“Yes. For you. Now make love to me before you say something stupid and ruin the moment.”
With a glad heart, a hard cock, and a head full of possibilities, I oblige.
Afterward, I drowse. When I awake several hours later, I’m dehydrated, disoriented—
And alone.
“Fuck,” I mutter, leaping out of bed. I grab my watch from the dresser and check the time. It’s late, much later than I thought. I jump into my pants, drag a clean T-shirt over my head, strap my watch to my wrist and shove my feet into my boots. I’m about to call Tabby’s room when I notice a note on the floor near the door.
Heart pounding, I snatch it up. When I read its contents, I groan.
Jarhead,
In order to avoid what is sure to be an even more awkward drive together to LA, I left first. You’re welcome. And thank you. Even writing this is ridiculously awkward, which convinces me I’ve done the right thing by going. My cell phone number is below. You probably already have it, having done your “research” on me, but just in case. It won’t be turned on until I arrive in LA. Text me the address of the job.
As you said, we’re both professionals, so I know I can trust you not to mention this again.
For the record, I won’t either.
T.
It could only be worse if she’d signed it “Friendly regards.”
I curse again, passing a hand over my face, and then crumple the note and throw it on the floor. Fuming, I stare at it for several seconds, but then expel a hard breath and pick it up. Smoothing out the creases, I carefully fold it and tuck it into my wallet.
I pack up the rest of my things in my duffel bag and head out.
I arrive in Los Angeles eleven hours later, overcaffeinated and jumpy as hell. True to her word, Tabby has had her phone turned off all day. I’ve dialed her number no less than ten times, my frustration growing each time I hear the toneless electronic voice on the recording directing me to leave a message. I never do.
Finally, on the eleventh try, she picks up. Her voice is mild, businesslike, impossibly impersonal.
“You were supposed to text me an address.”
I don’t bother to ask how she knew it was me. “Are you all right?”
That might have come out more brusquely than I intended, judging by the surprised pause on the other end of the line.
“Of course. Are you?”
No. Standing in my dark hotel room overlooking the bright lights of Century City, I bite back the word and rake a hand through my hair. “How did you get to LA?”
“I rented a car. Did you think I sprouted wings and flew?” She’s amused.
“Where are you now?”
Another pause. “Venice.”
I release a breath. From my investigation of her background, I know she grew up in Venice Beach, blocks from the ocean. Her parents were well-educated, a political science teacher and an artist, bohemian and antiestablishment, basically hippies.
And then they were dead.
“Visiting the old neighborhood?”
The pauses in this conversation are growing longer and longer.
“Connor.” Her voice is soft around my name, a caress. I close my eyes and listen to it, let it steady my jagged nerves. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking. And I’m ready to go to work. Whatever I need to know, text me—”
“I’ll email—”
“No email.”
Something cold snakes through my gut. “I use the highest encryption protocols commercially available, Tabby, and tweak them to my needs. You know I take precautions. It’s my business.”
“I’m sure Miranda took precautions too. You know as well as I do that email can never be one hundred percent secure.”
“The encryption I use is the closest thing to bulletproof. It’s based on what they use at the National Security Administration, customized for me.”
Her tone goes flat. “I see. And I suppose you think a universal encryption key is a myth.”
The cold unfurls, spreading to my chest. “Of course it is. Not even the NSA or Homeland Security has that kind of technology.”
“No,” she says after a moment. “They don’t.”
“Are you telling me—”
“By the way, if you’ve ever used this phone to contact Miranda, assume all your voice communications are compromised as well. My advice is to get a few burners for this job, use a new one every day. It won’t matter in the long run, but it might slow him down a little.”
Him. Søren. Like a bad rash, he’s suddenly back.
I say slowly, “If someone is intercepting my calls, watching my electronic activity, that means you’ve been exposed too.”
That charming sound on the other end of the phone is Tabby softly laughing. “Just text me the information about where we’re setting up shop, Connor. Leave the heavy lifting to me.”
She disconnects the call.
I stand there in the dark, staring at the phone in my hand, wondering why it never before occurred to me to ask her the reason she took the job in the first place, and understanding with sudden, awful clarity that it was the most important question of them all.
I’m in, she’d said. I hope you’re prepared for war.
With new foreboding about what that might mean, I take the elevator to the lobby of the hotel, in search of a payphone.
Thirteen
Tabby
The first thing that happens when I meet the venerated Miranda Lawson, CEO of Outlier Pictures and a long-time girl crush of mine, is that I hate her.
With a capital H.
Glaring at me, she snaps, “You’re late.”
Her words crack like a bullwhip across the space between us, spookily echoing off cement floors and columns before fading into silence. We’re at her movie studio, in one of those creepy, subterranean parking lots featured in slasher films, where the female victim is hurrying to her car, looking over her shoulder in fear of the boogeyman she senses is waiting for her with a chainsaw somewhere in the dark.
“That’s on me,” says Connor calmly, standing beside me. “Got a late start this morning out of Albuquerque.” A short pause. “Caught in one mother of a storm.”
Because I now have intimate knowledge of all the gradient inflections of his voice, I know what the slight drop in his tone over the last few words means, and who they’re meant for. I’m thankful for the cover of shadows, because I feel heat creep into my cheeks.
It blazes hotter as Miranda turns her icy-blue gaze on Connor and then breaks into a dazzling smile.
“Connor. So good to see you again.” She crosses the space between us with a few graceful strides of her long legs, her heels smartly clicking against the floor, and presses her cheek to his. She’s slim and immaculate, dressed in a perfectly tailored ivory Chanel suit, nude heels, and pearls. She smells like mint Lifesavers and money.
After a murmured hello, Connor introduces me. “Miranda, this is Tabitha. She’s—”
“The woman who works for free, apparently,” says Miranda, still with that dazzling smile. It’s toothy and predatory, and would look at home on a wolverine. “Not that I’m complaining, of course. Lucky me! I suppose we all have our quirks.”
Her gaze travels over my outfit as she says “quirks.”
I’m in my usual hacker chic outfit I wear on jobs, lots of tight black everything, punk meets goth, short on class and full of sass.
Because fuck you, that’s why.
I smile sweetly at Miranda. “You have lipstick on your teeth.”
She replies coolly, “If I did—which I don’t—it would be easily remedied. Unlike your unfortunate fashion sense. Or perhaps you got dressed in the dark this morning?”
Beside me, Connor bristles. “Enough.”
I think he’s chastising both of us, but when I glance at his face I’m surprised to see his ire is directed straight at Miranda.
He’s angry with her for dissing my outfit. Which he himself has done on more than one occasion.
>
Before last night.
This is new, I think. What is this feeling? Pride? Satisfaction?
I don’t know what it is because it’s completely unfamiliar, but I decide I like it.
Miranda’s gaze snaps to Connor. She studies his face for a moment in silence and then looks at me. “I apologize. As you can imagine I’ve been under a great deal of stress. I’m grateful to have your help.” She turns her attention back to Connor. “Both of you. The FBI so far has gotten nowhere, and we’re running out of time.”
“You’ve had more contact from Maelstr0m?”
Miranda nods. “He’s begun erasing data from the servers. It started an hour ago. He says he’ll erase a terabyte every hour that he doesn’t get the money.”
“So he’s installed malware,” I say, unsurprised. “Good.”
Connor and Miranda stare at me. “Good?” she repeats, astonished.
“The malware will have a specific digital fingerprint. If I can capture some of the code, I can link him to other malicious cyber activity through it. Which means he’ll be on the hook for a helluva lot more than just this job.”
“If you can capture the code,” says Miranda. “None of my in-house computer experts or the FBI have found anything so far to trace the source of the breach.”
There’s something unpleasant in her tone, but I merely smile. “That’s because the malware is written so it destroys itself after it delivers its payload. But I know where to look.”
Miranda inspects my face in the same way she did Connor’s moments before. I can almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes. She says quietly, “You admire him. This hacker, whoever he is—you admire him.”
My smile fades. “In the way one admires a shark for being a perfect killing machine, yes. But that doesn’t mean I like him.”
A new look comes into her eyes. Her voice drops in shock. “You know him.”
Connor says roughly, “She was victimized by him once too.”
Looking straight into Miranda’s wide eyes, I emphasize, “Once.”
I feel Connor’s attention shift to me, feel his need to question me about Søren like a razor slicing over my skin, but I know he won’t ask in front of Miranda.
The funny feeling from before intensifies when I realize that I know it’s respect that will keep his mouth closed. He might try to pummel me with questions in private, but he won’t bring it up in front of other people because he knows I wouldn’t want anyone else seeing how weak and stupid Søren made me feel.
I never would have imagined myself describing Connor Hughes as a gentleman, but I’m starting to believe that underneath the swaggering G.I. Joe sex-machine routine, that’s exactly what he is.
Miranda lets out a relieved breath. “Well, this is fantastic news! We need to inform the FBI immediately—”
“Oh, we will,” I say, waving my hand dismissively in the air. “But it won’t matter. They’ll never find him. He’s a digital Jedi. A ghost.”
Connor mutters, “A digital Jedi?” When I glance at him, his jaw is as hard as a rock.
Not understanding what caused the look on his face, I frown. Why is he angry?
“Whatever he is, let’s get on with trying to stop him,” says Miranda, turning brisk. “The FBI has set up a command center upstairs and has cyber forensic agents working twenty-four-seven on this. Shall we?”
We turn and follow her through the shadowed parking lot to the elevator bank, where she hits the button for the seventh floor.
The FBI’s COM center is something straight out of a spy movie. They’ve set it up in the empty office adjacent to Miranda’s executive suite, and even at this late hour, it’s buzzing with activity.
It’s got “waste of taxpayer money” written all over it.
By my count, there are fifteen fully equipped computer stations set up, arranged in a semicircle in the middle of the room. Each bristles with wires and is covered in monitors and hard drives, staffed by a young man in a suit, tapping diligently at a keyboard. A large desk has been set up to one side, where I suppose a more senior man sits, although it’s currently unoccupied. On the wall has been hung a large dry-erase board, with a mishmash of case facts, website URLs, and hypotheses scrawled over it in red pen. In the center of the board is a large circle, drawn by hand, with a big question mark at its center.
“Why are there so many government employees in this room?” I ask Miranda. “They usually sent out two or three guys for this kind of thing.”
“Because the Sony hack was traced to North Korea and the feds are concerned that this is the North Korean government upping their game. Apparently there have been some recent threats of nuclear strikes from the regime that are credible. These gentlemen are from the Cyber Action Team, the FBI’s rapid deployment group.”
I sigh, because this is going to be a real pain in my ass.
I stride across the room and pick up the red Erasermate pen from the thin metal lip at the bottom of the board. In the big circle, I write, “Søren Killgaard.”
When I turn around, everyone in the room has stopped to stare at me.
“Hello, humans,” I say, looking at each one in turn. “Take me to your leader.”
“That would be me.”
I look in the direction of the gravelly voice. A man stands in the doorway I just passed through. He’s built like one of Juanita’s MMA fighters, barrel-chested and short-necked, with a big red face that betrays his fondness for alcohol. His head is shaved. His tie is askew. His eyes are bloodshot and squinty. He looks as if he was woken up by gunfire halfway through a bad dream.
“Mr. O’Doul,” I say, recognizing him. Everyone in the hacking community knows who all the top government cyber dogs are. “I’m a big fan.”
He takes me in with a single, sweeping glance, his expression unchanging. “Executive Assistant Director O’Doul. And you are?”
Standing beside a tense-looking Connor near the doorway, Miranda says, “This is Tabitha West. She’ll be assisting in the investigation. I expect your team to give her its full cooperation. She’s a computer specialist, subcontracting with Metrix Security.”
Connor and O’Doul nod a greeting at each other. I take it this is one of the FBI guys Connor mentioned he knew.
O’Doul’s steady gaze comes back to rest on me. “What’s your specialty?”
I flippantly reply, “Destabilizing governments.”
His expression sours. “You’re a hacker,” he says flatly. The young men sitting at the computers shift in their seats, glancing at one another in surprise.
I give him my most winning smile. “I prefer the term social engineer. By the way, congratulations on being promoted to the head of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. Your predecessor was a total moron.”
His squinty eyes narrow. He says slowly, “Tabitha West, is it?”
Connor says tersely, “You won’t find anything.”
“We’re the FBI. We always find something.”
“Really?” My brows lift. “How’s that working out for you with Maelstr0m?”
The mood in the room is growing decidedly tense. I’m used to aggravating people, so it’s no skin off my back, but Miranda looks as if she’s already regretting the decision to bring me on board, while Connor is glaring a warning at me from beneath lowered brows. The guys at the desks have their hands poised over their keyboards, as if waiting for a command from O’Doul to enter my name into one of a dozen databases.
O’Doul asks, “You an associate of Maelstr0m’s?”
“Nope.”
Connor says, “She’s clean, Harry.”
A pause as O’Doul examines my face. “You vetted her?”
“Yes. You know no one gets on my team without a squeaky-clean file.”
That’s a stretch, considering Connor has witnessed in the past one or two of my less “squeaky-clean” activities, but he’s technically correct. My file is clean.
My hands are another subject altogether.
&n
bsp; I wait for O’Doul to decide whether or not he’s going to allow me into the boys’ club before a full government background check can be completed and he’s convinced I’m not collaborating with the enemy, a worm sabotaging the investigation from the inside. When he takes too long, I say with exasperation, “Okay, I’m not being conceited when I say this, but I’m your only hope here. You’ll never catch him without me. Dicking around is only going to make the situation worse.”
A few snickers and rolled eyes from the guys at the computers. Someone chuckles and says under his breath, “Is that a Hello Kitty watch she’s wearing?”
I turn to glare at him, my hands curled to fists. “Yeah, motherfucker, it is. And in two seconds it’s going to be telling the time inside your colon.”
Connor coughs to cover his laugh. Appalled, Miranda lifts her hand to her throat. O’Doul says wearily, “Shut the fuck up, Rodriguez, my daughter loves Hello Kitty.”
Abandoning my attitude of nonchalance, I turn back to O’Doul. “The name of the man you’re looking for is Søren Killgaard. I went to school with him.” I glance at the jerk who made the watch comment. “MIT, in case you’re wondering.” Back to O’Doul: “I know how he thinks, I know how he codes, and I know it’s him using that hacker alias, because he’s eliminated anyone else who ever tried to use the name.”
At the same time, O’Doul and Connor say, “Eliminated?”
“Use your imagination,” I respond, looking back and forth between them. “The part where all the monsters live.”
Connor does this thing where he seems to inflate, like a cat when it bristles all its fur upon sensing danger. I can’t decide if it’s interesting or ridiculous, but all the other men in the room except O’Doul definitely seem to think it’s intimidating as hell. I’ve never seen a group of men shrink as a collective.
Before Connor turns into the Incredible Hulk, I say, “I can make contact with Søren in five minutes. In under an hour, I can have a program installed on Miranda’s server to counteract the damage his malware is doing. And if you don’t get in my way, by tomorrow at this time I can—most likely—find out exactly where he is. If I fail, you’ve lost nothing.”
Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) Page 10