two weeks.” Tully smacked his forehead. “I forgot to ask her . . . Did she mention whether any tech guys had come in? She said Vicky had told her she would call them today.”

  Leland didn’t want to ask Dawn anything about the situation because he knew she would try to help. He shook his head. “I’ll ask her tonight.” That way she couldn’t do anything about it until tomorrow. By then Tully should know if the weapons were at Work It Out. “I’ll go with you to the gym tonight. I’ve been there several times so I know the lay of the land.”

  Tully squeezed Leland’s shoulder. “Thanks, buddy, but no. Ex-FBI agents are a dime a dozen. Computer geniuses are hard to come by. I’ve got a couple of good guys lined up to go with me.”

  Guys who were better trained for a situation like this than Leland was. Tully would be safer with them than with him. Like Dawn was safer with her professional bodyguard. Which made Leland feel like a useless piece of crap. He slumped in his chair.

  “You’ve been whining about not being involved in any SBI projects,” Leland said. “Looks like you finally got your wish.”

  “I reckon I did.” Tully’s expression was sober. “I wasn’t expecting an illegal arsenal, though.”

  Guilt jabbed at Leland. Because of Dawn’s devotion to Ramón, Leland had been the one who wanted to keep the authorities out of the situation until they had confirmation the gym was involved.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “We should turn this over to your former colleagues at the FBI. They’ve got the right equipment and the staff to handle it.”

  “Hell, no, partner!” Now Tully was smiling, albeit with a feral edge. “I’m not letting them have all the fun. This is just a recon mission. No big deal.”

  “Don’t decide to ride in and capture the bad guys,” Leland said. “I don’t want to have both you and Dawn on my conscience.”

  “No way am I getting myself killed.” Tully stood up and grinned. “I want to see Derek’s face when he sees those Class V rapids we’re gonna shoot.”

  Leland groaned as Tully exited Mission Control. He’d put that whole bachelor-rafting-trip-catastrophe-waiting-to-happen out of his mind.

  What he couldn’t seem to get out of his head were Tully’s words about holding on to Dawn. He hadn’t thought beyond the resolution of the dark web mystery at first. Not until he realized that once it was solved, he would have no compelling reason to trek out to New Jersey. That’s when he had come up with his half-baked idea to have Dawn travel to the city to train him. He smiled. She hadn’t been fooled by his pretense. She knew he wanted her for reasons other than her expertise as a personal trainer.

  But did he want her for the right reasons? Or was he using her the way he used his job, to push away the guilt and gut-wrenching sorrow over his mother’s death? Hell if he knew.

  So he plunged back into what he always did when he needed to avoid feeling—the controlled, logical world of his computers.

  Chapter 15

  “It’s Josh’s birthday,” Tiffany said as Dawn walked by the reception desk on her way home at the end of her day. “We’re all meeting at Arthur’s to celebrate with him after the gym closes at nine. You have to come!”

  “Darn! I wish I could”—total lie!—“but I’ve got plans.” Yup, a phone call with Leland counted as plans. Dawn waved a hand vaguely and kept going.

  “Bring your plans,” Tiffany said, giving her a sly wink.

  A heavy hand landed on Dawn’s shoulder, making her jump and twist away to tense in a defensive stance. “What the—?” she said, finding herself glaring at Chad.

  “Sorry!” He held up both hands, fingers spread and palms out, but his gaze on her was sharp. “I just wanted to encourage you to join us. Be friendly for a change.”

  “I’m friendly at the gym,” Dawn said, trying to hide the fact that her heart was beating at twice its normal rate. “I just don’t like to mix my professional life and my personal life.”

  “We know that’s not true,” Chad said with a slight leer.

  Now how the hell did he know about Leland? She decided not to deny it. “That was a bad idea. Proved by the fact that it didn’t work out.” She forced her body to relax by taking a deep breath. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “Show some solidarity with your fellow trainers,” Chad insisted.

  He was being more annoying than usual tonight. “Okay, I’ll meet you there at nine.” She didn’t have to show up.

  “Josh has a crush on you,” Tiffany said, clapping her hands together. “It will make him so happy to see you.”

  Dawn stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She’d been nice to Josh when he started at the gym, showing him the ropes. No good deed went unpunished. “That’s sweet but he’s a little young for me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He just wants you to be there.” Tiffany giggled. “Maybe you could give him a birthday kiss.”

  It was harder not to roll her eyes this time.

  “We’ll see you at Arthur’s. First beer’s on me.” Chad smiled, but something in the tightness of his jaw was not friendly.

  “That certainly sweetened the pot. I’ll be sure to join the fun now.” There might have been a wee bit of sarcasm in her tone. “I have to get home to change for the celebration.”

  In four strides she was through the door. As she walked home in the gathering dusk, she groaned at the thought of treading the fine line of being kind to Josh while making it clear that he had no chance with her. She wished Tiffany hadn’t shared that particular bit of gym gossip with her. Ignorance was bliss, in this case.

  Her step quickened as she realized she needed to shower and change before she called Leland. She didn’t want to have to rush their conversation since all they could do tonight was talk.

  Damn Chad and Tiffany!
She started to jog.

  The encrypted phone began to dance across Leland’s desk. A blip of something that might be happiness dinged in his chest as he seized the cell. “Dawn! I was going to call you soon.” He’d forced himself not to dial her the moment he thought she might get home.

  “I hope you can talk now. I got roped into going to a birthday party for one of the trainers at nine.” Her voice dropped into a flirtatious purr. “I’m told he has a crush on me, so I have to give him a birthday kiss.”

  “I am extremely envious of him.” He could hear the rasp in his own voice as he pictured her soft lips pressed against another man’s mouth. “Don’t make it too good.”

  Her laugh was light and delicious. “I wouldn’t have gone but Chad was being unusually persistent tonight. That man is beyond irritating.”

  “Chad was worse than normal?” Leland lost all desire to flirt. “That worries me.”

  “He’s just a harmless jerk. I know his type. Besides, I have Tully’s bodyguard to keep me safe, right?”

  “You have two shadows now. Tully has some gut instinct that makes him think something will happen tonight, so he doubled up.” In fact it was Leland who had insisted on that.

  “Wow! Really?”

  Chad’s refusal to take no for an answer combined with Tully’s forecast of activity sent a chill down Leland’s spine. “Where’s the party?”

  “At a bar called Arthur’s. Why?”

  “How are you getting there?”

  “Walking. It’s not far from my building.”

  Leland put the phone on speaker and did a fast search on his computer. It would take her about eleven minutes to walk there. “Dawn, be very careful. Stay with people you trust at all times. And stay away from the gym!”

  “You’re making me nervous.” There was a tension in her voice that made his chest ache.

  “As much as I hate worrying you, that’s a good thing because you’ll be alert.” Uneasiness hollowed out his chest. “I don’t like this at all. I need to tell Tully and then I’ll call you back.”