“Yeah, that had occurred to me, too. In a matter of hours, they’ve escalated from a quiet hit they could have staged as a home invasion to a massive public spectacle. There were literally thousands of witnesses—authorities may even have the shooter Ethan took down in custody. Why take such a risk?”
“It’s got to be the thumb drive. It’s the only thing that’s changed in the last twenty-four hours.” Parker patted the zippered pocket on his coat, reassuring himself it was still there. More than ever, he was certain the proof they needed was in those off-book operations. He just had to find it.
“But that still doesn’t explain how they knew we’d be at the stadium, let alone which exit we’d use.”
“Okay.” Parker angled his body toward her, glancing around them as people filed on and off the train, letting a blast of icy air into the car. “Back to the analyst example. Typically, in intelligence a team of analysts is tasked with research, with digging through all kinds of information and flagging and categorizing it. Then, once there’s enough information, they start cross-checking, drawing connections and making assumptions. But what it could take a team of dozens months if not years to do, my program can do in a matter of minutes. Worse, it’s a government-controlled asset. It has access to every database you can think of—every branch of the military, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and probably a whole host of other databases that local, regional, and international law-enforcement agencies use in everyday business. There are no boundaries, no borders, this program can’t cross.”
Deus ex machina. An accomplishment he used to be proud of. He’d been so caught up in what he could do, he’d never stopped to think about what he should do.
“Great,” Georgia said, tapping her fingertips against the plastic seat. “That sounds awesome.”
“It gets worse,” Parker admitted.
“Of course it does.”
“Normally, the program is hindered by the fact that we have incomplete or insufficient intel. Fleshing out the details of emerging third-world threats can be almost impossible at times. Only recently has terrorism and other types of organized crime taken to social media, left a paper trail. Tracking back more than a year or two for most persons of interest often isn’t feasible. Sometimes even confirming date of birth is a challenge. So the program has to compensate, make an educated guess based off race, gender, nationality, family ties—a whole host of information. But that’s not an issue here.”
Georgia dropped her head into her hands, her fingers gripping her curls. “Of course not. You’re all government employees—high-value assets, no less. The DoD probably has dossiers a mile thick on all of you.”
“Yeah,” Parker said on a sigh. “And the program knows how we function as a team. How each member reacts under pressure, how we work in the field. My best guess? The program went searching for the team, filtering through all of Ethan’s known associates. Ethan told me he pulled strings with a trusted client to get last-minute seats to the game today. Seats held under your name at the box office. Seats for every single member of our team.”
“But I’m not part of the team,” Georgia said. “I’d skew the number of seats the program expected to find, and up until yesterday, I wasn’t affiliated with any of you.”
“No. But you’re an employee of Somerton Security—Ethan’s company—and the connections don’t have to be perfect, just close. One additional ticket wouldn’t be enough to throw off the program.” Parker rubbed his palms together, balancing his elbows on his knees. “From there, it would have been a piece of cake to predict Ethan’s actions. His training, as good as it is, worked against him. Made him predictable. Waiting for the end of the game to leave, slipping out with the crowd, heading toward one of the closest parking lots . . . for the program, all too easy to predict.”
A twisted sense of pride slid through Parker. He’d never really believed his work, his legacy, would be so damn successful. “No one betrayed us, Georgia. My program is just that good.”
“Are you as certain of your own judgment? Are you willing to stack everything you know about these people against everything your program does?” She shot him a hard look. “Are you willing to risk your life—and mine—on the assumption they would never betray you?”
“Yes.” The answer came so fast it left him breathless. The truth was, he shouldn’t be so certain. He knew better than anyone that the face you showed the world was a tiny fraction of the entire person. He couldn’t claim to know everything about Jones or Ortiz. Ryan or Liam. But he trusted them. Partly because he’d always, even in the beginning, felt safe with them, which when he thought about it, really came back to Ethan’s leadership.
Ethan. Even if Parker didn’t know the men he worked with, trust them, like them . . . he knew and trusted Ethan. And his judgment.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“Okay.” Georgia sighed, obviously willing to defer to him on this but not happy about it. “I’d like to know how Ethan’s doing as well, and I’d feel better if someone was watching out for him. So if you’re sure, go ahead and reach out.” She placed her hand on his, halting the message he wanted to type out. “No details about us, Parker. I mean it. Nothing.”
“Okay,” Parker agreed, typing out a fast note on the game’s messaging center. Once done, he slipped his phone into his jacket pocket and sat back. If he’d expected to feel even the slightest hint of relief, he’d have been disappointed. Now there was just one more thing to wait for.
“So it knows our moves before we even make them,” Georgia said after a long silence, her tone cautious, as if she were wrestling with a puzzle that could fight back. “The program, I mean.”
“No,” Parker said, the first thread of hope winding through him. “It knows Ethan, me, the team. But it doesn’t know you.” Parker tried for a smile. “Beyond the most basic information, the program doesn’t know anything about you. And as you don’t strike me as the type to Instagram every meal you eat . . .”
“I don’t even have Facebook,” Georgia admitted.
“No social media at all? No adorable cat named Mittens? No tiny Yorkie named Sasquatch you feel compelled to subject to the world?”
Georgia shook her head. “I don’t like cats, and a Yorkie’s just a high-priced, overfluffed rat for rich people.”
“Ouch.” He chuckled, then slid his hand into hers. Squeezed. “You might be the only one who stands any chance at beating my program.” He took a deep breath. He was straying dangerously close to a “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” moment, which yet again cast him in the roll of the damsel. Still, if he had to put his life entirely in someone’s hands, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d trust more than Georgia. Which meant he had to be all in. He had to put his faith in her, had to let her make the decisions from here on out. Model client, as promised. He’d never have guessed just how important that bet would become. Or that he’d be so damn grateful she’d passed his test.
“What do we do first?”
What do we do first? Words she’d spent the last hour wrestling with. Words that took on a whole new meaning in light of Parker’s explanation. How the hell was she going to keep them alive? This was nothing she’d ever trained for, nothing she’d ever even considered. Funny, how basic training and private protection details didn’t prepare a girl for homicidal computers with a God complex. Ethan really should have read her in from the beginning. Now, no matter what she did, she’d always be catching up to the situation. Always a step too slow. Which could be deadly.
“I guess this is an obvious question, but is there any way to shut down the program?” He’d probably have mentioned such a thing by now, but a girl could hope.
“Yeah, one.” He picked at his cuticles.
“But?” Because, oh, there was a but. She could see it all over his face.
“But it’s not a magic bullet—the program has already run, already produced dozens of potential outcomes.”
“As that thing is trying to kill us, I’m goin
g to need you to walk me through your thought process.”
Parker’s smile was grim. “The program sits on a highly secured government server—something I’m not supposed to have access to outside of either my government-issued laptop and security key or when I’m physically present at the office. With decent Internet access, I can probably work around that part, but it’s harder on an out-of-the-box computer. The problem is, it’ll take some time—”
“How much time?” she asked.
“At least an hour—an eternity in terms of exposure. And even if I’m careful, even if I do everything right, it’s going to expose us to scrutiny.”
“What kind of scrutiny?”
“Our IP address, for one. Possibly our physical location as well. You have to understand, hacking isn’t easy, and more, it takes a lot of time. To even have a shot at doing this completely undetected, I’d need to spend days prepping, then hours upon hours actually executing it. It would take all my time and attention.”
“Which means you wouldn’t have the resources to go through the files Ethan gave us.”
“Right. It’s probably going to take both of us to do that as it is, if only because we have no idea what we’re looking for.”
“Needle in a haystack.” Awesome.
“If we’re lucky,” Parker said. “Shutting down the program would consume all our time and energy but ultimately wouldn’t put us any closer to the answers we need.”
Georgia rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “So we let it hunt us down? Wouldn’t it be better to disable it and run, buy us some breathing room?”
“Maybe. But the program has already performed an analysis. You have to understand, the program will cycle every time it’s provided with new intel, but at this point, that’s going to be pretty damn minimal. It already knows everything there is to know about me, about Ethan and the rest of the team. Those predictions are made. There might be variations, but if we don’t give it much to work with, not much will change. We can’t unring that bell.” Parker laced his fingers together, bracing his forearms on his knees. “The only new intel for the program to work with is you.”
Shit.
“And you don’t think it’ll find much?”
Parker shrugged. “Based on what you told me? No, I don’t think it’ll have a lot to work with. But even if that weren’t the case, I can guarantee they’re already working on identifying you. Even if I wasn’t worried about getting caught, by the time I get to a computer and disable the program, odds are it will already have factored you in.”
The weight of everything Parker said settled, heavy and immovable, on her shoulders. How was she supposed to work like this?
“All right, what if we throw caution to the wind and say screw flying under the radar? How fast could you take down the program?”
Parker grew quiet and still for a long moment, as if a brute-force Hail Mary tactic had never occurred to him. “Assuming my credentials haven’t been pulled? I could log in and take down the program, but the minute I do, our location is burned, and we’ve tipped what might be the only hand we have to play. No one knows I can kill this thing, but the minute I do, they’ll be alerted.”
That felt less like having an extra card up their sleeve and more like pressing a self-destruct button. And if Ethan was right, and this was all about the money, disabling the program was going to make whoever was behind this desperate.
And desperate people were dangerous.
So, what then? She fought back the hysteria, the absolute conviction that she was so far out of her element she couldn’t possibly hope to compete. She needed to breathe. To think. If she looked at their situation as a whole, let herself focus on everything she didn’t understand and couldn’t solve, fear and sheer panic would breed hopelessness. Enough people were trying to kill them. Georgia had no intention of defeating herself.
One decision at a time.
Start with a goal and work backward from there to create the steps for dealing with it. I can do this. I can do this.
“Let’s say we risk it and remove your program from the playing field—is there anyone who could get it back up and running?” she asked.
Parker shook his head. “Not likely. If I trigger my fail-safe, it’s going to pull down huge sections of digital infrastructure, which I’d have to rebuild.”
“And there’s no one on your team who could do that? No one at the DoD who could re-create what you destroy?”
“Over time—months, weeks if they hired outside help, maybe. But overnight? No way.” The train car shifted, barreling around a curve and pressing her closer to Parker, who asked, “Why, what are you thinking?”
“That we have something else to gain from disabling the program.”
Parker turned his head to stare at her, his brow creasing with confusion.
“Right now, someone is making a fortune off your work, and they want you out of the way.”
“Thanks for the reminder. I’d almost forgotten about my impending death.” His tone was wry, but Georgia laced her fingers around his forearm anyway.
“I may not have all the insight your tech does, but I do know one thing: people driven by power, money, stature—they will do anything to keep what they have.”
“Meaning?” Parker asked.
“Meaning that priority one is keeping you alive—and the best way to do that, for right now at least, is to make you more valuable alive than dead. If you’re the only person who can bring your program back online . . .”
“Then the objective changes from kill to capture.”
Georgia felt a tremor roll through Parker.
“Not sure I like that idea much better.”
“I know,” Georgia said, squeezing his forearm once before letting go. “But if something happened, it would buy me time to find you. This plan also increases the odds that you survive any encounters from here on out.”
“Doesn’t do anything for your odds,” Parker said, his words heavy with fear and regret.
Georgia tried to smile. It wasn’t just her. The only person this would benefit was Parker. Everyone else remained expendable. “One problem at a time, all right? I’m still the bodyguard; you’re still the damsel.”
“Ha-ha,” Parker muttered, then heaved out a breath and thankfully didn’t argue. “Okay, let’s say we go with your plan. Then what?”
“Then the priority becomes getting somewhere safe. Somewhere entirely off grid.” Which meant anywhere she and Parker had ever been was out of the question. She should probably strike anything that felt familiar or comfortable. Which left what, exactly? Places dangerous, terrifying, or both? As if her subconscious sensed her vulnerability, one possibility came to mind. Discreet, they could pay in cash, no one would ask questions . . . The smell of lingering cigarette smoke, decades old and stale, flooded her nose. No. Not there. Not unless it was the only option.
She pulled her thoughts away from worn, nubby carpeting and long, cold nights.
Regardless, lodging wasn’t the first problem they needed to solve. Falling off the grid meant functioning without the burden of a paper trail, and that meant they needed cash. A lot of it.
Her nerves settled under the blanket of a decision.
“How much money do you have on you?” Georgia asked, studying the Metro stops on the map above her.
“About seventy bucks—we spent a good portion of what I had last night.”
Yeah, but there hadn’t been much choice. She’d put off worrying about it because Parker had seemed so certain Ethan would make contact. When he had, she’d dismissed the concern almost entirely. Stupid, though her worry wouldn’t have changed anything. But seventy dollars . . . barely enough for a decent dinner for two, let alone enough to get them good and lost. And since she didn’t carry cash at all, their options were limited.
Time to get creative—or just acknowledge they were desperate.
Georgia twisted the bezel on her watch, the weight heavy against her wrist. For once the steady click-c
lick-click provided more hurt than comfort, a reminder time was ticking and her options were few. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets. So many things she’d sworn she’d never do were lining up before her, as if they’d always been there, just waiting for the day the universe decided to slap her back down. She wasn’t ready to take the hit. Not yet.
“Let me see your watch.” Parker was a tech genius with millions; he had to have something on him worth pawning.
He held out his wrist, shoving back his sleeve. A hysterical laugh bubbled up her throat.
“A Swatch? Seriously?”
“What?” Parker asked, brushing his sleeve back down. “It’s vintage. Worth a hundred and fifty bucks on eBay.”
“It’s Spider-Man.” Which didn’t surprise her at all. In any other scenario, she’d have found it oddly charming. And so very true to form. Nothing pretentious about Parker, though in the moment she wished to God there was. “Anything else we could pawn? Designer wallet? Other jewelry?”
Parker looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “My wallet is from Target. I don’t wear jewelry, and I’m guessing my watch didn’t impress. So no.” He shrugged. “Anything we could pawn for cash is back at my loft.”
Great.
“Forget it, sorry I even asked.” She shook her head. It was on her, then. Her heart twisted, but she pushed aside the feelings. With no other choices, she couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Hell, she should have gotten rid of the thing months ago. Losing something you weren’t attached to in the first place didn’t hurt.
“All right,” she said, shrugging off her darkening mood and focusing on what she actually had any control over. “Before we do anything else, we’ve got to get our hands on some cash. ATMs are out of the question, so we’re going to have to get creative. There’s a pawnshop walking distance from DuPont Circle. We’ll get off there and walk.”
Defenseless (Somerton Security #1) Page 14