Hope nodded.
He riffled through some papers until he found her cellphone and handed it to her. “I think it’s time you gave them a call.”
Hope took the cellphone from him and clutched it so hard that her knuckles turned white. She could not believe that her past was haunting her. She thought she’d left it behind. She did not want to relive any part of those years.
She met Jared’s gaze and held it. After a moment, she nodded then reached inside her purse for the business card that had been there for over a week.
As she punched the numbers in and dialed, she made up her mind to get to the root of this. She was not going to live the rest of her life looking over her shoulder.
Chapter Five
Retired Sergeant Emily Silver dropped the phone receiver in its cradle and leaned back against her chair. She stared at the space in front of her as she mentally went through the conversation she’d just had. In the years she’d run Silver Shield Security, she had come across several strange cases, but none as peculiar as the one she’d just heard over the phone. It was not within their usual area of coverage, but what was new?
She really wanted to accept the case. She was intrigued enough. But whether they agreed to take on this case would depend solely on one single factor.
She picked up the phone again.
“Hi, Mom, could you send Russ over here, please?”
“Sure, honey. I sent Ace home early. He looked worn out”
“Alright. I should have given him the day off.”
Emily smiled as she put down the receiver. Working with her mom was one of the best things she’d done. On paper, she might have been the boss at the agency, but her mom was definitely in charge.
They had all just returned from a harrowing mission in New Mexico. Thinking about the mission sobered her up in an instant. She hated kidnapping cases but was always drawn to them. She knew why of course. Each one put her through an emotional wringer as she relived those moments when her daughter was kidnapped almost six years ago.
Every time she had to go on a mission to retrieve a person that had been kidnapped, she was reminded again of her missing child. She did everything she could to get the missing people back. She didn’t know what she was hoping for…well, she did know. She hoped in some abstract way that for each person she rescued, fate would smile on her and rescue her daughter someday.
She knew her baby was alive somewhere, no matter what everyone tried to make her believe. She felt strongly that if her child were dead, she would have felt it in her heart. She just could not understand why she’d been taken in the first place. There had been no ransom notes, no phone calls, no body…just nothing.
She shook her head. She’d been told to move on. Forget. But she was never going to do that. Until she was convinced that there was no longer any point in looking, she would continue to search for her daughter.
Her reverie was interrupted by a brief tap on her door. She glanced at the door and found Rusty standing there.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She read the concern in his eyes. It had been in everyone else’s eyes since they got back from the mission. They all knew how badly abduction cases affected her. Or they had an idea anyway
She shrugged. “I’ll be okay. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the seat in front of her and waited till he had settled his bulk on the chair. Sure that she had his full attention, she leaned forward and arranged the tips of her fingers together in a steeple.
“You have a job for me,” he said with resignation.
Emily smiled slightly and nodded. She knew he was exhausted from the last mission. But she had a feeling he would not want to turn this one down.
“Yes, but only if you really want to take it,” she said, holding his gaze. “This is not our usual stuff and we do not need to take this case.”
“So this is up to me?”
“Totally.”
He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I’m intrigued.”
She watched him carefully. “There seems to be a case of cyber espionage or sabotage. The client believes it is more of sabotage and it is tied to her past.” She paused to let it sink in. “Her servers have been hacked several times in the past couple of weeks and she’s come to us for help.”
Rusty frowned. “Servers get hacked all the time. Shouldn’t she be speaking with a cyber-security company or better yet, her technicians? And why does she automatically suspect that it has something to do with her past?”
“All good questions, Russ. But that is not the question you should be asking.” Emily felt her lips twitch with amusement at what was coming.
“Okay, I’ll bite.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. “What question should I ask?”
“Who the client is.”
Rusty’s eyes narrowed and she saw the spark of interest in them. “Okay, now you’ve got me curious. Who is the client?”
She waited a beat then said, “Hope Conran.”
Emily knew the moment the name registered. His eyes widened and he sat up. He was visibly trying to restrain his excitement.
“Hope Conran of desireu.net?”
“One and the same.”
“Oh shit!”
This time she let out the smile that had been threatening to escape. Everyone on the team knew about Rusty’s obsession with Hope Conran. The woman was one of the badass programmers in town. She and her partner had built the dating and hook-up site into a thriving business. But although Jared Black had been featured in various magazines and TV shows, Hope remained a mystery. She was notoriously camera shy and lived a quiet, uneventful life.
“What do you know about her?”
Rusty grew thoughtful. “She grew up in foster care. She went to community college, but is a self-taught programmer. No criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. Has never signed up for jury duty. Phone number is unlisted and she is supposedly a boring hermit of a programmer.”
Emily tilted her head to the side. “But…?”
“Her code tells a different story.”
“You can tell a person’s personality from the code they write?”
“Usually. Hope Conran’s code appears simple and elegant, but when you take a closer look, it is bold and complex. She likes to add some fun little comments to the lines of code and really, I can get lost just studying it.”
“So what do you get about her personality?” Emily wanted to know.
“She is bold and a bit brash, has a sense of humor and appears simple, but it’s really just a façade.”
“You can tell all that just from looking at her code?” It was mind-boggling.
Rusty shrugged. “Well, yeah.”
“Damn.”
“It’s like handwriting analysis.”
Okay, she got that. “I guess it makes sense,” she conceded. “So, are you interested in this job?”
“Hell yeah!” he said without hesitation.
“Great. She’ll be with us in…” She glanced at her watch, “In a quarter of an hour. I’ll let you know when she gets here.”
**
Rusty walked back to his table in the open office. He was finally going to meet Hope Conran. The thought filled him with goose bumps. He had come across her several years ago in a chat room for programmers. Among programmers, she was treated like a demi-god. There was hardly any code she could not hack into, but she was what they called an ethical hacker. She was one of those programmers who constantly hacked into her own code to find vulnerabilities.
He tapped a key on his computer and the screen came to life. He pulled out a program she’d written a couple of years ago. He had studied it for so long, he felt like he had it memorized. It was so elegant and simple, yet he had found it almost impossible to hack. Almost impossible. He had achieved that feat after months of trying.
He leaned back against his seat and stared at his screen. What he could not understand was how she managed to hide such complexity behind such simplicity
. It was a damned paradox.
“Are you going to answer that?”
“Huh?” Rusty blinked and looked up to see Ryan staring at him.
“Your phone. It’s been ringing for a while now.”
He glanced at the phone holder on his desk and saw a number he did not recognize. It had a Chicago area code. He stared at the number, wondering if he really wanted to answer the phone. Then the ringing stopped.
“Why the hell didn’t you just pick up the phone?”
He shifted his glance to Ryan. “I don’t know. Didn’t feel like,” he said with a shrug.
Ryan shook his head. “You have issues, man.”
Rusty shrugged again. He knew more than anyone the extent of his issues. He had even tried therapy, all three sessions of it, before he’d decided that the therapist didn’t know jack shit about sorting him out.
He kept his gaze on Ryan. It felt odd to see him in the space where Drew used to occupy. He missed that asshole. He glanced around; it was just him and Ryan in the office. All the others were out, which was not unusual. They were usually gone on one case or the other. What was weird was knowing that only Ace would be reporting for work the next day. Tamika and Drew were gone. Living in different cities now. He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. It felt like his family was disintegrating, and he did not like the way it made him feel.
Through the side of his eyes, he caught lights on his phone flashing, a second before the phone began to ring. He picked up the phone, deciding to answer it this time.
“Hello?”
“Rusty?”
Rusty tensed. He knew that voice. “What do you want?”
“I just want to talk to you?”
“I told you…” Rusty looked up to find Ryan looking at him curiously. He shrugged and rolled his eyes, then got up and walked out to the terrace. “I told you to stop calling me.”
“Please, son. Just give me a chance to explain…”
“Son? I don’t fucking have a mother! You left me when I needed you the most and now you want to explain? I’ve told you, I don’t want anything to do with you. You are dead to me.”
Rusty was furious. He wanted to hit something very badly. That woman was impossible. How did you abandon your ten-year-old child, then go almost two decades without contact and then suddenly wanted to play mother? Who did that?
He did not need a mother. He had done fine for himself over the years and he sure as hell didn’t need a woman who only remembered she had a son when it was convenient for her.
Placing his hands on his waist, he took several short breaths and let them out in a puff. He was so wired. He should never have picked up that call in the first place. Now he needed to get himself in a frame of mind to meet with Hope Conran. He had to calm down, somehow. He shut his eyes and began to count to ten.
“Rusty Rosabelle?”
Rusty felt the effect of the warm, slightly husky voice. It sounded like perfectly aged brandy. A feeling of warmth went through his body and he felt the tension drain. A slight smile curved his mouth. He did not know who the lady with the sexy voice was, but he was about to find out real soon. He turned around with a warm smile on his mouth and froze.
**
Hope found herself gazing into a pair of…wait, were those amber eyes? She narrowed her eyes, looking closely at the eyes. They were a light golden color, like the sunset on a clear summer day. They were also the most beautiful eyes she’d seen. Or they would have been, if they were not attached to the one face she’d been unable to get out of her mind. He was the jerk who had snubbed her at the club, making her feel like she was less than.
“You are Rusty Rosabelle?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah. What are you doing here?”
Rude. He was so damn rude.
Folding her arms across her chest, she glared at him. “I am here for an appointment. Your friend, Ryan, told me where to find you.”
Come to think of it, there had been an unholy glee in the man’s eyes when he’d caught sight of her. She’d met Ms. Silver—call me Emily—at the lobby when she’d entered the building. Emily had explained to her that she needed to meet with Rusty Rosabelle, seeing as he was the one who had the expertise to work on her case. They had walked into the open office to find only one person whom Emily had introduced as Ryan Murphy. He had looked at her weirdly, but she’d dismissed it. When he had motioned to Rusty Rosabelle’s whereabouts, she had volunteered to go get him.
“You have an appointment?” He gave a sweeping glance over her body and slanted his eyes away, like he was bored.
Hope bristled in indignation. How dare he dismiss her like that? She turned and marched back into the building but stopped before she reached the door. She wanted nothing better than to walk out of that place, damning him to hell, but she couldn’t. She clenched her hands into fists and took deep breaths to calm down. She needed this man, even though he was a total jerk. She needed to put her personal sentiments aside and get this done.
With another deep breath, she straightened her spine and turned back to face him, keeping her expression bland.
She walked up to him and pasted a smile on her face. “Let’s try this again,” she said pleasantly.
He quirked his eyebrows. “This ought to be good.”
Hope chose to ignore that. “I’m Hope Conran and I would really like your help.”
He took a step back and she did not fail to register the look of shock on his face.
“You are Hope Conran?”
Yeah, and the disbelief in his voice as well. It made her even more furious, but she was not going to let him know that. She was a professional and she needed to get to the bottom of a problem that was threatening her company. If it meant tolerating…hell, if it meant being nice to this lout, then that was what she would do.
“Yeah, surprising, right?” She gave a deprecating smile. “Emily is waiting in her office. If you could meet me there, I would truly appreciate it.” She smiled and nodded at him before turning to walk back inside.
As soon as she was out of his sight, she dropped the act. Frowning fiercely, she wondered how in the hell she was going to be able to work with the asshole. She did not have much of a choice. What she’d seen had got her sufficiently rattled and she knew she needed to find out who exactly was out to get her. She did not need to worry about the why. She knew exactly why.
As she walked back towards the lobby, she acknowledged that what bothered her the most about the entire thing was that there was someone who had so easily hacked into her code. It was not that she didn’t think there were people who could do that. She knew that for every program that was created, there was a hacker somewhere who was eventually going to breach the security, which was why she had her staff constantly working on finding vulnerabilities within her code. It galled that this had happened.
“Hi sweetheart, looking for Emily’s office?”
Hope smiled at the older woman who manned the front office. She had the same light green eyes that Emily had and she remembered the other woman referring to her as Mom. For a brief moment, she wondered what it was like to have a normal mom whom she could have a normal relationship with. She waved away the thought and smiled at the woman.
“Yes, please. If you could just point me in the direction?”
“Oh, I’ll do one better and show you, dear.” She looped her arm through Hope’s and walked her down a short hall. “You know, I found the most gorgeous man on that site of yours.”
Hope turned to her with a smile. “Really? I hope he’s nice.”
“Myles is a darling. We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months.” They had reached the door now. The woman tapped on it then pushed it open. “Here you are, honey.”
“Thank you.” Hope said with a genuine smile. Before she walked in she touched the woman’s arm. “I hope it works out with you and your Myles.”
The older woman’s eyes softened. “That’s really kind of you, Miss Conran. Thanks,�
� she said shutting the door softly.
“Did you find Rusty?” Emily asked, getting to her feet.
At the reminder of her second encounter with the jerk face, Hope felt her smile falter. She had never been so infuriated in her life. Okay, that was not strictly true. Jared did a good job of infuriating her regularly, but she loved Jared. And even though he was a jerk to the women he dated, he knew not to bring that nonsense anywhere near her.
“I did. He will be with us in a minute,” she said.
Emily gestured for her to take a seat. “I must confess, I find this situation intriguing,” she said.
Hope smiled wryly. “I would have too, if it were not happening to me.”
They shared an understanding smile. Hope wished the woman sitting before her was the one who would be handling her case. But she needed someone with badass IT skills and Emily had assured her that Rusty Rosabelle, the jerk, was the best in town.
As she waited for him to show up, she made up her mind to keep things strictly official with him. She did not care what he thought of her. No one should have the power to make her feel less than. She brought out her phone then and booked an appointment with her therapist. She had no idea why he had affected her so strongly and she needed to process that quickly if she was going to be working closely with the man.
Chapter Six
They returned to the office with two technicians. They carried out a clean sweep of Hope’s office and to her horror, found a bug in her phone and another just beneath her desk. She could not believe things had advanced to that stage. Someone somewhere had been listening in on her conversations. The thought made her blood boil. Her privacy was one of the most important things to her, a direct result from not having any while she was growing up. To think that it had been breached in such a manner made the back of her eyes sting.
Once the technicians were done, they were heading to her home with a Silver Shield operator to carry out the same clean sweep of her home. She had also signed some forms authorizing them to beef up her security. Much as she hated people in her home when she was not there to personally supervise, she had concluded that getting out of their way was the most efficient thing she could do. Besides, she had a lot of work to catch up on.
Silver Shield Security Box Set Page 79