by Jodie Bailey
“You didn’t do anything other than show up at the right time. Did I thank you for that yet?” If she hadn’t, she’d sure thought it. Or dreamed it. She’d surprisingly been able to sleep last night, largely because she knew Sean was downstairs keeping an eye on the place. Contrary to what she’d expected, she’d slept like a private after twenty-four-hour duty.
“You fried your fancy chicken last night for my dinner. That’s thanks enough,” Sean said. “It wasn’t half-bad, even if you didn’t dump any gravy on it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Jessica grinned and turned on her desktop computer, slipping her ID card into the reader and typing in her password. “I guess we need to change seats if you’re going to get over here and do whatever it is you need to do.”
As Sean picked up his backpack, she gathered up a handful of items she’d need to work. They rounded the desk at the same time, meeting on the narrow end. Both stopped, Jessica’s eyes just above his chin level.
“About dinner yesterday evening.” Sean’s voice dropped low, the timbre of it riding an electrical pulse up Jessica’s spine. “I know it was interrupted and all but...thanks.”
He didn’t need to look at her that way. It made her feel things she’d rather not acknowledge. “It was no big—”
He held up a hand, his eyes searching hers. “No. It was a big deal. It’s like you knew something was wrong and you tried to make it right. Nobody’s thought about what I needed for a long time and...I appreciate that.”
His expression was too full of something beyond the words he was saying, words which were already out of the bounds of any place their relationship should go. The whole moment made her stomach flutter. Jessica cleared her throat and stepped back, catching her hip against the desk, then slipped around it, making a show of organizing her files. “Not even your girlfriend?”
“What girlfriend?”
“Ashley.”
“Ashley?” Sean’s voice rose on the last syllable. “She needed me more than I needed her. Not that that’s a bad thing. She was going through a rough time.”
Was? As in past tense? Jessica stopped shuffling papers to look up at him. “Is she okay?”
“She’s okay now.” Sean’s face darkened, a cross between regret and maybe anger. “Though that wasn’t the case a few months ago.”
“You broke up?”
“What?” Confused lines creased his forehead, then melted away into a slight smile. “No. Ashley’s not my girlfriend. I mean, she was, but that was a huge mistake. She’s a very good friend who is married to one of my other good friends.”
Jessica winced, then wished she could take the action back. The last thing a guy like him wanted was her pity.
This time, Sean didn’t even try to tamp down his amusement. “It’s not like that. I’m happy for both of them. They’re meant to be married to each other. Trust me. Ashley and I grew up together, lost our parents together. That breeds a whole other kind of love that makes you a family but has nothing to do with marriage. She’s like a sister. We were engaged briefly a long time ago, but it was a gut reaction to a bad situation. Ashley was a military police officer and was shot in the line of duty. She nearly died, and the post-traumatic stress...” He slid a stack of papers to the side. “She left the Army. Now she consults with us.” Sean seemed to decide the conversation was over, dropping into her chair and turning his attention to the computer screen. “A lot of things never should have happened.”
The utterance was so low Jessica knew she wasn’t supposed to hear it, but there was no way to deny the words. Something was definitely up with Sean Turner, and whatever it was, it ran deeper than his failed engagement or the death of his parents.
NINE
Seriously. Why did he open his mouth around her? He should pull an old-school tough guy impersonation and stick to nods and grunts. Every time they started talking, things came out that Sean never meant to say to anyone.
If he’d been smart, he’d have kept his mouth closed and let her think he was in a relationship. It wasn’t her business anyway, and that whole incident between Ashley and him was something he kept close and never talked about, especially since she was nearly killed when he made her the cipher for encoded information that took down a terror cell. If he’d played that differently, she’d have never been in danger in the first place.
She also probably wouldn’t be married to Ethan—and Sean would probably be dead.
He pressed his palms into the top of the desk, shoving away that line of thought. Bottom line, Ashley had been in danger because of his actions. Now he had the chance to make it right by getting Jessica Dylan out of this new situation alive. Nothing could stand in the way of that.
Not even the fact that his heart had double-timed so loudly when she stood close to him that she was bound to have been able to hear it. That was definitely not a thing he could allow to happen. Distance was best, and he meant to keep it.
Except that his stupid mouth kept shooting off. There was something about the way she looked at him. Something that reached inside and unknotted the ropes around the locked box of his heart.
He swallowed a groan. She even had him thinking like a bad poet. If Ethan or Ashley could read his mind, they’d both get a good laugh at his expense.
Forget it. The last thing he needed to worry about was Ethan or Ashley—and especially not Jessica Dylan. This was about getting to the bottom of the craziness, protecting Jessica and stopping whatever this group’s plan was. Right now, that meant wading through the data on her computer. With the administrator rights granted to him by her S-4 shop, which handled all of the computer systems for her battalion, he plugged in a portable drive and uploaded the files he needed to allow Ashley to remote in.
Slipping headphones into one ear, he pulled his laptop from his backpack and held it out to Jessica. “The data from Channing’s cell is already open on the desktop. While I talk to Ashley, I want you to go through each of those photos.”
She hesitated before taking the laptop, probably because of his abrupt change in demeanor. It needed to be that way, even though it cut him to see her confusion. “What am I trying to find?”
“Anyone you recognize. Anything that seems out of place. Take time with each picture and really think if any of them are familiar. I can’t get over the fact they have dozens of Department of Defense photos. That’s not weird, it’s downright bizarre. Nobody would need something like that for personal use. I didn’t see anything, but you, being closer to the situation, might get deeper.” He turned back to her computer and plugged the other end of his headphones into his cell. It would have been easier to use a Bluetooth, but wireless tech was too easy to hack.
Ashley answered before the first ring even finished. “I’m already in the system.”
“Good morning to you, too.” Sean grinned in spite of her businesslike attitude. Ashley was never more focused than when she was solving a puzzle and, judging by the number of texts she’d sent him over the past day and a half, this was a puzzle she was diving into.
“Sorry. I’m just really, really curious about this one.”
“You and me both, kiddo.”
“I’ve been up since five, going over the files you sent. From the data, the phone was used like a burner phone, but it’s not a burner. It checks out with Channing’s name and personal info and everything. Thing is, it’s only been used to call or text two numbers, and all of the texts are encrypted or at least in code.”
“You tracked down the other two numbers?”
“Burner phones, prepaids bought with cash, impossible to trace. Ethan was able to pull some strings and get surveillance footage from one of the purchases. It was a kid, probably no more than sixteen. We’ll try to track him down, but chances are high someone paid him to go in the store and buy that phone.”
“Hmm.”
Sean sat back in the seat and rocked back and forth, watching the mouse dance across the screen as Ashley took control of the computer from her home office in Virginia. “And the pictures?”
“Far as I can tell, they’re standard Department of Defense photos. But the question is how your suspect got original files. Those files aren’t scans of photos. They’re actual photos.”
“Fakes?”
“If they are, they’re good. Someone knew exactly what they were doing, down to having the same cameras used in the ID card facilities. Only other possibility is someone hacked the database, but that would be a risky hack just to get a handful of pictures.”
It had to be about more than the pictures, but Sean couldn’t quite figure out what. “Here’s another bit for you to factor in. Channing’s uniforms aren’t hers.” While he dragged out and fired up Jessica’s laptop, using her ID card to log in, he filled Ashley in on yesterday’s findings. “Military police investigations processed the room, and I’m waiting to get access to what they found, but my guy at the station says it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”
“Did Channing have a computer?”
Of course Ashley would ask that first. She’d love to get her hands on more hardware to play with. Sean grinned, and then frowned. “Not unless she has it on her. There was no tech in the room. All we’ve got is the phone, and they wiped it clean remotely. I doubt they know I’ve backed it up, so we’re a step ahead.”
“Okay.” Ashley was disappointed and holding back a sigh. Figured. She’d just been denied her right to more gadgets to snoop around in.
The mouse on the screen jumped again, and several new windows opened, then arranged in a square.
Sean scanned each one, looking on as Ashley’s second set of eyes. Encryption and coding were his specialty, but Ashley had taken it far beyond his training. He was here to back her up, to let her do her thing and read behind her on the off chance she missed something. Highly unlikely.
“You said Channing accessed the computer on Monday?”
Sean nodded before he realized she couldn’t see it. “Yep. Start there.”
Less than thirty seconds and two more windows passed before Ashley let out a small whoop. “Found it.” She let out a low whistle. “She didn’t download data. She uploaded it. And she had it buried deep. The file changed its own upload date.”
“So how do you know—”
“Because I’m good. Don’t ask questions that will take two hours to answer.” She laughed, clearly excited to know more than him about something.
Behind Sean, Jessica shifted in her seat, and her breathing grew closer. She was watching. Who could blame her? It was fascinating to see a computer seemingly take control of itself. “What’s going on?”
Sean laid a hand over the mic and turned to find Jessica leaning across the desk, closer than he’d thought. He cleared his throat, going for professional and hoping he hit it. “There’s a rogue file on your computer, uploaded by Channing on Monday before the attack. We’re tracking it now.”
She nodded but didn’t step back, just hovered, watching the screen.
Ashley drew him back into her work. “There are several files.” A few more clicks and she lined several windows up across the screen. “Far left is a keystroke tracker. Anything Staff Sergeant Dylan types, they’re going to log.”
“Including us right now?”
“Not since I remoted in. I blocked all traffic but ours. But they likely captured her password when she logged you in. And do you see this?” The mouse wandered over to a window in the middle of the screen. “It’s a back door into the system. They opened up their own entrance to Staff Sergeant Dylan’s computer. They can do anything they want, upload new software, manipulate files, delete data. They’ve set up camp in her system. And if they’re watching right now, they’re probably scrambling, trying to figure out why their door is shut.”
“Stop gloating.” Sean could hear it in her voice. “And reopen it when you’re finished. We don’t want them to know we’re onto them.”
“I’m not in kindergarten. I’ve got this.” She tapped a few more keys. “There’s another file I’m going to have to spend some more time with because I’ve not seen anything like it before, but the back door has a hacker’s signature in the code. I’m going to run it against a few databases and see if we lock on to anybody who’s known, maybe start from there.”
“How long?”
“Hours if you’re lucky. Days if you’re not.”
He was afraid of that. “Okay. You keep snooping and I’m going to check out the laptop, see if I can figure out what makes it worth stealing. Get back to me with any findings. And save me some of that pie.”
“You won’t be back for Thanksgiving. And how did you know about the pie?”
“Ethan.” They said it together, then Sean hung up, picturing Ethan and Ashley with his parents around the table in their brand-new house, showing off their home for the first time. Sean wouldn’t have fit in. For the first time since his own parents died, he wanted more than football and dinner with his buddies. He wanted...
What? Even he couldn’t define it, but the picture of Ethan and Ashley’s family Thanksgiving made his stomach raw with jealousy.
“Find anything?” Jessica’s voice dragged him out of a building melancholy.
It didn’t matter what he wanted. Until he beat back the dragons that ate up his sleeping thoughts, he couldn’t focus on anything other than being the best soldier he could be. “Ashley’s running the files on your computer against an international database of known hackers. It could be a while.”
Jessica nodded and sat back down, finger flicking across the touch pad as she studied each photo carefully, her forehead wrinkled in concentration.
Sean shifted the laptop on the desk, making a show of fidgeting with it but watching Jessica instead, while she was too focused on her task to notice. Her dark hair was twisted back in a knot according to regulations, but it waved where it wasn’t pulled tight enough. The set of her jaw said she was oblivious to his scrutiny, totally absorbed in her search.
She was beautiful. No man could deny that. Still, there was something else about her... The way she’d fried her precious chicken last night because she knew he needed it. The way she stressed over the women who were supposed to be at her Bible study, but still rearranged her plans to make sure they stayed safe. The fact she’d given up an afternoon to reassure a young wife over something as simple as a trip to the ID card facility. She thought of others over herself, and that was something that doubled her attractiveness. Something Sean hadn’t noticed about another woman since he and Ashley had parted ways. Maybe not even then. As much as Ashley was his best friend, loving her had become a habit, a given that they would get married. Without passion, it was purely platonic, a mistaken effort to help her restore a life spinning out of control, a decision made out of fear on both of their behalf.
But Jessica Dylan? There was something there he couldn’t quite deny, no matter how badly he wanted to.
As if she read his thoughts, her head jerked up. But instead of noticing him, she shoved his laptop forward, hand trembling slightly. “I know this soldier.”
Sean reached for the machine. “Who is it?”
“Specialist Andrew Murphy. Our dead soldier.”
TEN
“You’re sure that’s your casualty.” Sean dropped everything he was doing, sliding her laptop aside to pull his closer.
Jessica stared at the photo on the screen. Specialist Murphy was a cutup, one who’d barely made it overseas without the first sergeant tearing him to pieces for complete insubordination. There were moments when half the battalion wondered how the kid ever made it out of basic with his utter lack of seriousness. Even in this, what appeared to be an ID card photo, his smirk was clearly in evidence.
&
nbsp; “It’s him.” She pushed away from the desk, working hard to keep the shock from coming through in her voice. “That’s Andrew Murphy.”
“Did he know Specialist Channing? Were they friends?” Sean stared at the screen as though he was trying to memorize the image. As though he thought the answers would pop up in the background.
Jessica shook her head. “Not to my knowledge, at least not here at Campbell. He deployed with the rest of the battalion. Channing just got here as a replacement last week. We can pull their records and see if they were ever stationed together before.”
“Let’s do that. And as soon as we get an ID on our guy at the hospital, we’ll pull his records, too. Somewhere, there’s a link between the three of them that may give us some answers. How did Murphy die?”
“Stepped on an improvised explosive device while on patrol.”
Sean slumped. “He never knew what hit him.”
“Not exactly. He survived the blast, but barely. He had a reaction during his blood transfusion and his body was too broken to fight it off.” In her job as a medic, Jessica had seen more than one soldier chewed up by an IED. Almost always there was amputation involved and, with enough charge, there could be nothing at all identifiable. Sometimes, the entire contents of her aid bag weren’t enough. The sights and sounds and smells of a post-IED incident had her bolting up gasping for air some nights, feeling as if she could have done more.
“You okay?”
Jessica lifted her head to find Sean watching her with that look he had, as if he’d managed to get into her head and read her mind. “I’m fine. Just...remembering.”
He acted as if he was going to say something, but then turned his attention back to his laptop instead.
It took all of her willpower not to call him out on what he’d almost said. Maybe he knew of a way to make the visions go away. She’d give anything for a way to turn off the movies that intruded on her sleep.
Instead, Sean studied the photo, then slid the laptop to the side. “Okay, let’s run through this. Like we said earlier, it could be some weird dating site that uses Defense photos.”