Vigilante Investigator Series Box Set

by Eden Sharp

  Though respectable and expensive, the burgundy lace dress I was wearing was skin-tight for a reason. There was certainly no room for underwear. I was even further out of my comfort zone with the low-heeled shoes and the tiny clutch purse I was carrying that only accommodated my cell and some cash. I wanted my boots, my leather jacket and my gun.

  When Charlie opened his apartment door he had the good grace not to look me up and down or pay too much attention to my outfit. I rarely wore dresses and he’d only seen me in one once before and on an occasion I’d rather forget. He invited me in and told me that Hudson were sending a car to pick us up and it was on its way.

  I stepped inside and for a moment it felt awkward and then I looked into his eyes and the connection that had always been between us came on strong. He was wearing a black suit and shirt and he smelled good. I felt sixteen again.

  He took hold of my right hand and lifted it up. My skin tingled where he touched me. He peered at the implant site. The entry point was now invisible. He gently let my hand go again. There was so much I wanted to say but didn’t know where to start. Too many conflicting emotions were coming over me in waves and I didn’t want to say anything borne out of a warm and fuzzy moment that I’d later regret.

  One thing was bugging me though.

  ‘Did you know about me drowning before I left Japan?’ I asked.

  Before he could answer I knew from his expression that he hadn’t.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Rip tide.’ I shrugged it off like it had been nothing. I didn’t want to get into just how close I’d come to losing my life.

  ‘I saw the painting in your room,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Of course,’ he said nodding apparently putting together why it would have caught my attention. ‘When I bought it I just liked it as a piece of art. But now, when I analyze it, I guess it’s symbolic of how I was feeling at the time.’ His eyes fixed on me like he was mining my soul. ‘I’m sorry I asked you,’ he said. ‘You were too young. I thought maybe, at some point in the future… I didn’t expect you to leave. I know you wanted to come home. I would’ve come back too.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Despite the investigation,’ he said. He laughed for a moment and then become serious again. ‘Their case collapsed because of what you did.’

  That would have been because it was difficult to prosecute a hacker when they had a co-conspirator who, in their hour of need, had been on hand to wipe machines and remove everything else that could be incriminating. I’d stashed some disks in a train station locker and sent the key to his office by courier. That’s what friends were for. It had also helped to have an excuse to disappear when I had been hell bent on running away.

  The phone rang and Charlie answered it. ‘The car’s downstairs,’ he said.

  Mission Bay had started life as marshland which had gradually been infilled with rubble from various building projects and debris from the earthquake of 1906 but was now populated with all types of commercial projects many of which focused on biotherapeutic research as well as information technologies.

  We inched behind a long line of cars waiting for their passengers to alight before ours pulled up outside Sytec’s impressive new base. The building consisted of two wings clad with a white granite facia flanking a central glass atrium housing some kind of spherical metallic structure supported by legs which held it aloft upwards of twenty feet in the air and which resembled a shiny silver kettle barbecue hewn out of shipping steel.

  A built guy in a suit was on hand to open the door for Charlie and I was left to scoot across the back seat to exit the same side. I scanned the scene. Several such guys stood at different levels of the wide stone stairs leading up to the entrance along with small groups of arriving guests who were greeting people they knew and spending a few minutes taking in the warm evening air before heading inside to the reception. None of them looked like Feds.

  By holding the reception for the merger at their headquarters, Sytec were giving us an in. The difficulty in getting near the secured areas we needed to access to steal the code however, was going to be another matter entirely.

  Inside we were greeted by uniformed caterers with trays of champagne. Beyond them people were loosely assembling near a podium which appeared to be where the announcements and speeches would be made. We headed towards them. The place was starting to fill up.

  Charlie put his hand in the small of my back to steer me away from someone. I turned to see a guy trying to get through the growing crowd with a tray of empty glasses. As I turned back I saw Knox staring at me. This was unexpected. He was in a suit and standing with the junior Fed next to a pillar towards the right-hand side of the room. I’d never seen him dressed up before. He looked the part. Paul must have requested his presence.

  I started to feel a little uneasy and took a solid hit of the champagne which was dry and left a nasty aftertaste. In my opinion the overrated fizz was the fastest way to a headache. I noticed Charlie had already ditched his. He wasn’t a fan either.

  Guzek appeared to the side of us and I forced a smile. He wasted no time in showcasing his importance to the proceedings by clearing a channel to introduce us to the CEO of Sytec, Mark Carlton, who politely acknowledged our presence before leaving us standing uselessly. He spoke in clichés to Guzek who lapped up the attention and proximity to power.

  Carlton had two companions. One was a young male assistant who had practically fallen over to ingratiate himself with us when Charlie and I momentarily appeared to be important. As we were cast aside he lost interest and left us to make conversation with the other, an even younger blond who, if I hadn’t have seen her expensive chest heaving, I could have believed was an entirely plastic sex doll.

  When it came to initiating niceties I had nothing so threw Charlie a look that said I was handing the baton over to him while I observed the main man.

  The CEO of the soon to be officially announced new firm had the air of a man inordinately pleased with himself. This was despite his being blessed with a box-shaped face whose main features were an array of skin tags and oxygen-starved purple lips. After all, he probably had an offshore tax haven’s worth of charm when it came to snaring sycophantic lackies and women who believed it wasn’t who you were or what you could do that counted.

  Money might not be able to buy you love but it sure meant you could surround yourself with pretty things to look at and people who were likely to answer in the affirmative.

  The next forty minutes dragged slowly on. I counted on the announcements not starting early as, according to Charlie’s watch, the surveillance camera attack was imminent and it was best that we got things over with while the maximum number of people were in attendance and before they started to drift away.

  He turned to me and held me with a long look and gently squeezed my hand. Showtime.

  Guzek was still in close proximity and I wanted to get away without him noticing. The area I needed to access was in the right-hand wing of the building and I started to extricate myself before things really kicked off.

  The atrium was linked to the buildings either side of it by long, wide corridors which housed elevators as well as rest rooms. A social engineer always tries to have a plausible reason for every action so I told myself, partly to bolster courage, I was paying a trip to the bathroom.

  As I entered the corridor I could see the security guys listening to the wires in their ears and starting to move. I spotted Douglas and hustled over to him.

  ‘We need to find out from those guys what’s going on,’ I said, pointing to several suits assembling near a door beyond the elevators. ‘Something’s happening.’

  Douglas nodded and I could see he also wore an earpiece. One of the security guards waved him over. ‘Marks? Edwards? You got eyes on Lau?’ he said into a transmitter at his cuff. ‘Stay on him. Everyone else meet me at the rear of the building near the elevators at the east wing.’

  I followed on by his s
ide to the group of gathering men. Some of them were talking into their cuffs too. No doubt communicating with others inside who were trying to discover why the cameras were out.

  I glanced back at the entrance to the atrium. I didn’t want Guzek to see me. The rest of Douglas’ team and Knox headed toward us. We went through the door, marked authorized personnel only, into a security area consisting of a large briefing room, desks and an airport-style scanner which clearly signaled our target area lay beyond.

  ‘We currently have a breach in progress in our research and development area,’ he said. ‘The cameras have been disabled but we’re working on that. In the meantime we need to secure the area. External attack is complex so it’s likely whoever’s responsible is inside. We need to ensure they can’t leave the building. At this time we can’t determine in which section the intrusion is taking place as several different machines are affected. I’m going to need all your cellular and any other wifi devices or portable drives,’ the head guy said and pointed to a large grey plastic tray on the desk next to him.

  The Feds took out their phones and I put my purse in the tray. He told them the one radio frequency available they’d be able to transmit on. Anyone questioning whether I was concealing anything could quite clearly see there wasn’t room for more than a Band-Aid between my skin and my dress. We stepped up in a line to the scanner and walked through into a windowless marble corridor.

  Even before entering the site of their secured machines the temperature dropped to an icy chill. Inside the atmosphere was sterile apart from a faint odor part way between new carpet and plastic cabling.

  ‘The work areas fan out from this central cross-shaped walkway and comprise six corridors of three areas on each side radiating off in each quadrant,’ the head guy instructed. I glanced around me. Enough areas needed searching relative to the amount of bodies present for me to get away from them for the short window I needed.

  A mix of in-house security and Feds were dividing up to cover each side. Knox and I broke off with one group assigned the right-hand side of the central aisle which made up two separate quadrants. I made that seventy-two work areas for us to cover. As we got further in, Douglas’s men split off behind us until, apart from him, it was really down to myself and Knox.

  I pointed up to the far end of the walkway. ‘I guess we’ll take the area up ahead,’ I said.

  Douglas paused for a moment and then nodded, disappearing away from us after the last of his team.

  ‘Paul ask you to come?’ I said.

  Knox nodded. ‘How come you’re here?’

  ‘To keep an eye on the guy who hired Charlie,’ I said. ‘Shall I check out the areas on the left side of the corridor and you take the right? I asked.

  Knox shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’

  The work areas comprised a large L-shaped space with several desks and high-end computers. The shape of the room meant anyone sweeping the area couldn’t just stick their head in but had to enter a significant way into the room to see around the dog leg. This would afford me a little extra time. I hoped that the security cameras would not come back online but remain dark as Charlie had promised however, now was not the time to let my paranoia get the better of me. I headed for the area furthest away to give me the most time for what I needed to do.

  I left the door open about a foot so I could listen out for any approaching footsteps. Thankfully the shades were drawn but there was enough ambient light encroaching into the gloom from the corridor for me to work with. I reached two fingers under the collar of my dress and into the top of my shoulder where the fabric was tightest and retrieved the sticking plaster lodged there. I peeled off the backing and wrapped the plaster around my left hand index finger to mask my prints before depositing the backing paper back under my dress.

  Mindful of keeping my right hand away from the machine I powered up and logged on to a computer around the corner away from the door. I was so used to using all of my fingers to type, the pecking method I had to employ was frustratingly slow. I entered the password for the username Charlie had supplied me with and hit enter still concentrating on keeping my right hand clear. I knew accessing this machine would trigger a new alert but with so many intrusions going off simultaneously it shouldn’t really matter.

  The monitor jolted into life and the main interface appeared. I felt a little adrenaline surge of excitement. Holding my chipped hand in range of the CPU, I watched the script upload and the GET command run through its search parameters then kept it away again by resting it behind my back. File names and extensions lists scrolled down the screen as the search ran through several directories. Seconds seemed like minutes. I realized I was holding my breath and forced myself to breathe in through my nose and slowly out through my mouth.

  The scrolling stopped and a blinking cursor replaced it. I opened the source code of the file I needed and brought my hand back round to the CPU. A download bar appeared. A sliver of green protruded out from the left-hand side and text signaled there was under a minute to go. Annoyingly this flipped to two minutes. I willed the green bar to extend across to the right as though my mind alone could have an influence. I knew that time-remaining indicators were notoriously inaccurate.

  Realizing I’d been immersed in the data on the screen, I dragged my eyes away to make a quick check of my surroundings. My eyes took a second to focus back into the dark and I listened out for any sounds that might be heading my way from the direction of the corridor. There weren’t any.

  Because of the back-lit monitor I hadn’t been immediately aware of the increased amount of light seeping into the room. I discounted it as paranoia and my eyes readjusting to the ambient light levels and turned my attention back to the monitor. The counter indicated twenty seconds of download time remained. It was almost as if I could feel a dull ache in my hand as the data flowed into the chip but I knew this was my imagination playing tricks. What I did feel however rushed into my consciousness in one sudden hit. As the final seconds counted down and the download completed an almost preternatural sense hit me like a primeval warning of a predator about to strike. I felt, rather than heard, the presence of somebody standing behind me.

  Even as I was turning my head I was concocting an excuse for what was really happening. After all, didn’t it just appear that I had been standing watching while data downloaded? Why would it be attributed to me?

  Knox stood a couple of feet away, his eyes accusatory. ‘What the fuck are you doing McGlynn?’ he asked.

  From his tone I knew any denials would be an insult to his intelligence and I also had no idea how long he’d been standing there. I hit the off button and the machine began powering down.

  ‘I’m walking out of here Knox,’ I said. ‘And you’re not going to stop me.’

  I saw he’d registered the edge in my voice and knew I’d meant what I’d said. Hostilities would ensue if he got in my way and I was hoping he didn’t have the stomach for a fight. I headed for the door, peeled off the Band-Aid from my finger and stuck it to my skin under the neckline of my dress. No footsteps followed.

  Out in the main walkway I heard people approaching. A couple of security guards with Douglas and two of his team came into view. I heard Knox step out from the corridor to my rear and realized I was caught in the middle.

  ‘Anything?’ Douglas asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Knox kept quiet behind me.

  Two of the in-house guys swept past us both to check for themselves.

  ‘Same here,’ Douglas said. ‘Let’s reconvene for a debrief.’

  ‘We made a sweep of the whole area, found no persons on site. Most likely an external attempt. Multiple intrusions could point to an opportunist strike but we need to consider the timing with the event this evening. We’ll know more after analyzing the logs. The CEO will be on his way shortly.’ The head security guy looked like he was enjoying himself. Maybe he’d once fancied his chances at the Bureau. I was antsy to get back to Charlie and avoid any po
tential questions from Guzek. I went over to Douglas for a private word.

  ‘Where’s Lau?’ I asked.

  ‘Listening to the end of the speeches,’ Douglas said. ‘We had eyes on, the whole time.’

  I paused for a moment as though I was letting the significance sink in. ‘I need to get him out of here and locked down,’ I said. ‘I also don’t want our other subjects to notice I’ve been missing.’

  Douglas nodded his agreement. I looked over at Knox leaning against the wall at the side of the room and caught his eye. He stared back, his face impassive. I walked out of the room hoping for his continued allegiance.

  People were now spilling out of the atrium. I guessed the speeches were done. I spotted Guzek exiting the rest rooms and so I used a few congregating groups as cover to make my way back in to the reception area. I slowed my pace across the emptying floor in order to plot Marks’ and Edwards’ position before reaching Charlie standing talking to a couple of guys I didn’t recognize. He looked relieved to see me as I joined his side.

  ‘It was good to meet you,’ he said and diverted his attention to me. The two guys took this on board and moved away.

  ‘Programmers,’ he said.

  With the awareness that I had Marks and Edwards to my back I gave him my biggest smile. ‘We’re good to go,’ I said.

  Up in Charlie’s apartment I was fizzing with adrenaline and not keen on going back to my hotel while I was still so wired. But I had no real reason to hang around. I’d already decided it was better not to tell him about Knox. I couldn’t stand still and I couldn’t sit down. I made my excuses and headed for the bathroom.

  I needed a moment to get myself together and find some other way to bridge the gap between coming down and bed. I knew Charlie would offer me a celebratory drink and how tempting alcohol seemed right now but that one would turn into another up on the roof and someone would end up saying something they would later regret.

  I thought about calling Knox then realized I’d left my damn purse and phone outside, possibly on the couch. But then I didn’t really want to get into it with him either. Chances were he could be calling Paul right now or spilling his guts at a debrief with the FBI. Other friends I could call on would mean me drawing attention to them.