by Carsen Taite
“Is one of those beers for me?” Ryan walked out onto the patio, pulling the door shut behind him. He’d changed into jeans and a hoodie. “And are we allowed to talk out loud now?”
Royal handed him a beer and clinked her bottle to his. “Yes, but we still need to be careful.”
He raised a finger to his lips and nodded. “I guess you can’t tell me where you’ve been.”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“That’s a leading statement.”
She took another sip from her beer and contemplated her next step. She wanted his help, but she had no right to ask him to do what she needed unless she was willing to fill him in on the why behind it. It wasn’t like she was going to get in more trouble at this point. She downed the rest of her beer, set the bottle on the concrete, reached into her pocket for the burner phone, and handed it to him.
He took it and held it up. “Thanks, sis, but I already have a phone.”
“It’s my burner phone. The only thing on it is the contents of a flash drive I downloaded.”
“Okay. And you’re giving it to me because?”
“Because the files are encrypted, and I can’t read them.” She knew doling out the information piecemeal wasn’t ideal, but she had to work herself up to the big reveal. “The flash drive belonged to the consigliere for the Mancuso family.”
Ryan dropped the phone on the table between them like it had stung him. “Holy shit.”
“That about sums it up.”
“You know, I’m thinking your FBI friends might have people on staff who can read those files.”
“They do. The trick is getting them to share what they found with me.”
Ryan downed the rest of his beer and set the bottle on the ground beside hers. He stood and left the room, leaving her to wonder what exactly about what she’d said had caused him to leave. She didn’t have to wonder too long because less than a minute later, he reappeared with two more beers.
“Look, I know I haven’t been real open with you about why I’m home,” he said, “but it looks like you have some secrets of your own. Should we clear the air?”
She tilted her beer toward him. “Fine by me. You first.”
“I bugged out. Honorable discharge, but I had to fight for it. I turned my CO in for behavior unbecoming, and they tried to trash me. The discharge was a compromise. He stays, I go, and everyone acts like nothing ever happened.”
“That’s rough.” She wanted to ask him for specific details, but then the conversation would devolve into him feeling like he had to justify his decision. The best thing she could do to support him right now was to take it at face value that turning in his CO was the only option he’d had at the time.
“I’m not proud of taking the deal, but it is what it is. I guess I figured I’d die in uniform, but that’s done. I’m sure I can find something in security, but after what I’ve seen and where I’ve been, I can’t wrap my mind around babysitting some pop star or overpaid executive right now. I’m not going to take up permanent residence on your couch, but I need a little more time to figure out my future.”
“Take all the time you want, but we’re going to have to come up with a schedule for who’s doing the cooking because I just got eighty-sixed from the job I was working.”
He pointed to the burner phone. “And that’s why you need me to hack those files?”
“Yep.”
“I promised you I would never use my special talents again.”
“I know.” When Ryan was a senior in high school, moody and dark, he’d spent hours in his bedroom, dodging their dad between his bouts of sobriety, and earning extra cash by hacking into the school’s records to alter grades for other students who were willing to pay. When he leveled up to hacking into the City of Dallas Police Department network to alter arrest records, the feds had shown up at their door. Royal came home from college, cashed in what little savings she had, and hired him a good lawyer, who’d managed to work out a deal. Ryan had walked the local PD through how he’d gotten into their system and he designed a program to keep hackers like him out permanently. In exchange, his case was diverted into a pretrial program and later sealed. The Army had had access to his record, but what had been a potential career killer otherwise only made him more valuable to them as a candidate for special ops.
She picked up the burner phone and stared at the screen while she contemplated her options. He’d promised her he would never again use his skills to commit a crime, and as far as she knew, he hadn’t. What she was asking now was definitely in a gray area since she’d been ordered to stand down, but she felt like she was entitled to know what had been on that drive. If it wasn’t for her, the bureau wouldn’t even have the info and it wasn’t like she was stealing it—she was holding it in her hand.
She handed the phone to him. “It’s up to you. I doubt anyone will find out we looked at it, but if any trouble comes from it, it’s all on me. No one will ever find out you were involved.”
“Okay. I’m in.” Ryan’s eyes gleamed with excitement as he took the phone from her. “I’m going to need an air-gapped computer—one that’s never been connected to the internet before, so you’re probably going to need to buy one, but before you do that, I need you to think this through. Are you sure you want to see what’s on here? You won’t be able to unsee it.”
It was evidence in a case. What harm could come from looking at it?
Three hours later, they both huddled in front of the laptop she’d acquired at Ryan’s direction. They started with the data from the flash drive but, left with more questions than answers, they didn’t stop there, and it didn’t take long for Royal to realize she couldn’t have been more wrong. There was something big happening with the Mancusos, but it wasn’t what any of them had expected.
Chapter Seventeen
Siobhan was five words into another text to Royal when she hovered over the backspace arrow. If she hit send, this would be the fourth unanswered text since yesterday morning. She’d considered calling Valentino’s to see if Royal had shown up for work today, but if Royal dodged her call she didn’t need Robert and his crew speculating on their relationship more than they probably already were. Even if Royal was having second thoughts about the intimate side of their relationship, she would’ve expected her to respond out of respect for her position as consigliere. Either way, she wasn’t in the habit of chasing after women, but was she being irrational to think Royal should’ve texted her back by now?
She didn’t know. This was the first time she’d been in this situation—wanting another woman the way she wanted Royal. It was uncomfortable and frustrating and exhilarating and exciting all at once, and she didn’t know how to act.
She hit the backspace key, deleted what she’d written so far, and tossed her phone in her desk drawer to keep from being tempted to resume her efforts. Royal would contact her when she was ready, and she’d figure out how to deal with it when she did. In the meantime, she had work to do. She reached into her bag and unzipped the inside pocket. She pulled out the paper with the details about the shell company who owned the SUV that had tried to run her down, but she couldn’t find the flash drive she’d stowed there when she’d left the office on Friday.
She checked her computer, but it wasn’t there either. She tamped down the rising panic, stuck her hand back in the bag and rummaged around, breathing a sigh of relief when her fingers finally closed around the drive. She placed it in the USB slot on her computer and double-clicked on the desktop icon to open the drive. As usual, a box popped open on the screen asking her to type in her password, but for the first time a warning message greeted her as well.
You have two more chances to enter the correct password.
Siobhan stared at the screen. There had been a couple of times when she’d been working with these reports that she’d accidentally struck a wrong key and received a similar warning when she’d been trying to access the information on the drive, but not like this. The encryption prog
ram provided five chances to get the password right. The only way that warning would pop up would be if someone had tried to gain access, used up three tries, and then given up before getting in.
It hadn’t been her.
She retraced the entire weekend. She’d placed the flash drive in her bag on Friday before she headed home to get ready for the gala at the museum. She’d fully intended to access the drive on her laptop at home to finish up some reporting over the weekend, but a bomb threat and the meeting with Petrov had intervened.
And Royal. She’d been distracted by Royal. Her calm courage, her gentle affection, and her off-the-charts sexy body had occupied her thoughts both when she was at her side and when she wasn’t. Had her distraction allowed someone to access the drive when she wasn’t paying attention?
Her bag had only been out of her presence twice that she could recall—while she’d been at the museum Friday night and on Sunday, she’d left it in the car when she and Royal were inside Petrov’s compound. The only person who would’ve had access to her bag on those occasions was Neal. Neal had a key to her apartment, and she had been alone in the car while she and Royal met with Petrov.
She sank back in her chair. The idea Neal might be spying on her was inconceivable. She’d been with the family for years and Carlo had personally selected her to be her driver/bodyguard. She’d trusted her completely when it came to her apartment, her cars, her office. Had Neal betrayed that trust?
There was no way she was going to get any more work done until she had this sorted out. She typed in the password to the flash drive, changed it, made a copy, and locked the copy in her safe, thankful she was the only one with the combination. She placed the original drive back in the zippered pocket of her bag and sent a text to Neal to tell her she was ready to leave for the day. After Neal replied that she would meet her downstairs, she stared at her phone, contemplating her next move. She fully intended to confront Neal, but it would be wise to have backup when she did, and there was only one person she could think of that she wanted to be by her side. She spent a few seconds wavering before she pushed her pride aside and fired off a text to Royal.
I need to talk to you. My place. She glanced at the time, calculating how long it would take her to get home. Tonight at 7. It’s important.
She pressed send before she could change her mind, grabbed her bag, and went downstairs to meet Neal.
“Did you have a good day?” Neal asked.
She asked the same question every day, but today Siobhan searched her face for some hidden meaning, concerned she’d been missing duplicity on her part all along. “Uneventful, which was a relief. I didn’t have any hearings scheduled, which meant I was able to focus on some reports Carlo needs.” She paused for a moment to consider how much bait to cast in the water, and then decided to go all in. “I had some trouble accessing one of my password-protected flash drives, which was aggravating.”
Neal looked into the rearview mirror and met her eyes. “That’s a pain,” she said with no particular tone. “Those drives can get corrupted easily, especially if you use them a lot. You should probably switch them out on a regular basis.”
“Who knew you were a computer guru?” She smiled to cover her anger that Neal might be a traitor.
“I’m no guru,” she said. “Just had a bad experience losing some documents on a drive that stopped working.”
“Thanks. Switching them out is good advice.” She replayed Neal’s words several times in her head and decided she was no closer to determining if she’d been hiding something than she had been before she’d gotten in the car. She decided to wait until she could confront her with Royal before she went any further, and she settled back into silence for the rest of the way home.
A few minutes later, they pulled into the parking garage and she followed Neal into the building. On the elevator ride up, her senses went on high alert as she contemplated whether she’d made the right decision being alone with her like this. What if Royal didn’t come? Their complete lack of communication for the past twenty-four hours wasn’t a good sign that Royal would drop whatever she was doing and show up to respond to a vague text. She’d wanted to say more. Since Royal had left her bed yesterday, she’d wanted her to come back so she could huddle in the cocoon of affection and passion she felt whenever she was in Royal’s presence, but she didn’t know how to put into words how she felt or what she wanted from her. All she knew was whatever this was between them, she wanted more of it with a deep and burning desire.
What if Royal didn’t show up? Should she confront Neal on her own? What if she did and Neal turned dangerous? She and all the other protection who worked in the Mancuso inner circle were always armed—a fact Siobhan appreciated when it came to her safety, but she’d never before contemplated what would happen if the guns were turned on her. She had a gun of her own, but aside from an occasional visit to the range, it stayed locked in the safe in her closet at home. She didn’t even remember if it was loaded.
She waited in the hall while Neal did a walk-through of her apartment, another thing that used to make her feel safe, but now creeped her out as she wondered if she was inside going through her things. When Neal stuck her head out to tell her it was all clear, she was tempted to tell her she could go for the night, unsure she was up for the confrontation to come. She checked her phone one more time, hoping for a text from Royal, but there was nothing and it was time for a choice. She took a deep breath and walked through the door of her apartment, pretending it was the courtroom and she was going to square off with an overzealous prosecutor.
Neal held the door open for her but remained in the doorway. “I’ll be in the car if you need me. Pete will take my place in a few hours.”
“I could use a drink,” Siobhan said. “Are you up for joining me?”
She hesitated, but Siobhan couldn’t tell if it was an “I shouldn’t drink while on guard duty” or an “I don’t want to be subjected to uncomfortable questions” kind of hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” She strode to the bar and pulled down the bottle of Bow Street. She cradled the bottle for a moment, remembering she’d served it to Royal on their first date. Which hadn’t been a date at all, but a demand by her that Royal attend the event at the museum. The “date” had been work for Royal, and maybe that was the problem between them. Every interaction they’d had so far had been cloaked in the guise of a job. How was Royal supposed to know how she really felt when she was sending mixed signals?
But was that really the issue or was it more likely she was the one who was unable to read her own feelings? She didn’t have much of a model when it came to relationships. Celia and Tony professed to be in love, but theirs was a lopsided power dynamic where Celia wanted a handsome husband she could boss around, and Tony wanted the cachet that came from being in the Mancuso inner circle. Dominique had a different guy on her arm every week, but she professed none of them meant anything to her. Celia and Dominique’s mother had died so long ago, she didn’t remember much about her interactions with Carlo, but memory told her their relationship had been stiff and formal, in public anyway.
She wondered if her own mother had been in love with her father. She had very few of her mother’s things besides the antique basket she’d shown Royal—her recipes, a heart locket that contained Siobhan’s baby picture, and a few scarves—nothing to give her a clue as to whether she’d led a happy life before a stray bullet had cut her life short, suddenly and without warning. Nothing to give her a clue as to who her father had been or whether he had loved her mother and if he had, why he’d never married her.
“Are you okay?”
Neal’s voice cut through her reverie. She was here and Siobhan needed to find out if she had betrayed her and she would have to do it alone because solitude was her lot in life. She handed Neal a glass of whiskey, and as she took her first drink, she started her assault with a blunt jab. “Did you copy the flash drive that was in my bag or did you g
ive up when you couldn’t figure out the password?”
Neal gulped the whiskey and lowered the glass, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “What?”
“You heard me.” Siobhan took her glass and walked over to the couch. She sat and pointed at the chair across from her. “Put your gun on the table, come over here, and sit down. By the way, I had an extra security camera installed, and it’s high-def. If you try anything stupid, Carlo will hunt you down and you will beg for a swift death.”
Neal stared at her for a moment with a mixture of what looked like hurt and respect, then made a show of carefully extracting her gun from her shoulder holster and placing it on the table in the entryway where Siobhan usually kept her bag. She walked slowly over to the chair and sat down.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, “but I promise you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. I’ll talk, you listen.” Siobhan took a sip from her glass, letting the slow burn of the whiskey soothe her nerves. “There was a flash drive in my bag. I specifically remember placing it in the inside zippered pocket on Friday before I left the office. To the casual observer, the drive wouldn’t look like much.” She reached into her jacket pocket and held it up. “See. Small, gray.” She pointed at the label that read environmental reg research. “Legal stuff, of limited interest to anyone who wasn’t a lawyer. But someone thought it looked interesting enough to take it and try and open the data it contained.”
“And you think that was me?”
“I know it was,” she bluffed. “The good news is the data is encrypted. If someone tries to log in too many times without success, the information disappears.” She spread her fingers wide, letting the drive clatter to the surface of the coffee table between them. “But I suppose you already know that.”
Neal leaned forward, her expression desperate. “I promise you I don’t.” She held her palms up. “I don’t know anything about a flash drive or your reports. I may have—” She stopped abruptly and frowned.