Deception Lake

by Paula Graves

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked. “About trying to help me.”

  Something in her expression had changed. There was a softness in her eyes, a hint of vulnerability that made the world shift beneath his feet. He stood very still, waiting for her next move.

  “I’m looking for someone,” she said finally. “Someone who doesn’t want to be found. And if I don’t find him soon, a whole lot of people are going to get hurt. Or worse.”

  * * *

  “SHE SHREDDED THE hard drives. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to reconstruct anything.”

  Alexander Quinn quelled a flash of anger and met Anson Daughtry’s troubled gaze without blinking. “She must believe she’s in danger.”

  “Then why didn’t she contact you?” Daughtry dropped into the chair across from Quinn’s desk, all long limbs and a deceptive somnolence that hid a quick, brilliantly twisty mind. “You should have let me have a go at the project. She was always too much a wild card.”

  “You keep my computer systems running. I’ll handle personnel.”

  Daughtry’s lips pressed tightly together, but he didn’t argue.

  “It’s not in her nature to trust people. With good cause.” Quinn rose from his desk and crossed to the window that faced east. Night and rainfall obscured the normally breathtaking view of the Smoky Mountains he enjoyed, but his memory supplied the image of softly rounded peaks carpeted with evergreens that made the mountains look as if they’d been upholstered in blue-green suede.

  He’d left these mountains so long ago he could barely remember those boyhood years spent roaming the wilderness and imagining adventures far beyond the peaks and hollows of home.

  But the mountains he’d always remembered, as if they were part of his flesh and bones.

  Daughtry sighed audibly. “She left her phone at the cabin. Took all the insides out, so we’ll have to contact the wireless company to get a call log.”

  Quinn had anticipated that turn of events. “Nick Darcy’s already on it.”

  “Do you think she’s gone rogue?” Daughtry asked.

  Quinn turned to look at the younger man. “I guess that depends on your definition of rogue.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  No, Quinn supposed it wasn’t. But it was the only answer he planned to give Daughtry. A life of lies and deception in the CIA had taught Quinn a lot of lessons, but the primary one was that there was no such thing as a trustworthy colleague. Every human being had a price, even the most honest and moral of people. Money, sex, family, love of country, love of self, even a passion for the greater good could be wielded like a weapon against any given person at any given time.

  The secret was knowing which weapon to use against whom.

  But life could not be lived in pure isolation. And limited trust had to be granted from time to time to limited people in limited ways.

  He’d chosen to share a part of Mallory Jennings’s secret with Anson Daughtry. Not the name of the elusive gray-hat hacker she’d been helping Quinn seek. But other than Nick Darcy, Daughtry was the only employee of The Gates who knew their pretty office assistant was anything but an ordinary clerical worker.

  Had even that partial information put her life in danger?

  Or was she running from that troubled past that had brought her to Quinn’s attention in the first place?

  He didn’t know the answer to Daughtry’s question. And if there was one thing Alexander Quinn hated more than anything else in the world, it was not knowing the answer to a question that intrigued him.

  Mallory Jennings had gone off the grid, and if Hannah Patterson’s earlier call meant anything, she’d gone there with a mercurial, unpredictable former rodeo cowboy in tow.

  He returned to his desk and sat, nodding toward the door. “Let me know if you uncover anything new.”

  Daughtry frowned, clearly not happy with being summarily dismissed. But he unfolded his lanky body and headed out the door without saying anything more.

  Quinn waited until the door closed behind the other man before he released a sigh of frustration. He’d known she’d be trouble.

  She always had been.

  * * *

  MALLORY WATCHED JACK’S reaction carefully, looking for any obvious tells. She’d gotten pretty good at reading people in her younger days—a matter of survival, really, given the kind of people she’d run with then. Nineteen and already finished with her undergraduate studies at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology—MIT—she’d been ready to run wild. It had been a short step from the tech nerds she’d shared classes with to the brilliant underworld of hackers with whom she’d eventually fallen in. The majority had been mostly harmless, their forays into the silicon nervous system of the world’s computer networks all part of a game of cat and mouse with no real nefarious intentions.

  But there had been others whose motives were anything but harmless. And naturally, being young and reckless, a headstrong little Texas redneck swimming in a murky pool of cybersharks, she’d gravitated to the thrill seekers and the rule breakers.

  For all she knew, Jack Drummond could be one of them. She’d betrayed some very dangerous people when she went to the CIA with what she’d discovered about a plan in the works for a cyberterror attack that would have crippled the world economy for months, maybe years.

  Jack Drummond had wandered into her sister’s life within a few months of her first contact with Alexander Quinn. Had that been a coincidence?

  The lean, handsome cowboy stared back at her, his eyebrows raised in a slight quirk. But if he knew what she was talking about, he didn’t show it. “That’s a bit dramatic,” he commented.

  He wasn’t a hit man. Or even a hacktivist true believer, she decided when he continued to gaze back at her with frustration and a hint of skepticism. “I guess so. But it’s also true.”

  He caught the back of one of the two chairs in the small motel room and pulled it closer to where she stood. He sat and looked up at her with earnest dark eyes that made her want to believe he was exactly what he claimed to be.

  Her habit of trusting only herself had kept her alive so far. But for what? A life constantly on the run? Of always looking over her shoulder?

  You tried to trust someone else, and your sister ended up dead.

  “Are you a hacker?” he asked.

  She released a deep breath. “Define hacker.”

  “You breach computer security systems, I guess. For Quinn?”

  “No.”

  “No, you’re not a hacker, or no, you don’t do it for Quinn?”

  “No, I’m not discussing this with you. And you know that not all hackers are criminals, don’t you?”

  He shoved his fingers through his dark hair in frustration. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “No, I’m defining the terms. Yes, I’m a hacker. So was Steve Jobs. So is Linus Torvalds.”

  “Who?”

  She almost laughed. “Cretin.”

  He shrugged, a smile flirting with his lips. “My interests are a little more...visceral.”

  Heat flooded through her veins. He really needed to stop being so damn sexy. He was making her insane. “Not all hackers are lawbreakers. There are basically three types—and as a cowboy, you should appreciate this—called white hats, gray hats and black hats.”

  “And you’re a white hat?”

  At the moment anyway, she thought. “In this instance, yes.”

  “But not always?”

  “Not always,” she conceded, shooting him a sharp look. “But we all have our sinful pasts, don’t we?”

  “We do indeed.” The partial smile grew a little bolder, quirking the corners of his mouth. “So, this white-hat hacking you’re doing—”

  “It’s not exactly hacking. Not what I’m doing now.” She hesitated, apprehension tying her gut into knots.

  “You said you’re looking for someone,” he prodded. “And he’s hiding somewhere in cyberspace?”

  She�
��d told him that much? She closed her eyes, shutting out the magnetic pull of his dark gaze. “Jack, please.”

  “Not your secrets to tell?”

  She shook her head. “And I wouldn’t tell them, even if they were.”

  His voice lowered to a gravelly whisper. “What are you afraid of, Mallory? Can you tell me that much?”

  “You,” she whispered. She opened her eyes, steeling herself against the concern she saw shimmering in his gaze. “I’m afraid of you.”

  Chapter Eight

  What they both needed, Jack thought as he stared out the window into the rainy gloom, was a hot meal and sleep, and not necessarily in that order. But he had no desire to venture out in the storm for whatever fast food they might be able to stumble across at this late hour, and sleep was proving elusive.

  Mallory had blurted out her fear of him, then disappeared into the bathroom about a half hour ago. The shower had stopped running fifteen minutes after that, and there had been only silence since.

  There was no window in the bathroom, and the only vent he’d noticed was far too small for a human to crawl through. So she was still in the bathroom, right?

  He turned away from the window and crossed to the bathroom door, placing his ear against it. Hearing nothing through the flimsy wood, he rapped with his knuckles. “Mallory?”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice sounded thick and muffled.

  “Are you going to stay in there all night?” He kept his own voice deliberately light. “Because I had a lot of coffee earlier today—”

  He heard movement, then the rattle of the door handle. He stepped back as the door swung open and she glared up at him through red-rimmed eyes. “Are you happy now?”

  He sighed. “Clearly you’re not.”

  “I said I’m fine.” She brushed past him, the herbal scent of her bath soap lingering as she passed. She’d changed into an oversize Green Bay Packers jersey and a pair of silky running shorts that revealed the well-toned legs her jeans had hidden.

  Forcing his libido into submission, he followed, settling on the bed across from where she sat finger-coming her damp hair. “You said you’re afraid of me.”

  “Forget I said anything about anything.”

  “Can’t do that. You also mentioned a lot of people getting hurt.”

  “Maybe a lot of people maybe getting hurt.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel okay about dumping you here at this fleabag motel and going back to my family vacation?”

  A look of consternation furrowed her brow. “Yes. You’re shallow and self-centered. Life is a game to you—I mean, my God, you ride bulls for a living!”

  “Rode bulls.”

  “Whatever.” Her eyes narrowed a twitch. “How long did it take to recover?”

  “Almost six months.”

  She winced. “Bet the medical costs were hell.”

  “Considering how lucky I am to be alive, I guess they were worth it.” He’d thought at the time he was a dead man, with that much weight on top of him, but the surgeons told him he’d gotten miraculously lucky. “The doctors said if the bull’s weight had landed a few inches higher, I’d be dead.”

  She held his gaze without flinching at his words, but he could see a slight tremble around the corners of her eyes. Mara’s eyes used to do the same thing when she was trying to hide her reaction. He’d seen it a lot during the last troubled days of their doomed relationship.

  Maybe Mallory and her twin hadn’t been as different as she seemed to think.

  “I had saved up some prize money, and I had been smart enough to get insured through the rodeo cowboys’ association, so I managed to get through the aftermath without taking too big a financial hit. I’ve been doing some freelance consulting since then.”

  “What kind of consulting?” Her expression looked bored, but he heard a note of curiosity in her voice.

  “Bull breeders, horse breeders—they like a pro cowboy’s opinion on what breeding stock to purchase. Did some teaching at rodeo schools—”

  “Rodeo schools?” She looked skeptical.

  “I thought you were from Texas,” he shot back with mock disapproval.

  “Got the hell out as soon as I could.” She flashed him the first genuine grin he’d seen from her since they met. It was breathtaking. Her sister, Mara, had always had a pretty smile, but Mallory’s grin was all teeth and dimples and utterly infectious. He found his own mouth curving in response.

  “I liked Texas.” His smile faded. “For the most part.”

  “I hear a whole lot of the female part of Texas liked you, too.” She arched one dark eyebrow. “Didn’t you know Mara wasn’t the buckle bunny type?”

  “I knew she wasn’t a groupie,” he said. “But she was sweet. And smart. And she didn’t even like the rodeo very much, but she liked me anyway.”

  “I don’t think she was that surprised when you blew it.”

  “We weren’t suited.”

  “No.”

  “But I took advantage of her kindness and her caring. Even when I knew it couldn’t go anywhere.” If he was honest with himself, he had never had a relationship he had ever thought could go anywhere. He’d resigned himself to spending the rest of his life moving from one relationship to the next.

  “You humiliated her.”

  “I did. I’m sorry about that. I’m most sorry that she never got to hear me say so.”

  “Guess you don’t remember that drunk call you made to her later that night, then.”

  He frowned. “What drunk call?”

  “Apparently you were pretty maudlin. Begged her to forgive you, promised to stop drinking, told her she was way too good for you—”

  “I didn’t do that.”

  “She saved the message. Let me listen to it.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “She wouldn’t have done that.”

  Her lips quirked. “No, she wouldn’t have. But she did say you called to say you were sorry. I take it you didn’t?”

  “Not that I recall. And I didn’t get drunk enough to forget something like that.”

  She sighed. “That was Mara. Protecting your sorry ass even when you didn’t deserve it.”

  He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about him anymore.

  Any hint of humor had left her face. “I don’t know who killed her, Jack. But whoever it was, they were after me, not her. Do you have any idea how hard that knowledge is to live with?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I know what it’s like to lose one of the few people in the world who really gives a damn if you live or die. And I’m real sorry you do, too.”

  To his surprise, she reached across the narrow space between the hotel beds and caught his hand. “I believe you really are.”

  He closed his fingers around her hand. “Let me help you, Mallory. I don’t have any agenda here. I swear. I just owe Mara for the things I did, and I know she would have wanted me to help you if I could.”

  Nibbling her lower lip between her straight white teeth, she gave him a considering look. Finally she took a deep breath and let go of his hand. “I’m looking for a hacker. Someone I knew once, a few years ago. He was a white hat at the time, but I’m not sure he still is.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know his real name. Quinn does, but he never told me. I just know the hacker name he used to go by when I knew him—Endrex. Quinn says he’s also gone by pwnst4r and Phreakwrld.” She spelled out the screen names for him.

  “And what is this guy supposedly up to?” Jack was reasonably technology-savvy, but the hacker underworld Mallory was trying to explain to him might as well have been on a different planet.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “You said before that a lot of people could get hurt.”

  She scooted back on the bed, curling one leg up under her as she leaned forward, her slender fingers toying with the nubby bedspread fabric. “There’s been chatter.”

  “Chatter?”


  “Cross talk. Rumors. Hints at something big coming. The people I worked with at The Gates seemed to think there could be a large-scale domestic terror attack in the works.”

  Jack’s gut tightened. “And you’re in the middle of this?”

  She shot him a glare. “No, I’m not in the middle of it.”

  “But you’re looking for a guy you think might be.”

  “He might be. Or he might be trying to thwart it. Quinn seems to think it’s the latter, but—”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I don’t know. Being a white hat at one point doesn’t mean he still is. And Endrex always had his own agenda, even when he was doing things for the government. I just never could figure out what that agenda might be, from day-to-day.”

  “How well did you know this guy?” Even as the words escaped his mouth, he realized they sounded like an accusation. Her gaze snapped up to meet his in response, and he gave himself a mental kick. “I mean, did you ever meet him in person? Or was everything on the internet?”

  “The internet.”

  “So you don’t even know if he’s a guy.”

  “He’s a guy. I knew people who’d met him. In the ‘real world.’” She made quotation gestures with her fingers at his look of skepticism. “He’s a guy. Midthirties by now. Longish hair. Believe me, I’ve been asking everyone I know online about him.”

  “Maybe you asked the wrong person the wrong question,” he suggested. “Is there any way to track the people you talked to? See if you can figure out what triggered someone to send a rifle-toting goon after you?”

  “Maybe.” She made a face. “I’ve been a little busy running for my life and trying to get away from a mule-headed cowboy with a savior complex.”

  He couldn’t stop a grin at her description of him. “Probably more a guilt complex than a savior one, but otherwise...”

  She heaved a gusty, deliberate sigh. “Well, while we’re sitting here playing name the complex, I’m losing work time.” Mallory grabbed her backpack and pulled a sleek laptop computer from inside, setting it on the bed in front of her. Retrieving a power cord and a surge protector strip, she plugged one end into the computer and tossed the cord and surge protector strip to him. “Find a wall plug,” she ordered, all business.