Something in her stomach took a dive. Fool. A guy like him would never, ever be interested in a nerd like her. Saying more than two words to him had probably sent him into shock. Usually her tongue imitated a pretzel when he was around. She wasn’t outgoing under the best of circumstances, but he brought her to new lows of reticence.
Sure, she could fake her way past the lobby guard at Westgate or Janus, but that was acting.
Scott blinked, and his posture closed down somehow so that he seemed to shrink away from her without actually moving. “Well, I better get inside before we both freeze. Hollowell’s on his way in. We’re doing a practice recall.”
She nodded. “I’m sure I’ll be back in a few hours to brief him.”
“Have a good night,” he said. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
Tearing her gaze away, she made short work of the distance to her car. She slid inside, tossing her bags on the seat next to her, and started the car as the cold settled into her bones.
When she looked up, Scott stood with his hands in his coat pockets, watching as she backed out of the parking space.
Scott waited to enter the building until Valerie’s car left the parking lot. He ran his card over the RFID reader and pushed through the turnstile. In the cavernous lobby, he stopped for a second to soak up the heat.
“It’s cold as a witch’s tit outside, ain’t it?” Garth, the muscled guard, asked from behind a tall counter, eyeing him with curiosity.
Scott had never understood that saying, but he chuckled obligingly. “Got that right.” He’d been freezing his ass off in his car waiting for Valerie to leave work. Usually she was done by nine o’clock. His thermos of hot coffee had run dry hours ago. He should have waited inside, but he didn’t want Garth wondering what he was up to. “I’m just going to run up for a minute. I forgot to grab my notes for an offsite meeting I have in a couple hours. Couldn’t sleep,” he added, since it was a little odd for him to show up at oh three hundred.
He just needed to make sure Valerie didn’t realize he was on her tail. And he needed to thaw out.
The temps weren’t dead-of-winter cold, but after a mild October, the sudden drop in mercury was a shock.
The big man nodded and returned his attention to the monitors on his desk.
After a quick run to the team’s bullpen, Scott climbed into the silver Tahoe he’d parked in the back lot and drove toward Valerie’s apartment in Fairfax. She lived in an older cluster of three-story buildings in a busy commercial district, and he could easily keep an eye on her unit from the parking lot or from a garden area in the center of the complex.
Today was the first time she’d said more than two words to him since the day he’d been introduced around the office by Hollowell as part of his cover. Usually, she just mumbled “hello” if they passed in the halls or crossed paths in the break room. He probably made her nervous.
No surprise. Plenty of people turned skittish around a killer.
But today had been an eye-opener. First seeing her on fire, looking hot, and conning her way past the guard—which put a chink in his confidence that she was innocent—and then tonight she’d talked. Not only that, but her eyes had sparkled with excitement, and after her initial fright, she’d given him the most amazing smile.
A smile that could launch wars. It spoke of a light and energy that he hadn’t realized she possessed. He was now at war with himself. Watching her had been no biggie when he didn’t really see her. Now it felt like voyeurism.
Pushing that unwelcome thought aside, he climbed into the rear of the SUV, lowered the seat, and slipped into the cargo space. There were advantages to being “average” in size. He didn’t fit the All-Star quarterback mold like the other guys at Steele, but his shorter stature and narrower shoulders had served him well as a scout sniper.
Illegal tint concealed him from view even in daylight, which would break in another hour or so. From his position he could see Valerie’s windows, but she was a smart woman who kept her blinds closed at night.
The light in her living room blinked out, and her bedroom light came on. He could envision her one-bedroom apartment with its tiny kitchen and inexpensive but comfortable furniture. Not much color. Even the pictures on the walls were black-and-white shots of mountains in plain black frames. And not very good photos at that.
He’d never entered her apartment, but he’d viewed as much as possible through binos from the parking lot. Following someone wasn’t illegal; B&E most definitely was.
Her bedroom window went dark, and his imagination ran away with him. Did she sleep naked? Would she be shy in bed or bold?
Christ. He’d liked this assignment better when he thought she was boring.
Swearing under his breath, he adjusted his position and tried to picture Valerie in oversized sweats.
It didn’t help.
Three hours later, his muscles stiff, Scott woke to an alarm he’d hidden near her door to alert him that she was on the move. Already at the bottom of the stairs, she set a bag of aluminum cans next to the dumpster before sliding into her dirty-as-sin Prius.
The first time he’d seen her leave cans on the ground, he’d thought she was too lazy to throw them in the bin. But when he’d come back to peek through her windows while she was at work, an old man had been digging through the trash with a crutch, the back of his beat-up station wagon packed with bags full of aluminum. Hers sat on top.
So she was nice to the homeless. Didn’t make her innocent.
Starting to feel the pull of fatigue, he tailed Valerie back to Aggressor. Luckily, all the morning traffic was heading the opposite direction. The only slowdown was at 28 heading north toward Dulles. A string of defense contractors and tech companies lined the highway all the way to the airport and beyond, with Aggressor right in the center.
Scott made sure she took the turnoff to work, and then drove past the exit to the next off-ramp. He circled around and parked in the back of the building with the delivery vans and company fleet cars.
If she noticed his Jeep still parked up front, she’d think he’d never left.
The bright sun belied the twenty-degree temps, and the wind brought the air into the single digits. Head down, he hustled into the building.
A new guard sat on duty at the counter. He nodded as Scott passed—comparing Scott’s face to the one that popped up on the monitor when he scanned his ID—but didn’t say anything.
Scott spent the next hour in the break room, pounding coffee and pretending to read a procedures manual while waiting for contact from Hollowell. The text message finally came, and two minutes later he stood in Hollowell’s corner office with a view of the distant mountains.
“I just met with Valerie and Jay,” Hollowell said. “I finally have the evidence I need.”
Scott’s chest tightened. “What happened?”
The older man frowned, rubbing his clean-shaven chin. “According to the client’s log, she downloaded several key files.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. She had to know she’d be caught.” At Hollowell’s wave, Scott sat in a hard wooden chair. “What did she say when you asked her about it?”
The gray-haired man scowled. “I didn’t ask her about it. I don’t want her to know we’re suspicious.” He circled his desk and sat in a black leather chair, steepling the fingers of his sun-spotted hands. “The Westgate admin had a separate log file that she didn’t know about.”
“Still, she’s not stupid.” Scott just couldn’t see her taking that kind of risk. She did this shit all day long. She knew how it worked. “Why would she take a chance like that?”
Hollowell regarded him closely. “Are you getting soft on this woman, Kramer?”
“No, sir.” Scott ignored the temptation to shift in the uncomfortable chair—if the Marines had taught him nothing else, it had taught him how to be still—and held his gaze. “I’m surprised is all.”
The older man waved his hand vaguely. “A lot of these hacker types are anti-
authoritarian and think all information should be free. Except, ironically, their own. They’ll do whatever they can to undermine government and corporate secrecy. For all we know, she’s being paid to hand this stuff over to something like WikiLeaks.”
Scott shook his head, still wrestling with the idea of Valerie being guilty.
“The FBI will pick her up from home later this morning.” Hollowell sat back. “I want you on her like a fly on shit in case she runs or makes contact with her buyer before then.”
“Do you think she’s working alone?” Scott asked.
“According to Jay, she hasn’t made contact with anyone online, and you haven’t seen her using computers anywhere but her home and work.”
Scott nodded, and his spirit deflated. He would have sworn she was innocent. Which just showed how much he knew.
As if reading his mind, Hollowell said, “Her father was a notorious hacker named Filiberto Laredo. I know she looks innocent, but she grew up in that world and started working with him from an early age. I thought she’d made a break from that life, but some people can’t move beyond their past.”
Scott kept his face impassive even as he digested that revelation. He could relate. “Her dad was a con?”
“Yes.” Hollowell let out a long sigh. “I turned a blind eye to it because it’s typical for ethical hackers to get their start cracking systems illegally in their teens. She stayed out of trouble after her father was arrested, and her reputation was solid when I hired her.”
Scott ruthlessly pushed aside the idea that he and Valerie had a lot in common. “Sir, what kind of files did she get?”
“Documents relating to classified weapons systems developed by Westgate Defense. Full specs and drawings. Everything.”
“Fuck.” The value of those documents to some of America’s enemies was astronomical.
“My thoughts exactly.” Hollowell checked his watch. “I have a meeting in five.” He leveled a hard gaze on Scott. “Don’t lose her. If we’re lucky, she hasn’t done anything with the files yet.”
“Why doesn’t the FBI pick her up while she’s here?”
“Warrants take time.”
“And they’re not putting a team on her to make sure she doesn’t run?”
The older man looked down his long, straight nose at Scott, his bony shoulders rigid under a high-dollar suit coat. “You are the team on her. Regardless of what the feds do, I want you as backup.” Eyes narrowed, he leaned in. “Are you in or out?”
Scott swallowed. His scalp prickled in warning, but if he walked off the job, it wouldn’t just hurt his own reputation—and potentially national security—it would reflect poorly on Steele. Kurt didn’t deserve that.
And Scott wasn’t a quitter.
“In, sir.” He didn’t like it, but if Valerie was guilty, he’d make damn sure she didn’t escape.
Chapter Three
Chantilly, VA
Wednesday, 8:00 a.m.
Valerie drummed her fingers on her desk, trying to pinpoint the source of her unease. Now that her elation over breaking Westgate had ebbed, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a grave mistake, despite Duncan’s assurances that the leak was plugged.
What if he thought he’d fixed the problem but he was wrong?
Chewing a nail, she glanced at the day-shift operator, Carmen. If someone at the company was using Valerie’s reports to break into their clients’ systems, she had just put the country’s national security at risk. There were about a dozen people at Aggressor with the skills to access her reports without permission.
What didn’t fit was the timeline on some of the malicious attacks. Weeks or months had gone by in several cases. With that much lag time, none of the companies should have been vulnerable.
She stuck a half dozen Skittles in her mouth and sat up, suddenly energized. What if someone was tampering with the client reports, taking out a key vulnerability to leave themselves a backdoor?
For the next two hours, she compared the copies of the reports she kept on her personal drive with those she’d uploaded to the network. Nothing. She reached for more candy, only to find the bag empty, and slumped in defeat. If clients weren’t getting the wrong report, then why weren’t they making the changes to protect themselves, especially after spending the money to have Aggressor find the holes?
Not wanting to bother Duncan until she had more to go on, she dialed the office of the CIO at P + F whose name was at the top of her report.
“Marjorie Wilson,” the woman answered, her voice brusque.
Valerie hesitated. “Ms. Wilson. I didn’t expect to get you directly.”
“My secretary called in sick and the temp agency hasn’t sent a replacement. Who is this?”
“Sorry, I’m Valerie Sanchez. I work at Aggressor International.”
“I’m not interested.” Her voice faded as if she were distancing herself from the phone.
“No, wait. I’m not selling anything.”
Ms. Wilson sighed.
“I saw recently that your print servers had been hacked and—”
“Where did you hear that?” The question came like a slap.
“On a forum for hackers and network admins, ma’am. I’m following up because I know I pointed out that vulnerability in my report to you last year and—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The CIO was vibrating with anger now. “What report?”
“The pen test report I wrote for you in October of last year.”
“I don’t read unsolicited materials, but if you hacked our system to prove something…”
Valerie wanted to beat her head against her desk. “Ma’am, your company hired us to provide a penetration test, and I’m the one who wrote the report. It would have come from Duncan Hollowell, after your teleconference with him.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to, but we never hired anyone, and this conversation is done.”
What the hell? Valerie sat with the phone to her ear for a beat and then replaced the receiver, her hand shaking.
If Marjorie Wilson was telling the truth, then it wasn’t someone at Aggressor taking advantage of early information. There was only one man who made the assignments and coordinated with the clients: Duncan. If the clients weren’t real…
Oh shit. Valerie doubled over and wrapped her arms around her stomach to stem the tide of nausea.
How could he?
She rested her forehead on the cool Formica desktop and tried to sort through her muddled thoughts. Was she overreacting? Maybe there was a misunderstanding.
Shoving the empty candy wrapper into the trash—and now regretting having eaten so much sugar this early in the day—she brought up another report and called another client from a couple months ago who had been recently hacked. This time she used a slightly different approach.
“Hi, Tom,” she said after they made introductions. “We’re surveying our past customers on their experience, trying to determine how we can provide better service. Would you be willing to answer a couple of questions?”
“I think you have us on your list by mistake,” he said genially. “We’ve never used Aggressor.”
Her stomach backed up into her throat. “Oh, I’m so sorry. We might have some cross-contamination from the prospective client database. Sorry to bother you.”
Breathe. Valerie stared unseeing at her computer.
Duncan had used her. Betrayed her. Was he trying to scare companies into hiring Aggressor, or something more sinister? The top-secret files he could get from a company like Westgate… Holy shit.
And she was the perfect patsy.
What could she do? Who could she talk to? Did one just walk into an FBI building and ask to see an agent? Imagining it made her throat turn dry.
Somehow, she had to protect herself.
Any downloads made from the system would show up in the daily log. Carmen would check it before shift change, which meant Duncan would haul Valerie into his office first thi
ng in the morning.
She walked down the hall on unsteady legs, the shell of her body encasing a hot writhing mess. Several coworkers passed her in the corridor and she nodded absently, trying not to act out of the ordinary, but everything around her was too bright, too loud.
All of her acting abilities failed her.
In the storeroom, she held her badge up to a reader on a heavy-duty steel cabinet. An electronic lock buzzed quietly. She opened the reinforced door and removed a small thumb drive from the shelf. Only a handful of employees had access to flash drives since they were a common way to spread viruses. But the hackers often used them—with approval, of course—as part of their testing process for their clients, asking secretaries or guards to print something on their behalf, or leaving one behind in the bathroom so an employee would plug it in to see whose it was.
Back at her desk, she copied her mail files—which included Duncan’s assignments—and client reports to the flash drive, keeping her head down. Unfortunately, the drives had built-in RFID tags. She’d never get one past the guards now that she didn’t have the excuse of an active client. The mail room presented the same problem.
Normally, she approved of all of Aggressor’s security measures. Today, they worked against her.
Sweat formed on her brow and trickled down her back. Through the glass, the operator stared at her and pressed her intercom button.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” she laughed self-consciously. “Not nearly enough sleep is all. I’m going to head out in a minute.”
Slipping the small drive and a Scotch tape dispenser into her coat pocket, she signed out of her computer, waving to Carmen as she grabbed her bag and exited the Fish Bowl. Outside, six-foot cloth cubicle walls formed a ring that hid her from view.
She strode purposefully around the circle until she was almost behind Carmen and stopped next to an empty workstation. Her heart thrummed in her ears like a bass drum as she surreptitiously glanced around, placed her shoe on the corner of the desk, and pretended to retie her laces.
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