by Juno Rushdan
“Positive.” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “I gave it away somehow. Inadvertently.”
“Maybe you’re wrong and—”
He finally looked up and the shadows swimming in his eyes stole her voice. “I failed his test by not agreeing to take another assignment and let Cutter protect you. Sanborn gave me twenty-fours to report in with you and let Cutter take over.”
An achy tightness clenched her heart.
“To be honest, Kit, I feel lost. Before you blew into my life, I would’ve thought the things I’ve done over the last few days, the choices I’ve made, to be unimaginable.”
The conflict etched on his face made her long to erase the deep lines of worry.
Her future, possibly her life itself, rested on this moment. This fork in the road would determine what path they’d take, either together or separately.
Whatever happened, she wasn’t going to hold him to an obligation to protect her. He was a good man, the best man she’d ever known. This sacrifice was too much to ask. She cared about Castle, wanted to share herself with him, but the last thing she wanted was to hurt him.
“You have to let Cutter take over and step aside,” she said.
His eyes snapped to hers. “No way in hell. You won’t survive if I do.”
Always the consummate commando. Surprisingly, it was one of the things she realized she loved about him. He approached everything in his life the same way, as a warrior with conviction. Willing to put his life on the line if necessary.
But she was responsible for too many deaths already.
“If you don’t walk away from me, Sanborn is going to punish you.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“The parent–child dynamic you’ve mentioned between you two, the mentor–mentee relationship. What does any good parent do when their child gets caught disobeying?”
It seemed to dawn on him that she was right as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Shit.”
The ten-million-dollar question was, what would that punishment be? “Would he demote you for insubordination? Put you at a desk or something?”
“No. Nothing that straightforward for Sanborn. If he punishes me for not following orders, it’ll be something I won’t expect. Something that’ll hurt, so I’ll learn my lesson.”
Nauseating dread twisted through her.
Maybe it was her turn to protect him. “The smart thing for you to do is walk away. Accept your next assignment. I’m afraid of what Sanborn might do to you.”
“That’s because you don’t know him. Some good parents spank, but that doesn’t mean they crush their children into oblivion. Sanborn had a son and lost him in a bad CIA mission. One that never should’ve been sanctioned. That demon chases him. It’s the reason he cares so deeply about his people. I dare even say he loves us, in his own way.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I can’t bear breaking my word and handing over your safety to someone else.”
Her perspective on the kind of powerful men who ran secret government agencies was skewed for certain, but none of what he said calmed her nerves. “You have the drives. Move on and cut your losses. You don’t owe me anything. I don’t matter anymore, Castle.”
“You matter to me.” He clutched her hand and threaded their fingers together, pulling her against him, and kissed her.
She fought his devastating proximity, resisted the sublime seduction of his mouth for as long as she could. Three seconds flat until she was dragging him closer instead of pushing him away.
Once she loosened and yielded to him, he said, again, “You. Matter. To me.”
She believed him. “But I’m screwing up your life. You feel lost because of me, and everyone I care about dies. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I’m not worth it.”
“Bravo is screwing up both of our lives. Not you. I know you think you’re only worth what your money can buy for someone, but that’s a lie you believe based on every guy who has done you wrong.” He cupped her face in both his big hands. “Heel to toe, I’ve walked the line from one grueling mission to the next. I’ve always used the job as my compass, steering me the right way. But when I touch you, Kit, you feel like my true north.” He stared into her eyes, cradled her in his gaze. “Nothing worth having is free. I’m willing to pay the price to see what we could be together, but that means keeping you alive.”
Holy hell. She melted.
The odds of forging this bond, with the world falling to pieces around them, must’ve been a million to one. She felt like a damn lottery winner.
“Why did you pick this life?” she asked. “Join the military? The Gray Box?”
“I joined the navy to get out of my father’s house. It was the fastest, easiest, all-expense-paid, one-way ticket from under his thumb. I turned out to be a natural fit for the SEALs, and once you become a special mission unit operator, it gets in your blood. When Sanborn recruited me after I was discharged for PTSD, it was a second chance to do the only thing I’m good at, but this life wears on your soul. I can’t do it forever.
“Sometimes I look at my soon-to-be brother-in-law.” He gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. “Cole. He’s making three times what I bring home for doing a different version of the same job. Maybe he’s cracked the code on how to be an operator and still sleep at night.”
She caressed his cheek, her heart overflowing with gratitude for his presence in her life, despite the shitty circumstances responsible.
“This life picked me,” Castle said. “The same as with you. No sane person seeks out death and violence, but it has a way of finding some of us.”
“I keep wondering why the Outliers? With the other hacker groups out there, why did Bravo pick us?”
“Maybe you weren’t his first choice. Maybe he tested other groups and they failed. If you can figure out who else he might’ve contacted, determine the common denominators, you’ll have your answer. Your group was good, right?”
“One of the best. We played by our own rules, but…” Ever Shield.
“What?”
“We did something shady that our small community apparently knew about. Perhaps Ever Shield painted us as a group open to black-hat work.”
“Do you know anyone else like that, someone who might be willing to talk to you?”
Two groups sprang to mind, but only one might talk to her. “As a matter of fact, I do. I can reach out, see if they’ll meet. I can tell you right now, they’ll only talk face-to-face after verifying my identity. And if you think I’m paranoid, then you haven’t seen anything yet.”
35
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
9:39 p.m. EDT
Castle looked around, seated on a bench in front of the fountain in Passyunk Square. Home to cheesesteaks, taquerias, pho restaurants, the trendy neighborhood was a melting pot of cultures with a small-town vibe. Not to mention a host to rich, savory smells.
They were being watched and had been since they’d arrived an hour ago. Someone in the van parked across the street was sizing him up. By now, they might even have run his picture through facial recognition, cross-referencing it with local PD and FBI records.
“Who are they?” Castle asked.
“CONTRA84.”
He was better versed in foreign terrorists than potential subversive threats in their backyard, but the name struck a distant bell. “I’ve heard of them. They hacked a government satellite, right? Turned it into a weapon or something.”
“Three satellites. American, French, and Russian. I heard through the grapevine they used them as high-intensity radio frequency weapons targeting three U.S. battleships, frying their electrical systems.”
“Aircraft carriers. No one uses battleships anymore,” he said, correcting her without thinking about it. “Killing their electrical systems would leave them dead in the w
ater and vulnerable to physical attack. Why would CONTRA84 do that unless their intent was to inflict serious harm?”
Containing the war on terror beyond their borders was hard enough. They didn’t need their own citizens presenting a clear and present danger to national security.
“Supposedly, they were working with a company chasing a government contract building a new class of warships—aircraft carriers,” she said, making a gesture of apology, “with HIRF shielding. After the incident, the company won.”
“I remember that.” He tended to stay abreast of navy news. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL. “The company was awarded a fifteen-billion-dollar contract for two new aircraft carriers with sweet upgrades, better defense systems, and new stealth technology after a malfunction on three older models. I never saw anything about an attack.”
“It’s hard to know what’s fodder to build a group’s reputation and what’s real. CONTRA84 tends to stay under the radar, and they’re very good at covering their tracks. They do a lot of legitimate corporate work, but every year, their presentation at the black-hat convention leaves everyone speechless.”
This CONTRA84 sounded about as malicious as they came. Whether or not they’d had a run-in with Bravo, Castle made a mental note to have the Gray Box dig into them once things settled down. Hopefully that would be sooner rather than later.
The black, nondescript van on the corner flashed its headlights three times.
“That’s the signal,” Kit said, rising to her feet. “Let’s go.”
The check on him had apparently come back clean, as well it should’ve, but Castle had been at this long enough to know that his physical size and grim countenance tended to set people on edge. When he opened his mouth, it didn’t ease anyone’s qualms that he was capable of crushing bones. In fact, it only bolstered them.
“Stick to my side, no matter what,” Castle instructed. “Got it?”
Kit nodded.
The driver hopped out. A Latino man in his early twenties. “Winner of Scion7?”
“Avirom,” Kit said without hesitation.
It was a challenge–response authentication of identity. A set of protocols where one party gave a question and the other party provided a valid answer. This must’ve been the hackers’ lite version.
“Sex on the Beach,” the man said.
Something about that prompt made her smile. “Rusty Nail.”
“I’m Nim. I was told passage for you. Not him.” The guy flicked a wary glance at Castle.
Kit took a step forward. “I’m sure you’ve heard what happened to my group. He’s my private bodyguard. I don’t go anywhere without him.”
“You need this meeting with Henry,” Nim said. “Not the other way around. We’re no threat to you, but I can’t say the same about him to us. He stays. I’ll bring you right back here when you’re finished.”
“She doesn’t go without me.” Castle tried to soften his tone, less hard-as-granite, more easy-breezy.
“Sorry.” The kid shook his head, gaze bouncing between them. “No dice.”
Kit looped her arm around Castle’s. “Tell Henry the Pwnie is his if my bodyguard can come.”
Nim’s eyebrows shot to the sky at the offer. He nodded with an excited grin, took out a cell, and drifted out of earshot.
“What is the pony?” Castle asked. It had to be something big if it could get him in the door with no further questions asked.
“The Pwnie is an award given every year at the Black Hat conference for excellence as well as incompetence. Pwn is hacker jargon, means to own, take control of. Like I totally own your network. The ultimate dis.”
Maybe if you were an IT nerd.
“Add an ‘ie’ to the end and you get Pwnie, but it’s pronounced pony. Get it?”
Fuck no. That made no sense. “Yep.”
“Anyway, CONTRA84 won the last four years in a row for the former, until we broke their streak and stole it. Henry’s pissed and wants it.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“It’s highly coveted.” She cocked her head to the side, those sweet lips flattened into a harsh line. “Lose the judgy face. It won’t go over well with Henry. His sense of humor isn’t as good as mine.”
“What was with the drinks, Sex on the Beach and Rusty Nail?”
“The last time I saw Henry, it was at a bar in Vegas, where I had the pleasure of gloating over the Pwnie. That’s what we ordered. I’m not really supposed to drink with my meds, but sometimes I have a few sips to be social.”
Nim came back. “You have a deal. Weapons?” He looked at Castle. “You strike me as the kind of guy who’s packing. You probably don’t need it to do much damage where we’re going.”
“You want me to hand it to you right here on the street?” Castle asked. “Might be better to keep a low profile.”
Nim opened the rear cargo door and gestured for them to enter.
Castle helped Kit inside and then sat beside her on the bench seat that resembled one from a police transport van. There were no windows, and a steel plate separated the back from the driver’s compartment.
Nim tossed a backpack in. “You can put your gun in there.”
Castle withdrew his Maxim 9.
“Holy shit! That’s big,” Nim said.
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” Castle stowed his weapon in the bag and handed it to the kid.
The door closed and they were off.
Castle put his arm around Kit’s shoulders. “This is very cloak and dagger.”
“They’re just trying to protect their location. I’m sure you can relate. At least we’re not blindfolded and zip-tied.”
Although he understood their stringent protocol and caught Kit’s little quip, he said nothing. He was in full-on operator mode. With no visuals, he had to rely on sound to determine where they were headed. South. Two minutes. A turn west. Three minutes. The sound of an outdoor commuter train passing.
They came to a stop. A gate on rollers opened and they proceeded.
When Nim let them out, they were inside a small warehouse on the ground floor. They went to a freight elevator that had a metal accordion gate Nim had to close manually and rode up to the third floor, which opened onto a swanky apartment.
Apparently it paid to be a hacker.
Nim led them through a killer living space with luxe furniture, past a few geeky onlookers, and down a long hallway.
“That’s the Pwnie,” Kit whispered in awe, gesturing to a backlit glass display case.
Four My Little Pony statues were stacked in two rows on two shelves. Granted, they appeared to be made of solid gold and polished to a high gleam, but they were just expensive cutesy toys with pink and purple manes.
Castle clocked the surveillance cameras and wrangled down the intense look of scrutiny from his face.
“Please try to relax,” she said, low, “and lose the Judge Dredd persona you’ve got going.”
Guess he needed to wrangle a little harder.
Nim ushered them into a narrow room beyond a set of double doors but didn’t follow, closing the doors behind them.
The only thing inside the room was a brightly lit large container about half the size of a shipping container, with glass walls and a door at either end.
“What is that?” Castle asked.
“A Faraday cage. It’s designed to block any electromagnetic interference. No signals in or out means no Wi-Fi, no cells, no GPS. A free space that can’t be hacked.”
“They are paranoid.”
She smiled. “This isn’t paranoia. This is practical. We had one in our apartment. You just didn’t see it.”
Castle held the door open for her and they both stepped inside.
Seconds later, they were joined by a scrawny guy with curly hair and glasses. He wore a pullover sweater, jeans, and long, painted
fingernails. “Where’s my Pwnie, bitch?”
“Hello to you too, Henry. It’s not as if I carry it around. Don’t worry, you’ll get it.”
Henry crossed his arms and tapped his nails on his lean bicep. “What do you want?”
“I’m trying to figure out who killed the Outliers.” She approached Henry slowly until they were both standing in the middle of the box. “They were hired by a man known as Bravo and asked to perform a test. Once they passed, they were offered—”
“Two million for two days of work,” Henry interrupted, finishing her sentence.
“So they did contact you. When?” Castle asked.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“He’s my bodyguard-slash-private investigator, trying to keep me alive and help me figure this out. Whoever killed the Outliers is still after me.”
“Damn you, Kit.” Henry wagged a finger in her face. “Trouble is following you, and you come to me? You’ve got one minute, then you’re out of here.”
“When did they contact you?” Castle asked, not intending to waste a single second.
Henry shrugged, but his face said he knew exactly when. “Mid-September.”
“Why didn’t you take the job? Two million is a lot to walk away from.” Kit was independently wealthy and he still found it hard to believe that she hadn’t been tempted even a little.
“I’ve been in this game a long time,” Henry said. “It didn’t feel right. Couple that with their test and it just wasn’t worth it. They asked us to crack a secure government server.”
“Which server?” Kit stepped closer to him but stayed out of arm’s reach.
“I don’t know for certain, but it was a gold-standard block cipher. Type 1 encryption.”
“What does that mean?” Castle looked between them for an answer.
“The server held top secret U.S. material,” Kit said. “Could’ve been anything from the NSA to the White House.”
“Thirty seconds, Kit. Tick tock.” Henry tapped his watch. His finely manicured nail clinked against the glass of the facepiece. “Then you have to leave.”