Code of Conduct (Cipher Security Book 1)

by Smartypants Romance

  She scoffed. “Apparently the wife’s security is as stellar as Quimby’s.”

  “Remarkable, isn’t it? Almost makes one wish for the days of clandestine meetings and telephone conversations instead of the ‘anonymous’ internet of today.”

  “Why do you assume I go by Shane?” she asked.

  I studied her for a moment, and her eyes held mine. “It’s effectively gender-neutral and therefore relatively anonymous. According to your invoice, you accept checks under the name S. Hane, which must be some form of your legal name, though I find no record of it in Illinois combined with a date of birth or address that could possibly be yours, and finally, Mr. Basmian at the Armenian market, heard your neighbor, a young Hispanic man, greet you by the name Shane when he returned Oscar to you one evening last month.”

  “Mr. Basmian told you that?”

  “No, his daughter did. Her father had been very excited to finally learn the name of the mysterious, beautiful woman he’d seen nearly every day for a year, but who had never actually introduced herself.” I helped myself to a piece of chicken and took a bite with extra skin, which was crispy and excellent.

  She poured more wine into our glasses, then finally met my eyes again. “I don’t have many friends, Gabriel, and the few I have know me as Shane.”

  “Is it a name you’d allow me to call you, or do I need to keep digging?”

  “It’s the name I chose for myself, so if you think we can be friends, you can use it.” Her tone was careful, and I thought that she was protecting herself. I wanted to ask who had hurt her, but I wasn’t even sure what I’d do with the information if she gave it to me. Not that she would – she looked ready to ask me to leave, and again I wondered what had caused such mistrust that even the possibility of friendship was so tentatively offered.

  “I would like to be your friend,” I said solemnly. I held my hand out to her across the table. “I’m Gabriel Eze. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  She hesitated for the space of one breath, then shook my hand. “I’m Shane.”

  Her hand was cold, and I wanted to keep it in mine to warm her skin, but she let go, so I reluctantly released her.

  “I guess we should start with ADDATA’s finances,” she said as she made herself a bite of cheese and salami.

  I hid the smile provoked by the “we” in her statement with a sip of wine, and managed a serious tone. “I can get our man at Cipher on it tomorrow.”

  She picked up her phone and navigated through a few screens. “Or … I can get us in.”

  She handed the phone to me, open to Dane Quimby’s ADDATA bank account page. I stared at her. “You didn’t hack this, because my own phone would be buzzing off the hook if you had.”

  “No, the bank believes it’s Dane accessing his own account. And I assume that as long as there aren’t any big withdrawals, you guys won’t be alerted.”

  I finally allowed myself the grin that had been threatening since she agreed that we’d work together. “Greene, in our office, has set up an alarm system on every client account we monitor.”

  “Probably somewhere around ten grand right? That’s the federal reporting threshold, so most people don’t move more than that in any one transaction.” She’d taken her phone back and scrolled through the account activity.

  “Do you find it strange that a guy who drives a brand new, hundred-thousand-dollar car, whose wife left her brand new Lexus SUV sitting in the driveway, and whose home is worth more than two million dollars, is sweating the fact that his wife left with half-a-million dollars, despite walking away from the car and the house? It’s almost as if they both know nothing but the cash is worth anything.”

  I’d been staring at her lips as she spoke, and I suddenly realized she was expecting an intelligent response. “Quimby took out a FOID card the same week he opened the secret account,” I said.

  She looked up from the phone in surprise. “A gun license? That’s terrifying.”

  “That he can carry a gun? Yes, I agree.”

  “You ever notice that it’s the people who are most afraid who are also the most dangerous with weapons?”

  I scoffed. “I went from a country with incredibly strict gun laws into the UN Peacekeepers, which arms anyone who wants to don the helmet, and everyone who doesn’t. I felt like one of the few people who wasn’t in it for the firepower.”

  She put down her phone and regarded me. “Why the Peacekeepers? That’s how I found your name, by the way – from a captioned photo taken in Africa.”

  I felt the familiar prickly sweat that had plagued my dreams whenever they took me back to my time in the country of my father’s heritage, and I unconsciously sat back.

  Shane stiffened and spoke quickly. “You don’t have to tell me.” I could practically see the protective shell she was wrapping herself up in.

  “No, it’s okay,” I exhaled. “I just don’t generally talk about it.”

  She bit her lip and then pushed back from the table and grabbed the dishes. “Will you pour us more wine while I put away the food?”

  This woman had spikes on her armor, and I could almost picture them flaring out like the spines on a porcupine when she felt threatened or insecure. I did as she asked and then carried dishes into the kitchen while she wrapped up the food. “Dear Theodosia” was playing on the speaker, and I sang along with Leslie Odom, Jr. as he crooned to his baby daughter, promising to make the world safe and sound for her.

  And then my voice broke, and Shane spun to look at me.

  I closed my eyes for a moment to get my breathing under control. When I opened them again I saw Shane’s gaze locked on mine. She hadn’t moved, and I leaned back against the counter.

  “My heritage is Nigerian and Jamaican. The Jamaican is on my mother’s side. My grandmother was born in Jamaica, and she came to London when she was a child, right after the war. She and my mother raised us on stories of her childhood, so the Jamaican side of me I know quite well.”

  Shane retrieved our wine glasses from the table and handed me mine. She remained silent, waiting for me to continue. “There have been Nigerian Peacekeepers for more than fifty years, and at first, joining them was a way to connect with my father’s heritage. There aren’t any official peacekeeping missions in Nigeria, but some of the men in our unit were personally affected by Boko Haram operating out of the north. When Boko Haram kidnapped the schoolgirls a few years ago, my Nigerian mates decided to do something.”

  Her eyes searched mine as she waited for me to continue. I took another sip of wine to try to swallow the remembered horror.

  “We were a small unit, officially unsanctioned, but they weren’t expecting us, so we were effective. We removed twenty girls from the Boko Haram compound.” My voice broke again, and Shane closed her eyes against my words. “Some were as young as eight or nine. One of them was the little sister of a Peacekeeper in my unit.”

  “Oh, Gabriel.” She reached out to hold my hand, and my heart pounded in gratitude at her touch.

  “I left the Peacekeepers after that. It was just too … hard.” I rubbed the back of my neck and turned back to the table to clear more dishes. “I guess that’s more why not the Peacekeepers than why.”

  “I suppose a better question would be why Chicago?” she said, accepting my subject change without digging into the things I hadn’t said.

  I shrugged. “That’s easy. My twin sister, Kendra, got into law school at University of Chicago, and my mum moved with her to take care of my nephew. I was just back from Africa and couldn’t imagine being anywhere they weren’t, so I made a call to someone I’d met when I was a Peacekeeper, introductions were made to Cipher, and I got here a month ago.”

  Her expression softened, and it made her look young. She didn’t appear to be much younger than I, but then I’d always held that one’s experiences are often much more aging than one’s years. I generally felt decades older than my actual age.

  “How old is your nephew?” she asked.

&
nbsp; “Mika’s four. His dad, Jackson, and I were in the Royal MPs together.”

  That simple statement was like taking a dagger in hand and slitting my chest open from sternum to navel, and I felt as though I’d peeled back the skin to expose far more of myself than anyone should ever have to see. I carefully set the wine glass down on the counter, then took Shane’s hand and lifted it to my lips. Her eyes didn’t leave mine.

  “Thank you for dinner,” I said quietly.

  She started to speak, but her voice broke so she cleared her throat to try again. “I’ll work on Quimby’s finances.”

  I nodded, relieved that I could tuck my discomfort back out of sight. “And I’ll see what we have on ADDATA.”

  I finally let go of her hand, bent to give Oscar a belly rub on my way past the sofa, and turned to meet her eyes just before I left the apartment.

  “Good night, darling,” I said quietly, meaning the endearment not the nickname.

  She gave me a wry smile and closed the door behind me.

  15

  Shane

  “I don’t want to sound like a badass, but I eject my USB without removing it safely.” – Shane, P.I.

  It was almost noon when I finally closed my laptop and left my apartment, which was an excellent time to lurk outside the ADDATA office building. In my experience as a spy for marital fidelity, the lowest-paid staff of any company were typically the least loyal to the executives in charge of it. They were also the most likely to race out of the building at noon to get the tables at the good eateries.

  I’d once had a client who lived near the ADDATA offices, and we used to meet at a taqueria that made perfect street tacos – the little kind with meat sliced off the stacked roasting spit. That taqueria was directly opposite the office building, and I was willing to bet there was a line out the door every day at 12:05.

  I turned the corner just as a group of twenty-something guys exited the ADDATA building and strode toward tacos. One doesn’t amble toward tacos of such quality, and my own long legs carried me with velocity into the line just behind them.

  They appeared to be programmers, as evidenced by the t-shirt on one that proclaimed, “There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer.” Also, they appeared to be speaking recognizably English words, but not in any order that made sense to the casual, or even astute listener. It wasn’t until Cloud T-shirt Guy began discussing the demographics of the red state data sets that I tuned in.

  “They’ve got me coding micro data sets by location and specialized interest. I’m pretty sure they’re looking for gun-owning rednecks.”

  “Dude, you can’t say redneck,” the shorter one in front of him whispered.

  “Sorry. I meant white guys from the rural South with interests in hunting, big trucks, gun shows, and the NRA,” the guy in the cloud t-shirt said, with a shake of his head.

  “I’ve got a really broad group to scrape. They want pretty much anyone in California or New York with a college degree isolated into a subset,” said the third guy.

  “So … the opposite of my set,” said Cloud T-shirt Guy.

  “Hey, did you hear about Mickey Collins?” the short guy asked. “Steve said he dumped his girlfriend and went to California with the boss’s wife.”

  “Shut up!” said the third guy.

  “Dude, his girlfriend is hot,” said the short one. “And now she’s available.”

  “I heard the reason Mickey left Tomi is because she’s seeing some married guy, so when the boss’s rich wife hit on him, it was karma.” The third guy shrugged.

  “No, it was stupid,” said Cloud T-shirt Guy. “If the wife was going to leave Quimby anyway, she should’ve waited until Karpov’s politico deal goes through. She would have left with a helluva lot more.”

  It was their turn to order, so the conversation shifted to food, and then to weekend plans, but I made a note of Cloud T-shirt Guy’s name – Nathan – when he gave his order. I ordered my own tacos al pastor, then drifted near a table where a couple of young women sat oblivious to the stolen glances they got from the programmers. They were discussing books, and I almost jumped in a couple of times on the relative worth of the blockbuster vs. the indie, but I managed to restrain myself. With effort.

  When the guys got up and dumped their trash, I moved fast to get to the door in front of them. I looked back as the guys approached. “You’re Nathan, right?” I said to Cloud T-shirt Guy.

  He smiled without a trace of wariness. Oh, to be a young, white guy with no natural predators. “Yeah.”

  I held out my hand to shake his and tossed my head in the direction of the girls’ table. “Kylie said I should talk to you.” I pulled the girl’s name out of thin air, hoping Nathan didn’t actually know any of the girls he’d been leering at.

  He held the door for me, and I walked with the guys as they headed toward the office building. “Oh yeah, what about?”

  “That political deal Karpov brought in? How can I get on that team?”

  Nathan scoffed. “Talk to Quimby. No one ever sees Karpov anymore, and Quimby’s got us running around like chickens trying to please him. You’d never know they were partners the way Quimby drives us on data sets and target pops.”

  “Target pops?” I asked, as though that was the only confusing thing he’d said.

  “Target populations.” He looked at me oddly. “You’re not a programmer though, are you?”

  “I’m looking for ways to monetize each client relationship to its maximum potential,” I said brightly, hoping to dazzle them with the pure bullshit of that statement.

  “Well, good luck monetizing the politicos. I’m not sure where the money’s actually coming from, but if we don’t see some more soon, Quimby’s going to lose a lot of really good people.”

  We got to the front door of ADDATA, and Nathan held it open for me. “You coming in?”

  I checked my watch. “Crap! I have to run. Here,” I said, thrusting my cell phone at him. “Give me your number and I’ll come find you later, okay?”

  Nathan looked bemused as he typed in his cell phone number. He was a computer nerd, so he wouldn’t be nearly as easy to hack as Quimby had been, but I’d take whatever access I could get. When he handed my phone back, I waved with another bright smile, and then hurried around the building without a backward glance.

  As I walked, I sifted through the bits of disjointed information I’d gotten from the young programmers. I memorized the names for my notes, saw with satisfaction that Nathan Yorn had added his last name to his phone contact, and resolved to dig a little deeper on Quimby’s partner’s political dealings.

  16

  Shane

  “There are actually seven food groups if you count coffee, chocolate, and wine.” – Shane, P.I.

  I stopped at Dark Matter Coffee for a to-go cup, black with four sugars. It was a gamble, and not one I was sure would pan out well for me, but I understood enough about people to have worked up some apology hacks.

  Van Hayden was behind the front desk of Cipher Security Systems, and he watched me enter the building through narrowed eyes.

  “Another bike messenger steal your bag?” he said in a voice devoid of humor.

  I held up my bag and kept my expression neutral. “Not today.” Then I put the coffee and sugars on the desk in front of him. “Brought you something to apologize for lying to you before.”

  That got his attention in a fairly big way, and I could see him chewing over which question to ask first as he studied me in silence. “You want to talk to Eze,” he finally said in that not-a-question way he used so effectively.

  “If he’s available, that would be great,” I answered quickly to cover my surprise at the restraint Van was showing.

  He picked up the phone on the desk and punched in a number. “She’s here.” He scowled as he said it, then hung up. He met my eyes and nodded to the elevator. “Third floor.”

  The surprises just kept coming, and I struggled to keep my face from giving anythin
g away. I must have failed though, because Van’s scowl became the ghost of a smirk. “His neck’s out pretty far on you.”

  “Is it just me you dislike, or people in general?” I retorted, and the smirk disappeared.

  He let his expressionless stare be his answer. “Thank you for the coffee,” he said in a tone that was drier than the Sahara Desert. I turned to walk to the elevator, and his gaze itched between my shoulder blades. I had a feeling he was mentally mapping all my kill zones as I waited for the elevator. I was avoiding his eyes so studiously that I missed the entrance of the woman who called to Van in a voice that sounded like a combination of lace and fine suit wool. “Hello, handsome.”

  Shockingly, there was a chuckle in Van’s voice as he answered. “Alex is working in the vault today, Sandra.”

  I turned just as a stunning redhead blew Van a kiss. “He’s lucky he saw me first, or you’d be in trouble,” she said as she strolled past the desk toward me.

  The fact that it was the elevator she strolled toward, and not actually me didn’t seem to matter. She was like a curvy magnetic neutron star, with the strength of a hundred billion Teslas. She smiled at me, probably because I was staring and it was either smile or flee, and the room lit up a thousand candle watts brighter.

  I finally found my words when the elevator opened and we stepped inside. I stared straight ahead so I didn’t get burned by her sunlight. “You must be one of the two people in the world Van likes.”

  She laughed, and silk joined the lace in her voice. “Being scary is a sport to him.”

  “Well, he has Olympic-level skills,” I said.

  “Abusive fathers tend to bring that out in men who fear losing control,” Sandra said, and then she gasped and turned toward me. “I’m sorry, that was TMI on an epic scale, and pure speculation on my part.”