Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5)

by Paige Tyler

  Ivy sighed. She didn’t like the idea of Layla going up against a militia leader, but at least her sister was with a partner who would watch her back. “You’re right. And while Powell is a jackass, at least he’s there to back them up. That has to count for something.”

  Kendra turned and started across the quad again, walking faster than before. Ivy followed. Her friend’s heart rate was spiking and it had nothing to do with the vigorous exercise.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Ivy asked sharply.

  Kendra didn’t answer. Ivy thought she might have to circle around in front of her friend and get in her path when Kendra stopped abruptly and turned to look at her.

  “Powell isn’t going to be helping them on the rescue mission because he’s dead,” Kendra said. “He and Jayson got into a gunfight with the local militia shortly after they arrived in Donetsk. Powell apparently decided that he needed to off Jayson to keep the locals from getting their hands on a hybrid, and Jayson didn’t go along with the idea.”

  Ivy stood there stunned. “Jayson killed him?”

  “I don’t have all the details,” Kendra said. “It’s more likely that the local militia killed Powell, but I got the feeling that Jayson played a part in it. The important thing I’m trying to tell you isn’t that Jayson had anything to do with Powell’s death—that jerk tried to kill Jayson in cold blood and got exactly what he deserved—it’s that Layla and Jayson are a real team out there, and they’re good enough to get this done.”

  Kendra turned and started walking again. Ivy fell into step beside her. As they crossed the quad, Kendra brought her up to speed on everything she knew about what had happened over in Donetsk. “Jayson jumped off a three-story building and swam across a river at least half a mile wide. Does that sound like something the Jayson we know could do?”

  “No,” Ivy admitted, a little shocked.

  If Powell tried to kill Jayson, that meant the serum must have worked. The idea that Layla was out there on the mission with another shifter—or hybrid or whatever Jayson was—made Ivy feel a lot better about the danger her sister was in. That said, she still wouldn’t sleep until they were both back home.

  When she and Kendra got to the IT building, her friend led her through the maze of cubicles that filled the front half of the building and into a big room. All four walls were lined with computer servers while worktables filled the center of the room.

  John was waiting for them, along with Evan Lloyd, an analyst from the intel branch Ivy had worked with several times, as well as two techies she didn’t recognize. One was a woman in her midthirties with her black hair pulled back into a very businesslike bun, while the guy looked like he’d just graduated from college the week before. John introduced them as Lisa Marino and Karl Thomas.

  “So what do you have?” John asked her.

  Ivy reached into her coat pocket and pulled out both the diamond and the strange black box, setting them on the nearest table. Lisa immediately snatched up the box and examined it with Karl, leaving the rest of them alone with the diamond.

  “This is absolutely spectacular.” Kendra picked it up by the chain, watching the light bounce off the facets of the gem. “Can I keep it? I promise to take good care of it, take it out on walks every night, and clean up behind it when it makes a mess.”

  Ivy laughed. “I don’t think even you would be able to clean up the kind of mess that follows something like this thing around. I think we’d better just send it back home.”

  Kendra looked disappointed but set the diamond down on the table again. “Yeah, I guess so. Besides, I have nothing that would go with it. I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe.”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “I’m pretty sure Declan would be okay if you walked around the house wearing nothing but that.”

  John let out a polite cough, gesturing to Evan, then himself. “Two men standing right here.”

  Ivy opened her mouth to tease John, but Lisa cut her off.

  “It’s a solid state drive, but it’s way more advanced than anything either of us have ever seen.”

  “So it’s a hard drive?” John clarified, his eyes lighting up.

  Ivy shared his excitement. Considering the fact that this thing had been locked up in Thorn’s private safe, it had to have some really juicy stuff on it. Ivy doubted it was just his taxes.

  “This is so much more than a hard drive,” Karl said. “It’s one big, solid silicon-based integrated chip. There’s no moving disk like a normal hard drive.”

  He and Lisa started babbling about nonvolatile NAND flash memory, unpowered storage, fully integrated circuit design, and seamless controller chips, completely oblivious to the fact that no one else in the room understood a single word they were saying.

  “There are plenty of solid state drives out there right now, of course,” Karl added, as if everyone knew that. “Price has kept them mostly on the fringes though, so they’re mostly in toys. This thing looks to be light-years ahead of anything I’ve ever heard of. It would have cost a small fortune to make, but the storage capability must be insane.”

  “What kind of storage are we talking about?” John asked. “How much information could be stored on here?”

  Lisa exchanged looks with Karl, who shrugged.

  “Well, it’s all just theory at this point since this seems like a prototype, you know?” Karl said.

  “How much information?” John asked again, firmer this time. “Five terabytes or something?”

  The woman shook her head. “Definitely not. If all he wanted to do was store five terabytes, he could have used a normal hard drive. Heck, he could have used a flash drive for that. No, this thing is probably in the petabyte range, maybe a lot more.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” John said in exasperation. “Is that a lot?”

  Karl held up the black box. “A lot. As in the Library of Congress kind of a lot.”

  John grinned. “How long will it take to download the data?”

  Lisa studied the back end of the black box and grimaced. “I suppose I could come up with a transfer cable that would work. It might take a few days, though, not to mention a lot of trial and error because we don’t have a clue what kind of data transfer protocols this thing uses. The real problem is that we don’t have the key.”

  “Key?” John repeated, the smile disappearing from his face.

  Karl pointed at the irregular slot in the front of the box. “That’s a security key slot, like we use to switch on our classified phones. Without having that, it could take months to hack into this thing.”

  “Even longer if the data is encrypted, which it almost certainly is,” Lisa added.

  “Encrypted?” John said.

  Karl nodded. “Like the encryption code on the wireless router in your home. Except we have no idea how long of a code it might be. These days, it could easily be sixteen digits. Unless whoever designed this thing was working for a paranoid type. Then it could be anything—twenty-four or thirty-two characters even. Regardless, the chances of stumbling over that code by accident is almost nil.”

  John cursed. “You’re telling me that we likely have every piece of data that we need right here in this box, but we can’t get it out?”

  Lisa shook her head. “We can get the data out. It will just take time. Maybe a few days to come up with an interface cable, then a few weeks to bypass the key interrupt. After that, it’s just a matter of working out the encryption code.”

  “How long will it take to break the code?” John asked.

  Lisa exchanged looks with Karl again. “We know a lot about Thorn, so that helps. Maybe if we get lucky, we could do it in a few months.”

  John’s eyes widened. “Months?”

  “That’s if it’s on the lower end of the security scale,” Karl said. “If the code really is thirty-two digits long, it will take longe
r.”

  Ivy frowned. “John, we can’t wait that long. I told the shifter who stole this to get out of town for a while, but if we haven’t done something soon, it won’t matter what we do. Thorn will figure out her identity sooner or later and once he does, she’s dead. I promised her I wouldn’t let Thorn get to her. We’re going to have to give the box and the diamond back to him.”

  John was silent for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “You’re right.”

  Ivy blinked. She’d expected him to fight her a little more. While he had no desire to see Thorn get his hands on Dreya any more than Ivy did, he’d been after Thorn for a long time.

  John looked at the two techs. “If you test this thing with mass spec or X-ray or whatever you people use, could you make a realistic model of it?”

  Lisa looked confused. “Well, yeah, the material technology is well-known. It’s just a silicon crystal structure. Like a regular computer chip, but a lot bigger, with a few thousand layers of boron and phosphorus to form the semiconductor paths. Throw in a circuit card or two to handle the security key and the encryption code, and you’re done. But it won’t work and the data certainly won’t be there.”

  John shook his head. “I don’t need it to work or for the data to be there because when you get done with it, you’re going to smash it.”

  The two techs looked baffled beyond belief. “What?” they said in unison.

  “Smash it, make it look like a building fell on it or a steamroller drove over it, whatever,” John said. “I want it recognizable as what it used to be, but that’s all. You have two hours to make that happen. No one outside this room knows what you’re doing and why. No details of what you’ve done will ever be written down or disclosed to anyone. Is that clear?”

  Lisa and Karl nodded, still clearly confused but ready to do whatever their boss asked of them. They moved over to another table and started pulling out tools, calipers, and notepads from the drawers underneath.

  John turned to Kendra and Evan. “This is going to sound crazy, but we need a building we can set on fire and a fresh dead body to put inside it. It has to be someone we can create a detailed criminal record for, so if the guy already has a criminal past, that would be good. Burglary, safe cracking, explosives, the works—the record you create needs to be a perfect match for a criminal who would pull off the theft at Thorn’s place, and it needs to be bulletproof. Can you do that?”

  Ivy didn’t have to ask what John was planning because she already knew. He was going to make it look like the thief who’d stolen the hard drive had died in the fire and that the little black box had been destroyed. It was brilliant.

  Kendra looked at Evan, then nodded. “We can do that.”

  While Evan pulled out his cell phone and started dialing, Ivy turned to Kendra, saying, “I’m going to go find Landon and let him know what’s happening. We’ll be ready to go as soon as you get the body in place. In the meantime, let me know the moment you hear anything from Layla. I need to know she’s okay.”

  John frowned. “What do you mean ‘hear from Layla’? Where is she?”

  Kendra looked extremely uncomfortable as her boss moved his gaze back and forth between the two of them.

  “Kendra, I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me that Layla isn’t over in Ukraine trying to find Jayson and Powell,” John said.

  Kendra looked over quickly at Ivy, then turned back to their boss. “Layla isn’t over in Ukraine looking for Powell.”

  John’s scowl deepened. “Kendra.”

  Ivy gave Kendra a quick wave, then hurried to the door, never so happy to have silent feline shifter footsteps as she was right then.

  Chapter 14

  Layla led Jayson down the tight spiral staircase, her 9mm pistol clenched firmly in a hand that had suddenly become very moist with sweat. Shooting the man in the RSA building was completely different than what she was about to do in the next few minutes. He’d had a weapon pointed in their direction and been about to shoot them. This time it wouldn’t be in self-defense.

  She knew she was being stupid and that there was no reason to be squeamish about it. It wasn’t like they could walk in and politely ask Zolnerov’s men to simply release the girls. Something told her the men would certainly have no problem putting a bullet in both her and Jayson without another thought.

  Layla didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she reached the bottom of the steps. She glanced at Jayson over her shoulder, pointed down the hallway, then followed her nose to an arched doorway. She stopped just outside the door, but instead of peeking inside, she used her shifter senses to tell her what was happening in the room.

  The sour, acrid scent of fear wafted out, making her nose wrinkle up and tingle, like she wanted to sneeze. But she could also sense hope in the room as well. The girls had heard all the shooting and probably assumed it was a rescue party. They were murmuring excitedly to each other in Russian.

  “Quiet!” a man ordered harshly in Russian. “No talking.”

  The girls immediately fell silent.

  Layla forced herself to ignore the girls and what they were feeling and focused on the men. Once she had them, she turned to Jayson and traced a square outline of the room with her fingers on the wall in front of her. Then she stabbed her forefinger at three locations in that square—one in each of the far back corners and the third in the center of the room.

  Jayson nodded and pointed at himself, then the two farthest targets. He touched the center spot and motioned to her, lifting a brow in question. He’d take the two harder targets and leave the easier shot for her. That meant he was leaving himself wide-open to the shooter closest to them while he took out the other men in the room. If she didn’t make the shot—or she hesitated—Jayson would be the one paying the price.

  Layla took a deep breath and nodded.

  Jayson moved to her right shoulder and held up three fingers, then started counting them down before she had a chance to wonder how many different ways she could screw this up.

  When he got to zero, they both entered the room. It was a small home theater, complete with comfortable lounge chairs, a ceiling-mounted projector, and a wide, white screen mounted on the far wall. All twelve girls were sitting in the front of the room. They looked exhausted, scared, and more than one of them bore visible cuts and bruises. The signs of abuse sharpened Layla’s focus and she snapped her attention to the man in the center of the room, the one who was already spinning around in their direction, an assault rifle coming off his shoulder.

  She distantly heard Jayson’s pistol going off to her right, but she ignored it as she aimed for the center of her target’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The weapon bucked once in her hand, then again as she fired again to make sure he went down.

  The man forgot about the rifle in his hand, letting it hang loose as he looked down in shock at the blood seeping through the front of his shirt. A moment later, he dropped to the floor.

  Layla spun to the left and right, looking to see if she needed to help Jayson with his targets. She didn’t. Both men were already dead.

  She turned her attention to the girls on the floor to find them staring up at her and Jayson, concern and worry warring with hope on their faces.

  “Anya Zelenko?” Jayson called out.

  At her name, all other eleven prisoners in the room looked at a tall, dark-haired girl in the back of the theater. She had a bruise on her right cheek and fire in her eyes.

  “That’s me,” she said in English as she got to her feet.

  Layla smiled, hoping to reassure the girl that they were the good guys; however, as she got closer, she realized Anya was anything but terrified. Instead, she was brimming with bold defiance. No doubt she’d gotten that bruise on her cheek for getting in one of her captor’s faces and telling him exactly what she thought of him. Layla decided she liked the girl before ever exchanging a
word to her.

  “It’s time to go,” Layla said in English. “Dylan and your other friends are waiting outside for you.”

  Anya’s eyes lit up with a different kind of fire at the mention of her boyfriend’s name. “Dylan is here?”

  Layla nodded. “Yes. Neither of us speak Russian as well as you do, so if you can help us get the other girls moving, we can get out of here.”

  Anya looked like she had a thousand questions to ask, not the least of which was who the hell she and Jayson were and how Dylan had gotten them involved, but the Ukrainian girl focused on what they’d asked her to do. Scooping up the rifle from the man Layla had shot, she turned and urged all the other girls up. Layla led the way out of the room, taking them toward the main section of the house—and the exit.

  The gunfire out front had slowed a little, but the shooting coming from the east side, where Clayne and Danica had gone, was as intense as before. There were occasional explosives going off, too. It sounded like Clayne and Danica were in trouble, but there was no way she or Jayson could go to their aid until they got all the girls out and over the wall.

  They were hurrying through the living room, Layla starting to think their plan might actually work, when she picked up the scent of a lot of men coming their way—fast.

  “Incoming!” she yelled, automatically slowing down and motioning behind her for Anya and the other girls to back up.

  The girls slipped and slid on the marble floors but quickly moved backward into the cover provided by the arches that lined the eastern corridor.

  Ten feet ahead, Jayson came to a stop in the middle of the living room and lifted his rifle just as four men came running down the central corridor from the west wing. She expected Jayson to start mowing the bad guys down the moment they came into view, but instead he hesitated.

  Brian Powell’s scent hit her like a ton of bricks and her mind fought to correlate what she was smelling with what she was seeing. Powell, his head still wrapped in a bloody bandage, wasn’t a captive of the three armed militia soldiers. He was leading them.