Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  The video was over so fast it was hard to believe what they’d seen. So much for cornering Preston on the issue of receiving consent.

  “We’re going to need a different strategy,” Nora said.

  CHAPTER 14

  FBI FIELD OFFICE

  200 MCCARTY AVENUE

  ALBANY, NY

  “We lost him!” Boffman yelled from across Travis’s desk. In all the years Travis had been working here, having Boffman inside his office was never a good thing.

  “You say it like it’s my fault that Portland police botched the pickup and Meron’s guys got there too late. If I were there, would he have gotten away?” Travis asked, knowing Boffman would give the correct answer. The trust they’d built up was the only thing that allowed Travis to get away with purposefully undermining the operation, and it still ate him up inside that he had to do it.

  “No, he’d be in custody,” Boffman said, looking away as if it hurt him to admit it.

  “Of course he would be. We would’ve set up surveillance, surrounded the building, and tracked Paulk’s exact location with infrared scopes instead of trotting up the steps and knocking on the door like it was a noise complaint.”

  Boffman was shaking his head. He must’ve been under some awful pressure from above to bring Danny in. Travis’s phone buzzed, signaling a message from Danny. It’d been a full day since Travis had heard anything, and he’d begun to worry. Boffman glanced at the phone. If he reached over and picked it up, the whole thing would be blown and Travis would be headed to jail.

  Travis remained disciplined and ignored the phone.

  “Big help your credit card number has been too,” Boffman said. “There’s been no trace of him using it at all. Now that he’s given us the slip, we’re completely in the dark again.”

  Travis grimaced, imagining how Nora must’ve felt trying to explain technology related things to their Special Agent in Charge. Even Travis immediately grasped the correct answer to his complaint.

  “Lance, why are you still acting like Paulk is a regular street thug? Between him and Shotterham back in Seattle, it hit me like a brick on the head how acutely aware these hacker guys are of normal tracking methods. They know what’s going to put them on our radar. They know how connected everything is. Once he found out we were on to him, Paulk probably dumped his entire wallet, abandoned all of his accounts, and won’t make another transaction unless it’s with cold, untraceable cash. The element of surprise was everything,” Travis explained, sitting back in his chair and trying to stay cool.

  Boffman was steaming. He had a streak of pure pride in him that didn’t see failure as an option. When he was angry, he was dangerous and didn’t hesitate to punish anyone he thought was underperforming.

  “Well thank you for that extensive explanation of how badly we screwed up. What are we doing now to get him back in our sights?”

  Travis slid a thin stack of papers across the desk. “This should easily fall in our wheelhouse. A car was reported stolen a few hours after Paulk got out from under us. It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore. Paulk doesn’t have anything on his criminal record that isn’t computer related, but when people get desperate they do things you wouldn’t expect. Right now we’re monitoring every traffic cam in Oregon for the vehicle.”

  Boffman flipped through the pages and sucked his teeth.

  “Every camera in Oregon isn’t going to be enough. We need to extend the search to the entire west coast. Make that everything west of the Mississippi River,” Boffman said. Travis’s phone buzzed again. Boffman gave it a long look and watched as Travis picked it up.

  “I’m getting updates on matching fingerprints from Paulk’s apartment to those around the gym where the car was stolen, just to be one-hundred percent sure. No loose ends on this one. I’ll let you know when we’ve got a bead on the vehicle or any trace of his whereabouts,” Travis said.

  Boffman put his hands on the desk and leaned forward.

  “After pumping you up as the ace up my sleeve in this operation, you’d better come through for me, Travis. Everyone’s job is on the line for this one.”

  Travis only had time for a curt nod before Lance Boffman abruptly did an about-face and left the office. This situation wasn’t going to get resolved until somebody put handcuffs on Paulk, but if Travis could just buy a little more time he might be able to find out what really happened. Travis believed Danny when he said he wasn’t behind the hacking and had no knowledge of it.

  Travis’s belief hinged on how Danny thought he’d been conversing with Nora. But if Danny and OpenSwordsed weren’t behind the data center intrusion, who was?

  “Finally got to somewhere I can lay low. You’ve got to call them off. This is crazy,” Danny had written. Travis glanced over a couple other messages. Danny was scared and didn’t know what to do. Travis hadn’t known Danny very long, but he got an impression the guy wasn’t up to going toe to toe with the FBI like this.

  “The car is now off limits. Your name, face, social security number, and fingerprints are automatic red flags. You cannot surface,” Travis wrote.

  While waiting for Danny to respond, Travis pondered what should be the next move. The endgame was to ask Danny his location outright and sic Meron on him, but what should happen in the middle? If Danny had no knowledge of the hacking, the only way Travis could figure out who really did it was from someone else working the case within the FBI, unless…

  “The only way to clear your name is for you to figure out exactly who breached the data center,” Travis wrote.

  Although there’d been a pause after Travis’s previous comment, Danny responded in a flash after that one.

  “And how am I supposed to do that? I don’t know the first thing about what happened.”

  “Neither do we, but it looks like the real hacker exploited the Heartbleed bug in the encryption software and managed to download dossiers for all active investigations and the agents involved,” Travis wrote, feeling a tinge of guilt at handing over more confidential information.

  “Heartbleed? That makes it impossible to trace. The bug was an open door for those who knew about it, but since it’s been fixed trying to trace their footsteps is completely out of the question. The path is blocked,” Danny wrote.

  Travis sighed and leaned back in his chair. He had to think quickly.

  “The reason the FBI is pointing the finger at you is because they found the command:sync code in the system, which they consider part of your signature. If you didn’t put that there, someone else did and maybe they made a traceable mistake while doing so,” Travis added.

  “We haven’t used that in years!” came another rapid response from Danny. “And how could I possibly tell what was or wasn’t added to the FBI’s data center? Either I’d have to have access myself or I could burn through a thousand lifetimes trying to scan every computer in existence for those dossiers and those who have them.”

  Travis set down the phone and closed his eyes. Danny was right. He could find out what happened if he got inside himself, but that meant he’d have to have serious inside help that no one but Travis could provide. He was already in hot water for compromising the entire search up to this point, but what Danny needed would be to intentionally perform the crime he was accused of while everyone was looking for him. And Travis would be in Nora’s shoes, only explicitly guilty of helping him do it. He wouldn’t be nearly as lucky to be fired and thrown out of the building. It could cost him his freedom forever.

  And all for what? Danny himself said that the Heartbleed bug could’ve been used by anybody, even some clumsy goof who’d end up getting caught for something else in a month or two anyway. Was it worth it, to risk everything to bring in someone like that?

  But taking the risk would be doing right by Nora, who was counting on him to make this right. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Nora was thrown out and Danny pinned for the breach so shortly after they’d seen him. There was something bigger going on, and Travis had
to find out what it was. Maybe she’d visit him in jail on her way to becoming director of the FBI.

  Travis picked up the phone and typed another message. His heart was beating fast. In his mind he was running from something he couldn’t escape to something he couldn’t catch.

  “I’ll find a way to get you into the system. You uncover who actually made the initial intrusion. That’s the plan.”

  After a hard day at work and an intense workout, Travis returned home looking forward to a special Internet-facilitated rendezvous with Nora over Skype. When it came to women, Travis wasn’t used to waiting for the intimate parts of a relationship to kick in, but he wasn’t used to dating someone else who’d worked in the FBI either. If he could make it through Iraq without much in the way of sex, he could make it through a few more days of Nora’s absence.

  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t excited about getting a special sneak preview of what was to come via a video chat. Seeing her stripped down was something he couldn’t wait for, but the sexiest thing she could do was tell him when she’d be coming back.

  He downloaded and installed the program, creating a username and password. Nora had already sent him her username. Soon he was sitting in his computer chair wearing a t-shirt and unrestrictive shorts, running his hand through his hair a few times in the hopes it’d charm her more, and waiting for her to get online.

  The appointed time came but the minutes continued to tick away. Travis felt kind of dumb sitting there with his headphone/microphone set on, staring at the screen for his one Skype contact to get on. He glanced over at Dingo the sleepy Dalmatian in the corner.

  A text from Nora made his phone buzz. Skype was making her update the program. It would take a few minutes to download and complete the setup. Travis clenched his jaw and exhaled through the nose.

  “Are you ready?” she asked in another text.

  “I think so.”

  “Do you have any lotion or oil?” Nora asked. Travis raised his eyebrow.

  “What would I need those for?” he asked, wondering if taking off his shirt and covering himself in oil was what she wanted. If that was the case, she only needed to ask.

  “I’m hoping to get out of these clothes soon. If you needed to relieve any tension, I wouldn’t want you to experience any chaffing in the process.”

  Travis scratched the stubble under his jaw. He didn’t realize that was on the table, but if Nora was going to guide him through it he didn’t see an obstacle. Lotion in his apartment was hard to come by though. He found a small bottle of skin cream in the bathroom cabinet that would have to do. By the time he returned to his seat, Nora had finally made it on Skype.

  “I’m connecting the call,” she wrote in a message that appeared at the bottom of the window.

  Travis threw off the headphones at the ringing Skype call sound that assaulted his ears. It took a second for him to turn down the volume and put them back on, but by that time the notice of the incoming call vanished. Travis clicked on the username NorWex and tried to initiate a video call but got a busy signal.

  “What happened?” she wrote.

  “Volume issue distracted me. Are you talking to someone else?” he responded.

  “No, the call overlapped. Stop what you’re doing and let me call you again.”

  “OK,” Travis wrote, beginning to look suspiciously at the Skype logo in the top corner.

  The call came through a second time, and Travis’s hand jerked the mouse so quickly to accept that it might’ve broken the sound barrier. What Travis expected to see next was Nora’s beautiful face and ravishing strawberry blond hair, but instead there was a dark screen with a picture of a microphone and some tiered bars denoting the call quality. A little box with his own face was in the bottom corner.

  “Hello?” Nora asked, her voice sounding a little tinny.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” he said, his enthusiasm reigniting now that he could at least hear her voice.

  “Yes, I can. You look great,” she said.

  “I can’t see you. Is something wrong?” he asked. All he could see on the screen was his own face peering closer in confusion. A picture of himself was the last thing he was hoping to look at.

  “Wait, let me check the settings. It doesn’t look like the camera is working,” Nora said.

  Travis’s frustration came through in a snarled expression until he realized Nora could still see him. If for some reason there was a problem with her camera, he’d probably have to spend the rest of the night banging his head against a wall.

  Suddenly the screen changed and Nora appeared in front of him. The image was pretty grainy, but he could make out the dress shirt she wore and the way her hair tickled the tops of her shoulders.

  “That’s the smile I wanted to see,” she said. Nora made a motion to wave to him, but as soon as she did the frame rate of the image slowed down, then froze in place.

  “Nora, can you hear me?” he said.

  “Traaa…‌aaa…‌aaa…‌vvviii…‌sssss.”

  The video was stuck and the sound become more robotic until it was completely unrecognizable.

  “Come on!” Travis shouted at it. All of a sudden the call dropped and the screen returned to the main Skype menu.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Nora wrote in a message. “Sometimes the call quality isn’t great. Let’s try again.”

  “This program isn’t that great, is it?”

  His question went unanswered, but another call came in and he quickly answered. Wondering if the sudden movement of her waving hand was part of what sabotaged the quality, Travis tried to stay still when she once again appeared in front of him.

  “OK, this seems better,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t worry, let’s just forget about it. What’s been going on?” he asked. Nora smiled. From her lips to her cheeks, to her eyes, she was incredibly beautiful, even in this little box with worse image quality than he could’ve imagined.

  “A lot. I’ve been so busy helping Lauren with her situation that I haven’t even been able to take those next steps with Maria’s case I was telling you about on the phone. I’m hoping to make some progress with that soon.”

  Travis shook his head.

  “It sounds terrible,” he said, but what he knew was more terrible was that after all the trouble they had getting onto the call his mind was on something other than the myriad disasters they had to deal with. He started imagining her unbuttoning her shirt and thinking about how he could steer the conversation in that direction. “Do you know when you’re coming back?”

  Nora glanced to the left and assumed a pensive look.

  “I’m really not sure. The best case scenario is that Lauren’s hearing with the Disciplinary Review Board will come early next week. Depending on how it goes I might be back after that, if everything seems resolved.”

  “Oh,” Travis said, leaning against the back of his chair. Nora was watching him and must’ve known how disappointed he was.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I need to see these things through to the end.”

  “I understand completely. You don’t have to tell me about it when I’d probably be making the exact same decisions,” he said.

  A silent moment passed, in which Travis thought how nice it was just to look at her. A sly smile appeared on Nora’s face. She ran a hand over the collar of her shirt, then started undoing the top button.

  “My pajamas are waiting for me, and there’s no way I’ll be able to get into them as long as I’m wearing this,” she said, undoing another button. “You’re not planning to get into the shower with that t-shirt on, are you?”

  Travis shook his head, ready to pop the shirt off at a moment’s notice, but even the time it would take to do that would make him miss too much of what Nora was doing. She undid the last button and started to slide the shirt off her shoulders. The screen froze for an instant, causing Travis’s heart to jump to his throat, but it resumed quickly enough.

  Deciding it
was time to reciprocate, he peeled the shirt off over his head and dropped it on the floor next to him.

  “There it goes,” he said. Finally they were getting down to business. Nora slowly dragged the shirt down her arm, revealing a lot more skin and the right cup of a white bra. The look on her face strongly suggested that she was enjoying herself.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have a magnificent chest? Looks perfect to cuddle up to,” she said.

  “Maybe once or twice. Are you having trouble getting that shirt off?” he asked. She tilted her head and gave him a look. He had to admit she was good at this.

  “I could use a little help with the sleeves,” she said. Her arms were stretched back and she was leaning forward. Her skin, her cleavage, her neck, they were all perfect. Needless to say he was more than ready to go. “There, I got it.”

  She leaned back in her seat, giving Travis a view of her athletic body, curves, and sheer beauty.

  “You’re not going to stop there, are you? I’m sure that bra could go too,” he said.

  Nora pursed her lips and looked down.

  “You mean this?” She ran her thumbs under the straps. “I really can’t. There’s no telling who might be watching, so if I can’t take it off at the beach I can’t take it off now.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “There are some beaches—”

  “Trust me, after some of the things I’ve seen lately, stripping down naked in front of a web cam is not going to happen. But this is still pretty good for now, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Travis nodded.

  “Without question. It’s more than pretty good for now, but I’m already thinking about even better for later.”

  “Me too. Which muscles were you working out at the gym today?” she asked, but her words became choppy mid-sentence and the video feed slowed down and became distorted. Travis clenched his fists and hoped that it would come back soon, but instead it got worse and worse.

  “Can you hear me?” he said, staring at a pixilated still-image of Nora that even Picasso couldn’t have imagined. “Hello? Unbelievable!”