by Alexa Davis
"Ryan? Sit back," Echo said as she lifted me up from the pretzel position I'd bent myself into. She laughed lightly, "How did you fall asleep like that?"
"Huh?" I said, slowly unbending myself and wincing as I felt my muscles stretch. I mumbled, "I've slept in far weirder positions in the field."
"I can only imagine," she said as she helped me straighten up and then perched on the edge of he couch as I tried to get my bearings. She looked at me with great concern, "Where have you been?"
"Watch out, loaded question," I grinned.
"Why is that?" she asked confused. She reached out to touch me, but I pulled away not wanting to feel the softness of her touch and be tempted, again.
"Never mind," I said shaking my head. "Long weekend. It's all good. Is there anything to eat? I'm starving."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Echo
"How about some breakfast?" I called from the kitchen after I'd pulled Ryan back from yet another nightmare.
"Just coffee," he replied through the bathroom door.
I wanted to press him for details about where he'd been and why he was acting so skittish, but something told me that if I did, it would drive him further away and I'd never figure out what was going on. So, instead I decided to focus on Dr. Powell's emails and try to figure out how to find the lab keys so that we could enter his lab, find the cypher and get the research files into the hands of someone who would know what to do with them.
I started the coffee brewing and then stood at the counter and opened my laptop. I pulled up the email account into which all of Dr. Powell's emails were being filtered and saw that a new message had arrived. I clicked on it and gasped.
The message in my inbox read:
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS BLOCKED. This IP address is not authorized to receive messages from the source indicated. Your access to this information has been blocked. Please see an Administrator for further explanation.
"Shit!" I cursed as I slammed my fist on the counter. "They found everything!"
"What's going on?" Ryan asked as he emerged from the steam-filled bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist. For a moment I was torn between what was going on with my email account and the urge to pull off my nightgown and feel his clean bare skin pressed against me. His body was a sight to behold, not only because his muscles were lean and tight, but also because the tattoos covering his upper torso gave him an air of danger even though I knew he was one of the good guys. Too good, in fact.
"They found the bug and the program I installed," I said as my brain won the battle.
"Wait, what?" he said as he looked from me to the computer.
"Cece and I broke into TriCorp two days ago and I installed a program I'd written to bypass the server and get your father's email," I said. "They found it."
"You went into TriCorp without me?" he asked.
"Yes, that's what I just said," I replied in an exasperated tone. "Your father told me that they keys to his lab were in his office and that it was the only way we could access his lab. I texted you all weekend trying to get your attention, but you were too busy to reply. "
"I was trying to gather intel," he said defensively.
"Yeah, well, I was trying to figure out a way to follow your father's directions," I shot back irritated that he didn't quite understand the importance of what Cece and I had done.
"How in the hell did you get in there?" he asked.
"Cece pulled the fire alarm and we snuck in," I shrugged.
"What if Julian would have caught you?" he countered. "What then?"
"We would have dealt with it," I said angrily. "You really don't get it, do you? I have a message from your father telling me that there is a cypher for the files in his lab, but that I've got to get in there and get it!"
"There's a key?" he repeated.
"God, you are so wound up in your own issues that you can't think straight, Lieutenant," I sighed as I grabbed the hard drive from my bag and pulled up the message I'd saved. I showed him the email. "Someone is going to come for the information, but we've got to have it ready with the cypher when they do and in order to get it we need to find the keys to the lab."
"Holy shit," he said as he read the message again. "I have to break into the lab and get the key."
"Slow down, genius," I said shaking my head. "You're not going in there without me. I'm the one who is going to know where the cypher is. Your father said so."
"I'm not taking you into the lab with me," he shook his head. "You have no idea how dangerous this could be."
"Don't you think you're being a tiny bit dramatic about all of this?" I said raising my eyebrow as I stared at him. "I think you've been away from SEAL duties a little too long and you're itching for a fight."
"That's bullshit!" he shouted. "I've been trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and you've got messages from my father that clearly warn you to steer clear of Julian Baines!"
"Yeah, well, I'm not afraid of him," I said with a little more confidence than I felt as I remembered how scared Cece and I had been hiding under my desk. "We need to get the cypher and turn over the files to someone who knows what to do with them, Ryan. Plus, I know the building, you don't."
"I don't want to risk your safety," he muttered. "And you're not trained in this kind of mission, so you going along would risk the safety of the entire team."
"Oh please," I laughed. "You're treating this like it's a life or death security matter."
"It might be," he said walking over to the coffee maker and turning his back to me while he poured two cups.
"You want to tell me what happened while you were out on your little reconnaissance mission?" I asked.
"Don't mock me, lady," he said as he turned and handed me a steaming hot cup of coffee.
"I'm not mocking you," I replied accepting the cup. "I'm frustrated because you keep shutting me out, and you can't do this one alone."
"I can if you let me do my job," he said stubbornly.
"You really are a piece of work, Powell," I said as I sipped from my cup. "Look, I'm not trying to take over your mission or whatever you think it is I'm trying to do, but you'd better get on board with the fact that I'm going to be going with you because I'm not going to back down."
"Why are you so hard headed?" he shouted as he slammed his cup down spilling hot coffee across the counter and quickly grabbing a dishtowel to stop the flow before it hit the laptop.
"Because I cared about your father!" I shouted. "And I want to help figure out how he died!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" he said looking genuinely confused.
"C'mon, don't tell me that it hasn't occurred to you that your father didn't just drop dead of a heart attack," I scolded. "I can't be the only one who feels like there's something really wrong about all of this."
"Shit," he muttered as he stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door.
"Ryan?" I called, but there was no response from behind the closed door. I was completely confused until he emerged from the bathroom, fully clothed, with his hands raised in surrender.
"Okay, look, there's a lot going on that I haven't told you, but I didn't want to drag you into this mess," he said quietly.
"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm already into it up to my eyeballs," I smiled as I looked up into his amber eyes and tried force the memory of looking down into them while I straddled him out of my mind. "Just tell me what you know. I've already told you everything I know."
For the next half hour, Ryan filled me in on his visit to Eva's and his run in with Julian at the Manhattan Club. As I listened, I started trying to fill in the missing pieces, but there was still too much missing for me to be able to make sense of it all.
"Where's the corner's report?" I asked.
"That's what's still missing," he said. "Eva said they'd have it out today or tomorrow, but now I'm wondering if she even requested it."
"She could have," I said trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. "It
takes a long time for those kinds of reports to work their way through the system."
"Yeah, but Julian could also have messed up the process if he's got someone on the inside," he said.
"That would mean that he might have also gotten someone to falsify the report," I said.
"Dammit!" Ryan cursed as he started pacing the living room. "How in the hell are we going to figure this out?"
"By getting into the lab and getting the key your father left," I said simply. "That'll give us a way into the files and then maybe we'll have a clearer understanding of what we're dealing with."
"We're going to have to find a way into the lab," he said.
"Already way ahead of you," I smiled as I pulled up the layout of the building on my computer.
"How did you get this?" he asked as he turned the screen and started studying the map.
"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," I deadpanned. Ryan rewarded me with a laugh before he returned his attention to the screen.
"We could go up the back stairs," he murmured.
"Carrying the computer and equipment we'll need to break in up seventeen flights?" I asked.
"Yeah, what's the problem?"
"I'm not a trained Navy SEAL," I said. "That's one problem, and another is that there are cameras all over the place. We'll definitely be spotted in the stairwells."
"Then what's your plan?" he asked.
"Cooperation and virtual invisibility," I smiled as I began laying out the plan I'd come up with after Cece and I had broken into TriCorp.
When I was finished, Ryan frowned and shook his head.
"We're not getting civilians involved in this," he said. "It's way too dangerous to allow untrained people to do a job like this."
"Then what do you suggest?" I said throwing up my hands. "That we gather a batch of SEALs and go break down the doors?"
"First of all, we're not cookies," he grinned. "We're a team, and second, no, I don't think calling out the SEAL team is the first solution, but if it's necessary, then I know the guys who will help me. I'm just not sure I think your idea is safe."
"What other choice do we have?" I asked.
"At this point, not much," he admitted as he ran a hand through his hair and then rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, again distracting me from the issue at hand as my mind wandered into the fantasy of Ryan grabbing me and pushing me up against the wall as his hands, once again, roamed my body. The sound of his voice brought me back to reality, “Echo?"
"Huh?"
"I said; are you going to call down and ask Cece to come up so we can see if she is willing to do this?" he said as if speaking to a child.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll call her," I said. "Let me shower and get dressed first."
"Hurry up, then," he said impatiently. "We've got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time."
"Aye, aye captain," I said as I saluted him and headed into the bathroom.
"You need to work on your salute, sailor," he grinned. "It's pretty sloppy."
"Yeah, well, you get what you pay for," I shrugged as I closed the door and sank to the floor trying my best to resist opening it and dragging him into the shower with me.
Once under the steaming hot water, I realized that if we were going to make this mission work, I was going to have to stop myself from obsessing over Ryan. It was obvious that he wasn't actually interested in me as anything more than a babysitter for his night terrors and as the person who had a place for him to crash. I needed to stop acting like a schoolgirl with a crush and treat him the same way he treated me. I'd be professional and keep my distance from now on.
It was a nice promise, but I had no idea how I was going to keep it. However, Ryan's complete indifference seemed to be doing the job just fine.
#
Once I'd showered and slipped into the mostly clean shorts and t-shirt I'd pulled out of the laundry basket, I checked my phone and found another message from Commander Donnelly asking me to call him at my earliest convenience. I joined Ryan on the balcony, but before I could tell him about the call from the Commander, he took the conversation in another direction.
"Call Cece," he said as he tapped the screen of his phone in rapid succession.
"You bossing me around, sailor?" I teased.
"Look, we don't have a lot of time," he said. The look on his face was completely serious, and while I found it oddly arousing, I remembered my promise and dialed Cece's number.
"She can't come up here because Mando is gone, but she said the place is dead right now, so we can come down there," I said after talking with her.
"That's not the best place to talk about this stuff," he sighed. "But I guess it'll have to do."
I grabbed the laptop and we headed downstairs knowing that what we were about to do had some serious drawbacks. I tried to reassure myself that we were doing the right thing even if our methods of doing it were highly problematic.
"It's going to be okay, Echo," Ryan said as we descended to the street.
"Stop reading my mind," I scolded. I didn't like that he knew what I was thinking because it meant he knew the other things I thought about as well.
"I'm just saying, it's going to be okay," he repeated as he patted my shoulder and then left his hand resting on it for the rest of the way down. I could feel my breath coming more rapidly as the warmth of his hand radiated through my body, and it was all I could do not to stop and force him to bump into me. This promise was turning out to be way more difficult than I'd anticipated.
When we walked into Nemo's, Cece took one look at me and raised her eyebrow. I knew what that meant, so I fended her off with a pointed stare that clearly indicated she should go no further. She shrugged and led us to a table in the back corner.
Ryan explained the situation and then I explained the plan taking care to emphasize that she was in no way obligated to participate, but when I looked up and saw Cece smiling at me, I knew there was no way she was going to turn down this adventure.
"I'm in," she said. "And I've got an idea how we can get in. Let me make a call to a guy I know."
"Cece, you can't tell anybody what we're doing," I warned.
"I'm not gonna tell him a thing," she said. "I'm gonna borrow a cleaning van for the night, and in return, I'll...well...I'll take care of that."
"God, Cece," I laughed. "Don't do that!"
"What?" she said with a surprised look. "It's not like I'm gonna have sex with the guy. I'm gonna offer him top spot at next week's karaoke competition. You thought I'd have sex with him?"
"No," I said sheepishly. "I just didn't want you to compromise yourself for the mission."
"How long have you known me?" she asked. "Have I ever done anything to compromise myself?"
"Okay, this is all well and good that you're both so invested in preserving your reputations and all, but can we please get on with the plan?" Ryan said in an irritated voice as he tapped his fingers on the table.
"Chill out, man," Cece said as she pulled out her phone and began rapidly tapping on the screen. When she'd finished, she said, "I'll know in a few minutes. What's next?"
Ryan began laying out the plan, step by step, as we listened. There were still way too many wild cards, but we didn't have the luxury of time now that my programs had been discovered and disconnected.
"I'm not sure how we're going to deal with the security cameras," Ryan was saying as I rejoined the conversation. "I don't want to disable them and trigger an alarm, but we can't have those things recording our every move."
"Dude, you have got to be kidding me," Cece laughed.
"What? No, we can't be on camera," he said. "Echo can you program something to turn off the cameras or loop footage?"
"Good Lord, the two of you are so technologically adept that you have no real life skills!" Cece cried.
"Well, then tell us, oh great one, what to do," Ryan grumbled as he took another look at the map of the building and plotted distances yet again. "I mean, it's not like I'm not a highly trained me
mber of the United States military or anything."
"With an ego to match. Never mind, I've got this one under control," she said shaking her head as she tapped on her phone screen. She was silent for a while before she looked up and said, "We're good. We've got a van arriving at 10:30 tonight and it'll be black with a generic cleaning service logo on the side. He'd bring it earlier, but he's got a building crew using it until then."
"Perfect," I said as I examined the list and said, "Now, we either need to find the keys to the lab or I need to code a program that will bypass the security on the outer entry keypad."
"I might have a better solution for that," Ryan said. "But keep working on it just in case mine falls through."
We went to work on our individual tasks as Cece served the lunch crowd in between offering suggestions for how we could make things run more efficiently. Mando returned after the lunch rush was over wanting to know what we were doing. I shot Cece a look that told her not to tell him.
"Eh, just trying to figure out inheritance law so that Ryan can challenge his stepmother at the reading of the will," she said gently slugging her brother's shoulder. "You know, how it'll be when we battle it out over dad's non-existent estate."
"Not funny," Mando said.
"Aw, c'mon, none of this is funny, Bro," she teased. "It's just sad and sucky, so I'm trying to find something light about it."
"It's okay, Mando," Ryan said. "She's helping, seriously."
Mando skeptically looked back and forth between the two of them before walking over to me and resting his hands on my shoulders.
"And you, Echo," he said. "What about you? What is your role in all of this?"
"I'm just doing the research and feeding them the information," I said as I clicked around on a legal site not entirely sure I was choosing the right links. Fortunately he didn't look close enough to notice.
"Did you eat?" he asked as he patted my shoulder.
"Mmm, not yet," I said focusing my attention on the computer screen and as the coding formulas ran through my mind. I wasn't entirely sure that the key was something tangible inside Dr. Powell's lab. There was a part of me that wondered if it wasn't a kind of puzzle that I'd have to solve before I could decode the files, so I was trying to plan for every eventuality. It was like walking through a maze in the dark.