“It’s a pleasure to meet you. You were in the military?”
Cam nodded, but he looked at her differently than Logan, or Liam or Adam had. He peered at her with kind curiosity. “How did you know?”
“I come by it honestly.” She gestured at Liam. “I guess I’ve learned how to read people from the master.”
Cam nodded. “No surprise. Liam’s well respected throughout the company. He’s damned good at what he does.”
What he does…
The thought sank in, took root, and gave her pause.
Liam purposely bent people’s intentions and curved their minds, shaping them to form the outcome he wanted. Or what he intended to investigate, if he wasn’t going for outright manipulation.
It dawned on Sophia, at that moment. The skills Liam excelled at weren’t so far removed from what Todd had done to her.
Without thinking, she heeded a sudden, sharp instinct to back away from Liam.
Oh, my God. Am I falling for a con man all over again?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sophia went rigid. The thought—of her falling for a con man—left her deeply confused.
First, she wasn’t falling for Liam. She’d just had her hope and trust crushed by Todd. Her heart couldn’t even touch the concept of letting another man into her life, let alone falling for him. Even one as tempting as Liam.
Second, Todd and Liam were polar opposites. Liam was the CEO of a billion-dollar company, and only a strident work ethic had landed him that role. He was a champion of the less fortunate. He had his priorities straight. He had a good, generous heart, too.
However, she couldn’t discount that Liam made his living using tools of deception. Not for hurtful reasons or personal gain, per se. Still, the realization settled like a rock in her stomach.
“Hey.” His whisper pulled her from her distressing thoughts. “Where did you mind go just now?”
“Nowhere important,” she said, dismissing his insight. Clearly she wore her emotions too close to the surface. Not a beneficial habit, when dealing with a mentalist.
Liam’s phone vibrated from his shirt pocket beneath his left suit lapel. He retrieved it. When he glanced at the text, his eyebrows shot up. “Okay, Devon and her tech team found something valuable on your laptop. It’s the moment of truth.” He looked at her with concern. “You ready for this?”
The stone in her gut turned into a block of ice. A chill of foreboding rushed over her. “As ready as I can be.”
“I’ll be by your side,” he assured, his eyes settling into a calming color, equal parts green and blue.
She took comfort in his certainty, since she had none herself.
“Weird.” Adam wiped the perspiration from his face with a towel. “I just got a text from Devon. I guess she wants me up there, too.”
“It’s just one big party,” Sophia said, going for irony but falling flat and landing closer to cynicism.
“I’ll change into a fresh t-shirt and meet you guys up there,” Adam said.
Questions tore at her. What had Devon Soren found? Could it link back to her directly, and negate the results of Logan Stone’s test?
How had her life become so messy and confusing in such a short a time?
All this uncertainty wreaked havoc on her insides, shredding her nerves, pummeling her usual stoic reserve to stringy pulp.
Regardless of the outcome, she felt so exhausted by the rollercoaster of the past twenty-four hours, she just wanted to get it over with. With any luck—not that she had much at the moment—this would all blow over so she could return to her normal, uneventful life. There, in the familiar comfort of her quiet home, she could gather the pieces of herself. Stich together the fractured patchwork of her world and all the loose threads Todd had left behind.
After being emotionally railroaded and financially defrauded by a con man, she was pretty sure she’d never date again. At least, not for a long, long time. How would she ever trust anyone?
She’d find contentment in opening up her business, bringing out her paints again, improving her social skills at networking parties and enhancing her client list. Maybe she’d get a cat. Just one—she wasn’t that far gone. Not yet, anyway.
As she followed Liam from the elevator toward Devon’s office, her legs felt heavy like she waded through wet cement. Dredging up what remained of her courage, she walked into the woman’s office.
Everything appeared neat and orderly—except for a long table, covered with stacks of sticky notes and piles of balled-up yellow legal-pad paper. The table was positioned near a giant whiteboard that encompassed one whole wall. The endless scribbles were mind-numbing in their complexity. Text wrapped around symbols that looked less decipherable than hieroglyphics. Sophia had decent experience with programming code, while working on the website for her new company. She’d minored in graphic design in college. But on the wall scrawled a unique, unfathomable language that spoke volumes about the intellect of the woman seated on the other side of the desk in the center of the room.
Devon was strikingly attractive, with shiny dark hair to her shoulders and intense, deep brown eyes. Her lips were a glossy, rich red. When she stood, Sophia noticed the woman was slender, almost willowy, only two inches shorter than herself.
She moved around the desk and extended her hand. “Sophia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“You, as well.” Sophia shook her hand, the winced slightly. “So…what have you found?”
The woman’s stare was direct, no-nonsense. “You might want to sit down.”
“Okay,” Sophia said in a shaky voice.
This can’t be good.
Devon flashed a look at Liam. It seemed to impart some secret knowledge Sophia didn’t know how to interpret.
Liam remained standing. He curved his hands around the back of her chair. She leaned her tense shoulders against his fingers, as if they might transfer his strength to her. The connection helped ease the bottomless pit in her gut.
The door swung open, and Adam entered.
“Just hang out for a minute,” Devon instructed.
So Adam crossed his massive arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the pewter wall behind them. He nodded.
“Well,” Devon began. She half-sat on the edge of her desk, folding her hands over one knee. “We’re dealing with an expert hacker. I’ve met my share, but this one is in a class by himself.”
“Who?” Sophia needed to know with every bone in her body.
“I’m not sure. He covered his tracks very well. Which tells me he’s been planning this event for some time. Possibly years.”
Sophia swallowed. “So there’s no way to know who it is?”
“I’m hoping you can help solve the mystery.” Devon’s expression held a trace of admiration. “The way he did it is genius, really. He inserted a nano-thumb drive into the USB port of your laptop. An untrained eye would’ve never noticed. Via the thumb drive, he was able to download an encrypted spider to crawl through your system and invade every single program. Including your personal access to restricted sites, like your work email. He recorded your every move. He knew all your passwords.”
“A spider?” Doubt echoed in Liam’s tone.
Devon nodded. “It’s similar to what big tech companies use to harvest information. It follows a user’s habits and patterns, and returns the information to its creators. It indexes the information on the websites you visit. For instance, have you ever logged onto Amazon to browse for, say, a pair of brand-name jeans? Then, later, when you go to check your email, an ad for that brand magically appears?”
“Yes, it’s spooky,” Sophia admitted.
“It’s not magic, that’s a spider program.”
Fascinating, Sophia thought. But in her circumstance, it was frightening. “How did this hacker make one for my computer?”
With a thoughtful frown, Devon said, “Still working out that detail. My team is on it. Like the good geeks they are, they’re stoked about untang
ling new mystery code.”
How nice for them, Sophia thought. Her peril equaled their glee. Great.
“Whoever created this spider has been perfecting it for a long time. Waiting for his chance. Waiting for the perfect mark.”
“That would be me,” she said, the bite of bitter regret in her tone.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Devon nodded. “There is one ray of sunshine.”
Sophia stared at the woman longingly.
“You couldn’t possibly have the skills to create something this impressive. Few people on the planet do.”
“Oh.” Sophia wanted to find relief, but couldn’t. “So my stupidity is my best ally.”
Quietly, Devon assessed her. “I think everyone in this room knows you’re not stupid. You were a pawn, in an expert con’s diabolical game.”
Con man.
The word stuck at the back of her throat, ballooning until she could barely breathe. Todd was the only con man in her life—that she knew about.
The notion she’d been conned twice, by two different people, left her in a state of devastated defeat. How could she have been so naïve?
Feeling like her world had spun off its axis, she pressed a hand to her forehead. “I just…I don’t understand how this could’ve happened.” She needed more information, to salvage what little was left of her dignity. “How could this have been installed on my computer?”
“It could’ve been a quick thing,” Devon said. “Did anyone service your laptop in the past two or three months?”
She gave a helpless shrug. “No, nobody.”
“Did you take it to a coffee shop, and leave it unlocked while you went to the bathroom?”
The small window of opportunity shocked her. “Sure. Doesn’t everyone do that?” That took a lot of balls. She scrambled for answers. “That seems like a huge risk. I mean, how could he know how long I’d be gone from my computer? Besides, wouldn’t someone at the tables next to me notice if a stranger walked up to my laptop, while I was away from it for two minutes, then left before I returned?”
“I don’t know. Are you a regular, friends with customers or the baristas there?”
“Somewhat.” Now, her innate shyness and tendency to keep to herself seemed like a terrible character flaw. She shifted uneasily in the chair. “That just seems too obvious. Someone would’ve brought it up to me, I’m sure of it. If he’d developed this program for months, probably years, I seriously doubt he’d risk the execution in such an uncalculated way.”
“Excellent point.” Respect shone in Devon’s dark eyes. “You’re right, he wouldn’t. Good thinking. Maybe someone in your office?”
She rolled her eyes. “I work with a bunch of accountants. Their past-times are hardly worthy of a James Bond movie. Anyway, if someone had messed with my laptop, Maribeth—our department’s secretary—would’ve been the first to tell me.”
“There’s another possibility.” Liam spoke for the first time.
Sophia craned her neck to glance up at him. He kept his gaze trained on Devon. “Todd Hoolihan.”
Devon sent him a hard look. “You think I didn’t investigate that angle?”
“I have no idea. You and your team work like a hive. Top-secret agents buzzing around, ready to sting you if you disrupt the supreme order, ask questions, or bother their queen bee.”
Behind them, Adam snorted in amusement.
A rich, smoky laugh sailed from Devon’s lips. “That’s a good one. The guys will love it.”
“I’m not in a joking mood,” Liam said.
Devon’s smile fell. She turned sympathetic eyes to Sophia. “We were able to determine there is no such person. Todd Hoolihan doesn’t exist.”
“What?” The blood drained from Sophia’s face, pumping directly to her frantic heart. “That…that can’t be.”
Turning to retrieve a file from her desk, Devon faced them again and flipped open the manila folder. “I did plug in all the information Liam sent about the guy.”
More information Liam offered, without her knowledge? She frowned. The man must never sleep.
“I had a couple guys on my team run a profile search on people who might fit Todd’s MO.” She handed the file to Sophia. “Any of them resemble Todd?”
Sophia turned the pages. A sense of relief buoyed her spirit. “No, none of these men are Todd. Or, whoever he is,” she mumbled. But how much information about him did they have? “I’ll tell you what you need to know about him, to clear him.”
“I’m all ears.” Devon grabbed a pen. “Ready when you are.”
Sophia relayed what Todd had told her about his past. She filled in every detail that came to mind. All the things she hadn’t thought about in-depth, that now struck her as incongruent or exaggerated, she exposed everything.
Tilting her head, Devon tapped the pen against her lips. “There is one piece of information we uncovered. The guy left one detail to chance. The fake account he used to transfer the fifteen million—”
Sophia choked. “Fifteen million?”
Devon appeared puzzled. “That was the amount of the casino heist. Didn’t you know?”
“No,” Sophia said faintly. “No one told me the amount.”
Though Liam’s hand pressed a steadying touch to her shoulder, she shrugged away. He knew. He had to have known, the whole time. Mr. Atlas hadn’t told her. Liam hadn’t told her.
My God.
She set her elbows on her knees, sliding her hands into her hair, and stared at the floor.
No wonder Alex Atlas encouraged his men haul her away like she’d committed the most egregious act. She didn’t blame him at all. Suddenly, Logan Stone’s high-tech interrogation made so much sense.
Fifteen million dollars. Gone.
In her wildest dreams, she couldn’t fathom that amount of money. She also understood, acutely, why Mr. Atlas hadn’t gone to the police with this information. The FBI, maybe.
A terrifying thought occurred to her.
What if Alex Atlas had gone to the FBI? What if he’d covered all his bases, hiring the Soren’s and alerting the top investigative agents in the nation? By now, they would’ve torn her life and her past apart, looking for the slightest indication of theft or deception.
Such a complete, utter, impossible disaster.
Picking herself up, she sat stiffly in the chair. Accusation coated her tone. “Liam. You should’ve told me.”
“It would’ve made this bigger than it is,” he replied.
“It’s big enough,” she hissed.
“Okay.” Devon’s no-nonsense voice pierced the tension between her and Liam. “You two can work that out later. What I started to say was I did managed to trace part of the funds to one eye-catching account.”
“He used more than one account?” Liam sighed. “Smart fucker.”
“Oh, yeah.” Devon nodded. “All fake but legitimate-looking fronts. Each one funneled to offshore accounts in the Caribbean. Untraceable.”
Who could be capable of such an elaborate scheme? Sophia felt weak. “Unbelievable. He must’ve set them up, and somehow funded them enough to look respectable, long before he hacked my computer.”
Devon agreed. “But one caught my eye,” she said, “because it’s very specific to the tech industry. And this man is clearly a tech guy. It’s a volunteer thing. Have you ever heard of the [xxxxx]?”
The name tickled the back of Sophia’s mind, but she couldn’t quite place it. Since that type of information wasn’t something she or her friends were involved with, she wondered how she would’ve heard about it.
Continuing her explanation, Devon said, “They’re a group of people, all excellent programmers, some of the best in the country, who get together for a weekend sit-in, to do pro bono programming for non-profit websites.”
Oh, wait.
Sophia sat up.
Devon eyed her. “You remember?” the woman asked, equally on the edge of her seat.
Barely hearing her, Sophia went deep into a memo
ry. Had Liam’s hypnosis helped with her recall? She didn’t know, but she saw the moment clearly.
Todd had lit a candle in the bedroom before they made love. As she reclined in happy, carefree bliss in his arms, he’d bragged about how he worked for this nonprofit. His voice rang with pride, as though he’d earned it. The “one” accolade he’d bothered earning, the one thing he’d done for others… It made an impression, because he’d made such a big deal of it. A gathering of programmers, once a year. He’d gone to it, offered his help. Big shocker, like most of Todd’s stories, no one “understood” his far-reaching ideas. The rest of the programmers were all beneath him. So he’d left the convention.
Another lie she’d so easily fallen for, without due diligence.
She covered her face with her hands.
Tears sprang from between her fingers.
Devon stood and said, “Both of you, out.”
In the midst of sobbing, Sophia went to stand. Devon pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Not you, sweetie. Adam, get your brother out of here.”
Faintly, she heard an argument and scuffle behind her. She couldn’t focus on that.
Her whole world came down to one thing: Todd had orchestrated the casino heist. He’d manipulated her. He’d devastated her trust. He’d flattened her faith.
Worst of all, he’d proven himself to be so much smarter than she’d ever given him credit for. He had come across as a careless, hopeless romantic. Kind of a drifter, but with a definite plan. A guy with big ideas and big dreams—so he’d claimed.
And she’d bought his fake, going-for-the-dream impression. She’d accepted the wannabe business-owner façade.
The truth brought her to her knees. Literally.
While her head throbbed, she couldn’t stop the tears from pouring out her eyes, no matter how hard she pressed against them. She just collapsed.
Slender hands tucked beneath her underarms. For a willowy woman, Devon showed impressive strength. She hoisted Sophia back onto the chair.
The Billionaire's Seduction (Billionaire Bodyguards Book 5) Page 13