Off the Grid Christmas

by Mary Ellen Porter

  Kane had spent years trying to forgive himself for not being able to save Lexi. And in the end, for failing to save Evan. He’d spent years reliving those moments, hearing Evan’s harsh rasping breath, the last words of his dying cousin. “Tell Mom I’m sorry. Make sure she’s okay. Promise me.”

  Kane had joined the military and kept that promise, anonymously sending money to Evan’s mom. It was all he could do. It would never be enough.

  He shoved the thoughts away, pushed the memories back where they belonged. The crew lifted Arden’s backboard and carried her off the boat.

  He didn’t release her hand.

  He wouldn’t. Not until he was pried away from her, and even then, he planned to put up a fight.

  The dock was a flurry of activity. Silas was talking to agents, Dutch at his feet. Randy stood a few feet away, handcuffed and haggard, talking rapidly.

  Kane couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was certain it was a list of excuses that would take weeks for the FBI to sort through.

  Grayson fell in step beside him, his voice clipped and tight.

  “Agent Keller from the Boston Office is here.”

  “And?”

  “He wants to speak to you.”

  “I told Arden I wasn’t letting go of her. I’m not.”

  Grayson frowned, his gaze dropping to his sister. “I’ll do damage control, then meet you at the hospital. She’s going to need surgery. You let her out of your sight except for when they’re working on her, and I will personally make sure you spend the next few days answering useless questions at headquarters.”

  “It’s not nice to threaten people, Grayson,” Arden said without opening her eyes.

  “It’s not nice to let people get shot, either,” her brother replied.

  “It wasn’t his fault. He told me not to go in alone, but I had to.” She finally opened her eyes. “Where’s my laptop?”

  “Still in Silas’s SUV,” Kane responded.

  “I need it.” She tried to sit up, but the harnesses held her in place.

  “Stop,” Kane cautioned. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I’m already hurt.”

  “You’ll make it worse. I’ll have Silas grab the laptop. You rest. We’ve got things under control.”

  “Not if the FBI plugs the USB into their computers. It’ll take down their system. Don’t let them do that, Grayson. Just get the laptop to the hospital. I’ll take care of everything from there. I need to get the files—”

  “Kane is right,” Grayson cut her off. “We’ll handle things. You just get better.”

  “But—”

  “Oxygen levels are dropping,” a paramedic said, dropping an oxygen mask over her face. “You need to relax and stop talking, ma’am.”

  “Story of my life,” Arden murmured. Her eyes closed again, and her hand tightened around Kane’s as if she thought he could keep her from drifting away.

  He climbed onto the ambulance after they lifted her in, borrowed the paramedic’s phone and texted Silas to bring the laptop to the hospital once the FBI cleared him to leave. There was more that needed to be done to assure national security. The entity that had paid to receive the files still needed to be revealed.

  Kane wanted to care. He did care, but he was more concerned about Arden. Her vital signs were dropping, her breathing becoming shallower. By the time they reached the hospital, the EMTs were working silently and quickly, keeping pressure on the wound to slow the blood loss, increasing oxygen flow. He could feel their tension and his own.

  The ambulance doors opened, and a team of doctors and nurses appeared. They were moving, shifting Arden to a gurney, wheeling her through the hall, and he still managed to hold onto her hand. It was limp now, no desperate grasping.

  “She’s lost too much blood,” someone said. “We’re going straight to surgery.”

  “Sir?” A man touched his shoulder. “You’re going to have to let her go.”

  Probably, but he couldn’t quite make himself release her hand.

  They reached the double doors that led into the surgical suite, and the same guy stepped in front of Kane, blocking his path.

  “There’s a waiting room to the left,” he said quietly. “I’m Lucas Riggs. Head surgical nurse. I’ll keep you updated on things, Mr.—?”

  “Walker. Kane.”

  “We’ll take good care of her, Kane,” the nurse said, and then the gurney was moving again. Arden’s hand slipped from Kane’s as she was wheeled away.

  * * *

  Nearly two hours later, and she still wasn’t out of surgery.

  Kane eyed the waiting room clock and wondered how much longer it would be.

  He’d already given his statement, had his firearm confiscated for evidence, given his statement again. He’d used the phone at the nurse’s station to call both Jace and Silas, who’d been taken downtown for his statement.

  Kane stopped by the large windows that looked out over the courtyard. A dusting of new snow covered the walkways. Icicle lights hung from the windows and doorframes. Arden would love that.

  She’d love the snow. The lights. The Christmas carols playing over the intercom.

  The doors opened and Grayson DeMarco walked in. His black hair was nearly the same color as Arden’s, his blue eyes not nearly as soft and inviting.

  “How is she?”

  “Still in surgery.”

  “I’m going to see if I can find someone who knows what’s going on.” He turned back to the door.

  “I’ve been to the front desk every fifteen minutes. No one’s talking,” Kane warned him, and Grayson swung back around.

  “I don’t like being helpless,” he growled.

  “Join the crowd.”

  “Since there’s only two of us, there’s not much of one. The hospital staff’s extremely fortunate the snow has grounded my parents at the airport in Baltimore or my mom would take up permanent residence at the desk until someone gave her some answers.”

  “Maybe I should try that,” Kane responded wryly.

  Grayson walked to a coffeepot that sat on a nicked Formica counter and poured thick black coffee into a cup. “This stuff taste as bad as it looks?”

  “Worse.”

  “A perfect end to a perfect day,” he responded, taking a quick sip and grimacing. “You didn’t lie.”

  “I usually don’t.”

  “We’ve got men in GeoArray, a team of specialists that may or may not be able to undo what Arden did. I’m really hoping that the two of you have evidence that proves it was necessary to totally degrade a system used by the Department of Defense.”

  “We do.”

  “Good. I’m staking my reputation on that.”

  The door opened again. The nurse stepped inside the waiting room.

  “Kane? She’s out of surgery. I’ll take you back now.” His gaze cut to Grayson, sizing him up. “If you’re FBI, you’re going to have to wait. She’s not up to answering questions.”

  “I’m her brother.”

  “Then you can come back. But no more than two people at a time in the recovery room.”

  Kane and Grayson followed him through the double doors down a pristine hallway to a small recovery room where Arden lay. She looked tiny, her body shrouded in blankets. A monitor measured her heart rate and blood pressure. Clear fluid dripped steadily into the IV line attached to her arm.

  The doctor, still dressed in surgery scrubs, was making notes on a clipboard. He looked up as they entered the room.

  “Are you Ms. DeMarco’s relatives?” he asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose and slipping his pen in his pocket.

  “Yes,” they answered simultaneously.

  “The surgery went well. We were able to use a plate and scr
ews to rebuild the clavicle.”

  “Rebuild?” Kane asked. He pulled a chair over to the bed and sat.

  “The bullet went through her humerus and traveled up into the shoulder, shattering her clavicle. She’s very fortunate it missed the major arteries in the chest wall. She’ll need eight to twelve weeks to recover fully.” The doctor attached the chart to the clipboard at the end of Arden’s bed. “We’ll be monitoring her closely, but the prognosis is good.”

  “Thanks, doctor,” Grayson said, shaking the man’s hand.

  Kane would have done the same, but the surgeon was already hurrying away.

  “Arden?” Grayson said. He touched his sister’s forehead. She shifted but didn’t respond. “She looks terrible,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she muttered without opening her eyes.

  “Sorry, sis. I thought you were still out.”

  “I wish I were. I really, really do.”

  “Are you in a lot of pain?” Kane asked, and she finally opened her eyes.

  “Is the opossum the only North American marsupial? Are the echidna and the platypus the only mammals that lay eggs?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, lifting her right hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

  “You know what would make me feel better?” she asked.

  “Christmas?”

  “No. Well, yes, but...my laptop. Where is it?”

  “We can worry about the laptop later,” Grayson said. He pulled a chair over to the other side of his sister’s bed.

  “We have a twenty-four-hour window of opportunity to catch the buyers. That’s when the file transfer was scheduled. If we miss the opportunity, we may never catch the buyer.” She was pallid but reached for the button on the bed railing, obviously trying to lever the bed up.

  “Stop,” Kane said, and she shook her head.

  “I can’t. There’s too much riding on this.”

  “We’ve got a team working on it, Arden. All you need to do is work on healing,” Grayson cut in.

  “It is going to take your team too long. I designed the worm to stay out of the system storage and preserve forensic evidence that could be used in trial. They’ll never be able to recover the server in time. I’m the only one that can do it.”

  She met Kane’s eyes. “You know it’s true, and you know I can’t rest until I do this last thing.”

  He did.

  He also knew that he cared as much about her health as he did anything else. She wouldn’t rest. He knew that. She’d lie in bed, her mind working through the computer system even if the laptop wasn’t in her hands.

  He reached for the bedside phone, ignoring Grayson’s scowl. “I’ll call Silas for his ETA. Last time we spoke, he planned to return to the SUV from the FBI’s Boston office.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She smiled like she had on the yacht, and he knew. Suddenly and clearly. No questions. No angst. No second-guessing.

  She was where he’d been heading all his life.

  She was the home he’d been searching for.

  Her smile? It was the thing that had been missing from his life, and if her brother hadn’t been sitting right beside her, he’d have told her that.

  Instead, he dialed Silas’s number and waited impatiently for his friend to pick up. He knew Arden would never rest until she had her computer in hand. And she needed rest to heal.

  SEVENTEEN

  Arden’s small hospital room was packed. Two FBI agents stood against the wall. Grayson and Kane were sitting near the bed, talking in hushed voices while Arden typed right-handed.

  She’d been at it for two hours, and her entire body hurt. She wasn’t quite sure where the pain was coming from. She only knew it was there and that she had to ignore it. This had to be done. No pain meds until it was. No sleeping.

  No looking into Kane’s beautiful dark eyes.

  It took every ounce of concentration she could muster to focus on the complex algorithms scrolling across the screen in front of her.

  Silas leaned against the wall next to the window, dressed in all black. The medical staff gave him a wide berth, some glancing uncomfortably at him, as they entered and exited the room.

  A young nurse in colorful scrubs with rosy cheeks and a nametag identifying her as Lisa, with a heart over the i, fussed around the hospital bed, checking Arden’s vital signs and the IV fluids.

  With a thermometer under her tongue, Arden was doing her best to ignore the woman and focus on the task. A feat made doubly difficult by the room full of people. Not to mention that the overly chipper nurse seemed more interested in stealing glances at Kane, Grayson and Silas than in recording Arden’s temperature.

  Arden found herself uncharacteristically annoyed by that.

  She was used to women fawning all over the men in her life. Her four brothers commanded attention from the ladies wherever they went. Arden usually found humor in it. But somehow watching the nurse covertly glancing at Kane when she thought no one was looking was irritating.

  Of course, she couldn’t blame the woman—Kane’s quiet confidence and strength filled a room when he entered. Truth be told, Arden had caught herself glancing at him as well, only to find Kane’s warm brown eyes fixed on her from across the room.

  She took a calming breath and tried to ignore the nurse while she made a few adjustments to the reparation program.

  At Arden’s insistence, Grayson had called the FBI’s forensic specialist, Harriet Clemmons. Together, Arden and Harriet had been able to establish a connection for Arden to remote into the FBI’s network from her laptop. Grayson had forwarded the decrypted files to Harriet earlier, but Arden had still needed to transmit all the research files she’d collected, along with the files she’d swiped tonight.

  A quick look at the evidence was enough to convince Harriet that Marcus Emory had planned to sell government secrets.

  The question remained, to whom?

  Arden hoped the answer was somewhere on GeoArray’s network, and she intended to help the FBI find it.

  Advised of the contents of the decrypted files, Harriet had pulled some strings to get a warrant for Marcus Emory’s personal system as well as GeoArray’s networks. One of Harriet’s techs had retrieved Arden’s external drive from the hospital, then met Harriet and the FBI forensics team at GeoArray’s headquarters.

  Once the USB was plugged into the network and the override code entered, Arden was able to remotely access the system and launch her program to restore it. Arden had already restored the company’s networks so the FBI could perform a thorough forensic investigation. She only had one more thing to do before turning the network over to the FBI—discover who was at the receiving end of the stolen files.

  “Do you need anything?” the nurse asked sweetly as she removed the thermometer.

  “Coffee and doughnuts might help,” Arden answered wryly, her stomach rumbling. She’d only been allowed ice chips since she’d awakened.

  “Unfortunately, a doughnut and coffee probably won’t sit well on a post-operative stomach,” the nurse responded. “But I’ll see if I can scrounge something up for you that might hold you over.”

  “Thanks,” Arden said absently, her attention on the computer again. She was almost there. She could feel it, the cyber trail she was following, leading her closer to the answer she was seeking.

  She shifted uncomfortably, pain stabbing through her chest and shoulder and maybe her arm.

  “You need to take a break, Arden,” Kane said. He offered her the cup of ice that was sitting on a table beside the bed.

  “I need to figure this out,” she responded. She continued to type, scrolling through lines of code one after another. She followed the trail. Just like she always did. Minutes passed, and the nurse returned with chicken broth and Jell-O.

&nbs
p; Arden didn’t have time for either.

  She’d found a signature she recognized, one she’d run across on the darknet when working a forensics investigation a few years ago. It was tied to Alexei Petrov, a Russian citizen and hacker for hire. She pinged his system, located the associated IP address for the file transfer and slipped out the backdoor. Hopefully undetected.

  “It’s done,” she said, pushing the laptop away. She suddenly realized how quiet the room had become. Only Grayson and Kane remained, both of them working quietly on tablets.

  “You found them?” Grayson asked.

  “I found someone who is affiliated with the email account Emory was communicating with. I was able to trace the backdoor he’d set up to transfer the files. I sent his name and the IP address for the end system to Harriet. My guess is he’s hired help, just like Randy. The FBI will have to take it from here to determine if it’s a nation-state entity.”

  “You’re amazing, sis,” he said, pulling out his phone and sending a quick text.

  “I’m also tired.” Exhausted really. Her entire shoulder and chest throbbed with pain.

  “I can see that,” Grayson said, heading toward the door. “I need to make a few calls. I’ll go to the lobby so I won’t disturb you.” He opened the door and looked back. “I won’t be long. Kane, you’ve got watch.”

  “I’m on it.” Kane affirmed.

  Arden closed the laptop and leaned her head back on the pillows, shutting her eyes against the ceiling lights.

  Cloth rustled next to her, but she didn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t sure she could. Warm fingers traced a path along her cheek, tucking strands of hair behind her ear.

  “You didn’t eat your soup or your Jell-O,” Kane said, and she realized she could open her eyes.

  And he was there. So close she could see the tiny scar near his lip and the fine lines near the corners of his eyes. So close she could smell winter on his shirt.