She could be on and off in less than ten minutes…
The door opened, closed and heavy footsteps thumped against the hardwood floor.
Shit.
“Marco?” She leaned over the railing, peering down the stairs.
So much for having a lookie-lou.
The footsteps came closer and Marco stepped into view. He had three plastic containers stacked on top of each other and he was fully dressed.
“You shower quick.” He took the stairs two at a time.
“I…guess?” She turned, tracking him with her gaze.
Marco crossed to the bed and flopped down, those curious containers still in hand.
“Breakfast in bed?” His slow grin was…suspicious. He cracked open one of the containers and tilted it toward her. “I stole the last of mom’s homemade whipped cream and all the strawberries.”
“You did not!” She scampered across the room and bounced on the bed like a kid. She grabbed for the container, but Marco pulled it away.
“Nu-hu-hu.” He opened the second container of strawberries and sat up. He very carefully pinched the green bits and dipped the fruit into the cream, then held it out to her. “It’s more fun this way.”
She paused for a moment, a hundred thoughts soaring through her mind at once. Feeding her breakfast in bed was…romantic. They weren’t supposed to be romantic, were they?
Fiona leaned forward and bit off the cream-covered fruit. She rolled her eyes in bliss.
“You really like that, don’t you? Here.” Marco dunked another strawberry in the sinfully good concoction and held it out to her.
“Shouldn’t I feed you now?” She reclined next to him, the easier to be Fed, and accepted the treat.
“It’s way more fun watching you eat it.”
She wiped some juice from her chin and studied him.
Marco was…she didn’t know what he was. He was a hard man to figure out, but she liked what she saw.
“What do you want to do today?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What do you have in mind? Something else that’s going to kill me?” She grinned. Sure, crawling around rocks in an ATV and zip lining across hundred yard drops were terrifying, but they were also thrilling in a way she’d never experienced before.
“How’d you feel about floating down the river?”
“Floating? As in easy, relaxed and—you’re lying?”
“Okay.” Marco grinned. “There’s a motor involved.”
“And?”
“And we’ll have to wear wet suits.”
“And?”
“And my buddy said we could take the boat out. Just us.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re going to try to kill me?”
“Hey, it’s no fun if someone’s not bleeding by the end of it.”
“Right.”
“I think you’d look hot in a wet suit. Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“Feed me another strawberry and I’ll think about it.”
“Deal.”
Marco held out another glistening red berry covered in the best homemade sweet cream she’d ever tasted. She practically groaned with every bite, it was so damn good. She needed to talk the recipe out of Sue before they left.
Fingers dug into her hair and pulled her forward.
Fiona’s eyes snapped open a second before Marco pressed his mouth to hers. She gasped, but that was just foreplay. His tongue licked her lips and he tugged her closer. She leaned into the kiss, hungry for more than just fruit.
Marco leaned back, a sly smile on his face.
“I think I like the taste of this stuff better when it’s on you.”
Fiona sputtered and laughed.
She could be down for that. So what if she’d just showered?
“Question for you.” He swirled the next strawberry in the cream, his gaze on the sheets.
“Hm?” His tone was different. Thoughtful even.
“Why’d you come talk to me at the bar?” He glanced up now, his gaze seeing…everything.
“Oh.” Fiona inhaled and it was her turn to glance away. She bit her lip. The only thing to do was tell him the truth, sad as it was. “You looked at me.”
“So?”
“You saw me.”
“Lots of people saw you.”
“No.” She turned her head and stared at him. “Most people…look through me. I walked in that bar an invisible person and…you saw me. You looked right at me and…I don’t know. Usually I’m okay being invisible. It means less drama, but…I needed someone to see me, I guess, and you did. You probably regret that now.” Look at what she’d dragged him into. And the poor guy didn’t even know the half of it.
“Regret is a part of life, but I don’t regret you.”
Oh, dear God, that was a line. A line right out of a Romance movie and she wanted to swoon right into those big arms of his.
“My guy’s still working on Scott.” Marco set the container on the bed and shifted.
Right.
Scott. And Marco’s friend, doing her a solid.
That stuff.
She swallowed.
“He’s got some good leads. I think we’ll be able to take care of this.”
“Oh, good. Thank you.”
12.
Scott hadn’t slept since his meet with Lila. He couldn’t. And he was pretty sure he didn’t know shit about what was going on, either.
He’d been hired to do one job, get a drip leak going on the NueEnergy’s servers. He knew Good Global wanted information, specifically about some new wind turbine idea that was being rolled out, but there was more to it. More he wasn’t being told, and that was where he was getting screwed over.
Another cup of coffee and he’d be good for at least half an hour.
He took a quick walk around the one room shit-hole, then returned to his standing desk. He couldn’t sleep standing, or at least that was the theory.
What would have a spook like Lila completely change her strategy?
Why would she want to get gear back they’d agreed could be turned off and abandoned?
Because she thought someone would find it?
That had to be it.
Then who? And why?
Brat had stopped hacking, as far as he’d been able to tell. Sure, she had higher than normal competency when it came to technology and a history Lila was unaware of. Was that it? Had someone at Good Global figured out that Brat was a lie?
A notification popped up.
New activity in the NueEnergy world.
He still had a foot inside NueEnergy, which allowed him to access their system in real time. It was a lovely bit of code he’d stolen from a guy he’d been forced to work with on a gig. A few keystrokes and he was able to access the alert.
What. The. Fuck?
There was another piece of foreign code in NueEnergy’s world. A fucking data crawler.
Scott tapped away at the keys. The code was subtle. A delicate sort of touch. It’d only tripped Scott’s alerts because the permissions were identical to Brat’s, and he had all sorts of alerts set to her and her access. He wanted to know when and where she booted her laptop back up, because then he’d know where she was and how to find her.
It took him a few moments to find the trail.
Data crawlers lived in search boxes. Any search made would trigger the crawler’s interest. If the search returned any result that had keywords matching the code’s program, it would collect and send that information back to its source.
“What are you looking for?” His gaze narrowed.
The crawler had been installed on Brat’s laptop, but it wasn’t her work. She was good, but she wasn’t this good. Then who was it? It couldn’t be that brute of a guy fucking her. Was he the delivery boy? Was there someone else after NueEnergy?
Scott spent nearly an hour ghosting after the data crawler, following it from search result to search result. Patterns began to develop. Keywords in the crawler’s programming became
obvious. Any result with the words of Moah, Utah, waste or management got earmarked and copied.
Who the hell wanted to know about NueEnergy’s shit?
That didn’t make any sense.
The keywords Moab and Utah might as well have been a code all their own. What the fuck was Moab?
Scott did a quick search and came back with a desert town he’d never heard of before. One well within a day’s drive of Denver.
What the hell was NueEnergy up to in Moab that was worth breaking federal laws over? And did this have anything to do with the snit Lila was in?
The hours were ticking down. It was a matter of time before NueEnergy discovered just how far their servers had been breached and locked everything down. Scott intended to get to Brat first. Everyone else would have to get in line.
George Turner went straight to the IT office first thing Tuesday morning. While the NueEnergy employees were out of the way, he’d brought in an independent contractor their parent company had recommended. He was a fucking weirdo, but he was good. All through the night George had received on the hour updates with highlights of the guy’s progress.
All in all, George felt like by the end of the day they’d have a who and a why, if they were lucky.
The list of people with the kind of access to get to everything was small. They were people who were either in on things higher up, or had been with NueEnergy for years.
If they were lucky, it was someone who didn’t realize the epic fuckup they’d made and things could be handled quietly, with fewer people the wiser. But if they had a traitor in their ranks…
George swiped his card and entered the IT department. The manager gave him the stink-eye, no doubt since George had told the manager to fuck off yesterday after granting a stranger inner sanctum level access. He proceeded into the server room.
The creeper sat at a tiny desk, the only light coming from the monitor.
“Why the fuck are you working in the dark?” George squinted at the guy. He looked like a damn ghost.
“Didn’t need the lights.”
“What do you have for me?” George needed answers now. His next stop was a conference call with Eli and the others. What kind of breech they were facing would ultimately decide their next move.
“You have a data crawler.” The guy—what was his name again?—pushed back from the desk and faced George.
“What the hell is that?”
“This one’s looking for financial information. It crawls your system picking up card numbers, social security information. Looks like you have someone trying to steal identities. Common criminal shit. I’ve cleaned up your system, you shouldn’t have any more issues, but for those people whose information is out there, it’s out there.”
“Fuck.” That was potentially good information.
They spent some time discussing a few other issues but all in all, it was a problem they could bury. George signed the check and left the IT department with a lighter step. Everything was working out. It would be okay.
He went straight to Eli’s office, practically skipping.
“We have news,” Eli said the moment George shut the door. He gestured at a TV outfitted with a camera. Several other people’s faces filled the six squares.
“I do, too.” George took an empty seat.
“We traced your leak.” A man George vaguely recognized sat forward. His name was Randy-something, and he was part of the larger, corporate security team.
“Your guy was just here. He said he cleaned everything up.” George was considering popping open some champagne despite the early hour.
“What guy?” Randy frowned.
“The one corporate recommended. They sent him over last night.” George looked from the screen to Eli.
“I never heard about this,” Eli said.
“We didn’t send anyone.” Randy’s lips thinned.
Those words were like ice sliding down George’s spine.
“Then who the fuck was downstairs?” He sat forward, on the very edge of his seat.
“You let someone into the server room?” Eli was shouting now. He snatched up the desk phone, barking at security.
“Who was this guy?” Randy demanded.
“He—he said he worked for Ghost Consulting…” George swallowed.
“We’ve never used Ghost Consulting.”
“You emailed me his contact information.” George pointed at Randy.
Randy wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. The other five windows were muted, most of the present board on phones or typing away rapidly. No doubt moving all their assets to an off-shore account.
“God fucking damn it.” Randy’s face was a brilliant shade of red. “I never sent that email. It came from inside the building. She must have a team.”
“She—who?” George glanced at Eli.
“Fiona Goero.” Randy bit off each word with a snarl.
“Fiona? That dumb bitch? No.” George shook his head. His secretary was a follow-the-rules, keep-her-head-down kind of woman.
“She’s put two viruses on the company server. Someone’s gotten to her. Someone who is going to shut us down, because you can’t keep a clean house.” The way Randy was staring at Eli and George was not good.
Sweat poured down George’s back.
“I’ll fix this,” George said.
“No, you won’t.” Randy’s tone was cold. Deadly.
“George, take a walk with me.” Eli’s tone was brisk. Final.
One by one the other screens flickered to black until it was just Randy and Eli staring at him.
“I’ve been with you for twenty years,” George said. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Not when you fucked up this badly.” Randy leaned back, hands folded across his lap. He was former military, some sort of black ops turned mercenary and then hired on to be their guard dog.
“You kill me, you lose the books.” He was lying. He’d never seen a point to have a back-up system in place or some sort of safety net because why in the world would they try to get rid of him?
“Burn the books.” Randy glanced over George’s shoulder. “Eli, I’ll check in once I find her.”
The screen went black.
George gripped the arm rests. How the fuck had this happened? When he’d stepped through that door he’d been certain things were working out. And instead he’d let the wolf into the barn. It wasn’t his fault.
“George.”
He turned toward Eli.
“We’ve been friends for years, Eli. You know I had nothing to do with this.”
“Doesn’t matter. Someone has to be responsible.” Eli grabbed his coat and shrugged into it.
“Go to the bathroom. Talk to your receptionist. Give me five minutes.”
“It wouldn’t matter if I gave you an hour.” Eli buttoned his coat and stared at George as if he were a bug. “Randy already has a team here. They’re going to be waiting for us downstairs. You know the policy.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“Exactly. It’s just the way these things are, my friend. By this time next week NueEnergy will be bankrupt. Everyone in this building will be fired. Maybe even me.”
They’d known. They’d known before George ever woke up that it was Fiona. That somehow that stupid bitch was behind all of this. Had been setting them up for…how long? Days? Weeks? Years? How long had he walked past her and not known she was a traitor?
He’d never know, because as soon as he left the building he was dead.
Marco scrolled through his emails, careful to not click into them. Zain had once mentioned that he could track if a messaged had been read or not, and Marco was doing his best to keep everyone at work in the dark about what was going on. There were still several days left in his vacation, so going off-grid wasn’t unheard of. Especially for him.
A beat-up car turned into his driveway instead of using the cul-de-sac. It wasn’t one of the family’s cars, either.
He pick
ed up his coffee and took a few steps toward the door. There was a Glock in the last kitchen drawer and a rifle above the door. Fiona was still upstairs asleep.
The car parked and Ghost got out, both hands up.
Fuck.
What the hell was he doing here?
The last they’d spoken, Ghost had a plan he didn’t think Marco would like, and that was all he’d say about it.
Marco pulled the door open with a jerk, but closed it with a softer touch. He needed to know what was going on before Fiona did.
“Ghost, what the hell are you doing here?” Marco met the other man half-way between the porch and the car. “Where the fuck did you get this?”
“Parking lot of a dollar store.”
Not something Marco wanted to know.
“We have to tell her,” Ghost said.
“What? No way. What have you done?” Marco took a step toward Ghost and the man backed off a step. In a fight, Ghost would win. It was a fact Marco knew, and yet he was one second away from decking the guy. He’d done something that put Fiona in danger.
“I snuck into NueEnergy’s building, and I erased as much of the crawler and its trace as I could, but they’d already traced that—or Scott’s virus—back to her. This goes a lot deeper than we realized, and…they already know.”
“God damn it.” Marco turned, shoving his hands through his hair.
“We need to tell her. With what we know, she can go to the authorities.”
“We tell her the stuff was all from Scott. There isn’t any way to tell what we did and what he did, right? Ghost—”
The sound of the front door creaking open sent a sick chill into his stomach.
Ghost continued to stare at him, but his lips were thinned.
“Morning,” Fiona said.
If they told her the whole of it… His chest tightened. She’d hate him. This, between them, was always going to be temporary. He’d known that. But…if the truth came out, if they told her how far the deception ran…it would hurt her in a way being invisible hadn’t. He couldn’t do that to her. Keeping the lie alive was protecting her from him, just like he was protecting her from Scott.
“Fiona.” Marco pivoted so he could keep one eye on Ghost and the other on Fiona.
Damn, but she was pretty first thing in the morning. Her hair couldn’t decide if it was curly or straight. She was wearing those stretchy, skin-tight pants again. He liked peeling those off her.
Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) Page 12