The Boss

by Melissa Schroeder

  She twisted around and looked at Jay.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Get Millie to safety.”

  He said nothing but apparently decided to listen, because he hit the gas. As she turned toward the memorial, she heard Rock’s voice and then saw Tessa crumple to the ground in front of him. There were figures looming behind them, rushing toward the couple. With the dim lighting, she couldn’t make out how many attackers there were, but it wouldn’t be long before they caught up to all of them.

  She took off toward him, but Rock was already in action. He scooped up the agent and started on his way.

  “Fuck,” Vic said. “I’m on my way over.”

  She met up with Rock and the injured Tessa. Vic reached them about the same time. They all climbed into the SUV. Vic took off even before she had shut her door.

  Mac was breathing heavily as she looked around. She sat in the passenger seat. Turning in her seat, she looked at Rock. He’d already pulled out the first-aid bag and was pressing something to Tessa’s wound.

  “Jay, head back to the farmhouse.”

  “Roger that.”

  Then the connection went dead.

  “How many?” Vic asked.

  “Three, at least.”

  “Four,” Tessa said through clenched teeth. “I saw another one coming up behind them. They weren’t FBI, though.”

  “What makes you say that?” Rock asked.

  “They were speaking Russian.”

  Vic shared a look with her, and she read the conclusion in his eyes. They were truly fucked now.

  …

  “You mangy bastard,” Tessa yelled out from the room.

  They’d been back at the house for less than thirty minutes, and Rock was still trying to clean up her wound. It didn’t sound like it was going well at all.

  “She’s not shy, that one,” Mac said.

  Jay, Millie, and Mac sat at the table. Vic was pacing the floor.

  “I have some pain pills, if that would help,” Millie offered.

  “That’s okay, love. Everything will be okay. She’s just pissed she was shot. The big thing is making sure it doesn’t get infected.”

  “What I want to know is just how it got this fucked up to begin with?” Jay asked. “We went to her because she’s FBI. She got it all set up.”

  “People can be bought everywhere, unfortunately,” Vic said.

  “And there is a chance someone in the line of command was bought off. It seems the money is flowing easily through this entire cock up.” She looked at Millie. “This boss of yours is a real piece of work.”

  “He’s not my boss. Not anymore. I’m going to resign.”

  The comment was so odd that she looked at Vic. Even as tired as they were and with everything they had been through, they both started to laugh.

  “Yes, I think that is a brilliant idea, Millie.”

  Rock walked out from the bedroom and looked at them. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Millie is resigning from her job at Liberty,” Vic said. “How’s Tessa?”

  “She’s going to be fine. I gave her one of your T-shirts, Mac.”

  She nodded. “Good. Now we have to make ourselves disappear. I have identities set up for everyone but Millie and Tessa.”

  “I’m not running.”

  They all turned to look at Tessa. She was a trooper, that was for sure. She was leaning against the doorjamb, and her face was pale. The determination in her eyes, though, that is what struck Mac. No matter what, this woman wasn’t going to give up on her mission.

  This was not the time to take a stand, though.

  “We really don’t have a choice. Someone in your organization is corrupt, and now we have a price on our heads. And we have to make sure that we survive.”

  “I am not running. I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am.”

  “So what do you propose?” Rock asked.

  “We need whatever they are afraid of.”

  Everyone looked at Millie.

  “I have no idea what they are looking for. Really. I don’t have the first inkling. I saw a lot of data, but most of it didn’t make sense to me. Not really.”

  Tessa stepped forward and wobbled a bit. Rock moved closer, but the agent shot him a look that stopped him. Then, she turned to Millie.

  “Think back, Millie. There must be something. And it has to be something George wanted you to do. Something he had you working on, and no one else.”

  “What I know is that I can hack into anything. And I can hide anything. That is what I was there for.”

  A long beat of silence filled the room.

  “What does that mean?” Jay asked.

  She shrugged. “George had me hide a few accounts. He said they were for work for the government.”

  “But which government, is the question,” Tessa said. “What if he was hiding stuff for the Russians? I heard someone had a bead on George using his old military connections to get some work from Russia and more than one Eastern-Bloc dictator.”

  “Good lord. This is a mess,” Rock said.

  “What we need to do is prove that Millie had nothing to do with this,” Jay said.

  “That will never work,” Tessa said.

  “What?” Jay asked.

  Tessa opened her mouth to respond, but Vic answered.

  “What the agent means is that somewhere along the way, it became more about getting some leverage than anything else. You are never going to be able to prove Millie is innocent. Or if you can, it would take years. What we need is some kind of information to use as leverage against whoever is behind this. Then we can negotiate the deal.”

  “But what if I can’t think of anything? Seriously. I don’t know what to look for.”

  “Tessa, you might be good at that,” Vic said. “You have a background in the agency. You and Millie go sit down in one of the bedrooms and work on some ideas.”

  “I have no freaking idea what to do,” she said. “I hunt methodical killers. I don’t know squat about espionage. It isn’t my department.”

  “You’ll figure it out. We need to know all his associates. You go through them, maybe something will jog Millie’s memory.”

  The two women did not look that happy, but they did as he ordered.

  “This is more fubar than I thought,” Rock said.

  “True, but not as bad as that job we did for the Brazilian diplomat.”

  “Yeah.”

  They looked at her. “Don’t look at me. I never make mistakes.”

  “I need you two to go out and check the perimeter. We are not dealing with idiots, that’s for sure. I want to make sure everything is up to date and hasn’t been tampered with. We don’t know who is coming.”

  Jay looked like he wanted to argue, but thankfully, he did as ordered. Rock followed him out of the door. Mac stood. She needed to prowl, or she might just go mental.

  “You don’t need to pace. We’ll work it out.”

  She glanced at Vic, and then away. “You heard what Rock said. This is a huge mess, and we are never going to get out from beneath it.”

  “We will. I promise.”

  She stopped to look out the window over the fields. This was going to be their place, the one place in the world no one would know about. Now it had been tainted. Worse, she had dragged him back into something he had warned against.

  “I shouldn’t have gotten you involved.”

  “And then what? You would have handled this mess on your own?”

  “At least you wouldn’t have had your world turned upside down.”

  “Yeah, well, my world hasn’t been right-side up since the day you held a knife to my throat six years ago.”

  He didn’t sound particularly mad about it, but he didn’t sound happy, either.

  She turned and faced him. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head and rose from the chair. “I told you we had things we needed to discuss. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “There might not be a
later, Vic.”

  “Yeah, there will be. There always is. Just know that when this is done, we have some issues to work out. This”—he motioned at the small space between them—“can’t go on this way.”

  “I know.” And it broke her heart. From the moment she had met him, she had been half in love with him. Why she couldn’t just let things lie, go along…it was the one thing that all of her teachers complained about. And her parents. And everyone in her life. Until Vic.

  He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “I think we need to just get everything solved, get settled, then we’ll sort out our thing.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. The knot that had been in her stomach earlier rose and lodged in her throat.

  He leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers. Her heart smacked hard against her chest. He left her feeling slightly dizzy. She knew he was just trying to give her reassurance, a little affection, but she couldn’t bear that. She needed this connection, needed him to understand what he meant to her. She cupped his face and deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue between his lips. He growled in response and took control. She was contemplating how to get to the bedroom as fast as possible when the sound of footsteps rushing down the hall brought them both back to earth.

  “Hey,” Millie said, practically jumping up and down before she stopped and looked at them. “Oops, sorry. I have the worst timing.”

  “No, go ahead,” Mac said.

  “I think I remembered something about Denkov.”

  “And?” Vic said.

  “The last time I did work for his company, Blake had me make a copy of everything I was doing. He said it was for Denkov’s people, but now I think he might have suspected something.”

  “And you did?”

  She nodded. “He wanted particulars about what we did, what parts of the corporation we are protecting. He also wanted a copy of the hours of my work on it.”

  “What good does that do?”

  She shook her head. “It’s like a lawyer. Billable hours. He was searching for something.”

  “Yes, and more than likely it was the old adage of follow the money,” Tessa said. “General Blake made a name for himself after he won all those medals because he sniffed out corruption of the financial kind.”

  “So, you think Blake might have been gathering info on Denkov and George?” Vic asked.

  “Maybe, and since I can remember what he asked about, I know just what to look for. And I know how to access the information.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” Mac asked, even as a sinking feeling weighed her down.

  Millie gave her a toothy smile. “The best way to access the information is to get right in there and steal it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There is something devious about how women’s minds work. It’s one of the things I like most about working with them.

  —Vic Walker

  Vic looked from Millie to Tessa and back to Millie. They were actually serious. They wanted to break in to hack someone who was hunting for them. It was the stupidest of stupid ideas that had ever been thought up.

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  “Why don’t we hear them out?” Mac asked.

  “Because Millie is a civilian, and I have a feeling she thinks she’ll be going in with us.” He glanced at Millie, who nodded, and then turned back to Mac. “See. She has no background in this, and that makes it dangerous.”

  Mac nodded. “I agree, but the truth is, we are running out of options. We can at least listen to what they came up with before dismissing it outright.”

  He wanted to say no. He had done it enough in their time together now, though, it seemed impossible. He didn’t want to let her down, and he wanted to move on from this job. After this, they would have forever.

  “Okay, but it’s going to take a lot to change my mind.”

  “I know where all the information is, but I can’t access it from here,” Millie said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t access it from here?” Vic asked.

  “I’m a damn good hacker, but I don’t want to take any chances that I would tip them off to our location.”

  “As a computer expert, couldn’t you hide that kind of thing?” he asked.

  “I could, but it doesn’t mean they won’t figure it out. No, I think it would be best to break in and use one of their computers. It will be easier to confuse them if the information looks like it’s being accessed by someone who works there. In fact, I could probably hack in using Blake’s account. That alone would confuse them for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “More than likely, they haven’t had time to close it down, and there might be no one using it. Plus, if I hack in using his computer, they’ll assume I’m using it somewhere else.”

  “But I thought you said you were worried about them finding us?” Mac asked. “What difference does doing the deed from D.C. make?”

  “All roads will lead back to Blake’s computer. Not here. That is the big difference. While I don’t mind taking a chance and sending them on a wild goose chase from there, doing it from here could still lead them back to our safe house. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but they could always do a forensic search and find you. That wouldn’t be good,” Millie explained.

  “Once she has something incriminating, she has more to bring to the table,” Tessa explained. “More information means more power, and I can back that. Although, I do think there should be some kind of investigation to figure out just how that went to hell last night.”

  He shrugged. “It would be easy enough. They got to someone high enough to cancel the op. Everyone was told to stand down, and whoever was in charge sent snipers in. It could be just about anyone who has operational contacts. And don’t rule out whoever helped you. We really can’t trust anyone at the moment.”

  “I know. It just pisses me off. We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

  “You never know which side you’re on. Not when money is involved, and I know the Russians pay top dollar for this kind of thing,” Vic said.

  “They do,” Tessa said. “Along with several other countries.”

  “Gaining digital information on your enemy is the new cold war for countries. It seems so much worse than what went on in the twentieth century,” Millie said.

  “How so?”

  “At least then we didn’t hide it. Sure, we had spies, the Soviets had spies, as did China and so on and so on. Now, though, it is all spies, all information. The weapon of today’s cold war is information and hacking. If one country can hack into another’s and cause disruption along with gaining their secrets, that’s a huge bonus. And instead of people losing their lives, they lose their livelihoods.”

  “And that’s worse?” Mac asked.

  Millie shrugged. “It’s easier to defeat a country down on their luck and devastated by an economic disaster than it is to fight a country pissed off and looking for blood.”

  “Damn,” Vic said. He hadn’t really understood how smart she was, or how clinical she could be. She was right. Information was the key. “Do you think that’s why they were abducting you?”

  She shivered. “I’m not sure. It could be that they wanted a hacker, but why me? There are people who will gladly do it for money.”

  “So maybe it’s something you specifically know,” Jay said. “Something you saw, or something you did that alerted them. More than likely, Maatev wants to know what you know about Denkov.

  Vic nodded. “That would make you a hot commodity. You already have something in place that is working. So they could be after your hacking skills and your ability to hide information, or they were ordered to take you because of what you know about Walter George. Any of those options would make sense.”

  “So, where does that leave us?” Mac asked.

  “That leaves us breaking into the headquarters,” Tessa said.

  “No,” Millie said.

  “But I thought you said
that is all that’ll work.”

  “I think it’ll be better to break into Blake’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Less security, for one. Plus, I know Blake had his laptop and home computer connected directly to the server. They had me apply another level of security to it. It’s almost unhackable. I mean, I could hack it, and a couple of others, but not many. There is a good chance they have no idea what he has there.”

  “But wouldn’t they have taken it after his death?”

  She shook her head. “More than likely, they’ve wiped his computer clean. If the FBI is investigating, disappearing with his computer isn’t a good idea. This way, they wipe the information they want off and leave it. Keeps them from being considered suspicious. But I can log back in using his name and password. It will take them a while to figure it out.”

  Holy shit. It was the only thing he could think. If they made a mistake, they would all get found out. Right now, he was sure there was enough evidence to at least get Millie, but Vic knew without a doubt they were working on getting files on all of them. Worse, Tessa’s career was in jeopardy now, thanks to them.

  “Okay.”

  “What’s okay?” Rock asked as he and Jay came back into the house.

  “I take it the perimeter is secure?”

  Jay nodded. “Not a hair out of place. I think it’s amazing we haven’t been found out.”

  “Bloody hell, don’t jinx us. We have enough problems as it is,” Mac said.

  “So, what’s this plan?” Jay asked.

  “We break into Blake’s house and access the data from there. Once I have it, we have a bargaining chip. We can get me out of this mess, free you, and save Tessa’s career.”

  “What’s left of it,” the woman in question murmured.

  “By the time we’re done with this, we’ll make sure that you get some kind of accommodation.”

  Millie’s self-assured tone caught his attention.

  “How do you figure?”

  “I figure once the FBI finds out that not only has a company with very high security clearance been selling secrets and playing with dictators—not to mention their multiple contracts with the federal government and some of the bigger cities in North and South America—they are also going to find out they have a mole in the FBI. Most of the time, it isn’t the best thing to be tangled up in this mess, but I am sure you all can come up with some way to twist it.”