by Knight, TW
Ignoring Cassidy’s self-defeatist attitude, Rail walked around lab. "Would your employer have archived only the client-related items?"
"I’m not sure what the procedure would have been." Cassidy moved closer, a light of excitement in her eyes. "I see what you’re thinking. You think they would have copied everything on my hard drive to the server to audit later. Makes sense, but even if you could get to the archives, you’d have better luck trying to find a specific rat in the sewers of New York than sifting through all those files to find mine."
"But if you were there, in the office, you could find them?"
"Well sure, but—"
"Then I’ll get you there." A sly smile crept across his lips.
Cassidy jumped into his arms. "But you said I couldn’t leave. If I did, the skratars might find me."
"They still could. But you don’t need to worry. There’ll be three of us as protection. Four, if I can swing it."
Cassidy tipped her head to the side. "Kaz will never agree."
"Kaz can suck it." Rail winked and gave her a squeeze.
"Such language from an angel." She laughed.
"Former angel. Anyway, Kaz doesn’t need to know until we’re back."
"So, what’s your plan?"
Rail tapped his temple. "Working on it as we speak."
Chapter Twenty-Three
"I am not getting within a hundred yards of your female," Bass grumbled, sliding his sword into its sheath with a loud snap. "If I look at her wrong, I’ll get a busted jaw. Again."
"It healed," Rail said flatly.
"Aww, come on. You know you had fun." Boomer laughed. "Besides, that was the best fuckin’ fight we’ve seen in a while."
Cassidy rolled her eyes. "Why do we need him," she jerked a thumb at Bass, "if Hacker and Boomer are willing to help?"
"Because without Kaz we won’t have the energy to take you with us. And while I’d rather have Tam or even Zach over Bass, they’re not available."
"Hey, if it gets me out of this, I’ll gladly take over for Zach in the lab."
"And probably create a deadly virus that will kill every human within a thousand miles," Hacker mumbled not so quietly.
"Shut up, asshole."
"Zach is working on deciphering the glyphs on those skin samples we brought back from Peru. Besides, he’s not strong enough in a fight." Rail crossed his arms over his chest. "And he’s always been the weakest link when we flash."
"Explain this to me." Cassidy slipped off the desk she’d been perched on.
“All of us can flash short distances alone. To travel over long distances, especially intercontinental, it normally takes three of us. Kaz and I are the strongest. If need be, the two of us can travel without a third, but it shortens the distance by a couple miles. More if we have a human in tow, like when we moved you from the parking lot to the barge, and that was just across the state. Sucked the energy right out of us. As a result, we have to set up the teams based on our individual strength levels.”
"Was it always like that?"
"No," Bass snapped. "Before the Fall, we could go anywhere with just a thought or move humans with no effort, but when we lost the gift to enter Heaven our ability to flash was diminished."
“I don’t understand why the Hierarchy would do that. It forces you to band together. What's to stop you from gathering an army and flashing back to Heaven to kick their collective asses? I’m sure you’ve thought about it a time or two.”
The men shrugged.
"The compulsion?" Rail offered. “You thought it might have something to do with what’s kept us apart for so long. Not counting the trust issues.”
"What is this compulsion you keep talking about?" Bass rubbed his temples. "And why does my head hurt every time you mention it?"
"Trust me." Boomer winced, obviously affected as well. "You don’t want to go there. I saw what it did to Rail."
Cassidy playfully punched Boomer in the arm. "Let’s just say it’s a safety feature the Heavenly Host saddled you with to keep you from thinking too much."
"Not a problem with Bass; he barely thinks now." Boomer ducked as a dagger sailed in his direction, burying itself in the wall behind him. "Hey!"
"Enough," Rail snarled, putting himself in front of Cassidy. "Didn’t you learn your lesson last time? Cuz if no, I’d gladly beat your ass again."
Cassidy leaned around Rail with a resigned sigh. "The real question is, can we get into DataSearch and out without alerting the authorities or Kaz?"
"No problem," all four males answered, full of confidence and bravado.
"So you’re coming?" Cassidy asked Bass. When he nodded, she turned to Rail, her smile full of mischief. "Then why are we standing around? We get in, get my files, and get out. Then, you three can go back on patrol or whatever you do, and I can get to work."
"Just what makes these files so important again?" Hacker popped the magazine from his Glock, snapped it back in, and then repeated the process with a second gun.
"If we try to explain it, it will trigger the compulsion, and you’ll end up writhing on the floor useless for several hours," Rail answered. "Just trust me on this. Kaz already approved the research Cassidy is going to be doing and she needs these files to get a leg up on the work."
"And if we don’t get them?"
"She’ll be spending a lot more time in the tech lab cursing at Hacker's babies."
"I’m in!" Hacker sorted through a pile of gadgets, stuffing selections into his many-pocketed cargo pants. "Anything to return peace to my lab."
"Baby." Cassidy stuck her tongue out at him.
He returned the gesture with one of his own and began strapping weapons to his chest, arms, and legs. "What’s the plan?"
Dumbstruck, Cassidy watched the men arm themselves with various weapons. The selection was amazing—broad swords to semi-automatic handguns. She even thought she saw a grenade disappear into a coat pocket. "Uh, guys. We’re going into an office building after hours; you don’t need all of that."
They laughed.
"Never hurts to be prepared." Rail kissed her forehead, his hands holding her face gently as he gazed into her eyes. "Remember, the skratars are still hunting you, and we haven’t figured out how they detect the Aktura when we can’t."
"I know, but it seems like overkill to me."
"No such thing," Bass responded in a voice like ice and adjusted the sword strapped to his back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"I don’t know why you needed me," Bass grumbled. "She barely caused any drag."
"Drag?" Cassidy pinned him with a stare that would have left a lesser man whimpering in fear.
Oblivious to the danger, he answered, "You know, excess weight causes—"
"Excuse me!"
Rail swatted Bass in the back of the head. "He means, carrying a human creates resistance. But honestly, there was much less now than when Kaz and I carried you to the barge. Almost none in fact." He shot the guys one of those looks that said, Never imply a weight issue with a woman.
"Humph." Cassidy stalked away to investigate a parked car. "Someone stayed late."
"We’ll deal with them."
The sound of steel clearing leather made Cassidy turn. Behind her, four swords glinted in the parking lot lights. "Seriously? I can’t believe you guys walk around out in the open with all that hardware on. Someone could see you."
"Someone could see you," Bass snarked, "but not us."
"You can make yourselves invisible?"
Hacker, Boomer, and Bass looked at her as though she were a child asking silly questions they had no patience to answer.
"It’s more of a don’t look at me spell—like we have on the island," Rail answered.
"Oh. Well. Invisible or not, no killing the humans, okay?"
Boomer and Bass mumbled something sarcastic, but stopped when Rail turned glowing eyes on them.
Hacker ignored the drama as he pulled a tablet from one of the multiple pockets in his pant leg.
"What’s the security like?"
"We all carried ID cards that had to go through a reader and then there was a passcode." She rambled off a sequence of numbers.
Nodding, Hacker retrieved a laminated card with a wire attached to it from another pocket. "Let’s see if they remembered to make your code inactive." He smiled in anticipation.
"And what if they did?"
"We trick the reader with this little baby." Another gadget appeared from yet another pocket.
Cassidy gawked, wondering how he walked with the gear in his pants. "And to think, I thought Hacker referred to you chopping up monsters, not firewalls."
"Who says it doesn’t?" The evil glint in his eyes only lasted a second, but it was enough to make Cassidy reassess his carefree attitude.
The group approached the building, crossing the same parking lot where Cassidy had been attacked weeks before. When they passed the row she had been parked in that night, a cold feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Swallowing hard, she turned her focus away from the attack. "There’s a camera at the door. It won’t see us until we reach the last row of spaces before the access road in front of the building."
"Stay close and all it will see is a blurry spot." Rail gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. The others moved in and made a tight group around her.
"Okay." She tightened her hold on Rail’s hand. "Can’t we just pop inside like how we got here?"
"Sure, but if they have motion sensors, we’d set off the alarm the second we appeared."
Cassidy twisted a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail until she noticed Rail’s intense look following her fingers. The smoldering heat in his eyes momentarily derailed her from the problem at hand. "Do we have a backup plan in case we set off the alarms anyway?"
The group stopped and stared at each other. "Nope."
"We didn’t spend a lot of time planning this, you know." Bass frowned at Cassidy.
"Good thing you have me along then." She laughed nervously. "I did plan. If the alarms go off, flash me directly to the sixth floor. I’ll get into the server room and copy my files and we can flash out. At that point stealth won’t matter."
"Works for me," Boomer agreed.
"Intelligent, quick on her feet, and beautiful." Rail's kiss was brief, but full of passion.
"Ugggh, get a room." Bass turned away, pretending to retch, earning him another slap to the back of the head. "Hey! Cut that out." He rubbed the spot as he glared at Cassidy, who innocently smiled back.
"Just wait." Rail smiled and gave Cassidy a peck on the cheek. "One day it will be your turn."
"The hell with that!" Bass looked completely terrified with the idea of being tied to one woman.
* * *
Ignoring his comrade’s banter, Hacker approached the building while the others held back. With deft fingers, he attached a cable to the security pad and tried Cassidy’s old ID number to see what would happen. It didn’t surprise him when it didn’t work. What did surprise him was how lazy the security department had been. In ten seconds, he had the new access code copied to a blank magnetic card. A code only one digit off from Cassidy’s old one.
Hacker frowned. He’d been hoping for a challenge.
The lock released with a satisfying click as Hacker disconnected his equipment and waved the others over. "Piece of cake."
"What about interior security?" Cassidy asked, vibrating with nerves.
"We’ll take each level as we come to it." Rail took point. "I say we forego the cloak and let them see the dead woman wandering the halls."
"Great, I’ve become an urban legend."
The guys snickered.
Rail wrapped an arm around her waist. "Let’s keep a tight circle around Cassidy in case a skratar shows up."
"They can’t get into the building, can they?" She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the dark edges of the parking lot.
Rail nodded. "As easily as crashing through the front door. They aren’t subtle, and they care about security as much as a runaway train would."
The group headed for the elevators. Cassidy pulled back. "No, the stairs are down here."
The men eyed her curiously.
"Oh, please. Six floors is nothing. And we’re less likely to run into whoever stayed late." She smiled.
Thankfully the interior doors of the stairwells were not alarmed, and the trip to the sixth floor was uneventful.
Cassidy leaned into Rail as Hacker and Boomer slipped into the hall for a look around. "Told you…six floors…was nothing," she whispered between gasps.
"I can’t believe you ran them with us," Bass called from the landing below them where he stood guard.
"Anything you can do, I can do better," she answered between pants in a singsong voice.
Rail leaned in with a devilish glint in his eyes. "We’ll test that theory when I get you home and in bed."
Cassidy covered her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing out loud.
"No one’s up here," Hacker called back through the door. "Which way to the server room?"
"Down here." Cassidy slipped past him and took the lead. The men moved through the open area of cubicles, then regrouped as Cassidy stepped into the break room. "This is a shortcut." On the other side, they stepped into a hall banked with doors. "We want the last one."
Hacker studied the keypad and card reader a moment before attaching two cords between them and his tablet. "Similar to the front entrance," he mumbled. "Does everyone have access to the server room?"
"No. Crap. Is that going to be a problem?"
His lopsided grin clearly indicated she was silly to question him. "Nope." Handing his computer to Cassidy, Hacker vanished only to reappear a few seconds later tapping information into his tablet. With a swipe of the card, the locks released.
"What did you do?"
"I flashed inside and checked the last access number logged in today. There’s a tracking computer inside the door that doesn’t require a password to read.
"Come on, let’s get to work. All this sneaking around is making me nervous." Bass all but shoved Cassidy, Hacker, and Rail into the room, leaving him and Boomer to act as guards.
Cassidy sat in front of the console, her hands trembling. "I can do this. It’s not like I’m stealing state secrets or anything."
"But if you discover who shot Kennedy while you’re in there…" Rail stood behind her chair, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.
"Like you don’t already know," she mumbled.
Hacker pulled up a chair next to her and dropped a thumb drive on the desk. "Have at it. I’m here if you have security issues." He slid his tablet into view and connected it to the computer with a USB cable. "Try the code we used to get in here, and let’s see what happens."
Excitement streamed through her like a drug, and Cassidy thought back to the time her friends dared her to jump off the cliff at Lake Tahoe. She’d nearly peed herself with fright, but she’d taken the plunge, running off the edge and screaming the whole time.
Now, with her fingers flying over the keys and Rail at her back, she felt that same thrill. "There! There! I’m in!"
"Good girl. Now, find your stuff and let’s go."
She glanced at the clock and realized they’d been in the building nearly fifteen minutes already. "Crap," she muttered, but kept going. "There’s the archive menu, and…" She scrolled down the list. "And a file with my employee number." A few clicks and her old life opened up to her. It appeared her employer really had copied everything she’d ever done.
"There’s a lot of stuff here. How long will it take you to find your building blocks?" Rail leaned over her shoulder to read the screen.
"Longer than we want to take. It doesn’t look organized and all the files have the date they were downloaded to the archives." Cassidy shivered beneath Rail's hands—the date was just five days after she’d been pronounced dead.
"Plan B." Hacker produced a flat box from another pants pocket and attached it to
his tablet. "Move over and let the master drive."
Cassidy rolled her chair out of the way as she watched him work. "What are you doing?"
"We’re going to do this the quick and dirty way. I don’t like it ‘cus it will show up in a file audit, but it’s all we got."
Cassidy gasped. "You’re going to copy the whole hard drive?"
"Nope, only your files."
"But that still year's worth."
The tablet beeped. "We need eighteen minutes." Hacker didn’t look up from watching the counter on the screen.
"That’s pushing it," Rail rumbled.
"Better eighteen minutes than hours of hunting. This way, we can sort it at home."
"He’s right," Cassidy offered, standing to give Rail a hug.
"I want out of here the second it’s done."
She sighed. "Me too. I’ve got a bad feeling. Things have been going too smoothly."
Rail wrapped her in his strength and planted a kiss on her head. "I’m right there with you, sweetheart."
Chapter Twenty-Five
"Your eighteen minutes are up. Let’s go."
"Just wrapping up now." Hacker didn’t take the time to tie up the cords; he just stuffed them in a pocket with the portable hard drive and snatched his tablet. "They’ll never know we were here."
Alarms screamed through the building.
"Damn! What happened?" Hacker turned toward the door.
"Breaking and entering does not become you, my brothers," an oily voice hissed behind them.
Shoving Cassidy behind him, Rail drew his sword and took a defensive position. Hacker tipped out of the chair and somersaulted into a fighter’s stance, drawing his own sword.
Perched on one of the monitors like some freakish bird, sat a true Fallen Angel. One, who unlike the Knights, was trapped between his angelic and demon forms. With an evil grin, he stood, balanced on the edge of the monitor, and snapped his ragged bat-like wings, creating a thunderclap.