By three a.m., Valerie had everything set up for several of her phishing attacks on people at Aggressor. She even had one ready to go for Cathy Hollowell on the off chance that the woman and her husband used the same personal computer. Duncan might not keep anything on his home drive, but people got careless and arrogant all the time. It was worth a shot.
Valerie would send the emails later in the morning during typical business hours to arouse less suspicion.
Listening to a running loop of Santigold and the Renegades through her earbuds while she worked, the tasks had kept her busy enough to ignore her confusion over Scott. She’d wanted to be creeped out—or at least pissed off—by the pictures of her on his camera, but the images had been more artistic than stalkerish. She couldn’t explain it, but the mood of the photos had been decidedly…admiring.
Not only that, he’d somehow taken her from pretty—enough to occasionally turn heads or distract a guard with her cleavage—to almost beautiful. And, God, his words. She shivered at the memory of those words. You’re that woman, and she’s incredible.
For one breath-stealing moment she’d had the sense of something important and wonderful hovering between them, but then she’d ruined it, like a speck of glitter in the air that turns out to be dust lit by the sun.
She’d spoiled the moment with her obviously unwanted observations about the similarities between photographers and snipers. Hadn’t she thought herself clever? And, more importantly, like she finally had some profound insight into what made Scott tick.
Stupid.
Could she honestly be shocked he wasn’t happy about being psychoanalyzed? No wonder he’d backed away.
She let out a long sigh.
Her computer dinged softly through her headphones and she stopped absently combing hacker forums for news to check the alert.
Yes! For whatever reason, Eli had connected to the Aggressor corporate network in the middle of the night.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she fired the commands to launch a malware program through Eli’s connection that would give her a backdoor into Aggressor. She was proud of the scripts she had written and excited to see them out in the real world. Also nervous, since this could be the most important hack of her life.
Scott mumbled something from behind her. She removed the earbuds and looked over her shoulder at him.
He roused from the sofa and rubbed his eyes, checking his watch as he stood. “What’s going on?”
“Eli logged in,” she said with a grin.
Blinking, his demeanor went from soft and groggy to upright and alert in an instant. “Oorah. Now what?”
“I used the connection to upload a virus to the Aggressor server. He got us past the firewall, and my scripts will set up an administrative username and password that resides in the compiler.”
Scott squinted.
She waved a hand. “Sorry. Basically, they shouldn’t even notice it’s there, and it’ll be nearly impossible to get rid of without wiping their systems.”
“What about antivirus software?”
“That only works on known code. All of my scripts are clean as virgin snow. I rewrote my old functions from scratch and didn’t borrow from anyone else. So even if the Aggressor admins added the phrases from my old work to their antivirus database, it won’t help them.”
“Smart.” He tilted his head side to side, his neck popping loudly in the quiet.
She scrunched her nose at the ghastly sound.
“Sorry. Bad habit.” He strode into the kitchen and opened the pantry, staring idly at the boxes and cans Tara had left behind for them. “How long until you’re in?”
“I’m in now.”
He whipped his head toward her, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. “That fast?”
She laughed. “Faster than a speeding bullet.”
“And potentially just as destructive,” he said without rancor as he snagged a box of pita crackers from the shelf.
“True. Or helpful.”
He conceded her point with a half nod and set the crackers and a tub of hummus on the bar across from her. “Hungry?”
At the sight of the food, her stomach rumbled. “Yes, but I need to start digging around at Aggressor, see if I can find the emails Duncan sent me. I’m hoping there’s a backup somewhere.”
“Eat and type.”
“Yes, sir.” She tapped her fingers to her brow.
“I wasn’t an officer.”
Reaching for a cracker, she caught his gaze. “So?”
“So. Only officers get saluted.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Tradition. It dates back to medieval knights showing respect and good intentions, and the military—especially the Marines—is hardcore about its rituals.”
“I know nothing about the military. If you weren’t an officer, what were you?”
“Enlisted.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Education.” He frowned at his fingers, which were splayed on the counter. “Officers have to have a bachelor’s degree.”
“Oh.” She’d had no idea that was how the military worked, but she absolutely understood the resentment that came with limited opportunity.
Just one more thing they had in common. One more reason she connected with him. Maybe even loved him.
Chapter Eighteen
Falls Church, VA
Thursday, 3:30 a.m.
That breathy exhalation reminded Scott that Valerie was super techie-smart and he was nothing but a foul-mouthed grunt who’d had to bust his ass for a GED while behind bars. Okay, maybe he was a slightly enlightened grunt—he did read a lot now, and he had earned his Associate’s degree in the Corps—but a ground-pounder nonetheless.
His dad had beaten that into him well and good.
There had been moments in his younger days, glimmers of promise, when The Dick had seemed to care. Days when he was more sober than drunk, or things had gone his way, when the man had shown a modicum of interest in Scott. Just enough to tantalize, like a distant oasis that promises water only to reveal itself as a mirage.
But Scott had finally given up his childhood dreams of having a loving father. Probably the day his dad had literally stomped all over his science project.
“You think you’re smarter than me? That you can ‘be something?’” The Dick’s big foot landed squarely on top of the first miniature bridge, crushing it with the lug sole of his steel-toed boot. “You’re nothing, boy. Nothing. You hear me?” Crunch. The second bridge collapsed.
Scott tackled his dad, thrusting his shoulder into the man’s soft belly. “Stop it! Stop it!” His sobs rendered his attack ineffective as his body collapsed under his dad’s strong push and he fell to his butt on the scuffed linoleum.
The Dick waited for Scott to look up before he smashed the final bridge with a triumphant smirk. Then his face darkened and he straddled Scott, lifting him to his feet by his collar, tearing his T-shirt in the process. “You are nothing,” he said in a low voice full of menace. “You will always be nothing. Don’t you forget it.”
Scott hated how he trembled, how little control he had over his own body. “Yes, sir,” he said with as much of a voice as he could muster.
The man shoved him away, and Scott stumbled before catching himself against the wall. “You’re on dinner duty for the rest of the week. Your mom isn’t feeling well.”
Of course not. His dad had beaten her so badly she couldn’t move.
Even worse than his father’s attack was the look on his science teacher’s face when Scott told her he had blown off the project. He had lost the respect of one of the few people in his life who had believed in him.
Any lingering dreams of college had died the day he pulled the trigger.
But he could imagine Valerie on a red-brick campus complete with ivy climbing the walls, maybe not partying with the frat boys, but turning their heads. Unless she had always dressed in shirts that fit like garbage bags.
“You said you studied materials engineering.” He knew so little about her and wanted to know it all.
“That was my plan.” A nervous laugh burst from her lips, and she gave him a self-conscious glance. “I liked chemistry.”
Of course she did. “How’d you end up working as a hacker then?”
She looked down and tapped her fingers lightly over the keys without actually striking. “I dropped out during my freshman year.”
Her computer’s fan shut off. A clock on the wall ticked nervously, loud in the yawning silence. Scott didn’t move a millimeter.
Valerie lifted one shoulder and tilted her head. “After that, hacking was the only skill I had, and even though I tried to deny it, I enjoyed it. There’s an illicit thrill in solving the puzzle, breaking in.” She stroked the keyboard absently. “Also, I think I secretly hoped working as a white hat might make up for my past crimes. I was naive enough to believe they wouldn’t follow me.”
But you could never really outrun your past, could you? “Why’d you quit school?” he pried.
Valerie frowned but didn’t answer.
“Partied a little too hard, huh?” he teased, hoping to lighten the mood.
Her wan smile did nothing to alleviate the growing turmoil in his gut. “Something like that,” she said, her voice flat.
“Hey.”
She met his gaze.
His heart stopped at the depth of anguish in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.” He forcibly relaxed his posture and leaned against the counter. “I’ll quit interrupting your work.”
“Do you miss Montana?” she fired at him in a head-spinning change of direction as she crossed her arms.
Quid pro quo. Was that what she wanted? Fine then. He took a deep breath. “Some parts of it,” he said. If he wanted her to dredge up the unhappy and painful parts of her past, this was only fair. “We lived pretty far out of town, surrounded by mountains. I miss the billions of stars in the night sky, a hundred times brighter than you’ve ever seen in the city. When I was a teenager, I’d escape outside to sleep under the Milky Way. Nothing on earth makes you feel as insignificant as knowing every prick of light is a sun or a planet. It was liberating to realize how inconsequential we all are in the scheme of things.”
And apparently the memories had liberated his mouth far too much.
“It sounds beautiful,” she said with a sympathetic head tilt. “I’d love to see stars like that one day.”
I’d love to show them to you.
Her face softened, the line of worry between her brows easing. “For me it was clouds. I’d lie on the rotting lounge chair in my aunt and uncle’s little yard and watch them pass overhead, always changing, moving like ocean waves on glass.”
“Sounds nice”
“It was,” she said. “Have you been back? To Montana?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because as much as I love it, I hate it too. If anything good happened to me there, I don’t remember it.”
She frowned and flipped a cracker over and over with her fingers. “That’s how I feel about Texas, except my life there was fine. Right up until it wasn’t.”
He nodded and reached for her hand. “What happened at school?” he asked softly.
The heat kicked on, rattling the vent overhead, and Valerie curled her hand into his, staring at his pale fingers intertwined with her light brown ones. “I went out with this guy Tim a couple of times, but there was no…spark, I guess, so I turned him down for a third date.”
“And he didn’t take it well.”
Her head shook. “No. Not well at all.” She bit her lower lip and stared at the countertop for several moments before continuing. “He started following me around campus, showing up outside my classes.” Her gaze met his. “Surreptitiously taking pictures.”
Ah, hell. “I never wanted to hurt or intimidate you, V. You know that, right?”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand and smiled. “I’m not mad.”
Until she gave it, he didn’t even realize how much he’d been waiting for that acquittal. “What happened with Tim?”
She let out a long breath. “He escalated.” Her hand moved in an insolent arc. “Unwanted pizza deliveries that I didn’t have the money for, calls in the middle of the night that woke me and my poor roommate. The last straw was when he posted an ad on my behalf on an unofficial school dating forum.”
Scott’s heart plummeted.
“It detailed all kinds of sex acts that I would supposedly do for money and included my dorm room and phone number, along with a photo,” she said, her voice as emotionless as if she were reading out her grocery list.
“Fuck.”
“That was definitely on the list.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Jesus, Valerie.” He wanted to strangle the bastard with his bare hands. “What about the police?”
She shook her head. “They couldn’t prove it was him.”
Of course not. “So you left.”
“No. I hacked his computer and found videos of him and his fraternity buddies at a party. They were coercing new recruits to put something into girls’ drinks and then have sex with the girls. I sent the videos from his email to the dean of the university and the campus police department. Then I changed his password so only the cops could get into his computer.” She removed her hand from Scott’s and crossed her arms. “Then I left.”
“Holy shit. Remind me not to get on your bad side again.”
She gave a sharp nod and grinned like the Devil. “Damn straight.”
Two hours later, Valerie stared at her computer in dismay. She was in, but she had nothing. Oh, she had known not to get her hopes up, known Duncan would have attempted to cover his tracks. But she’d hoped anyway. Had counted on being smarter than him, counted on him making a mistake along the way that she could swoop in and exploit.
But no matter how many times she scoured Aggressor’s servers, there was nothing to find.
Nothing accessible from the network, anyway.
Now it was after five in the morning and she was depleted. After weeks of setting traps to get to this point, all her work had been pointless.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Scott said in a sardonic tone as he set a mug filled with coffee, along with the hazelnut creamer and the sugar bowl, on the counter in front of her. “Anything to be thankful for yet?”
Just you. “Not a goddamned thing.” She pushed away from her laptop and stalked to the far side of the living room to peer through the blinds at the dark sky. The faint glow of city lights tinged the edges of the horizon, obliterating all but the brightest stars. Tears of frustration clawed at the back of her eyelids like angry cats and she let the aluminum blinds fall shut with a dull tink. “He wiped everything.”
“Hollowell?”
She faced Scott and blinked to regain control, releasing a long, shuddering breath. Tears would help nothing. She’d learned that lesson long ago. “Him or someone working for him. Either way…”
There had to be something in this place that she could kick.
Scott nodded, unaware of the rash anger simmering behind her fists, his face impassive. “Okay.”
“Okay?” she lashed out, regretting her accusatory tone even as the words dropped from her lips. “That’s all you have to say? Okay?” She pointed to her laptop and marched toward him. All the anger she didn’t even realize she had built up since her dad died whipped itself into a raging tornado. “Getting into Aggressor’s systems was our best hope, our last hope for getting the evidence. And you just stand there like everything’s fine and say, ‘Okay’?
“Fuck that.” She trembled, part of her standing apart from her own body, watching in horror as she railed at Scott for doing nothing more than…doing nothing. “Fuck your unshakeable calm.” Her voice came out too loud in the small, quiet space, stretched tight like an overfilled balloon. “How about you drop the Mr. Cool act and show me how you really feel? For once,
could you do that?” Her fists clenched, and she shook one at him across the counter. “Show me that you feel something!”
He stared at her in silence, his sole reaction a twitching jaw muscle.
The heat shut off with a click, dropping them into tomb-like quiet. The only sounds were the humming of the refrigerator, her harsh breaths, and her heart pounding in her ears.
Oh, God, what had she done?
“I’m pretty sure,” he finally said, his voice even and low as he met her gaze, blue eyes blazing, “I’ve been clear that I feel something for you.”
She swallowed and the damn tears welled up again. A nod was all she could muster. She knew as well as anybody how much it cost to give away your emotions.
He reached across the dull Formica and held out his hands, palms up. Slowly, she unclenched her fists and laid her hands on his, more grateful than she could say for the contact.
“You think I’m not reeling from this? That I’m not disappointed? I am.” He caressed the sensitive skin of her palms with his thumbs. “There’s a part of me right now that wants to raze this fucking city to the ground just to get at Hollowell and make him pay for what he’s done to both of us, to this country. I’ve dreamed of hiding out in his neighbor’s tree, sighting him through the scope of my Barrett, and watching him fall as I pull the trigger. Worse,” he said, his voice harsh. “I’ve dreamed of much worse.”
Her eyes widened at his confession. Not because he scared her—if he’d planned to kill Duncan in cold blood, he could have easily done it by now—but because he’d never shown any sign of his anger. She thought he’d been letting it all roll off his back somehow.
Scott scowled. “I feel everything, Valerie. But I couldn’t survive in my house, in juvie, or on the outs in the Marines by wearing my heart on my sleeve. And I’m afraid…” He gripped her hands and broke eye contact, staring at a spot on the counter between them. “If I focus on how you and I have been wronged, if I work myself into a frenzy over every obstacle that blocks our path—”
Abruptly, he released her and retreated, pointing to his chest. “My dad’s blood is pumping inside of me, waiting, just waiting for me to lose control and unleash that fury. I can’t afford to give in to my anger. Not now. Not ever.”
Dangerous To Love Page 227
