“You’ve met your match,” said Slade as Gage climbed back in and handed the envelope to Slade without opening it first to read it.
Slade tipped it open and only a few sheets of paper fell out. Whatever they were doing, they were getting no assistance from the boss man. Just directions.
“We’re looking for a leak. Someone has been talking to the cops about one of his companies.”
Toni noticed how non-specific Slade was being. She wondered whether that was because the directions were so non-specific or whether he just didn’t want to give her any more information. Not that she really wanted any more information, if she was being honest. She just wanted to get this over with.
“How are we supposed to figure it out?”
“The leak has been communicating via email. We need to find the email address they’ve been using and trace the IP address. Can you do that?”
“Are you kidding? Punch me in the gut and I’ll be fine. Ask me insulting questions like that and I’m actually hurt.”
“Good,” said Slade. “Because we’re doing it now, whether you’re ready or not. And if you don’t get this done, I’m under orders to terminate your arrangement. Understand?”
Toni rolled her eyes and looked out the window. “Got it. Help or die.” She took a breath that didn’t do anything to calm her down. There wouldn’t be any time to relax until all this was behind her and Sterling was dead. “Can I ask you something?” she said finally. Slade didn’t say anything, which she took to be a “yes, but fat chance I’ll answer.”
So she continued. “Whatever Sterling has on you.... You wouldn’t kill me unless it was something bad, right?”
She thought he was going to ignore her, but after a second he said, “There is literally nothing I wouldn’t do if Sterling asked me to.”
Toni sucked in a breath. So she was willing to bet that no matter how much she and Slade got on, she wasn’t going to be turning him to her side anytime soon.
So she and Scott were on their own. A fact she wouldn’t feel as bad about if Scott were anywhere near her at the moment.
Scott climbed out of the car and looked up at the building in front of them. He didn’t know whether he’d call it a skyscraper, but it was big enough to be a pain in the ass to navigate. Looked as if it probably had about ten stories. Judging from some of the crumbling brick out front and some of the broken windows, he was willing to bet that not everything inside was up to code.
Toni moved to stand next to him and looked up, brushing a loose blonde strand out of her eyes. She pursed her lips as she squinted before she looked down to read the sheet of paper in front of her.
“The guys said you had instructions,” he said, trying to lean closer to see what she was reading.
She scoffed. “If you can call it that.” She handed him the sheets of paper before she pulled out her phone to look at something. When he leaned over, he saw that she was looking at the Wi-Fi options on the street.
He glanced over his shoulder to see the cars on the street. Two vans. They could’ve both fit into one, but it would be easier to make a run for it if they separated. They all knew how to get back to the house if needed, so getting separated wouldn’t be a big deal. But there was still an uneasy tension throughout Toni’s entire body. “Do you think you can’t do it?”
She shook her head. “I know I can. That’s what worries me.”
He nodded, not saying anything to comfort her. He knew exactly what she meant. If this was a test for Sterling to gauge her loyalty, it would have to be hard in some way. If it wasn’t going to be that physically dangerous, then it would throw some other curveball. He reached over, setting a hand on her shoulder, which had her jumping and looking at him with wide eyes as though he’d burned her.
Well, that was new. Had their mistake of a kiss thrown her off that much? He knew it had been wrong almost as soon as he’d done it. But he’d hoped they’d be able to move on and work together, at least while they were in this together. Well, now sure as hell wasn’t the time to talk about the kiss, but he could still be there for her. “Don’t worry. Whatever’s in there, we’ll take care of it.”
She ran a hand over her forehead and the top of her hair before she shook her head. “No, we won’t.”
“What does that mean?”
She pointed behind him to the vans where Hunter and Slade stood. “You get to hang out with them for a while.”
“Fuck that. I’m not letting you go in there alone.”
“Scott, you know I respect you. But this team of guys doesn’t need you. Sterling agreed to this arrangement because he saw use for my skills. The only reason you’re still hanging around is because they don’t know what else to do with you and, for the moment, you’re the perfect leverage to use on me.”
He winced. “Damn. Way to make a guy feel useless.”
She tightened her lips. “I just... Scott, I’m going to do whatever they ask me to do. No matter who I screw over. No matter how many good people have to pay for it. And I want you to know that I would’ve done this whether you were here or not. I came prepared for this when I turned myself over to Sterling. But if you try to get in the way, they’re going to kill you.”
“I’m not that easy to kill,” he reminded her.
“You’re human. That’s easy enough.”
Gage suddenly appeared. “Hate to break up the love fest over here, but we got shit to do and not a lot of time to do it.”
Toni stepped aside from Scott. “I’ll see you on the other side,” she said with a forced smile.
And then Gage led her away, and he had to decide whether Slade would kill him before he could reach Toni.
But she was right. He had to stop thinking about Toni and remember the mission. If they were going to use this position to get to Sterling, they were going to have to actually play along for a while, no matter how much the thought made him want to throw up.
Toni tapped her finger against her thigh repeatedly as she held the laptop close to her chest. The floor they were going after was up two stories, but she made sure to get off one level earlier. This wasn’t a smash and grab. She was going to get into their network and past the firewall, extract the information she needed, and that would be it.
Which would be all well and good if she hadn’t seen the name of the company she was currently infiltrating. And it wasn’t some massive corporation that she didn’t care about. It was a nonprofit called Hearts and Homes. She had no idea what this nonprofit did, but she had a feeling it was going to kill her soul a little bit more when she found out.
The level they stepped off onto was a smaller company, and it looked as if they dealt in office supplies from what she could tell from the logo on the door. Or maybe it was a shitty logo. She didn’t really care at this point. This wasn’t her objective.
She and Gage stepped outside the elevator and she looked toward the reception desk. She looked just long enough to see the name on the plate and verify that the receptionist was there. Then she walked back to the elevator bay.
“What are you doing?” Gage rubbed at the back of his neck. “Aren’t we going to get this over with?”
She knew he had to be frustrated, because everything they were doing was something he was capable of without her help, but he was charged with babysitting her. But even if he wanted to think they had the same skill set, she was willing to bet her entire life savings—which was considerable at this point—that he hadn’t had a mother like Isobel Murray. “You can break that code,” she pointed to the door across from the receptionist that required a keycard or combination to get past, “but this will be faster.” Just then, the number she’d looked up started to ring and a second later, the receptionist answered. “Melanie, we’re having some trouble with the projector. I’m going to need some help right now.”
“Who is this? IT can—”
“No one is answering in IT! I’ve been working on this for ten minutes and if I keep these clients waiting any longer, they’re go
ing to—”
“I’ll be right there,” said the poor woman before she even realized she never got the name of the conference room she was supposed to be going to.
Toni gave it a few seconds before she poked her head out from the elevator bay and confirmed that the receptionist was gone. From there, they walked right past reception and down the hall. The server room was easy enough to find, considering it would be windowless, not be well labeled, and gave off heat. The normal person wouldn’t notice that heat, but she wasn’t what anyone would consider normal. Even though she was in jeans and a tee, no one seemed to be paying her much attention.
With a quick glance around, she verified that no one was watching and pulled the server room door open and slipped inside. Once there, she started to look through the mess of wires that went throughout the building. She hadn’t seen blueprints of the building, but because wiring was so complex, there was about a ninety percent chance that the server room for the floor above, the true target, was right over her head.
The floors would be reinforced to handle the extra weight, so there wouldn’t be any way to get upstairs. But she was right underneath the router, and because she’d already realized that the nonprofit didn’t have any Wi-Fi and this company had unsecured access, she was already halfway in.
She found a loose cord and plugged it into her laptop and got to work.
The paperwork told her to install a backdoor on an email server at the nonprofit. So she wasn’t going to be able to figure out who the leak was or even what they were leaking, but she would be handing Sterling everything he would need to find the leak.
As soon as her laptop was open and she was hooked up to the network, she quickly found the access she needed to Hearts and Homes and got to work setting up the backdoor she needed to.
It was almost as though she were installing a bug in the email. This program would record everything that came in and out, including scanning the archived emails.
Whoever these good people were, they’d gone after Sterling without having any clue what they were up against. Poor bastards.
Once she had everything set up, it was a waiting game as the programs started to run. She glanced over at Gage, who looked bored and scrolled through his phone. While he was distracted, she pulled up an Internet browser and looked up the Hearts and Homes foundation. When it came up, her heart sunk a little bit. It was a charity to support the victims of human trafficking.
Which meant by helping Sterling, she was supporting human slavery.
Before she could allow the nausea to fully take over, she shut the browser and watched the program continue to run.
Slade checked to make sure Scott was still in the back van before he stepped onto the street. This was one of the rare moments that he envied the guy. He’d much rather be sitting in the dark than walking toward the stretch limo that had pulled up next to them on the road.
A year ago, he would’ve hesitated to get in the backseat, but today he just pulled the door open and slid in. No fear. No anticipation. Just going through the motions.
“What do you think?” asked the creaky voice from the shadows.
“I think I’m a babysitter,” said Slade as Sterling moved forward slightly so the light shone on his face just enough, but still left long shadows from where his cheekbones and overly long nose protruded. It was as though his DNA knew he was a son of a bitch and decided his face should reflect it accordingly.
“How’s the girl?”
“She’s angry. Lots of energy. That could be a good thing.” Her energy obviously didn’t come out during the morning training session, but he could tell there was a lot of fire under the surface. “Gage reported that she’s making good progress inside. She knows her way around a keyboard.”
“Good. I knew she’d be an asset. But she will need to be tamed before we can fully bring her in.”
Slade didn’t react. He’d tamed every one of the guys on his team. He would handle Toni easy enough. “I’ll take care of it.”
Sterling leaned forward and met Slade’s gaze before Slade looked away. There weren’t many people he didn’t like looking in the eye, but Sterling had a way of stabbing him in places he didn’t even know existed.
“She’s not going to be as easy to tame as you think.”
Slade didn’t say anything. He knew what Sterling was going to say.
“We have a few things to hang over her head, so I want you to get rid of the cop.”
Damn it. Even though he’d expected it, it still wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “You told me to see how it played out having him around.”
“As fun as that game would be, I didn’t get this far in life by playing with fire. Kill him and make sure the girl knows that if she crosses us, everyone in her family will be next.”
No anger. No guilt. No regret. Slade just nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
Scott leaned forward to look out the windshield.
“Sit down,” muttered Hunter from the driver’s seat, where he drummed his fingers along the steering wheel.
“Who is that?” Scott pointed to the limo that Slade stepped out of. He scanned the plate and stored the numbers in his memory but knew it would lead to the car company, and that would probably be a dead end if the limo held who he thought.
“None of our business,” said Hunter in a short, clipped tone. Which meant Hunter probably suspected Sterling was in that limo too.
“Does your boss always have secret meetings with Sterling?”
Hunter drummed his fingers faster. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“Don’t you want to know the entire plan?”
“Need-to-know basis. Now sit down.”
“Everything is need-to-know in your line of work. It’s your life on the line. You deserve—”
In a flash, Hunter pulled a handgun from a side holster and pointed it right at Scott’s forehead. It was a Glock, which meant there was no safety, and Scott was willing to bet that Hunter didn’t travel anywhere with an unloaded weapon.
Scott held up two hands, signaling that he didn’t mean to cause trouble, and he backed away. “Sometimes questioning things keeps you alive,” he said as a last rebellion as he sat down.
“And sometimes it gets you killed.”
“I make it a life goal to keep from working for someone who will kill me if I question too much.”
Tristan let out a small laugh from the back. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you failed that life goal, buddy.”
Hard to argue with that. Tristan had a laptop open in front of him, and Scott not so subtly moved to sit on his side of the van so he could look over his shoulder.
Tristan rolled his eyes and glared at Scott. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Character flaw,” said Scott dryly. “Are you monitoring Toni with that?”
“I don’t need to tell you anything,” Tristan pointed out.
“Yeah, but is there really any downside? I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
Tristan shook his head. “That’s stupid, you know.”
“Checking in on Toni?”
“No. Getting involved with someone in this line of work. I mean, I get it. I have a special connection with the ladies myself—”
“Shut the fuck up!” called Hunter from the front. Scott had a feeling it wasn’t the first time Tristan had gone on about his success with the ladies.
“But,” continued Tristan, “I know better than to mix business and pleasure. Not when we’re in this line of work. You used to be a cop, right?”
He hated that these guys knew that about him. “Yes,” he admitted reluctantly.
“And did you ever have a relationship with another cop? Like, not a fuck ’em and leave ’em relationship. Lovey dovey kind of shit.”
“No.” He’d been with Catherine long before he ever entered the academy, but he wasn’t going to give Tristan that piece of personal information. Even though he understood what he was talking about. When you had to
deal with life-and-death situations on a regular basis, relationships only complicated things and muddied the waters.
“And do you think now that you’re on the other side of the law that it’s any better to be getting emotions involved?”
Scott didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The answer was already evident, but he couldn’t protest that he and Toni weren’t actually together. And he also couldn’t honestly say that there were no emotions involved. Hell, he never would’ve chased her down here if he didn’t feel some sort of responsibility for her. But that didn’t explain what had happened between them that morning.
Not the fight with Slade. If the son of a bitch had treated any of his friends the way he treated Toni, he would’ve punched his lights out. But afterward was inexplicable. One minute he’d been trying to cool off and get to his normal levelheaded self, and the next he was kissing her.
He never should’ve done it. He never should’ve thought about it. This was Toni. Isobel’s biggest pain in the ass daughter. She was selfish, reckless and, most importantly, dangerous. He had to remember that at all times.
But when he kissed her, he hadn’t remembered a damn thing. He hadn’t remembered all the reasons she should be untouchable, and worst of all, he hadn’t remembered Catherine. He hadn’t been celibate since her murder. He’d tried to convince himself to do the normal thing and get out there and work off some of his stress. And every time he’d found a nice girl who he could see himself moving on with and he allowed himself to take it to the next level, he’d imagined Catherine. Every kiss, every touch, had been a way for his tortured mind to reach out to his forever untouchable wife.
But for the first time, with Toni, he hadn’t felt as though he were reaching for a ghost. He had been touching a real woman who went on fire in his arms.
Which was a terrifying thought in its own right.
“Boom,” said Tristan, pulling Scott out of his thoughts.
“What?”
“They got it. Your girl pulled through with her end of the deal.” Tristan looked over at Scott, but he didn’t seem happy. If anything, there was pity reflected in his eyes. “I guess it’s official then. Welcome to the team.”
The Reluctant Thief (The Stolen Hearts #4) Page 8