Leverage

by Janie Crouch

  All the guards nodded, smiling, in approval of Sawyer’s good husbanding. Shelby barely refrained from rolling her eyes. It was a good thing Megan wasn’t one of the bad guys, because she probably could’ve gotten away with just about anything without ever even raising a weapon.

  “Besides, Dr. Wonder and her assistant have flown all the way from Australia to work in the cybercrimes lab. It’s the middle of the afternoon for them.”

  If Shelby didn’t know it was Dylan standing next to her—sexy, virile Dylan—she might never have given him a second look. He had somehow contorted his posture until he looked unassuming and nonthreatening in any way. He definitely didn’t look like the confident, strong man Shelby had seen wrestle an unwieldy plane safely to the ground or defeat her attacker. The ill-fitting suit, glasses and horrible slicked-back hair helped the ruse, but it was Dylan’s demeanor that sold it.

  For the first time, Shelby could understand just how good Dylan had been at undercover work.

  The guards glanced at Shelby and Dylan and nodded politely; one of them handed her a visitor’s badge with her name and info on it, but their concern was for Megan. Shelby was a little disappointed that not a single one of them made the Wonder from Down Under joke.

  “I know you guys have extra security we need to go through. No drives, right?” Megan asked them, handing them her purse to go through the X-ray machine. Shelby and Dylan in turn handed over their purse and briefcase as well.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The guards all looked a bit sheepish. “Plus, we now have this new body scanner everyone has to walk through. They brought it in yesterday afternoon.”

  Whoever was trying to keep out a drive with all the numbers on it was doing a pretty thorough job. No one would be able to get any computer equipment or drives past that scanner.

  “Um,” the first guard spoke up again. “We already asked to make sure it was safe for a pregnant woman.”

  Megan’s smile was obviously sincere. “Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it.”

  They walked through the scanner, one similar to the new fancy security scanners at large airports, individually. Everyone was deemed clear to pass.

  “See you later, guys. Have a good night,” Megan said.

  Shelby and Megan moved quickly toward the elevators, Dylan one step behind.

  “That’s quite a fan club you have there,” Shelby told Megan while they waited for the elevator doors to open.

  “Elevators have cameras,” Megan whispered as the door opened. “But yeah, they’re all wonderful guys. Most hoping to be full agents one day.”

  They rode up in silence. Dylan kept his head down and pretended to be shuffling through some files he held in his hands.

  “There are cameras in the elevators, but not the offices or hallways,” Megan told her once they got out. “Sorry, should’ve mentioned that before.” Megan shot a worried look at Dylan.

  He nodded. “Yeah, we just have to be as alert as we can. We couldn’t prepare her for everything.”

  Something as simple as making a joke in the elevator could bring down this entire operation. Shelby suddenly became very aware of how precarious everything really was.

  “My plan is just not to talk to someone I don’t know unless I need to.”

  Megan wrapped her arm around Shelby as they walked down the hall. “Aw, honey, that’s always your plan.” She kissed Shelby on the cheek. “And I love you for it.”

  Megan knew what it felt like not to fit in. That’s why Shelby had bonded with her so completely.

  Shelby was very aware of Dylan on the other side of her and the huge distance between them. She hadn’t talked to him directly since what she heard from him in the kitchen. As far as Shelby was concerned, there really wasn’t anything left to be said.

  Dylan had said it all.

  They made it to the cybercrimes office, which was empty at this early hour.

  “Okay, as soon as we scan our IDs into this door, the clock is on. The Omega system will think we are all in there. That will only fool the mole for as long as there are no human eyes checking on us. If the mole is as high up as we’re afraid he is, that will only take a phone call once people start reporting in.”

  Shelby nodded. That gave them a few hours, hopefully.

  “I know I’m being monitored because you’re my friend and I’m the computer guru. What helps us is the mole probably thinks we’re spending all our effort trying to get you into the building with some sort of hard drive.”

  The elevator pinged down the hallway and Shelby startled in the quiet. Dylan slipped his arm around her to offer support, but Shelby shrugged it off.

  It was Juliet’s fiancé. That’s right, Evan was providing them the second set of IDs.

  This cloak-and-dagger stuff was already wearing on Shelby and she’d only been doing it for five minutes. She had no idea how people worked undercover for weeks at a time.

  “Here’s your local police IDs.” Evan handed another set of scanner cards to Shelby, Dylan and Megan.

  “Won’t they realize these IDs didn’t come through the front door?” Shelby asked.

  Megan nodded. “Yes, that’s possible, but it’s two different systems. Someone would have to cross-reference the two.”

  They all looked at each other. That was a danger and they all knew it.

  “Juliet’s plan is good, but the best it does is open us pockets of time. You and I are going to have to work fast, Shelby,” Megan said. It was three o’clock in the morning. At best they only had three or four hours. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  Shelby nodded. She was ready. Especially if it meant she didn’t have to talk to Dylan.

  Megan scanned the IDs for Dr. Wonder, Dylan and herself into the cybercrimes lab door. “Okay, that’s it. We’re officially on the clock. The mole is most definitely going to be watching for me. Hopefully he’ll think I’m here in the cybercrimes office as long as possible, since my ID won’t check in anywhere else.”

  “Let’s get you two to the real computer lab,” Evan said. “Cameron should be waiting for us there.”

  They walked through a series of hallways and used the back stairs instead of the elevators to avoid cameras. The whole building seemed dangerous in its partial darkness. To Shelby, it felt as if eyes followed them everywhere, that at any time someone would jump out. She didn’t want to be attacked out of the blue the way she had been while lying unawares at Mrs. Morgan’s house. She shuddered at the thought, the pain in her leg becoming more pronounced.

  “You okay?” Dylan asked.

  Shelby desperately wished she could lean into his strength. To just take a second and breathe in Dylan’s calm and feel his arms fold around her.

  But that had also been stolen from her while she was lying unawares. Shelby just didn’t want to be attacked anymore.

  “I’m fine,” she told him.

  But Dylan wasn’t willing to let it go. He grabbed her arm as they walked. “Shelby, what you heard—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Dylan.” She tried to snatch her arm away, but that was laughable when Dylan didn’t want to let her go. Although she noticed nothing about his grip hurt.

  Evan and Megan glanced back at them from their place in front, then sped up to offer Shelby and Dylan a bit of privacy. Privacy Shelby didn’t want.

  Dylan slowed them down so Evan and Megan pulled away even farther.

  “What I said to Juliet in the kitchen was just to get her to shut up, Shelby. She was pushing my buttons and I said the most obnoxious things I could think of.”

  “We don’t have any promises between us, Dylan. I know that. We’re just a fling, noth—”

  Shelby didn’t even get the words out before Dylan stopped them both and backed her up against the wall. Hard.

  And kissed her until she
was breathless and clinging to Dylan.

  He pulled back from her and cupped her face in his hands. “Damn it, Shelby, I know this isn’t the time. I know there are bigger things at stake here than you and me. But I couldn’t let you go one more second without you knowing how sorry I am for what I said. None of those words were true.”

  Dylan grabbed her arm and they began walking again at a quicker pace to catch up with Megan and Evan. Shelby now had no idea what to think. She wasn’t sure if she should still be mad at Dylan or if what he said was the truth.

  She wasn’t even going to think about it right now. She didn’t know if she would ever think about it again. And then it didn’t even matter because they were at the door of the main computer lab. Cameron was waiting for them.

  “Should both Cameron and Evan be here? Will that be suspicious?” Shelby asked.

  “No, there would always be at least two Omega employees here with anyone from the outside. The only thing that is really suspicious is that it’s three o’clock in the morning. But we didn’t have much choice about that,” Cameron explained.

  “You ready?” Megan asked her. “Everything okay?” She looked pointedly between Shelby and Dylan.

  “Yes.” Shelby nodded. “It’ll take me a little while to enter the numbers in, Megan.”

  “That’s fine. The system will begin analyzing them as soon as you’re done.” Megan collected the second set of IDs from Shelby and Dylan to scan them at the door. “Let’s hope this works.”

  “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.” The words were out of Shelby’s mouth before she even realized it. Megan gave her an odd look, but Shelby didn’t take offense. Megan didn’t get most pop culture references.

  “It’s go time,” Cameron said to Evan. They actually bumped fists.

  Megan and Shelby both rolled their eyes. “It’s go time? Seriously?”

  “Hey, you just quoted Jedi. Don’t give us a hard time,” Evan said, laughing. He scanned his ID at the door.

  “All right, here we go. We’re on clock number two now,” Megan said, scanning the other IDs. Cameron followed up with his.

  All joking stopped. If Shelby didn’t get these codes out of her head and into Megan’s system before the mole figured out they were here, then everything would be for naught.

  Shelby turned to Megan. “You know what it will be like for me while I’m entering in the data. Don’t stop me, even when it’s ugly. If I don’t get it all the first time, I won’t have the time to recoup and do it again.”

  Megan nodded and squeezed Shelby’s hand.

  Shelby was glad Megan understood. Shelby had to do this no matter what personal price she paid. Because if she didn’t, they’d be too late to stop whatever the DS-13 countdown was for.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Shelby, behind a keyboard, was amazing.

  Dylan had never seen anything like it. Her fingers flew on the numeric keypad as she stared blankly ahead typing numbers from inside her mind that only she could see. She’d been doing that for over an hour.

  “That’s pretty freaky, man,” Evan said from where they both stood at the back of the room. They spoke in hushed voices, but Dylan didn’t think Shelby would notice them even if they were yelling.

  Dylan had known Shelby was good with a keyboard because of her success as a video game coder, but this was almost like a superpower. She never stopped, never made a mistake, just typed in numbers at the fastest pace any of them had ever seen.

  “I don’t think I could type numbers that fast even if I was randomly pressing buttons,” Dylan said.

  And that she was remembering all of these in her head? That was beyond amazing.

  Megan came over and sat down in one of the conference chairs near where they were standing. “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?”

  Dylan nodded. Yes, she was amazing, but he’d known that before she started typing. He just hoped he hadn’t screwed up any chance with her whatsoever.

  What a stupid mess he had made in the kitchen. The look on Shelby’s face. Dylan hoped to go the rest of his life without ever seeing that look on her face again.

  Because what they had was special and she definitely wasn’t just another woman. Dylan looked at Shelby now, and the things he felt were both terrifying and thrilling.

  And even though he had no idea what to do or what sort of future they might have, he hoped to God he hadn’t ended the entire thing by something said so carelessly.

  “You know, DS-13 embedding their information in a children’s internet game is pretty impressive. Brilliant, actually,” Megan said.

  “With an organization as widespread as theirs, it’s a pretty effective way to communicate. They can get different levels of information to different people. No phone calls to be recorded or emails that can be traced,” Evan continued.

  This game was popular amongst grade-school children. A help-the-detective-type mystery. The game was unique in that it was only available once a week on Saturdays for only one hour.

  Now that they knew what DS-13 was hiding in the coding of the game, they understood why it wasn’t constantly available.

  It was much more possible that someone would’ve found the pattern if the game had been continuously available. Not likely, but possible. So they’d only made the game—and thus its coding—available one hour per week.

  “Shelby started following the game to get ideas for her own games. She likes to watch games in their code form because coding is in numbers and that’s how her mind works.” They all watched Shelby while Megan talked. Yeah, it was obvious her mind worked differently—more brilliantly—than theirs when it came to numbers.

  “The game can’t be recorded or played back, the coding deletes itself after just a moment, so I’m sure they were feeling secure in what messages they were sending out in the games,” Megan continued. “Because who would’ve ever believed that there was someone who could not only recognize that there was some sort of message going on inside the game, but also someone able to memorize the entire sequence after only seeing it once.”

  “The good guys caught quite a big break with Shelby,” Cameron muttered.

  “And we better use that to our fullest advantage. This could really be what we need to begin to bring DS-13 down completely,” Evan agreed.

  Dylan left them to talk and walked closer to Shelby. What she was doing was obviously taking a toll on her. She continued her constant data entry, but her lips were now tightly pursed and her face was paler than before.

  “Shelby needs a break,” he said to Megan as she came to stand beside him. “It’s hurting her to do this. Why?”

  “Have you ever given one hundred percent of your focus to one thing for an extended period of time? It’s like using the same muscle over and over. At first it’s fine, then it’s tiring, then it’s agonizing. That’s probably the point she’s getting to.”

  “Then she needs to stop. Stop her, Megan.”

  Megan laid a hand gently on his arm. “She wants to finish, Dylan. She knows we have a limited amount of time.”

  But in just the couple of minutes that they’d been talking, Dylan could tell Shelby was feeling worse. Her breathing was becoming labored. Dylan was horrified to see her nose begin to bleed on one side.

  “We have to stop this,” Dylan said.

  “Give her a few more minutes. She’s got to be close to finished. If we stop her now, she may not be able to get herself functional enough to restart and finish in time.”

  Evan and Cameron joined them. “Is it just me or is Shelby not looking so good? Is that blood?”

  Evan’s words were enough. Dylan was putting an end to this. He began walking toward Shelby, determined to stop her.

  Megan—moving pretty darn fast for a little pregnant lady—got in front of Dylan bef
ore he could reach Shelby.

  “Megan, look at her.” Shelby was now trembling. Color had washed out of her face. But her fingers kept moving.

  Megan put a hand on his chest. “It hurts me, too, Dylan. She’s my friend. But she asked me to make sure she was allowed to finish.”

  “Have you ever seen her like this? At school?”

  “Not this bad, no,” Megan admitted.

  Dylan looked at Shelby again where she sat at the computer terminal. He closed his eyes. “I have to stop her.”

  “Her body will stop her if it gets too bad—she’ll pass out. It’s the mind’s way of protecting itself from unmanageable pain.”

  She shouldn’t have to go that far. Dylan had no idea it would be this way. “Did Shelby know this would happen?”

  “She knew it wouldn’t be comfortable.”

  Wouldn’t be comfortable? This was so far past that.

  “She knows what’s at stake, Dylan. It’s DS-13. They’re known for incurring as many casualties as possible in their attacks. It’s a countdown and information that went out to every DS-13 operative. Whatever that countdown is to, it’s big.”

  “I know that, Megan, but look at her!” Both nostrils were bleeding now and her shoulders were stooping. Dylan gently, but firmly, moved Megan out of his way. He couldn’t watch this anymore.

  But Megan grabbed his arm. “If the roles were reversed and you had the chance to stop DS-13 even though it meant pain to yourself, wouldn’t you want the chance to do it? Don’t let her suffering be in vain. Respect her enough for that.”

  Dylan stopped. Megan was right.

  And he did respect Shelby’s strength.

  Though she be but little, she is fierce.

  But Dylan would give anything if he could take some of the pain racking her small body into his own right now.

  Shelby began to slump forward, tears rolling down her cheeks from eyes that were still closed. Dylan rushed over to her to hold her up, to lend his strength in any way possible. Her fingers kept plucking away at the numeric keypad.