Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  The doctor hesitated. Catrina's heart stopped. He had to be okay.

  "I'm not sure I should give you any information about his medical condition." The doctor looked confused. "But we're going to need someone to take him home, to care for him."

  Air came flooding back into Catrina's lungs. She realized she had been holding her breath.

  "He's going to be fine." The doctor smiled at her.

  Jeff wrapped his long arms around Catrina. She looked up to see the tears in his eyes.

  "He can go home now," the doctor said. "He has a moderate case of hypothermia. We've restored his core temperature with heated saline solution in his blood. He's coming back nicely."

  "That's one tough little dude." Jeff's voice sounded gruff, strained.

  "Keep him quiet for a couple of days. Watch him for signs of confusion or mental slowness. He should be past any danger now, but you can't be too careful. If his heart rate suddenly increases or he feels pain in his left side, get him back to urgent care immediately.”

  "Thank you, doctor." Catrina couldn't contain her tears.

  The doctor walked away. Catrina watched him disappear down the hallway and felt drained. What more could happen in one day?

  "Cat." Tom put his arm around Catrina's waist. "This doesn't look good. You said Higuera had a hood over his head. I'm doubtful he can make an ID. We need more evidence."

  Jeff, now showing signs of life, moved closer. Tom lowered his voice.

  "I need for you to do something for me."

  Catrina felt her skin prickling. Tom had never asked her for anything.

  "Do what you do. Dig around some more. Go where I can't go. Find me something that links Freeman to Daniels and Dombroski. I want this guy."

  A surprised look came across McGinnis’ face. He turned and walked down the corridor.

  "Tom, do you know what you're asking?" Catrina's blood ran cold.

  "I'm not asking anything. I just want you to know that they’ll be a stakeout at Freeman’s. The patrol car just might leave when you pull up. Just remember, I didn't say anything, you never heard this."

  ****

  “What tipped you off that Davis and Dombroski were holding Higuera?” Detective Marty McGinnis questioned Catrina. Attorney Jennifer Trask sat at her side.

  Tom stepped back from the interrogation because of his personal relationship with the suspect.

  “He didn’t show up for work. We used the GPS in his phone to track him. We didn’t know that Davis and Dombroski had him. We didn’t even know that they existed.”

  McGinnis paced back and forth in the interrogation room. “So how come you went in shooting?”

  Catrina stopped to think this one over. Her instinct, the Chevy Malibu, the location all told her to expect trouble. How did she explain it to McGinnis though?

  Jennifer leaned in to her and whispered, “Cat, you don’t need to answer any of his questions.”

  “No, I want to.” Catrina spoke in a normal voice. “We need to get this cleared up. I did nothing wrong.” Then she turned to McGinnis. “Gut feel. I never expected to drop the hammer, but you have to be prepared.”

  “So you just dropped two guys?”

  “They shot first. Your CSI guys will verify that. They’ll find two slugs in the wall next to the door. I felt one go by my head so close that it gave me a headache.”

  The interrogation lasted more than an hour. In the end, the detectives determined that there was no reason to hold Catrina and Jeff.

  “Petrocelli’s gonna shit a brick,” Tom told McGinnis.

  “Tough shit. I never liked the little bastard anyway. There’s nothing to hold them on. CSI confirms it was self-defense.”

  Chapter 31

  “Are you sure it was Freeman?” Catrina drove the delivery van.

  Ted ached in places he didn’t know he had and figured that he would walk bow-legged for a month. Catrina had totally forgiven him. He was back in the family.

  “He’s the only one whose network I hacked that had anything to do with MS.” Ted rode shotgun, taking as much weight as he could on his hands. Just sitting was painful, every bump in the road was sheer torture. “I never saw his face, but he said ‘Why did you choose to hack in from my home?’ I remember that distinctly. It told me that it had to be Freeman.”

  “Where do you want to park?” Catrina slowed down as she turned onto Freeman’s street.

  She drove the block slowly looking for unmarked cars. A dark Dodge Charger started up and pulled away from the curb as she drove by.

  Tom had been as good as his word.

  “Anywhere within a block or so.” Ted eased himself out of the passenger seat and gingerly worked his way to the back of the van. “I’ll see if I can pick up his network.”

  Catrina remained in the front of the van, keeping watch. “Jeff’s here.”

  Ted looked through up through the windshield to see Jeff drive slowly by in Catrina’s armored Explorer.

  “He’ll park a couple blocks up the street.” Catrina said. “This time, we have back up.”

  Was Freeman stupid enough to keep his personal network up? He’d been stupid enough to have a wireless network in the first place.

  “Shit. The ‘Dragon’s Lair’ is gone.”

  “The Dragon’s Lair?” Catrina looked back over her shoulder at Ted.

  “Yeah, that’s what he called his network. If he doesn’t have a wireless network, we can’t hack in.” Ted sat back in his chair and shrugged. “Game over.”

  “Not quite yet.” Catrina slipped out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the back of the van. “We can still get information the old-fashioned way.” She opened a plastic storage box on the van floor and tossed a brown uniform to Ted. “Breaking and entering.”

  Ted watched openmouthed as Catrina slipped off her T-shirt and jeans. Damn, she’s got a fine body, for an older lady. She was not what Ted would have called slim, but she had a great figure. He practically drooled following her long legs up to her hips. There was nothing sexy about her underwear. Her substantial bra supported heavy breasts. Her panties were briefs like something his mama would wear.

  She pulled on a brown delivery person uniform and clipped her holster to her belt, under the brown jacket.

  “What’s a matter, Higuera? You afraid to drop trou?” She sneered at him. “Stop staring and get dressed.”

  Ted gathered himself together and stripped off his T-shirt.

  Catrina grinned at him. “Nice abs, junior.”

  He felt the heat in his ears as he pulled on the brown shirt. After changing his pants, he was ready to go.

  “You wait in the van for my signal. Change the signs while you’re at it.”

  Ted rummaged through the stack of magnetic signs in the back of the van until he found “Express Package Delivery” signs. That would do.

  Catrina called Jeff on her cell phone. “Jeff, we’re going in. Keep a sharp eye out.” She picked up a clipboard and a small box from the storage container. “The trick is, to look normal. I go up to the front door. If someone answers, we’ve got the wrong address. If no one answers, I pick the lock.”

  “What about the security system? Freeman’s bound to have a state of the art security system.”

  “If an alarm goes off, you make a bee-line to his office and rip out his computer. The security company will call and I’ll play the dumb housekeeper who forgot the password. If they buy it, we’re okay. If not, we take his computer and high-tail it before the cops get here.”

  Catrina opened the van’s side door and stepped out. Ted felt his blood pressure rising.

  Watching Catrina walk up the path to the front steps felt like watching her walk to the gallows. Ted knew that they would get caught. That was all he needed, more trouble with the law. Didn’t Cat have any limits?

  Catrina rang the doorbell. Ted watched from the van.

  No answer. The butterflies churned in Ted’s stomach.

  Catrina rang again. Still no answer.
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  “We’ll try one more time.” She pushed the button a third time.

  Ted held his breath.

  When no one answered, Catrina signaled for Ted to join her. She handed him the clipboard and package and reached in her rear pocket for her lock pick set.

  She tried several picks. Ted felt sweat running down his back.

  “Freeman has good locks, I’ll give him that.” There was an audible click, then Catrina pushed open the door.

  On the wall, to the left of the door, Ted saw an alarm console.

  “State of the art. A Pierson 3000.” Catrina studied the console. “Very nice. Too bad they don’t use it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen it a dozen times before.” Catrina kept her voice low and her hand on the gun on her hip as she invaded the dragon’s lair. “Usually it’s the wife. Hubby puts in a high-tech alarm system and it’s too much trouble for wifey to set it, then deactivate it when her arms are full of groceries, kids or pets. More often than not, when she leaves the house, she doesn’t even bother to set it. ‘I’ll only be gone for a minute’ she says to herself to justify it.”

  “I can’t believe it.” He found his way into Freeman’s office. “They spend that much money on a security system, then don’t even use it.”

  “Believe it. What does he have?”

  Ted slid behind the desk and booted up the computer. It whirled a minute and the splash screen came up, then a popup box asking for a password.

  “Uh oh. It’s password protected. I expected that.” He removed a flash drive from his pocket and inserted it in the USB slot. “We’ll see how well it stands up to Cracker.”

  He rebooted the computer. This time, when the login pop up box appeared, a window with a progress bar and a label popped up.

  Please Wait.

  Attempting to Crack Password.

  Ted could hear Bear’s whisper in the back of his head. “Easy . . . Easy . . .”

  The popup box flashed “password cracked” and disappeared from the screen. Ted immediately started downloading the contents of the hard drive to his flash drive.

  “What’s there?” Catrina asked. “You find anything?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He turned to look at Catrina over his shoulder. “We’re taking everything. We can sort it out back at the office.” He focused his attention back on the computer monitor. “Hello, what’s this?”

  “What?” Catrina bent down, her head next to his.

  She never wore any fragrance when she was on a stake out, but she still smelled overwhelmingly feminine to Ted. His heartbeat sped up. For an instant, he pictured Catrina in her bra and panties in the back of the truck, then he focused his attention back on the computer.

  “There’s a second computer in the house. Very well-hidden. I’m betting that Freeman doesn’t know about it. I’ll bet it’s his wife’s, no it’s his kid’s. If his wife can’t set the alarm, she certainly can’t hack into his system.”

  Ted inserted another flash drive into the second USB port. “We filled up the first drive. Damn, this kid’s careful. He’s password protected his computer so that Dad can’t get to it.”

  Once again, Ted invoked the Cracker program and busted the second password.

  He browsed through the drives on the kid’s computer, then decided to download everything.

  “He’s got some big files on this drive. Looks like a lot of video. This is gonna take a few minutes.” Ted felt his palms sweating. “How long do you think we have?”

  Catrina was busy searching Freeman’s office. “Hard to say. If the little woman left without setting the alarm, she might just be on a quick run to the store. Jeff’ll call us if anyone shows up. You better be ready to run for the back door at any second. Hey! Looky here.”

  Catrina held up a silver picture frame with a picture of Freeman and a boy with fishing poles and a string of fish. Someone’s keeping an eye on things.”

  Ted looked up. “What is it?”

  “Nanny cam. Why does Freeman have a nanny cam in his office? Is he afraid that someone’s breaking in on him?”

  “Or, it could be someone else’s.” Ted pulled the flash drive from the computer. “There are a bunch of big mpg files on the kid’s computer. I would bet that those are videos. He could be spying on Dad.” Ted tossed an empty flash drive to Catrina.

  Catrina snatched the drive out of the air. “You done? Let’s get out of here.” She replaced the flash drive in the nanny cam with a new one and headed for the door.

  Ted didn’t need any encouragement to follow.

  ****

  “Holy shit.” Ted sat at his desk while Catrina made coffee. “What do you want to see first? The porn or the spying?”

  Catrina brought two steaming mugs from the kitchen. “Don’t tell me Freeman’s into kiddy porn too.” She put her arms around Ted's shoulders and gave him a hug.

  “Better than that." The hug felt good, but what did it mean? "Take a look at this. He’s been making homemade sex tapes.”

  Catrina put Ted’s mug down on the desk and walked behind him. On Ted’s screen, Mrs. Freeman was removing her rather ‘work-a-day’ bra and panties. “Hmm. . . The carpet doesn’t match the drapes.” Catrina pointed to Mrs. Freeman’s dark pubic hair, then her blonde locks. “I’m as anxious as the next guy to be a voyeur, but what does this have to do with our case?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s interesting. They both act like they don’t know they’re being taped. See there.” Ted stopped the action. Freeman dismounted his wife and turned towards the camera. “He’s picking his nose. He certainly wouldn’t do that if he knew he was taping himself.”

  Catrina leaned forward. “Well I’ll be damned. They don’t know about the camera. Look, Mrs. Freeman, I presume that’s Mrs. Freeman, just put a shoebox in front of the camera. It spoils the view.”

  Ted fast forwarded through several more videos. “These all came from Junior’s laptop. I think the kid has a spy-cam in Papa’s bedroom.”

  “Interesting family dynamics, but nothing to help our case. What else do you have?”

  Ted closed the video file with a mental note to himself to go back and check it out more carefully at his leisure. Mrs. Freeman was a looker.

  “I found several files with Donna on them on Freeman’s computer. They were watching her pretty close. I’m guessing they knew what she was doing at MS.” Ted fast forwarded through several files. They were boring. Donna cleaning various offices. Then came the big one.

  “Check this out.”

  Donna pushed her cart down a long hallway. Then she stopped and took a step stool off of her cart. She climbed the stool and dusted the camera. Her face filled the screen. She reached up over the camera for a moment, then the screen blinked. Donna stepped down off of her stool and pushed the cart to the office door.

  “Did you see that?” Ted stopped the action. “It’s easy to miss.”

  “See what.” Catrina drained her coffee cup and leaned closer to the screen again.

  “Right there, after the blip on the screen. Look at Donna. I’ll back it up.”

  Ted reversed the video and slowed the motion.

  “See, when she reaches up to dust the camera, she’s wearing a wedding ring. Then when she steps down, the ring is gone. She must have overridden the camera with old tape here.”

  “Okay.” Excitement crept into Catrina’s voice. “This must be the day she finally broke into MS’s systems. Fast forward.”

  The rest of the video was the usual boring stuff. Donna cleaning an office, then pushing her cart down the hall.

  “Wait a minute.” Catrina jumped up from her seat. “She’s got the ring back on.”

  “This must be where she cut out the override and let the security cameras go back to real time.”

  “I’ve got to hand it to her,” Catrina said. “She was really slick at this. You have to be looking pretty hard to see it.”

  The next file was startling.

  Two security
guards confronted Donna when she tried to enter the elevator. Donna pulled a gun, but Freeman jumped her from behind. There was a brief struggle, then Donna’s hands were secured behind her back with a plastic tie and she was led into the elevator.

  “That looks like it’s the end of Donna’s story.” Ted said. “This other file is from this week.”

  “Let me get more coffee, then we can look at it.” Catrina rose, grabbed both coffee cups and headed for the kitchen.

  While Catrina was in the kitchen, Ted perused the files on the flash drives. Most of them were large, that was to be expected with videos. One was huge. Ted double clicked on it.

  Instead of the grainy surveillance video, this one was high def. It looked like the video that Deep Throat had sent them of Metcalf telling someone to take care of Donna.

  “Cat, get back in here.”

  She was at Ted’s desk in an instant. “What have you got?”

  “This was from Junior’s laptop. How he got a hold of it, I don’t know, but he’s got the goods on Dad.”

  Catrina stood behind Ted and leaned over, her face inches from his. He felt her warmth, her presence. This heartbeat shot up.

  The video was dated the day that Metcalf had been found in his office. Metcalf sat behind his desk. He was not happy. He railed at the man in the chair with his back to the camera.

  “This has gone far enough.” There was real fear in Metcalf’s voice. “Shut everything down. Burn all traces of the project. We’ve got to cover our tracks.”

  “No one suspects a thing.” That man with his back to the camera’s gravelly voice sounded very calm.

  “What do you mean ‘no one suspects a thing’? That bitch has another PI in here. She’s showed Delphi to two private Dicks. They’re snooping around. You’ve got to sanitize things before they find anything.”

  The man stood and walked aimlessly around Metcalf’s office.

  “Freeman,” Catrina whispered.

  Richard Freeman, with his erect military bearing, wandered to the window. He pulled open the drapes. There was a long silence. Freeman put his hands in his pockets and watched the city below him.