by Misty Evans
Hawk looked up from his computer. “What?”
“Joel and the bimbo.”
She zeroed in on the photo of what might be the world’s best looking couple. People magazine should seriously be calling these people and putting them on the cover. That’s how beautiful they were. In contrast to Joel’s dark features, the woman was a platinum blond. Her straight hair fell below her shoulders and the teeny-tiny black dress she wore showed off long legs and the tall, thin frame Hope had always dreamed of having. The tweet accompanying the photo said “Happy anniversary to the sexiest girl I know.”
How sweet.
Hawk hopped up from his seat and joined Hope on the couch. “Whatcha got?”
“Just a photo. But he tagged her on it. Let’s see if she’s a little more generous with her information.”
Hope clicked on the girlfriend’s Twitter link and up popped her photo. Yet another perfect photo displaying the female half of the world’s most beautiful couple.
She scanned the brief bio on Daisy Tilmann who loved to travel, eat greasy French Fries and do hot yoga. Yadda, yadda. But wait. The last line of the bio stopped her. No way.
Hope snorted. Sometimes life was just amazing. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Ohhhhh.”
“What?”
She swung her head to Hawk, smiling the whole time because, yes, she was tired and maybe taking way too much pleasure in her little find.
“Guess what?”
Hawk drew his eyebrows together and stared at her with a quasi-laughing-slash-confused face. “What?”
“She has a blog. Daisy’s Delights.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
Hope went back to her laptop screen, tapped the last line of Daisy’s bio. “Right here, big guy. I mean, this is rich. Not only does she have a blog, it sounds like a porn site.”
She clicked on the link and watched the little icon spin for a few seconds until a home page popped up. Pink with swirling white letters shouting the name of the blog and in smaller type a brief description.
“What is it? Like a diary or something?”
“No. Apparently Daisy feels that the world needs to be in the know on her favorite things. Maybe she thinks she can top Oprah’s list.”
She scrolled through the posts, spotted various photos of Daisy’s favorite foods and places in the city. Two weekends ago, she’d been in New York and did several posts from different locations. And, yep, there was Joel, right along with her, smiling for a selfie.
Could these two be any more full of themselves?
But what were the chances Daisy had gone to Barbados with her man? “Let’s see if the happy couple vacationed in Barbados together.”
“Scroll down.”
She quickly bounced down the page until she reached the older posts from December. Three posts in, she stumbled on one entitled Paradise Found. She clicked. A new screen displayed a photo of a sunset view of a beach complete with Adirondack chairs. How romantic. Just below the photo Daisy proclaimed the spot her new all-time favorite.
Barbados.
Hope perused the post and came across a link to a photo album.
She looked over at Hawk. “Remember when I said I hated bloggers?”
Hawk rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”
“I’ve come a long way in a few days. First there’s you, who, you may have noticed, I’m incredibly fond of.”
“Gee, thanks. Blinded by the orgasms.”
“Then there’s Daisy. The wannabe Oprah who might just make my night perfection by posting photos of her fellow vacationers. I’m almost afraid to look.”
Hawk reached over, dragged his finger across the mouse pad and clicked the link. “I’m not,” he said.
A second later, a slew of thumbnail sized photos filled the screen. “God bless her. Looks like she uploaded everything. Now I really love bloggers.”
“Okay, Hope. Ease up.”
“This is an absolute gold mine. And she didn’t think twice about what she might be causing by posting them. And, hello? Does her boyfriend even know? If so, he deserves to go to jail just for being stupid.” She let out a heavy breath. “People. They frustrate me.”
Attempting to lock down her nerves, she hummed to herself while clicking through the photos.
“Oh, and look at this.”
“What?”
She puckered her lips and angled her laptop so Hawk could take in the full screen. “The happy couple flew private. Laughlin Charters.”
Hawk snatched the laptop and took in the photo of Daisy and Joel standing in front of a sleek private plane with the name of the charter company emblazoned on it.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “She is stupid. That’s fantastic.”
“I’ll download the photo. While I’m going through the rest of these shots, you find that charter company.”
He reached over, grabbed his laptop from where he left it on the coffee table, then sat in the chair next to Hope. Kinda snuggly that.
She continued scanning the photos. Mostly location shots and selfies with Joel. At least until photo twenty-two.
“Whoa. Look at this.”
Hawk glanced over, studied the screen a second. “Yep. I see it.”
In the photo, Joel stood on a patio in front of a table holding up a rocks glass while he smiled at his apparent beloved. Behind him, thick green foliage blew in the wind and a man sat at the table in what looked like a Tommy Bahama button-down shirt. Very tropical. He must have just started to turn away from the camera because he appeared to be staring off in the distance.
But, yes indeed, the lovely Daisy had gotten his full face. If only by accident.
“It could be some random person. Not necessarily with them.”
“Could be. I’m downloading that shot though.”
After downloading, she moved through the next series of photos and the very last one nearly made Hope giddy.
I totally love bloggers.
In the last photo, darling Daisy snapped a photo of a colorful bird perched on the back of an empty chair at one of the tables. At that same table she’d caught half of Joel and right next to him a portion of someone else’s sleeve. A sleeve with the same print as the man in the Tommy Bahama shirt.
She looked over at Hawk. “Still think it’s some random person?”
“Nope,” he said. “I think we just found the third guy.”
Chapter Nineteen
Laughlin Charters had a closed computer network.
“I can’t hack in from here,” Teeg told Brice. “You might be able to piggyback their mainframe, however, if you can get close enough to their Wi-Fi and bypass their encryption. The actual database has a backdoor once you’re inside the network.”
Not what he wanted to hear. “How close do I need to be?”
“From what I can tell, the Wi-Fi setup is pretty weak. It’s only meant for their office use and their clients who are waiting to board planes or take off.”
Leaving the safe house was a bad idea. Leaving Hope at the safe house alone was also a bad idea. But everyone on the Justice Team except Teeg was out working cases, and Brice was getting stir crazy.
Not that Hope hadn’t kept him busy. They’d slept, ate, had sex three times, and slept some more. It was now late evening. A whole day playing house with Hope was pretty damn fun.
But if he didn’t do something—anything—other than sort through papers and twiddle his thumbs, he was going to lose it.
“There’s no way Grey will okay you leaving the safe house,” Teeg said.
A quick drive to the airstrip, a minute or two tops to hack into Laughlin Charters’ mainframe and copy the manifests, and a quick drive back to Chinatown, all under cover of darkness—it was doable.
If he had accurate intel. “Let me worry about Grey. Ballpark it. How close?”
“Ten yards? Ten feet? I can’t tell from here. The closer the better.”
Brice thanked Captain Obvious and hung up.
“Well?” Hope asked.
She’d showered
and changed into fresh clothes, put on makeup and secured her hair in a ponytail. She looked like she could be heading to the office.
He secretly liked her the other way better. He wanted to kiss off the sticky gloss on her lips, mess up her hair, and take her back to bed.
What was wrong with him? He was acting like a sex-starved maniac.
Oh, right, he was. At least until last night.
“Road trip,” he told her. “We’re going to the charter company.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh goodie. What are we doing there?”
“Hacking their mainframe to see who’s listed on the plane manifest for December 14th.”
“Is it safe?”
“To illegally hack into a business and steal files or to leave the safe house?”
“Either. Both.”
“No and no. You live for danger now, remember?”
She balled a fist and swiped it through the air in a gung-ho motion. “Right. Absolutely. Let’s go.”
Brice grabbed his laptop. He had illegal software on it that would help him bypass the charter company’s encryption and piggyback their software. He’d never used it before, but there was a first time for everything. After making sure the coast was clear, he hustled Hope downstairs to his truck.
The drive wasn’t quite as quick as he’d anticipated, traffic thick due to an accident on the interstate. Once clear of that, however, they flew down the road, Hope finding a pop station to listen to and singing along with every song that played. She was in awfully good spirits for someone on the verge of losing her job and possibly being on an assassin’s hit list.
Brice put down his window, letting the cool night air blow over him as he drove. He felt the same way—like he could break out in song.
Again, he had the errant thought, what is wrong with me?
He didn’t sing along with the radio and he certainly didn’t sing pop songs, but there was something so normal about driving down the interstate on a spring evening with a pretty girl in the cab next to him that made him want to forget his troubles and pretend he was a normal guy.
Pretending wasn’t his game, however. As the sign for the airport came into view, he reminded himself that he was a realist. A pessimist. He and Hope were not out for a casual drive. Someone had painted a target on his back and she could very well be caught in the crossfire.
He took the exit ramp and rolled up his window.
The office of Laughlin Charters sat at the end of the airstrip, a small parking lot to the east. Everything was thoroughly lit by streetlamps. Cameras were everywhere.
“Shit.” He slowed, driving around the outer perimeter fence. He’d known from their website that Laughlin catered to the power players in Washington. Power players who took their security, and oftentimes anonymity, quite seriously. “Pull up my laptop, would you?”
She did, and he slowed even more as he got closer to the back end of the grounds where the office sat. One story brick façade. The front of the building was floor to ceiling glass windows so those waiting could see their planes. In the back, there was a single window and a door.
And a broken camera.
The small black box was cocked at an odd angle, possibly due to the recent storm. It was probably still recording, just not the area around the door.
For half a second, he toyed with the idea of breaking in, but with this much security, the company no doubt had more cameras inside.
He parked the truck and took the laptop from Hope.
She scooted across the bench seat to sit next to him. “What are you doing?”
He scrolled through his apps. “This will pick up the Wi-Fi connection and decrypt the security so I can log in to their network.”
“Don’t you need a password?”
“I have a different app for that.”
She snuggled against him. “There really is an app for everything, isn’t there?”
There was when you knew the right people. He opened the software, scrolled through the available networks, and hit the one he wanted. “Come to papa, baby.”
“Are you talking to me or the laptop?” Hope watched the screen, laying her head on his shoulder. “I have issues with being called ‘baby.’”
The software sped along, latching onto the network and spinning through a decryption algorithm. “That’s because you’re young and I’ve thrown it in your face time after time.”
“I know. It’s one of your defense mechanisms.”
He had defense mechanisms she didn’t have a clue about. “Well, just so you know, I was talking to the laptop, not you, so don’t throw a hissy.”
“A hissy? You haven’t seen me throw a hissy. Trust me.”
She pinched his leg and he jerked it away, chuckling as he nearly bobbled the laptop. “Hope…trying to work here.”
She shifted her face to plant light kisses along his neckline. Her right hand latched onto his thigh and stroked down and in. “I’m just trying to help,” she said in that innocent voice that wasn’t innocent at all. It was the sexy voice he’d learned meant only one thing.
Hope Denby wanted to be fucked.
Again.
She was nympho. A total freakin’ nymphomaniac.
How had he gotten so lucky?
His screen flashed with a window confirming the software had decrypted the security code. He was now able to see the Laughlin network. “We’re in.”
“Good, because the sooner you get that manifest, the sooner we can get back to the safe house and you can get in me.”
If she didn’t stop in the next two seconds, he was going to toss the laptop in the back and take her right there.
He clicked a couple of keys, finding the folder for manifests, then searching for December’s. A couple more clicks and the database was downloading all the manifests for the month.
“Hey!” A voice came from somewhere behind them. “You there!”
“Ah, shit,” he said, catching a figure dressed in a uniform bearing down on them. “Security guard.”
Brice hurriedly shut the laptop and jammed it under the seat as Hope reared back to look. They could make a break for it, or…
Brice grabbed Hope and kissed her.
She broke the kiss. “What are you doing?”
“Play along,” he murmured against her lips. “The computer needs another minute or so to finish downloading.”
She did and by the time the guard knocked his flashlight against the window, she had her tongue down Brice’s throat and her hands clawing at his back.
“This is private property.” Mall Cop tapped again. “What are you doing back here?”
Brice shifted to look at the man, plastering a goofy grin on his face as he rolled down his window. “Um, seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?”
The guard narrowed his eyes, doing a full body scan of Hope with the flashlight. Her hair was now falling out of its ponytail, her lipstick smeared. She gave the guard a smile that matched Brice’s goofy one. “Sorry, sir. We couldn’t help ourselves and this looked like a safe place to park.”
She winked at him and the guard switched his gaze back to Brice. “She legal?”
Ho-boy. Look out.
“I am twenty-four freakin’ years old,” she said, her voice too loud in Brice’s ear.
Mall Cop didn’t look convinced. He pinned Brice with his light. “How about you step out of that truck and show me some ID, boy.”
Boy? Granted, Brice gauged the guard to be twenty-years his senior, but he was no boy. Maybe Hope’s youthful look was wearing off on him. “We didn’t mean any harm. I assure you, my friend here is of legal age, and we’ll be going now.”
Swiping back his jacket, the guard made sure Brice saw his sidearm. “I said, get out of the vehicle.”
Like the crack about Hope’s age sent her into rage mode, threatening Brice, a former ATF agent, with a gun the guy probably couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with, was the wrong move.
The goofy grin slid off Brice’s face. He lean
ed out the window, knocked the flashlight away from his face, and pinned Mall Cop with a deadly look. “I don’t think you want to do that, old man. Now take a step back and my friend and I will be on our way.”
Something in the tone of Brice’s voice, or maybe in his eyes, made the guard do exactly that. The guard stepped back.
And then he raised a two-way radio to his mouth. “Code 44. We have an intruder on the premises.”
Stupid laptop better be done downloading.
“Hang on,” Brice said to Hope.
Putting the truck in gear, he started to step on the gas when crack! Brice’s forearm, the one still on the window ledge, exploded in pain.
Brice jerked back, his fingers tingling, his arm throbbing. “What the hell?”
Mall cop had hammered him with a baton.
“You fucking prick,” Brice said, ready to throw the truck back into park and teach the man a lesson.
And then he saw the baton coming through the air again.
Anger, hot and fierce, roared through him. He shoved the guy back and hit the automatic button to raise his window.
Mall Cop didn’t know how to take no for an answer. The man was a bulldog. A second before the baton swung at them again, Brice yelled, “Get down!” at Hope, his hand already on the back of her head, shoving her toward the floor of the truck, even as he stepped on the gas for real this time.
Too late, the fucker managed to slam the baton into his back window.
In the split second Hope’s head went down, the rear window shattered in a hail of glass. White-hot pain sliced through the back of Brice’s neck.
He rounded the corner, pushing the truck faster. As soon they hit the main road and were well enough away, he looked over. Even with the extended cab behind him, plenty of glass had found its way to the front seat.
The bastard damaged my truck.
Hope covered her head with her hands. ”Go, go, go!” she yelled to Brice without looking up.
The back of his neck was already slick with blood and he could barely move his left arm. A dark rose bloomed on his skin. Shit. That’ll be black in an hour.
Hope was curled into the passenger foot well, arms over her head. Light from the streetlamps they whizzed under reflected off bits of glass stuck in her hair.