by Cindy Gerard
Silence. Then a cold glare. “Then you’ll have to be particularly careful, won’t you?”
It was after six and the floor was deserted by the time Stephanie finally finished the CVX summary. Instead of taking a chance on the interoffice delivery system, she decided to walk the report up to Alan’s office personally.
It wasn’t just about making certain he got the report before the weekend. She wanted to talk to him, give him an opportunity to… damn. She didn’t know. Make her believe he wasn’t hiding something horrible, she guessed.
She still couldn’t believe it.
“Extract your head from the sand,” B.J. had told her before she’d clocked out half an hour ago. “Loyalty is one thing. It’s time to face the facts.”
And the facts, Stephanie knew, were going to either clear or vilify her boss.
The elevator hit his floor; she walked down the hall, then rapped a knuckle on his office door. It swung open.
“Alan?”
When she didn’t get a reply, she walked inside. His computer was powered down, the screen was black.
“Bastard,” she swore when she realized he’d already left. “Needed this summary tonight,” she sputtered, and resisted storming out of the office.
Angry with just about everything about this wretched day, she marched back down the hall with the report, punched the elevator button, and did a little solitary fuming as the elevator descended to her floor.
She made herself take a deep, steadying breath to settle herself down. The breath left her body in a rush, however, when she stepped out of the elevator and spotted a man at her desk.
Alarm bells rang inside her head like storm sirens. “What are you doing?”
The guy jumped, then flattened a hand on his chest. “Holy crap! You scared the hell out of me.”
Join the club, she thought, her concern mounting. He was little more than a kid—probably fresh out of college. His name tag identified him as Tracy Davis, IT—which meant exactly nothing to her. She’d never seen him before.
“I asked you what you’re doing at my workstation,” she demanded when she realized he’d torn her CPU apart and was in the process of putting it back together.
“Just replaced your hard drive.” He went back to work with his little screwdriver and fastened a metal plate to the base of the tower.
“My hard drive? Why?”
Pale blue eyes glanced up at her above the thin wire frames of his glasses. “Because I got a work order. Cripes. What is your problem?”
Her problem was, there hadn’t been anything wrong with her hard drive. “Let me see the order.”
He gave her a huffy look, grunted, then dug around on his clipboard and produced a sheet of paper. “Satisfied?”
Alan’s signature was scrawled on the order. She swore under her breath, then glanced back at the tech. “There’s nothing wrong with my computer.”
“You’re right about that. At least there’s nothing wrong now. I just installed the new drive.” He stacked the old drive on top of his clipboard and rose to leave.
“But there was nothing wrong with that one,” she pointed out again.
“Look,” he said, sounding like he’d used up his store of patience. “The work order said it was fried. To me that means it’s fried, so I replaced it. End of story.”
End of story? God, she wished that was the case.
Every word that had come out of B. J. Chase’s mouth during the past two weeks started replaying in her head like news footage. There was a traitor in the ranks. This hijacking of her hard drive proved it.
“When will the backup server restore the data on my machine?” she asked carefully.
“Happening as we speak. Your unit should be operational in a couple of minutes.” The tech gathered his things and walked away mumbling. “Hell of a fuss over nothing, you ask me.”
Oh, how she wanted it to be nothing. Her pounding heart told her otherwise. Yes, she’d been resistant to Chase’s insistence that there was a traitor in their midst. Resistant, but not stupid. There hadn’t been a damn thing wrong with her hard drive.
She needed to get out of here. She was already getting a late start for her trip home to her parents’ in Richmond. But she needed to check for herself and see if he was telling the truth, that her data would all be restored. She sat back down at her desk, powered up her computer, then sat waiting for it to boot up.
Finally, it was all systems go. Her heart pounded like crazy as she accessed the file containing the information on her report. Gone. Her fingers trembled on the keyboard as she typed in the path to the backup location. Also gone.
She felt the rest of the blood drain from her face. They’d wiped out anything and everything that had to do with the report. Alan had wanted to make doubly sure that any record was wiped clean, which, as far as she was concerned, was the last nail in his coffin.
It was a desperate action, suggesting that Alan was a desperate man. She needed to get out of here and report to Chase.
But first, she had to break a few laws.
She stood up, checked the floor, listened. She was alone.
God, she couldn’t believe she was doing this.
Angling her shoulders so the security cameras couldn’t see her hands, she lifted her decoder ring out of its box, along with the cardboard insert the ring rested on. Inside the bottom of the little box was the flash drive she used as temporary backup for her work—the work Alan had just had destroyed. With her back still blocking the camera, she lifted her purse out of her drawer, then rummaged around for the little cylindrical penlight she always carried. Quickly unscrewing the seal from the bottom of the plastic flashlight, she dumped the batteries in her waste can and hid the flash drive inside the barrel of the flashlight.
The ploy wouldn’t disguise the drive from the security scanner when the guard checked her out at the main door, but she’d think of something between now and then to deflect his attention.
Five minutes later, she approached the security checkpoint, absently fumbling inside her purse. “‘Night, Ben,” she said. The scanner everyone passed through was similar to airport security scanners, only a little more sensitive and high tech.
“Oh, damn,” she muttered when she “accidentally” dropped her purse and half the contents spilled onto the floor. By design, the flashlight concealing the flash drive went rolling across the polished floor, past the X-ray scanner but still in view of the watchful camera.
Ben—mid-forties, family man, working for the weekend—hauled himself out from behind the scanner with a chuckle. “Must have a hot date,” he said, bending over to help her pick up her things. “Go on through, Miss Tompkins. I’ll help you with that.”
“Never pays to hurry,” she said, sounding put out with herself.
Then she tossed her purse on the belt and together, she and Ben chucked everything back inside her bag. Everything but the flashlight, which had rolled across the room.
She stooped over, picked it up, and with Ben watching, tossed it in her purse as if, in her haste, it hadn’t even occurred to her to pass it back to him to scan.
Then, counting on Ben’s good nature, his long workweek, and her years of passing through security without so much as a set of nail clippers to set off the scanner, she held her breath, shouldered her bag, and headed for the door.
“Thanks, Ben.” She smiled, big and wide, over her shoulder to hide how nervous she was.
“You have a good weekend,” he said as he settled back into his spot and she sailed on out the door.
Stephanie’s heart was still slamming when she reached her car, buckled herself in, and zipped out of the parking lot. Her palms were sweating as she hit the road and maneuvered onto the 295 on-ramp.
That’s when the gravity of her situation hit her. What had she done? What in the hell had she just done?
And the bigger question: Why did she have the horrible feeling that “borrowing” the flash drive was the least, the very least, of her problems
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♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥
6
B.J. let herself into her D.C. apartment, tossed the keys to her brand-new forest green Jeep Cherokee—she was doing her bit to help the economy—on the kitchen counter, and headed straight for the freezer and the bag of Hershey’s chocolate Kisses she kept there. One kiss wasn’t going to do it today so she grabbed a handful and started ripping into the silver foil before she even hit the sofa.
The first piece hit her tongue and flavor burst through her mouth. She felt the tension start to ease from her shoulders as she sank into the lush red leather.
Yeah. Red. She still wasn’t sure what had come over her. She wasn’t an impulse buyer. She was a basic-black kind of girl—until she’d walked into that upscale furniture store two months ago. All she’d needed was a new floor lamp.
She ran her hand across the buttery smooth leather. No, she hadn’t needed a red leather sofa, but damn, she had needed the pick-me-up.
She needed another one now. The traffic from Fort Meade to D.C. had been brutal. And despite Sherwood’s assurances, B.J. had second-guessed herself all the way home. The trap she and Stephanie had laid today that caught Alan Hendricks might have also painted a big red X on Stephanie Tompkins’s back.
“Stephanie’s not in danger,” Sherwood had assured her when she’d called him from her Jeep on the pricey new encrypted cell phone he’d issued her that ensured their conversations were secure. “Hendricks isn’t going to do anything stupid. Based on what you’ve told me, he thinks he has his bases and his ass covered. And he knows that after his performance today, if something happened to Stephanie, the first place anyone would start looking would be his backyard. No, he’ll play this safe. I’ll order surveillance on him right away so we’ll be there if and when he screws up.
“Listen. Good job, Chase,” he’d added. “Just keep your eyes open.”
She planned to, she thought as the last of the chocolate melted in her mouth. That plan included digging up background information on Alan Hendricks, which meant she had to go into the D.C. office to get it. The software that she’d need to hack through the many firewalls she’d encounter wasn’t in place on her laptop. No, she needed the DIA’s system to dig as deep she needed to go.
She shoved herself up from the couch. A quick shower revived her. In deference to the July heat, she threw on a pair of khaki shorts and a black tank top— two colors that dominated her wardrobe—and headed out for the office.
No rest for the wicked or the terminally diligent. She’d been labeled both.
Earlier that day a cell phone rang in a hotel room a mile from the NSA complex.
Zach Loeffler, who was registered with the front desk as Robert Smith, recognized the number. He turned down the volume on the TV and flipped open the phone. “Smith.”
“Time to earn your retainer.”
He’d been expecting this call. He always expected a call. “Specifics.”
He listened, then asked the inevitable question. “Accident or execution?”
“Use your imagination. If it must be newsworthy, just make certain it appears random. Avoid any undue attention. I’ll arrange payment the usual way when you confirm that it’s done.”
The line went dead.
Zach pocketed his phone, flicked off the TV with the remote, and turned on the GPS locator he’d planted in the target’s car several weeks ago.
The vehicle was traveling south, less than two miles from his current location. He pulled the Fort Meade area map out of the top dresser drawer, double-checked his bearing. He’d spent a fair amount of time studying the area both via the map and in his car.
“Location, location, location,” he muttered. “It’s all about location.”
But prime real estate wasn’t the object of his search. Advantage was.
He had three spots picked out. The challenge would be finding the perfect vantage point.
Hell, who was he kidding? There was no challenge. He was too damn good at what he did.
He scooped his keys from the dresser and pocketed them. A golf bag leaned against the wall in the corner by the bed. He unzipped the side pouch, made sure the two magazines were both filled with 5.56 NATO rounds. Then he shouldered the bag that contained a couple of woods, a few of his favorite irons, his putter, and his custom Steyr AUG. The Austrian bull pup rifle was very compact. With the quick-change barrel detached it was so small that it looked like a child’s toy, only without the cork.
“Enjoy your game, sir.” A cheerful bellman stood aside as Zach stepped out of the elevator onto the gleaming marble floor of the hotel lobby.
Zach smiled and slipped on his Ray-Bans. “I intend to, thanks.” Then he walked out into the Maryland summer sun.
By the time Stephanie realized she’d been gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline, her fingers were aching. She made herself relax as she drove on, wondering what to do.
Chase. She needed to talk to B. J. Chase. Before she could dial her number and tell her what happened, her cell phone rang.
“Dead?” she repeated, disbelieving, after Rhonda Burns, another cryptologist in her section, delivered the stunning news. “Alan Hendricks is dead? Oh my God. How?”
“I just heard it on my police scanner! Couldn’t believe it. It got called in as a suspected random shooting.”
Alan Hendricks… dead…
The words echoed in Steph’s head long after she’d hung up the phone. She drove on in stunned silence, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel again.
Alan Hendricks…
dead…
random shooting.
Or was it an execution? But that was… crazy.
Wasn’t it?
God. Chase was making her paranoid.
“No. Alan Hendricks getting shot to death is making you paranoid,” she muttered aloud as she sped along the highway.
Her hard drive being replaced was making her paranoid.
There are no coincidences.
It was a code she lived by, a mantra she used to problem-solve every day. It was no coincidence that Alan had been shot to death on the same day he’d wigged out over her report. It was no coincidence that her computer had been sabotaged in an effort to hide certain truths… truths she hadn’t yet fully pieced together.
Still, it didn’t make any sense. If Alan was really the mole, then why was he killed? Did that mean there were others involved? And if they killed him because of her report, did that mean… oh, God. What did it mean? Was she next?
She had to talk to Chase. Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with her phone and tried to steer at the same time. She started to dial. Stopped abruptly. Cell phones could be traced. Whoever had killed Alan could be monitoring her phone and locate her.
She quickly shut off the phone, then, holding the cell phone in the same hand she used to steer, she pried open the case and pulled out the battery.
“Try and find me now,” she muttered aloud, and tossed the disabled phone onto the front seat beside her, then shook her head at the desperation in that line of thinking—and the momentary, false sense of confidence. So she’d disabled her cell phone. That wasn’t going to stop anyone who wanted to find her. Her car could already be bugged or fixed with a tracking device. On top of that, her Saturn had come factory equipped with both OnStar and a GPS navigation system. If she was a target a professional would already have a lock on her position. Short of smashing all the electronics embedded in her dashboard, which would also disable the car, she was a sitting duck.
Her knuckles were white again as she shot off the parkway onto the New Carrolton exit and stopped at the first convenience store she spotted. Once inside, she bought a throwaway phone and had it quickly activated. Then she hurried into the public restroom, locked the door, and dialed B. J. Chase’s number.
B.J. had just pulled into the DIA complex parking lot when her cell rang. “Chase,” she answered, not recognizing the number on the screen.
“B.J. It’s Stephanie.�
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“What’s wrong?” she demanded, reacting to the panic in Stephanie’s voice.
“Alan Hendricks is dead.”
B. J. slammed the Jeep into park. “What?”
Stephanie filled her in on what she knew. “Jesus,” she muttered. “This was no random shooting.” B.J. was certain of that.
“I know. It’s horrible. And there’s more. I caught someone from IT swapping out my computer’s hard drive. Alan had ordered it done. All the data I had stored about the report was destroyed.”