by Liz Wolfe
Five minutes later, she removed the flash drive and logged in as the system administrator. She had just finished giving herself administrative rights to all the servers when there was a loud knock on the door.
Shelby logged out, slipped the flash drive into her pocket, and opened the door.
“Arnie, I was just looking for you.”
“Why was the door locked?” Arnie’s eyes glanced about the server room.
“I must have hit the button when I closed the door.” Shelby gave him a wide smile, hoping to eliminate his suspicions. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“You are?”
Shelby smiled again. “Well, I wanted to know if there were any limits on passwords. You know, do I need to have a number in it? How many characters does it have to be?”
“Oh. Sorry, I should have told you that.” Arnie grinned. “I guess I was just thinking about the dentist.”
“You were at the dentist?” Shelby asked.
“Well, I had an appointment for a root canal, but the dentist had an emergency so I got a reprieve until tomorrow.”
“Man, bummer on the root canal.”
“Yeah. Has to be done though. But for your password, it just has to have at least one numeric, and one alpha character and it has to be eight characters or more.”
“Thanks, Arnie. I figured it’d be something like that. Good luck on the root canal tomorrow.” Shelby walked back to her office and settled behind her desk. She logged in again and navigated to the server that contained all the employees’ personal drives. Might as well start at the top. She opened the drive belonging to Howell. Besides, she was still bothered by him.
Shelby scanned the list of folders and opened the one labeled “personal”. Most of the files were documents and spreadsheets. Shelby sighed at the amount of work before her. Probably every employee had hundreds of files on their personal drives. But she knew they were the most likely place to find a lead. She was probably wasting her time looking at David’s files, but her growing dislike of the man made her continue.
After a couple of hours, she was almost ready to admit that David had nothing to hide. Or, at least he wasn’t hiding it on his personal drive. She decided to check one more folder at random. She clicked on a folder labeled “personnel” and scanned the short list of files. Her eyes stopped at a file labeled MARD.
What the hell was that doing among David’s personnel files? What the hell was it even doing on his personal drive? Shelby opened the file and sucked in her breath as the plans for the Mobile Anti-Radar Device opened. Page after page of detailed drawings and documents unfolded. Shelby checked the file properties. It had been moved to the drive three days earlier. David hadn’t made any modifications, making it unlikely he was doing any actual work on the plans. Unlikely, but not impossible. She needed to be sure of that before she went any further.
Arnie was the only person she could strike up a casual conversation with, and she headed back down the hall to the server room. Arnie was hunched over his keyboard.
“Hey, Arnie, I just wanted to thank you for getting me set up so fast. I know in a lot of places it takes forever.”
“No problem, Shelby. How do you like it here so far?”
“Well, there’s a lot going on here.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I mean for such a small business.” Shelby smiled, hoping to put Arnie in a talkative mood. “There are only a dozen engineers and five or six programmers.”
“They put out a lot of work, that’s for sure,” Arnie said.
“I guess upper management does some of the work, too, huh?”
“Here? You gotta be kidding.” Arnie laughed. “None of them know how to do anything but manage. When Howell first got transferred from the corporate offices, someone put up a copy of his resume’ in the lunchroom. All he’s ever done is be a manager.”
“Oh, I guess that’s the way it is these days.” Shelby looked at her watch. “Well, I better get back to my office and see if I can figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. Thanks again.”
“No problem. You need anything, just call.” Arnie waved as Shelby left.
Well, duh! She should have thought of checking the personnel files for David’s resume’. Shelby logged on to her computer and quickly accessed the personnel server. A few minutes later, she was reading David Howell’s resume’. MBA from Harvard. Joined Eastland Industries about ten years ago. Moved up through the ranks in successively more important managerial positions. Impressive, but certainly nothing to indicate he would even understand the plans for the Mobile Anti-Radar Device, much less work on them.
So, why was there a copy of them on his personal drive?
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
PAIGE WOKE WHEN CONNOR SHIFTED, ALLOWING the sunlight to splash across her face, turning the inside of her eyelids a brilliant red. She lay still for a few minutes listening to the even breathing of the man beside her. It felt pretty good. Something she hadn’t had for a long time.
“You’re awake.” Connor lifted his head and kissed her. His lips were soft and inviting. Paige felt her body respond in kind, but gently pushed him away and sat up. She needed to rinse off and she really didn’t want one of the others stumbling across them at that particular moment.
“Come on.” Paige grabbed his hand and hauled him to a sitting position. “Let’s take a dip before we go back.”
The water was cool and refreshing, and for a few moments Paige could pretend they were just a couple on a tropical island. Connor dove under the water and grabbed her ankle, pulling her down with him. He pressed a moist kiss to her breast, and she almost gasped. He pulled her legs around his waist, and they floated up to the surface. Her breasts were warm where they pressed against him, and his hands traced patterns on her back. She wanted more than anything to melt into him, to have the fantasy that this was a tropical vacation be true. But it wasn’t. Paige pulled away and swam back to the bank.
“How did your mother die?” Connor asked while they were struggling to pull dry clothes on over their wet bodies.
That took Paige by surprise. She stopped tugging on her shorts and looked at him. “Why do you ask?”
“She was young, so I thought it probably wasn’t expected. Must have been a shock for you.” He shrugged. “It must have been hard.”
“It was.” She zipped up her shorts. “We’d just gotten back from a camping trip in Mexico. Mom wanted to dive off the cliffs.” Paige shrugged. “She loved that kind of stuff.”
Connor nodded and waited for her to continue.
“She and Dad usually went out for an evening alone when we’d been gone. On the way home, they were mugged.”
“At gunpoint?”
“Knifepoint, actually. Mom never liked Dad to carry his weapon when he wasn’t on duty, so he’d left it at home, as usual.”
“What happened?” he asked softly.
“After he’d taken their money, the mugger was startled by something or someone. He pushed her into the street just as a truck was turning the corner.”
“I see.”
“The driver didn’t have time to stop. She was killed instantly.” Paige sucked in a shuddering breath at the memory.
“And your father couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“He kept saying that if he’d just had his gun with him …” Tears pricked her eyes. “But he didn’t. He really had a hard time with that.”
“I can imagine.”
“I spent a lot of time with him after that. I did everything I could to make him feel better.” Paige pushed her feet into her hiking boots. “We went to the cabin almost every weekend, and I let him teach me about weapons. We talked a lot about police work. He really believed in the system. But nothing really helped until he caught the mugger.”
“He caught him?”
“Yeah. He’d check the log every day at the station. Look at pictures of every man who was arrested. He believed that eventually he’d see the guy.�
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“I guess that was a face he wouldn’t forget.”
“It took a long time, but one day, they arrested him. Dad recognized him, charges were filed.”
“And that helped him?”
“I think it probably did. It didn’t bring her back, but it was a kind of justice that Dad could live with.”
“And what about you? Was it a justice you could live with?” Connor asked.
“I don’t know. Never really thought about it, I guess. I’d lost one parent, and I put all my energy into the parent I still had.”
“Is that why you became a cop? “
“I don’t remember when I decided to become a cop. I think it just grew on me. After Mom was gone, I spent most of my time with Dad. And Dad was all about being a cop, so that’s what we talked about. I know it made him happy when I joined the force.” Paige bent and tied her shoelaces. “We need to get back to camp.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But when this is over I want to spend some serious time with you.”
She grinned at him, glad to be off the subject of her parents. “Depends on what you call serious.”
“Seriously fun, then. I think I can last a few years before you wear me out with that sweet body of yours.”
A few years? Paige had been thinking along the lines of an occasional night. She didn’t have a few years. Not right now. She had finally become a partner in the agency. That meant a lot more responsibility. As great as sex was— and it was really great with Connor—an ongoing relationship just wasn’t in her immediate future. Paige thought that this was probably not a good time to have one of those long, heart-to-heart conversations about where a relationship was going. And, like he’d said, they might both be dead in a couple of days anyway.
That thought jerked her back to reality. She needed to know what they were going to do. Just staying one step ahead of the Hunters wouldn’t work forever. Hell, it probably wouldn’t work for long.
“Ty, you and Nick are coming with me today.” Paige stood and dropped her coconut shell bowl with the others. “Connor, you’ll stay here and man the outlook.”
“I’d rather go with you.”
Paige grinned at his eagerness. “Nope. You got to have a field trip yesterday.”
“What are we going to do?” Nick asked.
“We’re going back to the campsite we left. We’ll collect everything and take it to a new spot. Build a fire, leave some tracks in and out, make it look like we’ve been staying there.”
“Why?” Nick asked. “I mean, it sounds like a lot of work.”
“We want them to think we’re still in the jungle. Give them somewhere to look besides up here.” Paige was relieved that no one asked what they were going to do about getting off the damn island, because she didn’t know. Yet.
Alex and Aleisha took care of the cleaning up while Connor climbed the tree and Nick, Ty, and Paige headed down the mountain. She could feel the increase in humidity and heat as soon as they entered the rainforest. Paige led them through the thick vegetation as quickly as possible, arriving at the old campsite in a couple of hours.
The Hunters had thrown some stuff around, but that was pretty much the only change. Paige directed Ty and Nick to gather everything up. When they had it all, she led them through the jungle, making sure to leave clear tracks. Of course, the next monsoon would obliterate them, but she left enough broken brushes and branches that anyone could follow. They headed west for about half an hour and stopped in a clearing.
Ty and Nick set up the tents while Paige scattered everyone’s belongings around, making sure everything looked different from the way they had left it last time. The three of them walked around the camp to leave tracks, then built a smoky fire and let it burn for a while. Her heart wasn’t really in it. At best, this was a stopgap measure. Something the Hunters might fall for if they weren’t too observant, and if they happened to come across it. Really, it was just to give everyone something to do while she tried to come up with a plan of action. Satisfied they had made it look like they were camping there, Paige banked the fire, and they headed back to the cave.
On the way back, they found an abundance of guava berries and sea grapes and gathered enough to last a few days. Paige stuffed some edible greens into her pack and dug up a few wild yams. Even though none of them wanted fish, Paige stopped and caught several before returning to the cave. It wasn’t steak, but it would fill their bellies.
“Hey,” Paige called up to Connor.
“Yo.” He waved at her.
She climbed up the tree and perched on the sturdy branch next to him. “See anything interesting?”
“You,” he said and swept his lips across hers. Paige stifled the urge to giggle. She never giggled. But she couldn’t help smiling.
“I meant down there.” She pointed toward the far edge of the rainforest.
“Yep. Just a few minutes ago, the Hunters drove their Jeep to the edge of the rainforest and went inside.”
“Which road?”
“The one on the far right.” He handed the binoculars to her. They weren’t very powerful, but they worked.
“Maybe they’ll find the camp we set up, then.”
“They probably saw the smoke from the fire you built.”
“That’s the plan. I just hope it keeps them away from here.”
“Looks like they were here just a while ago. The fire pit is still warm.” Kevin kicked at the half-burned wood and looked around the camp.
“This is working out for shit.”
“Well, Dennis, you wanted a challenge, didn’t you?” Wade asked.
“What I want is all of them dead. I don’t care about hunting them any more. I just want it over with.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying for days now,” Nathan complained. “In fact I told you we should just hire someone to get rid of them. But, no, you and Martin wanted the thrill of the hunt.”
Wade walked away, following the trail of footprints into the jungle. God, he was tired of Nathan’s constant whining. Granted, the hunt wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d planned, but they’d get them. Hell, where were they going to go? The trail disappeared into the brush, and Wade turned and retraced his steps back to the camp. Martin had returned from taking a whiz and was listening to Dennis and Nathan argue.
“We could just leave them here,” Nathan suggested. “Wade can fly the plane. We can just leave, and they’ll starve to death or something.”
“Yeah. Or they can build a signal fire and get noticed by some low-flying plane or a ship passing by,” Wade said.
“Do you think that could happen?” Nathan looked disappointed.
“I’m not willing to take that chance, are you?” Wade rubbed his bandaged arm.
“But they could die before that,” Nathan argued hopefully.
“They haven’t died yet, have they?”
“Well, boys, seems to me we need a new plan.” Martin smoothed his mustache. “This running into the jungle every morning doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.”
“Absolutely,” Dennis agreed. “Wade, what do you think?”
“I think they’re better at this than we’d originally thought they would be.”
“That opinion helps a lot, Wade.” Dennis walked over and looked inside one of the tents. “From someone who let two of them get away.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Dennis? You think I let them get away on purpose? You think I called that damn bear over just to give them a chance to leave? You think I wanted to be mauled?”
“Keep your shorts on, Wade.” Martin glanced at the bandages on Wade’s forearm. “Dennis is just frustrated like the rest of us.”
Wade paced across the clearing, looking at everything, then stopped. “I think they’re messing with us.”
“What’s that?” Martin inquired.
“There aren’t enough tracks here. The tents are set up too close together. The cooking utensils are clean but there’s no sign of where they cleaned them.
No water in camp.”
“So?” Dennis asked.
“So, I think they set this up to make us think this is where they’re camping,” Wade said.
Martin grunted and ran his fingers across his mustache. “Then, where the hell are they?”
“About as far from here as they can get would be my guess.” Wade turned and headed back down the trail, the others following. He stopped at the Jeep and looked around. Beyond the rainforest, he could see the tip of the mountain.
“That’s where I’d go.” He pointed to the mountain. “Out of the jungle. Kevin said they were going to camp in a cave. There’s a lot of them up there.”
“That’s what Paige said.” Kevin nodded.
“I also think they expect us to hunt them during the day,” Wade said. “I’d say it’s time to break out the night gear and see if we can catch them asleep.”
“Now you’re thinking, boy.” Martin clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get back to the house, have a good meal, and get some rest before dark.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
PAIGE SWALLOWED THE LAST OF HER guava berries, took a swig of water, and headed out to relieve Ty from his position on watch in the tree. She climbed up to the limb beneath him and handed him a bunch of berries.
“Did they leave yet?” she asked.
“Nope. Kept my eyes peeled. Haven’t seen a thing.”
“Go get some lunch. Send Nick up to relieve me in a couple of hours.”
“Will do.” Ty scrambled down the tree, and Paige turned her attention to the rainforest and the roads that led south from it. It had been just over an hour since Connor had seen the Hunters enter the jungle and she expected they wouldn’t return for several more hours. She was surprised when she saw them return to the Jeep less than half an hour later. She watched the Jeep bounce along the trail and park in front of the house.
What the hell were they doing? Surely, the Hunters didn’t expect to locate them by wandering through the jungle for an hour or so at a time? Paige wanted to believe they were that stupid, but she couldn’t. She watched the house for another hour but they didn’t leave again.