His eyes were intent on hers. “The second call was to a friend at the Pentagon. Seems we don’t lose as many people in critical missions as we used to. We don’t lose as many missions that in the past were considered dead end. For the past few years, something is turning missions around at the last minute. Something is coming in at critical points in missions and turning them around. Something that for him is only a rumor.”
Lara’s heart was beating hard, and she was glad he was far enough away for her to hide it.
“That’s what they’re after, isn’t it?” he said. “Our side has something that works against them and they want to stop it. For revenge, to prevent it from standing in their way, whatever. They’ll do anything, it’s all worthwhile to them just as long as they destroy it. They want it gone.”
His last words hit home too hard, and finally he saw it. He’d read no change in her as he talked, but now he saw it. The intake of a breath, the sudden concern in her eyes.
“The way I see it, they could do it in three ways,” he continued, unrelenting. “They can hit it through cyberspace. But that obviously can’t happen. Not only because this thing would be highly protected, but also because with the post-break-in security shutdown even we can barely access our own data. So they can attack the AI physically. But would they know where it is at IDSD? And could they even pull something like this off, attack a secured computer within the IDSD complex here, assuming it’s even here, in the United States? That’s not the way I’d go unless I was unsophisticated or desperate. They’re obviously neither.
“Or, they could kill whoever is behind it. The person it can’t operate without. That would set it back. Unless there is more than one person. But my tech doesn’t think so. She thinks the optimal would be one person working with the AI, a single seamless connection that would eliminate internal conflicts. So one person. And once that person is dead, it would take time to train another. But a person who is capable of what I’m thinking—that cannot be even remotely easy, finding someone like that. Or, hell, maybe I’m wrong, and there is more than one person behind the AI. But even then, why not just kill them all?”
He frowned. “I don’t expect you to confirm or deny. But I need something to find them. So let’s assume I’m right.”
Lara closed her eyes, all too aware of his ability to read her. She couldn’t allow him to see too much. Oracle had to be protected. She forced herself to calm down, to regain the ability to hide what she wanted to. To think.
When she opened her eyes, they were focused again. She’d decided how far she would go. “You’re right,” she said. “You won’t decipher the data they stole. Not without a hell of a lot of computer power and a lot of time.”
“Okay.” He let her take her own way, choose how to help him. Her mind was clearly working now, thinking alongside his.
“So how did they?” she continued.
He sat up. “How long would it take to do that, decipher IDSD’s encryption?”
“Not our regular encryption. The encryption for the data center. That’s the best of all our encryptions. At least, it’s supposed to be,” she said. “And I don’t know.” She nodded and continued before he had a chance to speak, “But you need to know, in order to set a range for how long this group, as you say, has been working on the break-in. I understand. I’ll make sure you get what you need.”
“Good. Thank you.” His brow furrowed. “Why can’t you just get it yourself?”
“I’m not supposed to go anywhere near your investigation.”
“But you’re updated.”
“Yes.”
“And you are able to make sure I talk to whoever I need to.”
“To an extent.”
He looked at her curiously. She could just as well have lied to him. Or simply denied everything he’d said. It occurred to him that she never had, not once since they’d met.
“Will you be reprimanded for having this conversation with me?” he asked.
A fleeting, amused smile. “Hell yeah.”
“Would whoever reprimands you be surprised that you did?”
Lara thought about Frank knowing that the investigator was her neighbor. Knowing what she would never risk, what she could never allow to happen. Knowing that ultimately only she could judge where to help and where not to. “Hell no.”
He looked at her in wonder. Who are you, Lara Holsworth?
She settled back, her gaze thoughtful. “They had to have some reference data.”
His brow furrowed in question.
“They got the encryption somewhere. Unless they actually got the key, and there’s no way they did, they would necessarily have put their hands on sample data with the same encryption, something they could work on, learn the encryption and how to decipher it.”
“No data theft of that level has been identified.”
“I know.” She noted the obvious. “But there had to be one. They had to have something to work on, something to get them started on this encryption.”
“And something to point them to IDSD—IDSD in the United States, that is—and to the Oracle technology it has that they want destroyed.”
He wasn’t baiting her, she knew, just using the only assumption he had that sounded logical. “But there is a time limit here, which you might also be able to use to locate them,” she said. “Encryptions change, are replaced for security purposes. The data center encryption included.”
He nodded. “You’re right, USFID does that too, everybody does. So they had to do this relatively quickly—get the encryption, decipher it, and get what they wanted from the data center before the encryption is replaced—and this does limit the time frame within which the encryption fell into their hands.”
“An encryption of this level would be replaced less frequently, but still, yes, if you assume that they did in fact know our replacement frequency, then that, together with how long it might have taken them to learn the encryption, should still give you a limited range to work with. And as you said, they had to have been working on the data center break-in for more than a year. This helps further pinpoint when all this started.”
On the table, her phone beeped. As she picked it up its screen came to life and Donovan saw what looked like a short code, although he couldn’t make it out from where he was sitting.
“I’ve got to go in,” she said absently, her mind already elsewhere. She stood up. “I’ll pass on what you told me. All of it, if that’s okay with you. It’ll shorten the way to getting what you need.”
“Can you do that in a way that won’t get you in trouble for talking to me?”
She wondered that he would even think about it. “I’ll survive,” she said, but the words were followed by sudden doubt. Will I? She thought this thought that had never before occurred to her. Will Oracle survive whatever was coming? Pushing the thought out of her mind, it had no place, not now, not ever, she turned to walk upstairs, get ready for what experience told her was waiting for her at IDSD in the day, or days, ahead. Then remembered he was there, and turned to see him standing, watching her thoughtfully.
He’d seen enough people called to duty to recognize it. “Until the next truce,” he simply said and turned to leave, but then immediately turned back to her with a small, impish smile he hadn’t known he had in him, considered asking her after all what she did at IDSD.
“Don’t,” she said, surprising him by anticipating the question, and for the first time, she laughed. Really laughed. Grinning now, forgetting everything that came before that laugh, he turned and walked away.
Chapter Nine
Donovan was back in his kitchen nook, deep in thought, when the call came in. The head of IDSD Intelligence herself, Ruth Larsen, confirmed that she had spoken with Ms. Holsworth, then discussed with him at length how incidents could be identified that might point to the identity of the data center perpetrators, going back to his conversation with IDSD’s liaison, where he had begun to profile the types of groups he thought could be behind i
t. Finally, she told him she would get back to him as soon as she had anything that could advance his investigation, giving him a feeling that she was, in fact, making this her top priority. Ending the call, Donovan chuckled in appreciation. Lara Holsworth had come through.
He immersed himself back in his work.
And sometime later realized he was staring at his screen, thinking about her. The way she sat on the couch, comfortable in her own home, yet intent on their conversation, her eyes focused, golden flecks set in soft hazel enhanced by the gentle sun peeking through the open patio doors. She was obviously a professional in whatever it was she did—even if he still had no idea what it was, he’d now had a front seat glimpse at the level of intellect she operated on, and her calm confidence indicated to him that she was used to this, used to her mind being looked up to.
But she also had the looks that would draw a man’s attention. Yet what he’d seen in her so far told him that she didn’t see her looks as what made her who she was, didn’t attempt to use them, even if she didn’t care to hide them, but just accepted them as they were—the way she dressed, the way she held herself, spoke of understated femininity. And while a woman like that would be used to having the attention of a man, something about her was forbidding, subtly designed to maintain a distance.
Except it wasn’t going to work with him, that much he already knew, now, after this morning. He thought of the way her eyes fell on him when she assessed him, the careful distance she kept from him. As the investigator in this case, or as a man? he asked himself, then realized he was hoping it was the latter, and wondered if she even knew her effect on him. He doubted it.
He realized he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Angry at himself, at the professional side of him not being able to take over like it always had, at this part of him he had been sure did not exist choosing now to awaken, at the most unlikely, unwanted time, at emotions so out of character he had no idea how to react to them, he transferred his work session to his office via the USFID secure channel that connected his home and SIRT and turned off the screen, leaving it on the table. He grabbed a jacket and his Glock and badge on the way to the front door, and left. That should do it. It had to. He had to take his mind off her. This, she, had no place in the life he had chosen.
With little traffic on the way, he made it to USFID Plaza in no time. The USFID-SIRT floor in the main building was empty, the way he needed it to be. He got some coffee in the kitchenette and settled down to work in his office.
USFID director Leland White thought he would wait with the results of the reconstruction of the data center break-in until Monday, but two calls from officials too high up in the US Administration to be disregarded prompted him to leave the family gathering in the backyard lawn of his home and initiate a call from his study, after making sure to close the door behind him.
Donovan took the call on his wall screen, and White realized immediately where he was. “What in the world are you doing in your office?”
“Investigating,” Donovan said, a tad impatient.
“Ah. Do tell.”
The communication with the director was a secure one, and Donovan updated him.
“So we’re waiting for IDSD.”
“They’re the only source we can get this information from. It’s their encryption, and apparently their Oracle.” Donovan raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. “I could have Reilly hack their internal missions database, the one at IDSD here.”
“You finally got them to work with you, so don’t. And I don’t need a diplomatic incident. Not on this. It’ll have everybody on my back, so seriously, don’t.” White knew Donovan was baiting him, but he still hoped to God the man wouldn’t hack IDSD just for the heck of it. Donovan didn’t like anyone interfering with his investigations.
He contemplated what Donovan had just told him. Something there eluded him. “So you talked to Lara Holsworth. And she cooperated.”
“We had a professional discussion about an investigation aimed at assisting IDSD.”
A bit enigmatic, White thought. A bit defensive, too. Donovan didn’t do defensive. “How?” he asked.
“Mmm?”
“How did you get to her?”
On the screen, Donovan seemed to feign interest in the file he had open on his desk screen. “I told you my neighbors next door left,” he said.
“Yes, to that retirement community. They were nice. I liked them.”
Donovan raised his eyes to meet his. “Apparently they sold their house to their granddaughter’s friend. She moved in. I met her. The day after the data center break-in.”
White’s jaw dropped.
Donovan nodded.
“Let me get that straight. Because I’m thinking I’ve lost it here. Your next-door neighbor is Lara Holsworth, our mystery woman from IDSD.”
Donovan nodded again.
“Wow. The odds on that.” White chuckled. “So how’d you get her to talk to you?”
Donovan took a deep breath.
“No. No, no. Really. No. You didn’t hit on her?”
Donovan raised his eyebrows.
“No, of course not. Next-door neighbor is too close for you. And connected to an investigation. No, certainly not. What was I thinking? You wouldn’t, I know.” White stared at him, thinking, rather frantically he had to admit. “No. I know you. You did something. What did you do?”
Donovan was silent.
“Oh no. Donovan, don’t make me come there. It’s Sunday, Victoria will kill me. Please. Please don’t tell me you did something you shouldn’t have, that I’ll have IDSD to deal with tomorrow.”
“No, you would have already. Apparently she’s not the type to run and tell, and she deals with me nicely herself.”
White hadn’t expected the appreciation in the younger man’s voice. Not willing to let the matter go, not in the least, he leaned forward in his chair, saying nothing, his eyes on Donovan’s, his eyebrows raised. And waited.
Finally, Donovan let out a breath. “We might have had a couple of minor clashes since the investigation began.”
“Couple? Minor? How minor?”
“I told her to stay away from the investigation and threatened to arrest her. And I might have threatened to shoot her.”
White forgot to breathe. “No.”
Donovan shrugged.
“What did she do?”
“Gave me back as good as she got.” A smile played at Donovan’s lips.
“Really?” White settled back in his chair, considering this. With a woman who looked like Lara Holsworth did, Donovan was one to either make a move or turn his back in disinterest at the outset. And in an investigative setting, he would conduct himself professionally and with considerable self-control, certainly never mixing work with anything personal. He was doing none of the above. They had known each other for a long time, and White had never seen Donovan this way. Somehow, this woman had gotten to him.
“Don’t.” The gray in Donovan’s eyes had an icy warning in it.
White didn’t, ending the conversation at that. He wouldn’t push this, not until after the investigation was over. This wasn’t the right time. But he would get to it, eventually. That was the one thing he and Donovan had never seen eye to eye on. Relationships. At forty-eight, Leland White had been married to Victoria, the love of his life as he called her, for over fourteen years, much thanks to Donovan, who had talked him into taking the right step all those years earlier, when White had been a senior agent on a field mission with the special forces team a young Donovan was a part of. Donovan had saved his life on that mission, and had then gone to see him in the hospital and had told him to quit stalling and settle down before he got himself killed. White had done just that, and Donovan hadn’t been wrong. The marriage was a happy one, and Victoria and he had two kids. Mark, their oldest, was almost twelve now, and Sean was nine.
Donovan, however, did not take for himself the advice he had given the man who had since become his close friend. He was not,
as he called it, husband material, or common-law partner material, which was the way most people went nowadays. He wasn’t even boyfriend material. He had no intention of settling down. His flings—they never came close to relationships—were all short-lived, and he nurtured that obsessively almost, not letting any woman in. He never wanted to stay, never wanted one of them to stick around.
He never cared enough.
White knew where that came from. The kind of military history his friend had, had a way of distancing its best from permanent relationships, and his years as a field agent hadn’t helped either. Donovan had spent too many years knowing he might not return from his next mission, and bringing someone into that life wasn’t something he was inclined to do. He’d been to too many funerals and had seen too many anguished families. Unfortunately, even in the more stable life he led now and this job he was in, in which quite a few of those around him did not hesitate to have families, he’d kept to his old ways, not letting anyone close. What a waste, White thought. Donovan was a good man. He wanted more for him, even if Donovan himself didn’t care.
He sighed, left his study and joined his family.
Donovan turned off the wall screen, shaking his head in irritation. He knew where White was going with this. He didn’t want to go there. This isn’t the time to deal with this, he told himself, and dived back into work. Here in his office it was easier to focus, and he was deeply immersed in reviewing his investigators’ work on another investigation when the call came in. Throwing a look at the clock—he wasn’t surprised that the caller was spending Sunday night the same way he was—he took it.
Ruth Larsen appeared on the screen. She greeted him, then excused herself and added someone else to the videoconference. Donovan’s wall screen split into two views as US Global Intelligence’s director, Paul Evans, joined in. Having worked with Evans in the past, Donovan was not at all surprised that he was dealing with this himself. There was no arguing that the man deserved his newly-acquired position.
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