He rambled out several of his usual cuss words. What in the hell was the matter with him? He couldn’t run an op lying horizontal. Sleeping with her, sleeping next to her or otherwise. They should have stayed at the monitors. They could have picked up on this sooner. They would have been able to stop it.
Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve.
A little late to be singing that song.
“No shit,” Weber replied. “Agents are on site. It’s a bloody mess, literally. From the initial assessment, I’ve been told there are at least a couple dozen fatalities with this one. Maybe more. Most of the bodies seem to be in the halls.”
“A couple dozen?” David exchanged looks with Charis.
They could have stopped this. If only. If only.
“Maybe more,” Weber corrected, as if David would forget a detail like that.
The people ran through the halls to get out of the building. Oh Jesus no. He tried to get them out of the building as fast as possible. Now, knowing the fatalities were high because they’d been in full evacuation made his gut tighten. He pulled a fist to his chest to ward off the growing ache.
“I had them pull the fire alarm,” he stated, numb. It was his hasty decision that cost the lives of countless people. “Jesus, Weber. I had them... It was me...” Holy hell. He swallowed as the bile slammed into the roof of his mouth.
“Listen to me,” he stated low and careful. “If you didn’t have them pull the alarm, the numbers would have been much higher. Yes, we lost people today, but you also saved hundreds of lives. You. And McKoy.”
But they lost how many?
“How mobile can you be with this system of McKoy’s?”
The request shook his brain back into SAC mode. He eyed all of her monitors, her gigantic tower that seemed to be constantly grinding and spitting out data. The monstrosity of a desk holding stacks of papers. Not really something they’d be able to shove into the back of a van. “What do you have in mind?”
“You successfully tracked him down to the Riverside facility. Chances are, if you can track him...”
“He can track us,” David finished, making the connection. This just kept getting better and better.
“Exactly. I can have a team on its way to pick you up, get you to a safe house.”
“If he can track us here, he can track us to a safe house. We’ll run the op from here. Send a team to cover us. We’re better off remaining stationary.”
“If you weren’t in the middle of BFE, they’d already be there. As it is, it will be a few days to put a team together and get out there without Surreal following their trail.”
“I don’t like this.”
“You and me both,” Weber barked. He paused, sighed. Well, shit. That sigh only meant one thing. “Snyder, this mission reeks of Colombia. The players may have changed, but it’s the same game.”
“A mole?”
“No. It’s more about the agents. I made a hell of a lot of mistakes on that find. It almost got us all killed. I wasn’t thinking with my head. Well, at least not with the one I should have been thinking with.”
He grunted. “And you think I’m making that same mistake on this find?”
“I do.”
To hell with him. Weber didn’t have any room to talk. He’d almost given up their location so he could meet up with JT in the middle of the night, right under the tango’s nose no less. What right did you have to judge me?
Every right in the world. He was David’s director, and ultimately responsible to his superiors on this, or any op within the western region. Hell, this attack had been in Weber’s back yard. California was his jurisdiction.
“I’ve got it under control,” David answered, not denying Weber’s accusation. It would be a lie if he did.
“Snyder,” Weber started in, his voice low and even. “You’re going to have to pull yourself in on this. You are running point on this op. If you can’t keep it in your pants, I’m sending someone in who can.”
Jesus Christ. Another sucker punch. David cussed and clenched his teeth. He’d just have to keep his libido in check. His mouth away from hers. Hell, he’d be better off duct taping himself to the chair. A quick glance her way sent his insides spinning. Damn it. He’d have to poke his eyes out as well. “I can do this.”
“I know you can, which is why I’m not going to yank you and send you back to Hawaii. Get it together, and get this asshole before he strikes again.”
“Give me a break Weber,” he snapped. “We just got the assignment two days ago. So far, the find has been—”
“FUBAR, that’s what. He stole the laptop out from underneath you. JT tracked it down to a dumpster just outside the airport. She planted a GPS on it before handing it off to McKoy.”
“You’re shitting me. Surreal didn’t take it?”
“Oh, he had a hand in it. Prints taken show it to be a couple of punk kids who have a mile long rap sheet of petty thefts. JT went back and checked surveillance footage. They’ve been picking pockets, helping themselves to unattended bags and whatever else they could find. As soon I showed them the footage, they sang and gave up Surreal.”
“How’d he contact them?”
Weber ground his teeth. “He sent one of them a text.”
“Cell phone? Now we have to worry about him hacking into our calls?” Shit. Like they didn’t have enough to worry about. “Did he get anything off it?”
“No. One of the punks tried to turn it on and fried the system. They freaked and tossed it in the dumpster. Cell phone, too.”
Why the phone? By tossing out the phone, they’d lost their connection with Surreal. Unless that was exactly what they wanted. “They didn’t want him finding them, right?”
“You got it. So at least that’s one less thing to worry about.”
That didn’t make him feel any better. None of these mistakes should have ever been made. Where the hell was his head? He knew. In his goddamn pants. He darted his attention to Charis, who went back to staring at the monitors, flipping the view to take in the full devastation.
“He was early,” David pointed out. “His MO is a bomb a week. This one was four days early.”
“Then we can’t go by his MO. Surreal must know you’re on his trail. He panicked.”
He turned from the monitors, having viewed enough of the scene to be forever burned into his memory. If Surreal felt any danger of being caught, he’d increase his hits. Psycho assholes always did.
“You need to step it up,” Weber ordered.
“Jesus, Weber. We started monitoring his strokes as soon as we ID’d him.” Damn him for digging in like this. He felt like a pile of shit already. He didn’t need his boss, his friend, badgering him.
“His what?”
“Keystrokes,” Charis corrected.
“Keystrokes,” he repeated into the phone. “As soon as Charis analyzed the data, she spotted that he’d hacked into the Riverside Consulting Building’s system and pulled a copy of their blueprints. We moved out as fast as we could.”
“Not fast enough,” he growled.
“Face it,” David admitted, more to himself than Weber. “Surreal beat us on this one. He won’t do it again.”
“Let’s hope not. Now, if I leave you stationary, can I count on you to keep it in your pants long enough to get him? You can fuck her all you want after we get this guy.”
He wanted to jump through the phone and cold-cock the bastard for saying something so heartless. Then again, he had to be in his position. Following his lead, David detached himself, closed down his heart, his emotions. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Make it happen.”
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the desk.
“I can’t believe it,” she muttered. “I should have been able to find it sooner.”
“It isn’t your fault,” he stated and moved to the board. It was his fault. Weber was right. If he’d been focused on the mission and not on her, he would have seen the pattern. Not that he even saw
the pattern now.
And he was as focused as hell.
“If I... If we...” She let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes. “Oh God.”
“Charis, the guy doesn’t follow a pattern. We can’t predict what he’s going to do.”
“I can, David. At least I should be able to.”
Staring at the board, he barely heard her. A pattern started to stand out with the names. He continued to study it, the design becoming more and more distinct. He erased the names and wrote them out vertically. He spotted the connection and didn’t know whether to laugh. Or cry.
It stood out like a fucking neon sign. Holy shit. He stared at the buildings Surreal took out five years ago, shocked he’d never picked up on it before now.
True Technologies, Inc.
Round Architectural, LLC.
Emergent Technologies, Inc.
X-Tech Industry, Inc.
T.R.E.X. TREX. But it was the next grouping that gave his heart arrhythmia.
Cascade Technological Advances.
History of Arts.
All City Technology.
Riverside Consulting.
C.H.A.R. CHAR. Charis.
SEVENTEEN
Charis stood there, unable to move. Breathe. Think. Still shaking, she stared at the board. How could she have not seen the pattern? It was right there.
Thomas Macy—no, he wasn’t Thomas, at least not the Thomas she remembered. Surreal loved his acronyms. He thought them so witty. She’d told him over and over they were too easy to decipher, for him to come up with some other way to scramble his communications. Obviously, he didn’t listen.
And still she’d missed it.
She eyed the names of the buildings now destroyed, thanks to Surreal. Why her? Why would he blow up buildings at all? Was this payback for getting him banned from TREX or any other government agency for the rest of his life?
Shuddering, she closed her eyes. All those people. Their lives either lost or permanently altered. Destroyed. And for what? What did she ever do to him to warrant this kind of revenge?
“Anything?” David came in and stood behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back against him. His breath warmed her chilly neck. It drew a wash of goose bumps across her flesh.
She knew what she had to do, and it broke her heart. Loving him so deeply, so completely was supposed to make her happy. Instead, knowing she’d have to push him away, to break all contact with him, made her utterly miserable.
Love sucked.
The tears threatening to fall all day surfaced again, and it had nothing to do with the latest attack. Okay, it had everything to do with the latest attack. If he hadn’t discovered the pattern. If Surreal hadn’t resurfaced. If she hadn’t gone to Hawaii.
If she didn’t have a heart.
And right now it was shattering into a million pieces, each one full of so much anguish it hurt to breathe. The tightness in her chest threatened to rob her of her last thread of composure. She stiffened and wrapped her arms around her torso to stop herself from spinning and throwing her arms around him, holding him tight and never letting him go.
Knowing she’d only be pulling him deeper into danger, she resisted. Wanting, needing his comfort, and knowing she’d never have it again only added to the anchored weight in her heart. Her time with the one man she truly loved had come to an abrupt, cruel end. Not only had their relationship, at least what they had of one, cost them at a very crucial point in the mission, it would also continue to wreak havoc every step of the way. When they were together, the rest of the world disappeared.
If you love something, dig a hole. Wasn’t that how it went? It never made much sense to her, but then again none of the clichés ever did.
Damn Surreal for putting something like this on her conscience. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought back the tears.
Oh, David.
Turning from the board, she went back to her monitors. Work. Work would make all the pain go away. She’d worked endless hours while nursing her leg back to health. It helped pass the time, even made the pain a little more bearable.
God, she couldn’t wait for this pain to become bearable. Right now it almost blinded her. Sinking down in her chair, she drew in a breath and let out a deep sigh.
Surreal had been extraordinarily quiet over the past several hours. But, of course, why wouldn’t he be? No doubt blowing up a server room and killing innocent people took a lot out of a person.
“Why don’t you take a break?”
She analyzed the last hour’s data. If she added a few more algorithms to analyze his tracks, she just might discover his next move.
“Charis.”
“I’m going to find him,” she declared. “Maybe if I run a search on possible targets, we’ll find him before he hits again.”
“We can’t post guards at every building with a name that fits the profile. We can’t predict his next move.”
Oh yes she could. This might work. Her heart rate picked up. Her vision cleared, as did her mind. She’d make this work. “I can create an algorithm to weed out improbable targets. I can run a binary switch and use that same algorithm to identify those with a higher probability of being selected by Surreal as a target.”
Her fingers flew over the keyboard. The trick would be to add the correct arrays in order to retrieve the data without pulling any false positives. Sucking her lower lip in between her teeth, she went to work.
“Okaaay.” He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. “I have no idea what you just said.”
She smiled. “I’m going to write a program to find Surreal before he strikes again.”
The grin he gave her melted her heart. She held her breath until the urge to cry passed.
“Now that,” his grin widened. “I understand.”
* * * *
David took another pull off his root beer before setting it back down in its condensation ring. He rolled the bottom of the bottle along the ring to occupy his time and keep his focus on something other than the fact they hadn’t been able to pick up a hint of Surreal for almost two days.
He had cabin fever. Having never run surveillance via a computer and nothing else, he felt helpless. And antsy as hell. He needed something to do and glanced around the kitchen as he leaned back, his elbows on the counter, facing the living room. It closed in on him, as did the rest of the house. With his calculations that, to date, still had not failed him, he’d say the house was a little over twelve hundred square feet. Twelve hundred and thirty four, to be exact.
The Miles Anthony black and whites she’d told him about in Hawaii hung on the farthest wall, perfectly placed, the black frames offsetting the photos and adding just the right accent. He traced the room to see if he’d missed anything the first time he’d memorized it.
Cream-colored leather sofa with fuzzy peach pillows—check. Two IKEA-looking chairs with the same color motif against the wall housing the Miles Anthony photos—check. A single low, light pine table in the center of the room with three fashion magazines, the newest one at least a two months old—check. In her otherwise perfect world, the outdated magazines were the only things out of place.
But so Charis. She didn’t give a shit about fashion. Magazines on the latest techno-gadget were more her style. Or one of her beloved romance novels. No, she had the magazines on her table for display purposes only. What else did she keep for display purposes only?
The way she’d cooled to him these past few days definitely fit the bill. He knew why she’d done it and didn’t fight it. If she wanted to put a stop to whatever they had going on, that was her choice, and the right one.
He’d put a hell of a lot of effort into not thinking about her and how she’d react if they were too late. When his fears came true, he couldn’t focus on anything but her. He forgot his role. As SAC on the mission, let alone a TREX spec ops agent, his focus should be on said mission and said mission alone.
Easier said than done.
The fate
s sure knew how to play a cruel joke. Why would they tease him with the thoughts of falling in love, coming alive again in her arms, only to rip his world out from under him like this? He couldn’t have her, not the way he wanted to. He wanted to protect her, wanted her as far from this op as possible. Surreal was a fucking psychopath and had his sights set on her. If something happened, David would make sure the bastard died slowly, excruciatingly. He wouldn’t stop until he delivered the pain personally, killed the lunatic with his bare hands.
Shit. As SAC, he needed to base his decisions on fact, not emotion. And the fact was they needed her. Needed her on this op. No one had the power to do what she did at a keyboard.
Except Surreal. It was cyber-titan versus cyber-titan. And the only thing he could do was sit back and watch.
He took another drink off his root beer and curled his lip. He wanted something stronger but didn’t dare. Even one sip of alcohol would be too much right now. He wouldn’t do anything to dull his senses. Maybe he just needed sleep.
He started down the hall and almost collided with her as she stepped out of the office. His heart slammed to a stop. It was the first time they’d been this close since Chris barged in on them. Bringing his hands up the same time as her, and at the same height, they touched. He didn’t move away. Neither did she.
He searched her eyes. He ached to take her in his arms, to pull her to him and kiss her. His mouth watered in anticipation of tasting her. She lifted her chin and made that noise in the back of her throat. He sucked in a breath and entwined his fingers with hers. Stepping closer, he drew in a breath.
Her eyes clouded. She visibly swallowed, drawing his attention to her neck. The erratic pulse at the base of her throat caused his to fall in synch.
Their gazes locked again. Her lips parted and he couldn’t resist.
Leaning into her, he brushed his lips against hers. Softly, knowing it shouldn’t go any farther than this, he took his time tracing his tongue along her lower lip. She tasted amazing, like the promise of a better day, just by starting it with a kiss.
Seek and Destroy (TREX, #5) Page 22