Cyber Illusions: Sensory Ops, Book 6

by Nikki Duncan

  Kieralyn, more sensitive than Tyler, moved toward Ms. Bellamy. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I’ll be fine.” Blowing a steady breath, she seemed to pull herself under control. Her eyes never left Tyler. “You might want to sit down. Or lean against something at least.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked. Interviews didn’t normally take a turn the way this one had seemed to. It wasn’t guilt knocking Ms. Bellamy off balance. It was fear. The question was fear of what, because it wasn’t over being a suspect or even completely over the child. “Why would I want to sit? And who was right?”

  Ms. Bellamy moved toward him. With each step she grew a little taller, straightening her back. Her head rose. A step away she stopped and extended her hand pointing at her phone he still held. “These children are yours, and Sidney’s run away to find you.”

  He couldn’t be a father. He’d never met the woman standing before him, so her claim made no sense. Though the kids looked just like the pictures hanging on his mom’s wall of her grandchildren, he wasn’t ready to accept her at her word. “I don’t have any kids.”

  Chapter Two

  “I wouldn’t normally be so blunt, and I’m sure you’ll want proof.” Taryn shrugged not feeling remotely casual. “But I need to find a missing girl.” My baby girl. “You’re FBI. You can help.”

  “Telling me they’re mine isn’t going to help matters.”

  “Their names are Ryder and Sidney. Sidney is five minutes older. Their mother Jenny only ever said she knew their father, Tyler, in college before he was arrested for hacking the FBI. According to Ryder his dad made some kind of deal and instead went to work for the Feds.”

  He said nothing but the color drained from his face. He didn’t blink or move. He only stared.

  “Jenny. Haven’t thought about her since college.”

  “Since you were taken into custody for hacking the FBI?” Taryn asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” he answered, but still didn’t move. “We were so wrong for each other I never thought there was a reason to think of her. Let alone kids.” For a man who’d said he didn’t have kids, he seemed to be thinking awfully hard about the possibility.

  “Tyler?” Kieralyn asked.

  When he said nothing, Kieralyn stepped in and took over the conversation. “Ms. Bellamy, you said the girl’s missing. How long has she been gone? Where’s the boy?”

  “Call me Taryn. They stayed with my mom in California. I don’t like them to miss school.” Taryn turned toward Kieralyn, but kept watching Tyler. She needed to know as much as possible about him, and seeing his reactions to her news was a great way of learning. “My mom called as soon as tonight’s show was over. Sidney isn’t at a sleepover we thought she was going to. I’ve called her Tae Kwon Do coach and her teacher. Both said she wasn’t in class today.

  “Her teacher overheard Sidney talking to a friend about going to Miami to find her dad. I talked to Ryder before leaving New Orleans. He said he’d found his dad, you—” she pointed at Tyler, “—and that Sidney had a plan to meet you.”

  “How old is she? Are they?” he corrected.

  “Ten.”

  “We’re supposed to believe a ten-year-old girl could get a flight from California to Miami and you not know about it? What kind of guardian does that make you?”

  “A damn good one.” Her back stiffened and her tone bit but she didn’t care. He hadn’t been around for the kids, so he had no right to question her competence. “These kids are more special and gifted than you can imagine. And while I don’t know how Sidney would get from home to here without money or a credit card, I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s a schemer of epic proportions.”

  “If she’s learned at your side…” Tyler trailed off.

  “They’d have surely picked up a few tips?” she challenged. “Maybe they did, but getting away with it’s on the TSA and the airlines, not me.”

  She leaned in, confronting him. “Think me guilty of whatever you want, but those kids are my world. I have every reason to believe Sidney is here, in Miami, looking for you. Get on board with the idea I might be telling the truth or get out of my way.”

  “Tyler.” Kieralyn stepped in close to him. “If she’s the thief, she can’t steal anything while she’s with us. We need to find this girl and then you can get answers.”

  “Right.”

  It irritated Taryn to be suspected of thefts just because they occurred when she was in a town. Okay, it pissed her off, but not as much as not knowing where Sidney was or seeing Tyler’s reaction to the news of being a father. Not that it made sense to be angry with him. He had no reason to believe her.

  Jenny hadn’t thought he’d want them and she hadn’t looked for him to tell him. That wasn’t on Taryn. He deserved to be surprised, especially since he’d shown up to question a suspect and ended up being told he had two kids, but she’d hoped for more.

  “So you’re going to help.” She quickly caught him and Kieralyn up on what she knew, which was little. Tyler seemed like he’d stopped listening the moment he pulled out his phone, but she was used to the way Ryder managed to carry on a conversation while hypnotized by a screen.

  “Yes. Can you email me that picture?”

  She nodded. “Any way we can do this not standing on the tarmac?”

  “Let’s go to the office,” Kieralyn suggested. “If she’s here to find you, that’s a good place to start. We can meet up with the team.”

  It was late, so she doubted an office building would be where they’d find Sidney, but she liked the idea of having a team to help search so she kept her opinion to herself.

  Tyler jerked, showing the slightest surprise. “Okay.”

  “Living with Ryder has given me an appreciation for technology. The boy’s a genius.”

  “Tyler’s pretty good too.” Kieralyn chuckled as she led the way to their SUV. Tyler was tapping away on his phone. “Who’d have thought Tyler would be the first of our team to have a kid? Especially with Kami and Breck’s recent announcement.”

  “We don’t know for certain they’re mine,” he muttered over his screen.

  Taryn slid into the backseat behind Kieralyn, who’d taken the driver’s seat. Being behind Kieralyn allowed her to study Tyler.

  She didn’t welcome an investigation into her life, but she couldn’t deny that having the FBI looking for Sidney settled her some. “Ryder put an app on my tablet. He said he’s using it to talk to Sidney. Some kind of secret room only they could see.”

  Tyler turned and reached between the seats. “Can I see it?”

  “I have nothing to hide,” she said, passing the tablet forward.

  “We’ll see about that.” His fingers were already flying across the keys on the screen. He paused briefly to look at his phone when it beeped.

  “The team will meet us at the office. Aidan’s bringing Lana,” Kieralyn said, hanging up the phone.

  Taryn’s observation skills were kicking back into gear as her confidence in finding Sidney grew. “Who’s the team? Is there something you specialize in?”

  “We’re the Specialized Crimes Unit of the FBI,” Kieralyn answered while Tyler kept tapping away. “We’ve worked on cases ranging from kidnapping and murder to government conspiracies spanning decades.”

  “We have a ninety-seven percent close rate,” Tyler said, “because we’ve learned to play to our strengths.”

  “And Lana?” she asked. The way she’d been mentioned led Taryn to believe she wasn’t part of the team.

  “She’s a journalist with connections we’ll never fully know about,” Tyler said. “Her social reach is unparalleled and could come in handy.”

  “You’re going to make a public plea.”

  He nodded. “If I have to. If Lana kicks off the story with a simple tweet, every news station in town will be covering the story before their next broadcast.”

  “That’s a lot of power.” And possibly the only time she’d care about social media, because she
preferred to keep her personal life personal.

  “She’s earned every bit of it. We need to find Sidney, and I’m curious how she got to town with no money.”

  “You and me both,” Taryn agreed.

  “You finding anything,” Kieralyn asked with a nod toward the tablet.

  “I always find something,” Tyler said. “Does Sidney have a computer at home?”

  “Yes,” Taryn answered.

  “If it’s not on, can we get it turned on? And Ryder’s.”

  Taryn was already dialing home. “Mom, I need Ryder to turn on Sidney’s computer. His too, but he’s to stay off it… Well, make him stay in the same room as you to make sure he stays off it. The FBI is here and they’re helping. I’ll let you know as soon as we know something,” She hung up before Mom could ask more questions. She had neither the time nor the patience for questions she couldn’t answer.

  “I’ve issued an Amber Alert,” Tyler said, his hands never slowing on the keyboard.

  Kieralyn pulled into the parking lot of an office building and said, “Looks like everyone’s here.”

  “Good.”

  Taryn looked between them, turning the phone over in her hand again and again. “What can I do?”

  “Answer everything you’re asked,” Tyler said, “and let us do our job.”

  Kieralyn nodded toward her. “How direct do you think Sidney would be in her approach to Tyler? Any idea where she’d sleep for the night?”

  She followed them inside and to the elevators. “I wish I had those answers.”

  “Would you have brought them here if they’d asked?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes. I’d have made them explain why they thought you were their father, but yes, I’d have brought them.”

  “And you’d have found me?”

  “Yes.” Her heartbeat had settled, but it picked up again beneath his antagonistic attitude. Fighting back her desire to defend herself, she faced him as the doors closed. “If I’d known you weren’t in prison, I’d have contacted you two years ago when Jenny walked out on them.”

  “Because you didn’t want them?” he challenged without ever looking up. She had no clue what he was doing on that tablet, but she assumed it had something to do with finding Sidney.

  “I’ve always wanted them. I will always want them. I guess you believe they’re yours?”

  “Not telling me about the kids would be Jenny’s way of getting even for breaking up with her. Then there’s the fact you could put their pictures on the wall at my parents’ house and not tell them apart from any of the rest of the kids.”

  “So you think I’ll tell the truth about the kids, but lie about some art.”

  “Having custody of my kids won’t send you to prison. Being a thief will.”

  Wow. The only times Jenny had mentioned Tyler, she’d talked about how charming he’d been in their month together. Taryn was having a hard time finding anything about him charming.

  Then again, if he was thinking about taking the kids from her, why would he consider charm? It would be much easier to prove she was a crook and put her away. Winning custody of the kids would be so simple then.

  Dialing home again, she asked her mom to put Ryder on. When he answered, she put the phone on speaker and asked, “Ryder, did Sidney have an address for Tyler Greer?”

  “There were fifteen listings in Miami,” he said. “I narrowed it down to five before she left.”

  “Which five?” Tyler asked.

  “Who’s that?” Ryder asked in much the same tone. Defiant.

  Taryn answered, “That’s Tyler. Which five?”

  “You’re with him?” Ryder’s voice grew quieter. Taryn knew it to be a sign of insecurity. He’d wanted to find his dad, and now that he was on the phone with him, he became a boy instead of a master hacker.

  “Yes. Ryder, which five?”

  He was reading off the last street address when they exited the elevator and moved down the hall.

  “If you hear from Sidney, you call me first, Ryder.”

  “Yes, Taryn.”

  Before she could end the call, Tyler stopped her hand. “Ryder.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “This code you wrote.”

  “What about it?”

  “There’s a pattern to it I’ve seen a lot lately. Tonight most recently.”

  Silence came from Ryder, which primarily happened when he knew he had really messed up and no explanation would be good enough.

  “I don’t want to see it in my systems again,” Tyler said. “Hacking might be fun, but the consequences aren’t.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Unsure what that had been about, Taryn ended the call and followed Kieralyn through a set of double doors discreetly labeled Specialized Crimes. Waiting inside, among the dark wood desks organized in a circle to face each other and a large screen TV, was an alert and worried-looking group of men and women.

  Tyler moved to a computer that projected up on the screen while Kieralyn made the introductions.

  Breck, the team lead, Aidan and Liam, obviously twins, and Ava and Lana. They would help find Sidney, because it was their job. She only hoped they would believe her claims of innocence more easily than Tyler seemed to.

  “Why are you issuing an Amber Alert, Tyler?” Breck asked. “What’s going on?”

  “In a messed-up, it’s-a-small-world mess, the hacker I’ve been tracking is a ten-year-old boy in California. Taryn is guardian to him and his twin sister who’s run away to Miami.” He paused, and for the first time looked up from the computer. “It seems they’re my kids.”

  “Ryder hacked you?” The boy was in bigger trouble than if he’d only helped his sister get to Miami. Taryn just wasn’t sure what the punishment would be.

  “What’s going on around here?” Aidan asked. “Ava has secret powers. Liam has a secret wife. You have secret kids.”

  “Well, they were a secret from me too. Can we focus?”

  “I’m always focused,” Aidan said. “What do we know? What’s the plan?”

  Tyler caught them up on everything Taryn had told them and updated them on the work Ryder had done on the addresses.

  “This is the result of a ten-year-old boy sitting at a computer?” Ava shook her head. “Does he understand the risks he’s taken? The danger he’s inviting?”

  “He will if he hasn’t figured it out already,” Taryn injected, speaking for the first time. At a minimum, she would monitor every moment he spent with a piece of tech in hand. There would definitely be discussions about the acceptable limits of computer use.

  “I’m not talking about hunting Tyler down, which is no small thing I’m sure.” Ava said. “I’m talking about the evidence he’s uncovered and slipped into Tyler’s systems. He’s led us to some big arrests; he’s marked himself as a witness.”

  “And we’ll make sure he’s safe if it comes to it, which I’m sure it won’t,” Tyler assured. “But first, we need to find Sidney.”

  Taryn’s instincts hummed. Tyler and Kieralyn being at her plane hadn’t been a coincidence. They’d been led there. By Ryder.

  Her jaw clenched. On top of everything, Ryder hacked the FBI and planted evidence. He’d led Tyler to Taryn.

  “You said she has five addresses. Any of them yours?” Breck’s question pulled her back to the moment.

  “No. Which means my security works better than my firewalls. I also found a chat in her computer history with her friend Addy. She’s traveling with very little cash so Addy made her promise to check into a shelter when it got dark if she hadn’t found me yet.”

  “Then we split up and go talk to every Tyler on her list and check any shelters in the same areas.” Breck and the team accepted the possibility of Tyler having kids as readily as they assumed control of the situation.

  “I’m sending mapped addresses to your phones now,” Tyler said.

  As if they’d done it a thousand times, they split into groups. Breck and Ava, Liam and Kieralyn, Aidan and La
na, leaving Tyler. “Don’t tell me I have to stay behind,” Taryn said to Tyler.

  He shook his head and then stood, grabbed his phone and looked at Taryn. “You’re with me.”

  He sounded like he’d just been sentenced to life in a dark cell, but Taryn was going to use the time to learn more about him. If she was going to find herself in a custody battle, and given how quickly he was claiming the kids as his despite what he’d said to the contrary, she had to admit she might, she wanted to know as much as possible about her rival.

  When the team had gone, Tyler turned to Taryn. “Let’s go.”

  “You don’t trust me to not run with her,” she said as they headed downstairs.

  “The only thing I know about you is you’re a suspect in a ring of thefts that cross several state lines. Mostly, I’ve gone ten years without knowing I had a son and daughter. She’s in this town. I’m not going another night without her.”

  “Fine, but add this to what you know,” she challenged. “I’ve had a hand in taking care of your kids since they were a couple months old. I love them as much as I would if they were my own and I won’t see them hurt.”

  “Saying that doesn’t mean you’re good for them and it doesn’t mean I should trust you.”

  Tyler’s brothers had talked a time or two, when they had enough drinks to forget to act macho, about how they’d loved their kids the moment they’d held them. Or how they’d loved them on some level before that but it hadn’t felt real until they were actually born. Their wives, never needing the liquor to talk about their kids, had claimed they loved each child from the first discovery of each pregnancy.

  Any one of them would do anything to protect their kids. Hell, they were only his nieces and nephews, but if anyone dared to try to hurt the kids, Tyler would kick up some serious shit. Now, without ever having had a successful relationship and having a job that consumed his life, he found himself with two kids of his own.

  He knew nothing about being a father, but he knew he had a daughter who needed finding. And he knew how to find people. He would blow away every rock and seashell in Miami to find Sidney.