She swallowed, her mind racing. Despite what little she had learned about the Guardian Knights, they were definitely involved in illegal activities. The good guys didn’t kidnap you and hold you hostage.
She had been convinced that Asher worked for good guys, equally secretive, but how could she know for sure? For all she knew, he could work for a competitor of the Guardian Knights. How many times had she asked Asher about his boss, that guy he was calling all the time, only to be brushed off? Was this whole thing one big pissing match to see who had the biggest gun?
No. She didn’t think so. The emotion in his eyes as they’d made love. That couldn’t be faked. She also knew that these guys could be—probably were—lying. They weren’t going to let her go. They claimed that she couldn’t expose them anymore, but Ellie didn’t really believe it. She was good, and if she wanted to find something, she could. They could put up all the firewalls and traps they wanted, but eventually, she would find a way in. They had to know that, too.
“What you want from me?” She dropped her voice—quiet, contemplative. As if she were truly considering it.
“First, we need to know who this operative is and what he wants with you.”
Should she tell them? At least, honesty was the best policy. Besides, it was the truth. “All he told me was that they, whoever they are, because I really don’t know, wanted to keep an eye on me because I found a photograph or something, and they wanted to make sure that I didn’t expose their organization.” She put some emotion into her voice. “You need to believe me . . . I have no idea who they are! He never told me!”
“Photograph?”
If possible, her mouth grew even drier. She tried to work up enough spit to swallow but failed. She nodded. “It was just a group of guys in wet suits. I couldn’t see much of their faces, their location, or anything else. That’s it, I swear!”
“All this, just because they didn’t want what you digging deeper?” The man sounded doubtful.
“I don’t know!” Ellie paused. Should she say more? “Well, that was all at the beginning, until I got attacked in an alley. One of your guys?” she dared ask but received no answer. “And I also assume one of your people was also behind my stolen money, those false warrants, the explosion, the attack on . . .” She shut up.
“Attack on who?”
She shouldn’t have opened her mouth. She shouldn’t . . . was he even alive? A surge of emotion swept through her, overwhelming even her fear of what would happen to her in the next few minutes or hours. She heard a rush of movement and then the crack of flesh against flesh, followed by the sting of pain from an openhanded slap against her cheek, snapping her head to the side. She gasped, a cry of alarm and pain erupting from her throat. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart raced. This couldn’t be happening. This—
“Might as well spill it all, Ellie. He’s dead now, so what difference does it make?”
The air left her lungs as if she’d taken a punch to the gut. Was Asher really dead? Or was Southern Guy lying to get her to do what he wanted? Was she talking to Clay Mosby, the CEO of Guardian Knights?
In the beginning, when she first met Asher, she’d been afraid that he hadn’t been truthful with her, insisting that he was one of the good guys. But now? She was positive Asher had been telling the truth. She had to figure out a way to escape or get the good guys to come to her. But how?
“What you want me to do?” Maybe her question would distract them from Asher on to the other thing they wanted her to do.
“All right then, Ellie, we’ll come back to your friend later. No rush. Here’s what I want you to do.”
He told her, and as he spoke, Ellie’s disbelief grew by leaps and bounds. What the hell were these guys into? They wanted her to hack into some highly classified files within the Department of Homeland Security! While Southern Guy told her that they had some pretty good hackers of their own, she was even better, and they needed her skills. Again, he promised to let her go and provide transport to wherever she wanted to go, with a new identity, if she agreed to help them.
When he finished talking, she remained quiet for a moment, her thoughts racing. Then, her voice barely above a whisper, she asked the question. “And if I don’t?”
Southern Guy chuckled. “Let’s just say that you’ll wish you were already dead.”
22
Asher
Within the hour after the FBI agent and the county sheriff left his hospital room, Asher knew what he was going to do. He was thankful that he seemed to have the support of the local authorities, maybe even the FBI. It would make what he had to do next easier. They’d be less likely to get in his way.
The moment the two men left his room, he reached for the landline phone on the bedside table. He moved slowly and carefully, punching in Jackson’s number. The phone could easily already be tapped, but he had to take that risk. While it connected to the outside line, his gaze scanned the room, looking for his clothes. There, in the closet across from the bed, the door half open. The faster he got out of there, the better. Ellie needed him.
And he needed Ellie.
The phone rang once and then picked up. “Jackson, it’s me.”
“You doing okay, Asher?”
“No. I need to find Ellie. They’ve got her. The FBI agent you spoke with—”
“They’ve been filled in, at least with what information I wanted to share,” Jackson broke in. “They’ll give you their cooperation, but it’s going to be a balancing act, you know that, don’t you?”
Asher knew exactly what he was talking about. “I’m just a bodyguard assigned to protect and shadow her, and a failure at that.”
“Not your fault, Asher,” Jackson said. “We’ve been doing some digging. Tansy and Matthias have been busy—”
“Have you located her? Any news?”
“Hang on a second. I’ll be quick, I promise.” Jackson paused. “We’ve learned that the Guardian Knights, acting as a shell corporation, has been selling armor-piercing weapons to a source in Syria. We’ve been busy trying to nail down the transactions. We also have a link to Senator Chambers of the National Defense Committee. We’ll be taking them down, but—”
“What about Ellie?” Asher hissed, frustration roiling. “She’s the one who found them in the first place. We can’t just leave her to the wolves, Jackson. We—”
“If you’d let me finish, Asher . . . I think we’ve already found her.”
“Where?” he asked. His mind flirted with an overwhelming sense of relief. “Is she alive? Where is she? When did you make contact?”
“We didn’t . . . not exactly,” Jackson said. “All of us . . . me, Declan, Logan, Tansy, and Jasper . . . we’ve been trying to backtrack the senator’s contacts. We found one with Mosby and another link to an aide serving in the DHS.”
Asher frowned. Ellie had no idea what she’d found, no idea of what kind of trouble she had brought down on herself. “And?”
“Here’s the interesting thing. While digging into the encoded e-mails, we found a digital trail into Chambers’ server at National Defense. He’s contacting this aide at the DHS. But the thing is, there’s some weird code jumbled in there, as of two hours ago.”
Asher grunted. “What’s that mean? What kind of weird code? Have you figured it out?”
“We haven’t broken the code just yet, but Tansy’s working hard at it. But we think it’s Ellie.”
“Ellie? Why would Ellie be inserting a strange code into a senator’s communications?” Before his mind caught up with the question, Jackson answered it.
“We think that Ellie’s being held by the Guardian Knights, and has been . . . encouraged . . . to hack into the Department of Homeland Security for some classified information. We think she’s trying to leave a trail for us to find. She’s smart enough to infer that we’ve been doing some digging on our own with the information she provided you, and you to us. We’re trying to follow her trail, see where it leads us. She’s leaving us bread crumbs.
Asher, she wants us to find her.”
Asher’s heart raced. “How long ago was the last message stream?”
“About ninety minutes ago. We’re working hard at backtracking it. If she can send us a longer stream of code, Tansy’s pretty sure he can figure it out, at least down to a more specific location.”
“So, she’s still in the northeast? In New Hampshire?”
“We believe so. But there’s a lot of wilderness up there. Lots of hiding places.”
“So what we do, Jackson? We’ve got to find her. And soon. If we don’t . . .” he cleared his throat from the lump forming at the thought. “If we don’t, and she can’t keep stalling them, we both know what’s going to happen.”
“Tansy thinks he’s got the region nailed down to somewhere around Concord.”
Asher racked his brain, trying to remember the image of the state map he’d pulled up on his cell phone. It seemed like days ago. “Is he sure? We came through Manchester, then west to Peterborough . . . I’m still in Keene, aren’t I?”
“Yes, at the regional hospital there, and you’re under orders to stay put—”
“Fuck that. Jack, you can’t ask me to do that. I was supposed to protect her, to keep her safe. I can’t just—” A muttered curse on the other end of the line cut him off, but he was right, and he knew it. “If the shoe was on the other foot, what would you say?”
“Damn it, Asher, you’re injured! You just got out of surgery.”
“The doctor said that no major organs were damaged. They stitched me up. Give me the route up to Concord. You guys headed up here, too, on the jet?”
“Asher, we haven’t even pinpointed her location. All Tansy was able to get from the backtrack was that it was in the vicinity of Concord. Shit, we’re talking potentially hundreds of square miles!”
“How far away am I from Concord?” Asher interrupted. He heard rapid tapping on the keyboard of the computer that sat close to Jackson’s phone.
“A little over an hour, maybe an hour and a half, on county and state roads. The last little bit will be on the interstate. But Asher, we’re not sure yet—”
“When was the last time Tansy was wrong tracking a connection back to its origin?”
Jackson said nothing.
Asher continued. “With your help or without it, I’m going up there.” He hauled himself up again and carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed, waited for a wave of dizziness to pass, and then took a deep breath. He was sore, no doubt about that, but he could do it. He could do it for Ellie.
“I had a feeling you’d be difficult, and I already know what the doctor said. I talked to him myself. There’s a vehicle in the parking garage for you, a Ford Ranger pickup. Sorry, it’s all we could get on short notice. Keys are at the nurses’ desk. But just so you know, SSA Hemmings will be tagging along. If this is what I think it is, and these guys are who we believe they are, you’re going to need all the help you can get—county and federal.” Again a pause. “He’s waiting for you downstairs in the parking garage. I’ll give him a call, let him know you’re on your way.”
“You’ll send us GPS coordinates as soon as you get a lock on her?”
“Asher, the last interception may have been the last string of code she sends. We’re hoping she can send another one, but there’s no guarantees.”
“Damn it, I know that. Believe me, I know that.”
Ten minutes later, feeling queasy, his head pounding, his shoulder screaming, Asher was nevertheless dressed, albeit in his bloody clothes. He didn’t give a damn. He had to find Ellie before it was too late. He had just reached for the door to his room when it opened and the doctor, followed by a nurse, entered, both frowning with displeasure.
“We were told that you’re leaving,” the doctor grumbled, eyeing Asher’s bloodstained clothes. “You do realize you’re leaving AMA, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know I’m leaving against medical advice,” Asher said, impatient. “Don’t care.” He gestured for the clipboard the doctor held, the release form on it, and wiggled his fingers, gesturing for the doctor to hand it over. He did, albeit reluctantly. Asher grabbed the pen the doctor handed him and scribbled his signature on the line, or as close to it as he could get.
“Here,” the nurse said, shoving an orange prescription bottle into his hand. “It’s codeine. There’s only four of them in there, and they’re not strong enough to take all the pain away because we’ve been told you need to stay conscious and upright, but it should help. Just don’t take them all at once.”
Asher muttered a thank you, took the bottle, and shoved it into his pants pocket. Without a backward glance, he brushed past the two of them and into the hallway. He received several odd looks as he made his way as quickly as possible toward the elevators at the end of the hall, pausing only to pick up the truck keys. Pain shot through his body, his head throbbed, and his left shoulder protested every step he took. But he had to do this, not only for Ellie, but for himself, for his team. Jackson had said it wasn’t his fault, of course he had. But Asher knew better.
He should’ve expected a trap, should’ve been more careful. The guys after them were good, and he knew it. Without his being aware of it, the team from the Guardian Knights had succeeded in tailing him and Ellie every moment since they had left Boston. He didn’t know how, but the hows at this moment were not important.
“Idiot,” he mumbled under his breath, gaining him a sideways glance from a nurse at the nursing station, who stared at his bloodstained clothes without surprise as he reached for the elevator button.
Once inside the elevator and all alone, he closed his eyes, and grimaced at the pain racking his body. Asher leaned against the walls of the elevator as it traveled down to the parking garage in the basement. He watched the light above the door as it descended toward the parking garage, where SSA Hemmings would be waiting for him. He didn’t like it, but he needed the help. Ellie needed him. Hell, Ellie needed the cavalry if they were going to save her in time.
By the time the elevator doors dinged open and he stepped into the underground garage, Asher knew the truth. He was falling for Ellie.
No, he had fallen for her. Past tense.
His heart pounding, his body humming with sensations, none of them good, he gazed through the parking garage. The scent of rubber, gasoline, and car smells assailed his senses. Halfway down the main aisle, SSA Hemmings stepped out from between two black SUVs, lifted his hand, and gestured.
Taking a deep breath, fighting the pain as he stiffened his shoulders and straightened his back, Asher walked as quickly as possible toward the agent. He stopped three feet away, both of them eyeing one another. The SSA nodded and Asher offered a slight nod in return.
“I’m going to need a gun,” Asher said.
Without a word, the FBI agent reached inside his jacket and pulled out a compact forty-caliber Smith & Wesson. Asher took it, hefting its weight in his hand. He already missed his Glock, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Let’s go,” he said.
Without a word, the agent turned, climbed into the driver’s side of the pickup while Asher climbed into the passenger side, reluctantly handing over the keys. He had to keep all his strength for what was coming.
Hang in there, Ellie, we’re coming . . .
23
Ellie
It was a chance, a big chance, but she had to do it. They had taken her blindfold off. The truth hit her in the gut, making her taste bile. She’d seen them. They weren’t going to let her go, no matter their promises.
They’d brought down a small desk, almost like one of those old-fashioned writing desks she remembered from elementary school. They’d brought a laptop, too. Told her what they needed, what they wanted. She had complied, agreed to do what they wanted, and only hoped that they weren’t smart enough to discover her own ulterior motives.
Her orders? Hack into the Department of Homeland Security. She was good, but was she good enough? Could she get past their firewalls, their se
curity measures, to get the information they wanted?
After they had taken her blindfold off, she got her first good look at Clay Mosby, CEO of the Guardian Knights. He hadn’t been at all what she’d expected. Not a block-shaped gangster with a broken nose or scarred face. Actually, he looked like an accountant, or maybe even a banker. Pale, even slightly on the pudgy side. Tall, but other than his height, he wasn’t really intimidating or imposing at all. Except for his eyes . . . so dark his pupils blended in with the mahogany brown of his irises. That gaze, so direct, so . . . confident and arrogant. He was a man used to being in charge, used to controlling things. She’d been around enough men like him to recognize the type. Not like Asher—
No, don’t think about Asher or what happened to him. You can lose it later.
Ellie didn’t know why Mosby wanted her to hack into Homeland Security, and she didn’t ask. She was told what to look for, but before that, the main challenge would be just getting past the firewalls and network security. Those security systems had been designed by the best of the best. Was she good enough? She shook her head, forcing herself to focus. She had to be. Failure was not an option.
“Work faster.”
She glanced up. Mosby was hovering in the now open doorway of her jail cell, arms crossed over his chest. “There’s a lot of code to get through,” she mumbled. She gestured toward the screen, inviting him to look, but he didn’t move. “I’ve gotten through one firewall, and I have two more to go, and that doesn’t even begin to count the security on the inside.”
“Five hours to get through one firewall?”
She scowled. “Have you ever tried to hack into the Pentagon? It’s about the same,” she snapped. She grimaced and hunched her shoulders in expectation of a blow, but it didn’t come. Mosby didn’t move except to grin.
“You’ve got moxie, I like that,” he said. “But we’re also in a bit of a hurry, so speed it up.”
Dark Deception (DARC Ops Book 11) Page 16