Blindsided

  He laid down his spoon and lowered his voice. “I think we proved that we don’t need a bed.”

  Her face flushed a sweet shade of pink, clashing with the red sweater Tara had left for her. The way it snugged across Valerie’s breasts almost made him want to kiss Tara in thanks.

  He resumed eating with great effort, welcoming the distraction of scalding coffee. “What are you trying to get off the Aggressor computers?”

  “Originally, I was hoping my email conversations with Duncan would still be on the mail server, but everything pertaining to the illegal hacks he assigned me has been conveniently deleted. I copied them onto a thumb drive and hid the drive at work, but it’s not like we can waltz in there and get it.” She frowned and ate a spoonful of oatmeal. “So, now I’m trying to get into the servers where sensitive documents are stored, hoping to find any piece of evidence that helps us.”

  She sighed. “I have a backup plan since we can’t wait around for Eli to connect to the remote server. Everything’s finally in place to start a coordinated attack on Duncan’s friends and family, as well other people at Aggressor. I’ve already sent a friend request to his wife Cathy on Facebook posing as a member of a private book club group she’s in, and I have a few other lures out there.” Her fingers tapped at the keyboard again. “Did you know Sid collects stamps?”

  “Really?” Scott shook his head and tried to imagine the uber-pumped security specialist carefully placing a stamp into a book with tweezers. If that’s what collectors did. “How does that help us?”

  “We can go phishing.” She smiled. “I can tailor my email to something he’ll be more inclined to open.”

  “Like what?”

  “A message that appears to come from his favorite website saying their server was hacked and he should log in to change his password. Hopefully, he’ll assume he accidentally signed up using his work address and not think about it too hard.”

  “It almost seems cruel, tricking people like that.” As much as Scott needed and admired her skills, the things she—and others—could do were enough to make him want to live in a cabin in the woods, completely off the grid. “Makes me glad you’re on the right side.”

  “I wasn’t always.” She cast her eyes downward and bit her lower lip. “I hate doing this to Sid too, but I’m not going to mess with his personal info. I’m only using him as a door into Aggressor.”

  “I know. It’s okay.” He squeezed her hand. “Do you have to create an entire website for that?”

  She smiled. “No, I’m going to grab an unused piece of real estate on the deep web and create a splash page. If Sid clicks the link, he’ll get to that screen and then receive a server error if he tries any of the page links. By then, I’ll have control of his computer, and once I’m in the network, I can access anything that’s not encrypted. Assuming there’s anything to find at this point. I’m sure Aggressor is even more locked down than ever, and I expect Duncan would cover his tracks. But if anything’s still there… We have to try.”

  “Definitely.” What else were they going to do? Scott’s head spun. She hadn’t been idle during her time on the run. Not even close. She’d spent every waking hour putting together pieces of the puzzle, planning her own attacks, and researching.

  Reconnaissance and surveillance. At her core, she was a patient observer, just like him. Only she tracked targets, searched for defensive weaknesses, and attacked online instead of in the field. She cloaked herself in bits and bytes as effectively as he concealed himself in a ghillie suit.

  And like him, she’d suffered, she’d been scarred. There wasn’t another woman in the world who could understand and connect with him the way she did. Fuck.

  Was this pain in his heart, this fear in every cell of his body, what falling in love felt like?

  Even as he shrank from the idea, part of him wanted to open his arms and embrace the joy of it. Embrace Valerie. He hadn’t been touched—not in any meaningful way—in years. Had shied away from human contact even. And now he couldn’t get enough of it. Not when it came from her.

  You’ll hurt her someday. The thought sliced him like a knife to the gut, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it. He’d hurt everyone important in his life. Why would Valerie be any different? If she made him angry, would he lose his infamous cool and strike out?

  With his dad, it always started with verbal abuse and escalated until The Dick snapped and beat the shit out of his mom. Then the honeymoon phase where he was remorseful and apologetic. His dad would go for weeks, sometimes months, treating her like a queen before he lashed out again, each time worse than the last.

  Scott had been through endless rounds of counseling in juvie. He knew not everyone “loved” like that. He knew his dad wasn’t normal. He also knew his dad’s blood ran in his veins, and he’d been raised on brutality. He couldn’t change what he came from. Scott had loved his father—the way a dog loves the master who kicks him—but he’d still put three bullets in the man’s chest. He wanted to believe he was different from his old man, but was he?

  Was he the protector Valerie took him for, or was he The Hulk, calm as all fuck…until he was pushed too far and he mowed down everything and everyone in his path?

  The things she could do were incredible. She was incredible. He wanted her like he’d never wanted anyone or anything in his life. She filled a void in him he had denied for years. She was smart and beautiful and fun and sexy as hell, and Scott flat-out wanted her for himself.

  But he couldn’t risk it.

  His chest tightened like a screw in a bolt. How the hell he was going to let her go?

  “Scott?” Valerie asked, pulling him back into the moment with a slight frown on her pretty face. “Did that make sense?”

  Get your head back in the game, Kramer.

  He took a deep breath, rolled all his messy feelings into a little ball, and mentally tossed them into space, blanking his expression as he let his eyelids drop into ambivalence. “Yeah.” He nodded. “I got the gist.”

  No need to make her explain it all. He trusted her now, and this was her area of expertise. He had his own.

  “Okay. I’ll start working on laying the trap for Sid.”

  “Before you do that, let’s look at Hollowell’s calendar. I think we should be surveilling him in person. We need to get to know our enemy. His schedule, his habits, what matters to him, who he meets with, if he cheats on his wife…”

  Her gaze settled on the scarred wood of the table. “It’s a huge risk, but I agree. If he’s selling state secrets or even corporate secrets from the companies Aggressor has been hacking into, he might have to meet his buyers in real life. There’s a lot of law enforcement lurking on the dark net. In the past they’ve even had officers working undercover as moderators on illegal forums, and confidential informants running VPNs.” She must have seen the question in his eyes. “Virtual Private Networks are a way to let users access a computer server over the Internet, theoretically in anonymity. Everything’s encrypted, so it should be a secure way to share files and communicate. Businesses use them all the time to allow employees to log in remotely.”

  “Why theoretically anonymous?” Scott asked.

  “Anyone working through a VPN should be untraceable back to his original location, but an unscrupulous VPN owner can monitor and log everything. In a big case a few years ago, a hacker learned about a vulnerability in a cell phone network’s computer system and used it to access the company’s user names and passwords. Remember when all those celebrity photos were leaked?”

  He nodded, growing less and less enamored by the minute of the smart phone sitting in his old apartment.

  “That was him,” she said. “He logged into the movie stars’ accounts to access their text message history. Anyway, he later used a well-known, hacker-friendly VPN to log into a Secret Service agent’s account to look for information about ongoing investigations and upcoming raids. Turned out the VPN was run by a confidential informant for the feds, who watched
the whole thing play out onscreen.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Right?” Valerie laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to babble. My point was that Duncan might worry about communicating with his buyers, even on the dark web. Unless, of course, he has a VPN he trusts.”

  “So we cover all the angles and hope like hell we catch a break.”

  She nodded. “Catching him in the act would be great. If we can use photos to convince the feds to go after him, they’ll have to get warrants for Aggressor. Then I can tell them where the flash drive is and they’ll have enough to start investigating.”

  Scott clapped his hands together, eager to finally be on the offensive. “Okay, once you put out your phishing lures, we’ll go hunting.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  McLean, Virginia

  Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.

  VALERIE HAD FORGOTTEN HOW BORING surveillance was. As a kid, she would bring a library’s worth of books and work her way through them while her papá sat watchful, occasionally pointing out something of interest for her to take notes on. Security shift changes, garbage pickup schedules, what time the target left work, car makes and models, and license plates all had gone into her sparkly purple notebook.

  Now, she sat in the near dark, reclined in the passenger’s seat with Scott next to her behind the wheel of an old-but-clean gray Camry Dan had left at the apartment for them. Even bundled up in a parka, scarf, and fleece beanie that hid her hair, she shivered.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked, taking a sip of hot coffee from the travel mug Tara had given her, and savoring the short-lived boost of heat.

  “Nah.” Scott didn’t take his eyes off the massive red-brick colonial sitting on maybe an acre in McLean. Duncan had parked in the driveway and gone inside a couple hours earlier. They’d followed his white BMW to the upscale neighborhood when he left Aggressor at six p.m.

  Her boss’s choice to live in one of the wealthiest zip codes in northern Virginia didn’t surprise her, but his proximity to the CIA’s Langley Headquarters did.

  “How much do you think that place would go for?” Scott asked, shaking his head. “It’s got to be at least five thousand square feet, more if the basement’s finished.”

  “Probably several million,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Who needs that much house?”

  She couldn’t imagine. Her apartment was probably smaller than the garage.

  Scott had parked as far as possible from the nearest streetlight, and she could barely see his frown under the pale wash of the setting moon as he glanced at her. He turned and rummaged in the back seat, producing a small first aid kit. “I knew Dan would have one,” Scott muttered. Inside he found a Mylar blanket. “Wrap this around yourself under your jacket,” he said, unfolding the crinkly silver fabric. “It’s too shiny to wear over your shoulders.”

  Duncan’s street was lined with empty cars—apparently even wealthy folks with three-car garages had too little space, or too many vehicles, to park all their cars inside—which provided great camouflage for her and Scott, but in a neighborhood like this, people wouldn’t hesitate to call the police if they noticed anything suspicious.

  She opened her parka and wrapped the ridiculous blanket around her middle, and then zipped her jacket to cover it.

  “Better?” Scott asked, taking her gloved hand in his.

  His touch, even through multiple layers of fabric, warmed her more than the blanket. “Yes, thanks.”

  Conversation had been sparse between them all evening, and she had no idea why. Okay, admittedly, awesome sex when the future was so uncertain, and without the ability to sneak out the morning after—not that she’d wanted to—could make things awkward. But he’d seemed fine until their afternoon breakfast. Something in his demeanor had changed while they were discussing hackers. He’d gone from openly admiring to emotionally shut down in a matter of minutes.

  Was he one of those guys who didn’t like it when a woman knew more about something than he did? She had seen firsthand how vicious a man could be when his masculinity was threatened, but she hadn’t pegged him as the type. Still, how well did she really know him?

  “I’d like to stay until at least thirty minutes after all the lights in the house go out,” he said. “Will you be okay that long?” Whatever had changed, he still seemed to care about her.

  “Yeah. The blanket is helping.” She watched out the window, counting her breaths until she worked up the nerve to say, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Shoot.” His gaze roved the neighborhood.

  “How did you get into the Marines with your conviction? Was your juvenile record sealed?”

  He released her hand and shifted in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Juvenile records are generally not public, but law enforcement and the military still have access. Lucky for me, the Marines were desperate for warm bodies to go to Iraq. I had earned my GED in juvie, and they decided, given the circumstances of my crime, my dad’s history of abuse and such,” he waved a hand in the dark, “that I was an acceptable risk. Worthy enough to fight and die, at least. During the troop surge in 2007, they let in far worse than me. Maybe not in huge numbers, but most people have no idea.”

  “You say that like you’re one of the bad guys.”

  He shrugged.

  She brought her knees to her chest and hugged herself, wishing she could think of something to say that would change his mind, and cringing at the harsh crinkling sound made by the blanket. “But you wanted to enlist?”

  “Hell, yeah. I wanted to get as far away from Montana as possible, get a fresh start.” He gripped the steering wheel, twisting with gloved hands. “I had a lot to prove. To myself. To the world…” His self-deprecating laugh ushered in that preternatural stillness that seemed to be his native state. “What’s more badass than the Marines when you’re an eighteen-year-old boy, right? No matter how small you are, nobody questions your toughness if you’re one of the few, the proud. At least, that’s what I thought then. I guess I mostly still do.”

  She regretted calling him cute now. He’d clearly been teased—maybe even bullied, probably by his dad too—for his size. If she’d met him when he was eighteen, would she have been drawn to him the way she was now? They were both different people then. And yet, maybe not.

  “Did you like it?” she prompted, hoping to keep him talking.

  “I fucking loved it.” Still staring through the windshield, he said, “I loved every minute of it. ‘Embrace the suck,’ is one of the Corps’ mantras. But everything in my life before the Marines was ‘the suck.’ Prison—shitty as it was—was a step up from home. The Corps? That was the good life. That was my family.”

  Her throat tightened. They had so much in common, but until her dad was killed, Valerie’s life had been easy. If one ignored that Papá had sucked her into his underground world, he’d been a good father. Kind, patient, caring, playful, stern without being too strict. And he’d loved Dad to distraction. Valerie knew what a loving relationship and a happy home were like.

  Scott had never had it easy. He’d been an innocent boy raised in a violent home, driven to make a terrible choice. And he’d paid for that choice in so many ways. Valerie was the one who’d broken the law and never paid for it. Not through the legal system. Losing her dads and the years that followed had been their own form of punishment, but she’d had food on the table, a safe place to live, and no jail time, no record. Was karma finally catching up with her now?

  Except it had given her Scott, and he was a far better man than she deserved, even if he didn’t see it.

  “Why’d you get out?” she asked.

  His harsh laugh punctured the relative quiet of the car, the puff of air from his lips faintly visible in the chill. “Getting blown up has a way of changing your perspective. By the time I was fully recovered, the mission had changed. I wasn’t sure I fit into it anymore.” He rubbed his left hip. “And honestly,” his voice turned
low and rough, “I doubted my ability to protect my teammates, so I chose not to reenlist.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, amazed and grateful that he had opened up to her so completely.

  He cleared his throat. “Me too.”

  At some point, he must have changed his mind about his skills or he wouldn’t be working with Steele now. She could only hope it provided some of the brotherhood and sense of family that the Marines had given him.

  What she wouldn’t give for her own tribe, for people she could trust to have her back, for Scott to be the first—the heart—of that elusive group.

  They sat in silence for another half hour as the moon slipped toward the horizon, dropping the night further into darkness. Her thoughts raced round and round like a greyhound on a track, desperately searching for some magical way to prove her and Scott’s innocence and coming up empty.

  “He’s moving,” Scott said.

  Down the street, partially blocked from view by rows of leafless branches, the BMW’s lights flicked on, and the car backed down the long asphalt driveway.

  Her heart sped up. “Did you see if he was alone?”

  “Yep. Just him.” Scott peered through the pair of night vision goggles—NVGs—Dan had left in the apartment for him and watched the luxury car through the windshield. “What do you think? Did they forget the cranberries?”

  Five minutes later, she and Scott had tailed the car to a nearby VABC store, Virginia’s commonwealth-run liquor retailer, and parked in a dim corner of the lot with a view into the brightly lit storefront through floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Watch for a drop, a brush pass, or anything unusual,” Scott said, raising his large Nikon to his eye and peering through the telephoto lens. He snapped photos continuously as they both scrutinized the man’s every movement.

  “Catch anything?” she asked once her boss had returned to his car. Impotent rage ran through her like an earthquake, causing tremors from head to toe. How could Duncan toss her to the wolves and then go about his life as if he hadn’t thoroughly ruined hers?