Once level with the penthouse, Zach said, “I need those doors opened.”
“I’m trying, but I think you’re going to have to manually open them.”
Easy to say when sitting in an ergonomic chair half a city away. Not so easy here. There was barely a ledge to stand on, let alone enough room to really get the leverage he would need.
Then he saw it. Two large magnets with handles. It must have been how Robin Hood had climbed across the elevator shaft. Now, of course, he just had to jump across the wide open space, catch onto the handles and not fall several stories. A risk that he was more than willing to take, knowing that the Robin Hood Hacker was just an elevator door away.
Zach climbed up several more feet on the cables. Best to try this stunt with gravity on his side. Bracing his feet against the metal, he shoved off. Twisting mid-air, he caught one handle and narrowly missed the other. Worse, the handle turned under his weight and the magnetic disc started moving to the left.
What the hell?
Quickly, he swung his feet, maneuvering his body over so that his other hand caught the second magnet. This one held. Once his feet were firmly on the beam, he turned the handle of the magnet and got it to stop its wandering. This hacker had some weird-ass toys.
No matter, he had a job to do. Releasing the magnets, he stepped onto the elevator door’s ledge. Now all he needed to do was open the elevator doors. Which, apparently, was harder than it looked. On the inside, there wasn’t enough space between the doors to even give his fingertips leverage. And simply pushing them apart just wasn’t happening.
“Warp,” Zach whispered harshly. “There’s no way to get these open?”
“Sorry, no.”
He could not come this freaking close and miss the hacker because of a stupid door. Then he looked to the magnets. Carefully, he turned the handle all the way around. It released its hold on the metal so fast that Zach nearly dropped the thing. He reattached the disc to the elevator door, then repeated the process with the other disc.
Taking in a deep breath, he turned the handles in opposite directions. Between their force and his upper body strength, the elevator doors cracked open. He shoved a foot between them and pushed. With a creak, the doors opened all the way.
Jumping through, Zach released the magnets and pulled his gun. He landed hard and dropped to his knee, sweeping his gun in an arc.
“FBI,” he announced…to no one. The office was empty.
How?
“Well?” Warp asked in his ear.
Zach rushed over to the desk. The hacker seemed to have abandoned his keyboard and everything else during their hasty escape. The computer screen had been left on the company’s bank account page.
“You stopped the transfer?” he asked.
“Holding at ten point one eight billion,” Warp said with a distinct sense of pride.
With the money safe, Zach could go after the hacker.
“I’m following him down the access tunnel,” Zach said, sprinting back to the elevator doors. “Do you think you could round up some back up now?”
“Oh, you know it.”
* * *
“Where’s the helicopter?” Ronnie asked, turning her back to the wind. Of course there had to be a storm coming in. That was just her rotten luck today.
“Darlin’, he is en route, you’re just going to have to shiver for a while.”
“Why isn’t he here now?” Ronnie demanded. She was a little short on patience after having her hack interrupted.
Quirk tsked her again. “Remember how you wouldn’t let me prepay for his services? Remember how you said the chances we would need a helicopter on this job were so slim that you wouldn’t waste the double overtime?”
Oh yeah. She did say that. Sometimes her frugalness did interfere with a speedy exit. But hey, she had an island country to buy. “Fine. ETA?”
“I don’t know,” Quirk stated. “How long does it take to make your apologies from Christmas dinner, get suited up and fly over?”
Ronnie stifled a scathing retort. This was her fault. Sort of.
“So how did the FBI know we were here?” she said tightening her collar around her neck.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Quirk said, although not with his usual snappy tone. She knew that he was as affronted as she was. This just didn’t happen to them.
“Uh oh.”
Every muscle in Ronnie body tensed. “What?”
“Okay, which do you want? The bad news or the really bad news?”
“Quirk!”
“The Feds have called for backup. Just about every on-duty cop in the city is heading for you.”
Ronnie’s body trembled and it wasn’t all from the cold. “And?”
“The helicopter pilot is in the middle of some kind of gift exchange that may—” “Double his pay,” Ronnie interrupted. She wasn’t going to get to use her own private island if she was incarcerated. There was a delay on the other side of the line. “I mean it, Quirk.”
“Oh, trust me, I love to spend your money, but even if he left right now…”
Ronnie didn’t have to ask Quirk for clarification. Not as sirens sounded on the wind. Red and blue lights flashed in the distance. The building would be swarmed within minutes.
“You’ve got to use it,” Quirk said.
“There’s got to be another way.”
“Nope,” Quirk said flatly. “We’re on to plan C.”
But Ronnie hated plan C. Okay, she’d loved plan C when they were thinking it up, but now that she had to implement it? Not so much.
“You better start stripping, or even plan C isn’t going to get you out of this mess.”
Ronnie knew her assistant was correct, however she was having a hard time putting that knowledge into action. The sirens helped, though. And knowing that an FBI agent might be barging through that rooftop door got her fingers moving. Quickly, she stripped out of her outerwear to reveal her “swallow suit.”
Skin tight, the aerodynamic body suit had another feature. “Wings.” Not really wings, but flaps of resilient fabric under her arms and between her legs. She zipped each of the pieces into place.
“Do you like the embellishments?” Quirk asked.
Ronnie hadn’t even noticed the tiny swallow stitched onto her shoulder. Somehow that gave her resolve. “Yes, I do.”
Still, looking over the side of the building, preparing to jump with just a glorified yoga outfit, Ronnie hesitated. “You know what to do if this doesn’t work out.”
“Oh please,” Quirk said in her ear. “Don’t be so maudlin.”
Wind whipping all around, Ronnie stepped onto the ledge.
It was now or never.
CHAPTER 4
“He’s on the roof!” Warp screamed in Zach’s ear.
Zach clutched the pipes. He’d just gotten around the junction and was on his way down. Now the hacker was on the roof? Damn it.
“No. Wait.” Warp said, then screamed again, this time much like a little girl. “He’s jumped!”
Jumped? Nothing in the hacker’s psych file indicated suicidal tendencies. If anything, his survival instinct measured off the charts.
“No, he’s flying!”
“Warp, damn it. Which is it?”
“The satellite feed is coming in at a low angle, but the dude is in some kind of hang gliding outfit, only without the hang glider.”
Zach had no idea whatsoever what that meant, but it did mean that he had to get out of there, pronto. And there was only one way to do it. No more “walking” his way down the pipes.
Instead, he released his grip and slid down the copper. He gained speed rapidly. He must have passed several floors by now. Looking down, the end of the tunnel rapidly approached. Braking with his feet, his shoes squeaked in protest. That floor was coming up pretty damned fast.
He hit way harder than he’d wanted to, but knee pain was a small price to pay for getting back onto the Robin Hood Hacker’s trail. Zach burst through the
access door and into a small electrical room. Jerking open the door, he charged across the lobby, not even bothering to answer the shouting security guards.
Hitting the front door at full speed, Zach ran out into the parking lot. He looked up to find a figure in a black suit, with armpit wings, no less, sailing overhead.
Screw that.
Hopping into his car, he gunned the engine and squealed out into the street. Leaning forward, Zach watched the figure bank right. Sure the guy was high-flying now, but he had to come down sometime, and when he did, Zach was going to be right there.
Zach skid around the turn, keeping the suspect within sight. “Warp, are you tracking this?”
“He’s about to move out of range of the satellite, but I should have an image back within a few moments.”
Did it matter, though, since Zach had eyes on the suspect? Then bright flashes came from the suspect’s hands and the guy made nearly a U-turn…in the sky.
“Were those…?” Zach asked as he skid the car around.
“Yes, those were mini, handheld jet packs,” Warp said. “But I’ve lost him.”
So had Zach. He searched the skies above him, but no show. The hacker had gone between the highest buildings in El Paso.
“We need that satellite in position.”
Zach could hear Warp typing as he talked. “Border Patrol is already pissed off we’re realigning it. I don’t think they’re in any hurry to help us out.”
“Well, make them hurry!”
“Maybe I’ve got another way,” Warp commented.
Zach took his foot off the gas. Just a little. There was no point in rushing in any one direction when the Hacker could have doubled back. Zach had to give it to the guy. He was inventive and adaptive out in the field. A rare quality in a hacker. Most just sat behind a desk and got pasty white. This one climbed pipes and jumped off buildings. What were the FBI shrinks going to make of that?
“Okay, okay, okay,” Warp said. “We’re flipping through the traffic cams and I think I’ve got a location.”
“Where?”
“Turn left at the next block.”
Zach was more than happy to. Of course, due to traffic, he had to go up onto the sidewalk. Seriously, people still didn’t seem to catch onto the lights and sirens. And, with every cop in town was now descending onto the oil company building, Zach was on his own once again.
He followed Warp’s directions to the letter, driving deeper into the city.
“Robin Hood should be overhead!” Warp announced.
Only he wasn’t. There wasn’t anything in the sky. “Warp, he isn’t here.”
“But, but, but…” Warp stuttered, then the line went quiet. “Oh no,” the tech groaned.
“What?” Zach could tell by the guy’s voice this was bad. Really, really bad. Worse than just losing sight of the suspect. “Warp?”
“I’ve been…” the tech gulped loudly in Zach’s ear. “We’ve been hacked.”
“That can’t be,” Zach stated. “The guy is up in the air.”
“He must have an accomplice,” Warp said. “Because they have been feeding me fake traffic cam images, leading you astray.”
While Zach was pissed, mighty pissed, so much made sense. This wasn’t a single person executing these elaborate cyber heists. It was a team. Something the profilers back in DC never detected. Of course, Robin Hood had never been spotted before. Their crimes were elegant in their conception. Apparently, two heads did think better than one.
“Oh no,” Warp groaned again.
What could be worse than losing the suspect and having the FBI field office hacked?
“Oh god.”
Zach’s stomach dropped. There could only be one other aspect of this case that had gone wrong. “The bank account?”
“Gone,” Warp answered.
“How much?” Zach asked, although, from the tech’s tone, he pretty much knew already.
“All of it.”
That was billions and billions of dollars. “How?”
“They let me hack into a ghost account. It looked like I’d stopped the transfer, but the money has been siphoning the money all this time. They just got the last of it.”
And right under their noses.
Zach gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas again. “Tell me when the satellite feed is back up.”
“Where are you going?” Warp asked.
The only place the hacker would be going after stealing over ten billion dollars.
* * *
“We’ve lost them!” Quirk announced. His tone glowing with pride. “Hah! Take that, G-men.”
Ronnie would have smiled, except for, you know, the wind slapping her in the cheeks. Her only thought was getting to the rendezvous point. If the helicopter couldn’t come to her, she needed to get to it.
Using just her wings, since the jet packs, much like the pen laser, had rapidly overheated. Quirk really shouldn’t call them prototypes. He should call them use-it-once-before-it-overheats-types.
Ronnie glided over El Paso, passing over the FBI building.
“Kind of ironic, right?” Quirk said in her ear.
Yes, it kind of was. Banking in the wind, Ronnie headed out of town and toward the airport. Her target? The large parking garage. The tiny spot in the distance rapidly approached. She just needed to land, change clothes, and head out to the helicopter, then meet up with Quirk. As the garage loomed ahead, this C plan really might work.
That was, until a bullet ripped through her right wing. The torn fabric flapped wildly, throwing her off balance. Tilting askew, Ronnie was headed straight for one of the garage’s concrete pillars. Pulling her arms together, she cut her lift all together, falling from the sky. Tucking into crash position, she could only hope that she had enough velocity to make it through the pillars and into the garage, otherwise…well…otherwise, she was going to make a very artistic statement on the street below.
Her foot hit a pillar, spinning her around as she sailed through the large concrete opening. She hit the floor on her shoulder. Pain shot up her side. As she lay there on the third parking level, trying to figure out if all of her bones were intact, bullets chipped away at the ceiling.
“And he’s shooting left handed,” Quirk said, sounding slightly too impressed. “While driving a speeding car.”
“How the hell did he find me?” Ronnie croaked out, still guarding her ribs.
“No idea, but girl, you better get on the move.”
Catching her breath, Ronnie pushed up from the pavement and unzipped the fabric that connected her legs together. She didn’t have time to tuck the extra fabric in the pocket Quirk had made for them. The screech of metal as the FBI agent’s car bounced over the entrance to the parking garage kind of told her that Quirk was right, she needed to haul ass.
With her “wings” now nothing more than flapping fabric, Ronnie knew that she looked like some kind of drunken mermaid making a run for it, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about pretty. She cared about practical.
But trying to outrace a car, uphill, was not going so great. Ronnie ducked her head over the side of the retaining wall to watch the FBI car pass the second turn. Damn the guy could drive.
“I’m not going to make it,” she said, as much to herself as to Quirk.
“Then honey darlin’, you better come up with a plan D.”
* * *
Zach laid on the emergency brake as he took yet another curve. The hacker couldn’t be that far ahead.
“Do we have satellite coverage yet?”
“Trying,” Warp answered, with that far-off voice of his. Either he was concentrating really hard, or having an internal argument that involved whether Big Bang Theory was a satire or homage to science fiction. Zach was learning you could never quite tell the difference with the tech.
Coming out of the curve, Zach punched the gas pedal, flying across the third level, aiming for the up ramp to level four. He was about the make the turn when his headlight bounced
off metal. Slamming on the brakes, Zach laid down rubber, skidding to a stop just inches from a car parked sideways in the tight space of the up ramp.
He didn’t bother to curse or hit the steering wheel. Zach just popped his car door open and jumped out. He slid onto the car’s hood, then hit the ramp running. The hacker must have been heading for the roof, because that was exactly where Zach would run, and so far, he was batting a thousand on what the hacker was going to do next.
Except, of course, for Robin Hood stealing the oil company’s money, but honestly, Zach didn’t care about that. He was sure the oil company could take care of itself.
This was now personal.
The Robin Hood Hacker was going down.
* * *
Ronnie charged up the steps to the last level. Given that it was Christmas, the place was packed, end to end with cars. But no helicopter.
“Where’s my ride?”
“He says he’s en route,” Quirk answered.
“Okay, en route and being here are two distinctly—”
A shot rang out. Ronnie ducked behind the nearest vehicle. The bullet missed her—however, her back was covered in paint chips from the car that was hit. She dove behind the next car, trying to make it to the cover of the large electrical room at the corner of the garage.
“God, he’s hot,” Quirk breathed out. “You should see him, striding across the garage, arm out, firing shot after shot.
“Quirk!”
“Well, I mean, if he weren’t shooting at you, he’d be hot.”
She had little time to worry about Quirk’s crush. There were a good twenty feet between the last car and the electrical room. And with how rapidly the FBI agent was firing, she was not going to make it.
“I need a plan E,” Ronnie admitted.
“You do realize how crappy our plans C and D were, right?”
“Yeah,” Ronnie said, putting her hands over her head as the FBI agent shot off the side mirror of the car next to her.
Then the sweet, sweet sound of rotors filled the air. Her helicopter. It rose next to the garage in all of its escape-possibilities glory. There was no pretty way to make her escape. She was going to have jump for it and pray the FBI agent wasn’t going to shoot an unarmed person in the back.
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