Seek and Destroy (TREX, #5)

by Allie K. Adams

  It was gone.

  “What the hell?” He went in search of the recorded call. After several minutes of frantic searching, he came up empty. Running a trace on the hits to the system right before the call disappeared, he spotted a foreign IP.

  “Hello,” he sang. “Would that be one of your many proxies, Charis my dear?”

  Surreal added the IP address to his array. If that IP came in on any of his systems, he’d know. “Thank you.”

  His attention back to the other monitor, he watched the woman stare at the screen. Holy Jesus, what was wrong with her? “Pick up the phone and call, already.”

  She picked up the phone. Instead of his phone ringing, it rang into another connection. “It’s Marie,” she said into the phone.

  It must be fate. Marie was Charis’s middle name. Hearing the woman say her name only solidified his choice. Image Techno-Gadgets was the perfect match. Based out of Aurora, Colorado, it settled in nicely with his plan.

  “The server isn’t responding,” Marie stated into the line.

  “Are you sure you hit the right key?” The male voice, so condescending, barked at her.

  Asshole.

  Judging by Marie’s body language, she shared Surreal’s opinion. “I think the hard drive failed.”

  “You aren’t paid to think,” the guy responded.

  Surreal made note of the voice’s extension. He’d make sure the asshole paid for the way he talked to Marie.

  “I’m sure of it, sir.”

  “Well,” the man sighed, irritated. “I guess you’d better call their tech support, since you obviously can’t figure it out.”

  “Fuck you,” Surreal sounded off, saying exactly what he knew Marie wanted to say. After all, he knew everything about her. Well, everything about Charis. But once you knew one woman, you knew them all.

  Marie disconnected the call and picked up the receiver again. Surreal’s phone rang.

  He cleared his throat before he answered. “Mainframe Supply.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  He took the bait. By adding the false IP into his array, Charis had him. She already had one of her many phishing programs searching the cloud for the IP he piggybacked on hers. Instead of hunting him, it was time to turn the tables.

  He’d never see it coming.

  “Mainframe Supply.” Surreal’s voice pulled her attention to another monitor. Her jaw dropped at the data she quickly analyzed. He had the calls routing directly to him. That’s how he got the servers there so fast. He shipped them there himself. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  The equipment they had access to at the safe house beat the hell out of her system. It didn’t take her long to have a new system up and running at the safe house, with a few additions courtesy of the cyber division of TREX. She really liked her new division.

  “How may I help you?”

  “Hi. My name’s Marie. I’m calling from Image Techno-Gadgets in Aurora, Colorado. I need to talk to someone about a server...uh...misbehaving.”

  Charis shook her head in disbelief. She’d never heard another techie refer to a server as misbehaving. It was a machine for God’s sake.

  “Just what is the darn thing doing? Running with scissors?” Surreal teased, charm oozing from his tone.

  Oh please.

  Marie laughed. “No. But it does seem to be having some trouble booting up. I’m wondering if you’d be able to help me?”

  “Of course. I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  That didn’t sound good. David needed to hear this unfold. “David?” He didn’t answer. Ever since arriving at the safe house in Washington state he’d barely said more than a few words to her that didn’t have something to do with their find. They spent every waking minute searching for Surreal. When they did find sleep, they were in separate rooms. And they were never alone. Having at least three other TREX agents present at any given time really put a stopper on one’s overactive libido.

  David had disappeared into another room an hour ago with a group of TREX agents. Chris got to stick around, but the rest of the McKoys were sent away. Logan had another assignment and Mitch and Seth weren’t spec ops. Because of that, they didn’t get invited to play in the reindeer games. They should have at least let Seth stay. After all, he was TREX, but was on leave while he completed the last of his medical training. Mitch, she understood why they wouldn’t let him stay. He was a sheriff and had his own people to protect.

  “David,” Charis called again, this time louder. Still nothing. With a put out sigh, she stood up and poked her head out of the room she’d turned into her office. “David!”

  “He’s on SatCom with the director,” a rather large man buried behind a newspaper stated. As he spoke he lowered the corner and peeked over the top. He had no hair on his head, tiny little eyes and a crooked nose. He’d obviously broken it more than a few times. “He told me to have you use the radio if you need him.”

  She stepped back into the room. If she jumped on the radio, she wouldn’t be able to hear the conversation between Surreal and the poor woman who had no idea she was about to open the door to disaster.

  “Can you walk me through booting it up? Since this is something one of my coworkers usually takes care of, maybe I’m not doing it right,” the woman said.

  “Not doing it right?” Surreal repeated, astounded.

  Yeah. Tell me about it. Charis rolled her eyes. Did this woman really just say that? Seriously? And, come on, did she really have to sound like she sucked helium before talking?

  “Well,” Surreal chuckled. “I’m sure I can work with you, Marie. Why don’t you have a seat? We’ll get started.”

  “How did you know I was standing?”

  Charis whipped around to the monitor just as Marie sank into a chair. He’d already tapped into their feed. Why hadn’t she seen it? She could hardly type, her hands shook so much. Having already hacked into their system to monitor the traffic, she traced their hits for any foreign IP addresses in their phone lines.

  “Where are you?” Charis whispered to the data. “Where are you?”

  “I’m new,” Marie giggled. “So I’m going to need all of you. You don’t mind helping me, do you?”

  You’ve got to be kidding. Charis scanned the IPs scrolling across her screen. So far all had the same DNS to balance the load of the hits. They were all coming from the switchboard within Image Techno-Gadgets. Damn it.

  On a hunch, she switched to the wireless IPs. She’d bet her PhD he used VoIP. And with any voice over, they all had their own IP, just like a phone number. She may be able to pinpoint his location from it.

  This could work.

  “I’ll give you exactly what you need,” Surreal oozed into the line. “Don’t worry, Marie. You’ve got my full...ahem...attention.”

  She giggled. Surreal had successfully charmed her into forgetting he’d known she’d been standing. “What’s your name?”

  “Thomas. And you’re Marie. Are we having a moment?”

  Charis rolled her eyes. Oh pahleeez. This conversation made her stomach turn. Jumping to her feet, she hurried toward the door again and poked her head out. “Can you please get David?”

  The man next to the paper-reader looked up from the TV. Just as bald, nose just as crooked. “He said for you to contact him, not us. We’re here to be your babysitter, McKoy, not your secretary. If you want him contacted, do it yourself. You’ve got two hands.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Asshats. It didn’t matter. She had enough to know Surreal’s next target. If they got to Image Techno-Gadgets before Surreal, they’d be able to stop him.

  She picked up the radio. Holding the heavy thing in her hand, she frowned. Did the frontline divisions use the same radio etiquette as the sidelines? It didn’t matter. He needed to know this new information so he could put a team together and deploy them to Colorado.

  “Uh, Charis to David.” She paused, hoping she didn’t do it wrong.

  “Snyder. Go ahead.”


  Her heart flipped at the sound of his voice. “I know Surreal’s next target.”

  The pause on the other end had her nerves on edge. Why didn’t he answer? Holding the radio up, she pressed the key to ask him to say something when his velvety baritone sounded behind her. “Talk to me.”

  Spinning around in her chair, she gaped up at him. When he widened his eyes and motioned at her monitors, she nodded and spun back around. “Listen to this.” She played the call for him.

  “When was this?”

  “About thirty seconds ago.”

  “Hot damn! Angel, my love, you just made my day.” He kissed the top of her head and ran out of the room, barking orders at the two monster-sized men sitting in the other room.

  Smiling, she sat back and twirled in her chair. And having you call me that just made mine.

  * * * *

  David couldn’t hear anything over the grinding of his own teeth. Being stuck in the fucking van was even worse than being stuck in Charis’s house for a goddamn week. And this time, she wasn’t with him.

  He rested his chin on his hand, his elbow on the narrow counter inside the van, and stared at the screen, counting every passing second and hating it. He should be the one on the inside, not Charis.

  The monitor blinked and sent his pulse racing. If they lost their video feed, he’d have no way to monitor her, no way to make sure she stayed safe. “Why does it keep doing that?”

  Rich Neely, the bigger and more computer literate of the two gigantic Neely brothers, looked up from his station. “McKoy said it might blink as it jumped from feed to feed.”

  His pulse settled back into the pace of bored-as-hell. The van they’d parked across the street from the Image Techno-Gadgets Building felt cramped with the three of them in the back. The Neely brothers were both six and a half feet at the very least, and close to two fifty a piece.

  “When is she going to look around?” Ron Neely asked in between shoving pretzels into his mouth. He offered some to David, who shook his head, then to his brother Rich. He, of course, took a handful and started munching loudly.

  “She is,” David answered. She sat at the station in the center of the room, the back of her head to the camera as instructed. If he didn’t already know it was her, he would have been fooled. “She’s checking out the system. And turn your mic off when you eat those goddamn things. I can’t hear shit.”

  “Sorry,” they both stated in unison and clicked off.

  “You know,” Rich said to David. “She could have monitored the activity from the safe house.”

  No shit. A valid point and one he fought tooth and nail to pound into her thick skull. Let him pose as the technician and have her walk him through the install remotely. Wardrobe could transform him into anything from a dirty old homeless man digging through trash to an Italian count. He hated the makeup they’d covered him in previous ops. It itched like hell. It was also part of the job. Regardless, the makeup job always fooled even the keenest eye.

  He prayed it would be enough to fool Surreal.

  But she insisted he wouldn’t know what to do if something went wrong. True, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Things went wrong on ops. And when they did, he adapted.

  Rolling his shoulder to stretch it out, he curled his lip. Yep. Adapted just fine.

  When HQ jumped in and sided with her, he had no choice. Forced to sit in a tiny van with the two bottomless eating machines, to stand on the sidelines while the woman he loved put her life on the line. She wasn’t a field agent. This felt wrong.

  Her normally rich coffee-colored curls were now a Marilyn Monroe blonde, and perfectly straight. He had to hand it to wardrobe. The wig looked like real hair. But even with her disguise, he still didn’t like the scene. One slip up and Surreal would know it.

  Why hadn’t they let him go instead? He knew how to stay hidden from the camera. He’d be the one in the field and not Charis. This was too dangerous. Too fucking personal.

  He flipped on his mic. “Remember to keep your face away from the camera.”

  “I know,” she sang. So it might have been the fourth, okay fifth, time he’d reminded her of that. He couldn’t help it. She brought out his protective side. “And whoever keeps crunching in my ear? Stop it. It’s making me hungry.”

  He threw the Neely brothers a sharp look. Ron smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “What? I’m a growing boy.”

  “Me too,” Rich added.

  Ignoring him, he went back to the monitor. “Tell me what you see.”

  “You see what I see.”

  She’d been able to tap into Surreal’s feed. Not only could they control what Surreal heard and saw, they were only hours away from breaking down his damn door and dragging his sorry ass in, thanks to something about a piggyback IP.

  All thanks to Charis.

  TREX gave David a choice. Go after Surreal or stay and monitor her. He wanted to personally be there and drag Surreal in kicking and screaming, of course after he had a little conversation with the shit-for-a-spine. He’d bring in whatever he left.

  But he wanted, no, needed to be here for Charis. He needed to ensure her safety. If something happened and he wasn’t here, he’d never forgive himself. Hell, he wouldn’t survive.

  “Any sign of a bomb?” He spoke into his headset. He had to admit, the wired devices definitely picked up more than the wireless mics. And he didn’t think anything picked up more than those things.

  “Nope. Not that I would know what one looked like.” She flipped her hair off her shoulder.

  Another reason why TREX should have let him be the one to go in. “Look for something with a bright red heart, split in half.”

  “A broken heart? Seriously?” She tried to sound so calm, so easy. Her voice had an underlying quiver. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her she was doing fine.

  He stole a quick glance at the Neely brothers. Rich and Ron both seemed involved in their duties, but they listened in. He’d never known them not to listen in, to know exactly what’s going on. Even in Colombia they knew Weber needed them before the call came in. He didn’t know how they knew what they knew, he was just grateful they were on his side.

  “This...” Charis’s tone caught his attention. “This isn’t right. David, this is wrong.”

  His neck hairs spiked. Oh shit. “What do you see?”

  “It’s what I don’t see. I ran a scan on the hard drive of this server. It’s got about one-third the hard drive space it should have, and even less memory. A server of this size should have at least several terabytes of space.”

  He nodded at the Neely brothers as they looked to him for confirmation. Not that he had a clue what the hell a terabyte was, let alone how many should be in a server, but he didn’t want them to know that.

  With Charis’s intel from the Riverside bombing, TREX confirmed the bombs were being delivered and detonated via the server. Another reason why he didn’t want her anywhere near the server room. With the missing terabytes, it also confirmed his worst fear.

  She sat next to a bomb that, if detonated, would kill her. He wouldn’t risk it. Surreal was too goddamn unpredictable. If he so much as sniffed them there, he’d detonate the device and David would lose her forever.

  Fuck that. He’d find another way to get the psycho son of a bitch. “Charis. Get out of there.”

  “What about finding the bomb?”

  “You did,” he informed her. “It’s the server. You confirmed that when you noted the missing terabytes.” He watched the monitor as she stiffened.

  “Are you sure?”

  He’d never been more certain of anything in his life. “I want you to stand up and, keeping your back to the camera, casually walk out of there.”

  Instead of listening to him, which pissed him off but didn’t surprise him in the least, she started to type. Fast. Faster. “I can’t.”

  “Charis—” Goddamn it.

  “I need to disconnect this server from their system before Surreal hacks in and det
onates the device. It will only take me a few minutes.”

  You may not have a few minutes. “Get out of there! If he suspects anything, he’ll blow it.”

  “Not if he can’t connect to it.” She shook as she spoke. He knew she wouldn’t leave until she had the server disconnected. By then it would be too late.

  He needed to get her out of there. Now.

  Throwing down his headset, he ignored Ron and Rich’s protests as he jumped out of the back of the van. His only thought was on Charis as he made a beeline for the server room.

  * * * *

  What happened to Marie? Not that he minded. The new girl they brought in had a hell of a nice ass and didn’t wear it as a hat. But he missed Marie’s dark hair. Surreal never really had a thing for blondes. Or those with straight hair.

  No, he preferred brunettes. Curly-haired, sassy brunettes with amazing blue eyes. The blonde had... Well, he didn’t know. She still hadn’t turned around so he could catch a glimpse of her face to see what color her eyes were. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be anything close to the blue eyes of his lover.

  The blonde had the server in, up, and running in record time. Nice to know not all IT techs out there were fucking idiots. This woman showed them all it could be done within the time he’d plotted out in his plan. She was the first one to ever stay within his timeline.

  How nice. And just when he’d started to question the time it took to install a server. Apparently not. Interesting how she just sat there staring at the screen, pretending to type. She’d completed the install and checked the size of the hard drive. Surreal leaned closer to the monitor. And now she checked the RAM.

  How very...uncommon. He liked this blonde more and more. Untrusting, just like him. Of course she’d check to see if the server had everything they’d ordered. She flipped her hair and he caught a quick glance at the side of her face.

  Surreal sucked in a harsh gasp. He knew that profile. The curve of her face. She didn’t have her lovely smile curling those magical little lips of hers, but she didn’t have to. He knew the exact shape of her lips when they formed into that delicious grin.