“You don’t talk about that time much.”
“One of these days, honey, we’re going to get smashed and then there won’t be any more secrets between us.” He toasts me, though his words still sting. “A couple of days ago, I couldn’t find my keycard when we moved from sixteen to seventeen. Al told me to go on ahead and he’d have Zach check the crawlspaces.”
“You think…”
“Al said Zach found my card outside the service elevator.” Lucas stares into his second whiskey. “I was so pissed at you that afternoon. TechLock had just laughed in my face. I took the damn card out of my wallet and almost snapped it in half. But I swear I put it back.”
“You think they might have used it. To do what? Even with access to the server room, they wouldn’t be able to hack Oversight’s encryption.”
“I know.” He drums his fingers on the table. “But, Cam, this is Seattle. The land of Microsoft. Google. How hard would it be to find someone?”
“I’ll issue all new keycard codes tomorrow. If they did use your card—even if they cloned the damn thing—we’ll lock them out. Beyond that…I hope the police can find something on those tapes.”
The server drops the check on the table with a smile, and Lucas narrows his eyes at me.
“You haven’t said a single word about your SEAL all night. Haven’t checked your phone once.” He sits back with a sigh. “What happened?”
“Same shit, different day.” Lucas’s arched brow has me withering. “We had a fight, and I kicked him out. I’m pretty sure he’s done with my drama. Refusing to listen to your boyfriend when he’s upset because you’re too caught up in your own problems doesn’t make for good partner material.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
“No.” I already know what Lucas is going to say, but I still stare at the floor when he chastises me.
“You’re an epic failure in the apology department. You know that, right? Give me your phone.” Resting his hand palm up on the table, he cocks his head.
Bossy Lucas usually makes me laugh, then give in to his demands, but I can’t let someone else bail me out this time. “No. If West and I have a chance, I have to fix things myself. After I finish this job.”
“Nuh-uh. Now. We’re not leaving until you apologize to the man. You want to tell that poor bartender over there she’s got to stay past closing?” Crossing his arms, he settles deeper into the leather captain’s chair. “Go outside and call him right now.”
“Fine.” I snap the response, but inside, I’m terrified. Dealing with all of my failings in just a few days doesn’t leave much protection around my heart.
Only a few tourists wander the waterfront this time of night, and I huddle under one of the bar’s tall outdoor heaters as I wait for West to answer. My heart races until I hear his voice mail message. I almost hang up, but I’m not fast enough—maybe because I don’t want to be, and when I hear the beep, I don’t even think.
“I’ve played the other night on repeat in my head all week. You asked me for ten minutes, and I refused. I don’t have an excuse. I was scared, but you deserve better than a woman who can’t get past her own problems to see that her partner needs her.” My voice cracks and the lump in my throat threatens to choke me, but I have to finish this. “I’m sorry. For losing my shit, for ignoring your pain, for not showing you just how much I care. For not letting you in. I…I’m damn close to falling in love with you, West. Please call me back.”
As I hang up, a star streaks across the sky, and I wipe away a single tear as I make my wish. If only I had better luck with silly little children’s rituals.
“I left a voice mail,” I tell Lucas as I reach our table.
“That’s a start.” He unfolds his tall frame from the chair and tries to stifle a yawn. “You’re the strongest person I know, Cam. Don’t let fear steal a chance for real happiness.”
No amount of rehearsal is going to make my next words any easier, so once we’re outside, I rush before I lose my nerve.
“Not many people are lucky enough to work with their best friend. I did a damn good job of screwing that up, and you still came back and helped me fix Oversight. Please think about staying on after we finish this project. I’ll understand if you don’t, but…I need you.”
He offers me a firm embrace, and in his arms, I find a sliver of forgiveness. We part ways, and I’m so wiped, I don’t notice until I crawl into bed that West never called me back.
WEST
Retired from active duty for six years and not much has changed. Ryker distributes rations, and the four of us crouch against a low hill as we chow down on something that resembles meatloaf—if you close your eyes, don’t inhale, and swallow quickly. At least the comms are more comfortable.
“Now that El Presidente has refused to pay Ernesto’s ransom, the guerrillas want a show,” Ryker says as he lays the ruggedized tablet on the damp forest litter between us. On screen, the leader of the extremist group known only as the People’s Army pulls Ernesto’s head back by his hair, then rests a machete against his carotid artery.
“Your president cares little for anyone but himself. He will not save his own son. How can you ever trust him to save you? At midnight, we will take his son’s life, but his is not the first blood spilled in this war. Your brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers, daughters, and sons have died so your beloved leader can have his gilded cage. To that we say, ‘No more.’”
The hostage screams as the madman flicks the machete upwards and slices into Ernesto’s bruised and swollen cheek. The camera zooms in on his frightened and probably drug-addled stare, and then the video fades to black.
“Rewind twenty seconds.” Unlike the others, I’ve watched this video—and the four others the People’s Army released—a dozen times, looking for any intel that will make our infiltration and subsequent escape easier.
Ryker taps the screen, then hands me the tablet. Playing the same five seconds over and over again while the others wait, silent, I take in every detail of the room. A dirty window high on the wall provides the only natural light, and shadows flicker twice as the machete-wielding asshole talks about first blood. One of the other guerrillas in the room stifles a flinch, and a third casts a quick glance upwards.
“They moved him.” I zoom in on the window. “The angle of the sun is all wrong. Our current breach plan won’t work.”
“Fuck.” Ryker glares at Coop. “If you hadn’t gotten your chute stuck in that tree, we’d be home by now.”
Coop holds up his hands. “I don’t control the wind, man. The plan’s solid. Why do we have to change it?”
“Shut up.” Inara, who claims the Firefly character of the same name was named after her and not the other way around, punches Coop in the arm. “We brought Sampson in to handle shit like this. Let him do his job.”
“Give me an hour.” Creeping off to a deeper depression in the mossy landscape, I visualize the layout of the compound. Keeping this team safe is my mission, and I can’t fail. During my free fall, in those terrifying and exhilarating seconds before I released my parachute, Cam’s face was burned into the backs of my eyelids. I have to see her one more time.
Gunfire peppers the side of the building as I sprint for cover. A few feet ahead of me, Ryker carries Ernesto, who’s too weak to stand, let alone run. Muffled pops at regular intervals join the cacophony, and as we duck down behind a shed, I count three dead guerrillas. Damn. Inara didn’t lie about her skills.
“Where the fuck is Coop?” Ryker hisses as I load a fresh clip in my pistol, then flatten myself against the wall to fire off a volley of shots towards the observation tower. “I’m going to break his goddamn neck when I find him. He gave away our position.”
“If he’s not at the rendezvous point, he’s probably already dead.” Another burst of enemy fire sends me springing back, and as I hit the shed wall, white hot pain lances through my abdomen.
Without thinking, I roll onto my back and fire two shots up the hill in fr
ont of us, taking out the bastard who shot me. Only then does my vision waver. “I’m hit,” I manage, but my words sound hollow and raspy.
“Stay with me, Sampson.” Ryker yanks a roll of duct tape from his rucksack, pulls up my t-shirt, and curses.
“That…bad?”
After another subtle pop, Inara’s voice floats through my comms. “If you boys are going to get out of there, you need to go right the fuck now.”
Ryker holds the duct tape in his teeth as he lifts me to my feet. The world tilts. Fire consumes my entire left side, and I let out a roar as the ugly son of a bitch wraps length after length of tape around my torso.
“We leave no one behind,” he snaps. With Ernesto tossed over his right shoulder, he lets me lean on his left.
I try to fight him. “You won’t make it carrying my ass.”
“Then walk. You’re a goddamned SEAL, Sampson. If you can’t run five hundred yards while bleeding from a stomach wound, you don’t deserve to wear the uniform.”
“Yessir,” I mumble, his words so similar to my former CO’s that I can’t help but obey.
Inara clears the way for us until we hit the edge of the jungle canopy. With the last of my strength, I squeeze off a round, killing a soldier who springs out of the underbrush. My arm drops, the gun tumbling to the ground. Ryker supports my full weight, maintaining a constant stream of orders to stay conscious, to run, to fight, and I try, but I’m blind, and a dull roar, like the sound of the ocean inside a conch shell, fills my ears.
“Tell…Cam…”
17
CAM
I n the corner of the ceiling, a cluster of glow-in-the-dark stars center me after I wake with a scream in my throat. I almost had them removed when I bought the place, but after a few sleepless nights, I let them stay. Wide awake, mind racing, I reach for my phone. No messages.
When I can’t get back to sleep, I tug on a soft tank and shorts and then head for my laptop and coffee. As the rich scent of a Colombian blend fills the room, I log on to VetNet, then promptly forget all about the coffee.
HuskyFan: Check the logs. Key cards and logins. You almost caught me twice. I can’t give up. They’ll kill me. But you can stop them.
“Holy fuck.” I rush to reply, hoping he’s still online.
FlashPoint: Do you work at the hotel? How did you know who I was?
HuskyFan: I’m a hacker, Camilla. Do you really think finding your name, address, and service record was all that difficult?
FlashPoint: Who are you?
HuskyFan: Think. You’ll figure it out. You helped me through a dark time. I’ll never forget you. Goodbye.
His status changes to offline. A few minutes later, his account disappears completely. I save my chat logs before those vanish as well, then lean back and close my eyes. Whoever HuskyFan is, I think I owe him now.
“What the hell?” A single flower—a small daisy—lays across the keyboard in the server room.
“I like daisies. One of the street vendors was selling them this morning.” Al had been so surprised when he’d seen me walk in carrying a flower I’d bought on impulse. I told HuskyFan to pick his wife a flower. Could Al be HuskyFan?
Moments after I call up the access logs, Royce slips into the server room. “How are we looking?”
“I don’t know.” I explain my early morning surprise. “I think…it might be Al. What do you know about him?”
Royce pops two white pills and washes them down with his coffee. “Anti-seizure meds,” he says at my raised brow. “Mostly precautionary.”
“Mostly? You look like shit, Rolls. Go home. Relax. Or…I don’t know…go fishing. Get drunk. Binge watch House of Cards or something. Lucas and Orion will be here in an hour. I won’t be alone.”
“I can’t.” Royce takes another slow sip of coffee, then sets the cup down next to mine. “Best thing I can do is work. Too much time alone and things get dark pretty quick.”
Touching his arm, I try to find the right words to offer comfort, but then my phone buzzes, and I hold my breath. When Lucas’s name and number flash across the screen, I try not to let my disappointment show.
Zach and Al called in sick today.
“Bingo.”
“Care to explain?” Royce drops down into the chair next to me. I try not to notice the tremble in his legs as he shifts to get comfortable.
I turn my monitor so he can see the access logs. “Lucas and I were having a drink after the team happy hour on the twentieth.” Highlighting two card swipes, I continue. “We left the bar ten minutes after he supposedly entered the server room.”
“So, the hacker—Al?—stole his key card. That doesn’t explain how he accessed encrypted files.”
Waving my hand at the old, now defunct, security camera in the corner of the room, I try to keep the disgust out of my voice. “The strongest password in the world isn’t safe from a camera.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“What do you know about Al? How’d you find him?” Continuing my scan of the logs, I find half a dozen of my own logins at times I was either asleep or engaged in other bed-based activities with West. The pang of loss hits me hard, but I try to ignore the hole in my heart so I can listen to Royce.
“I’d advertised. I wanted to be fully staffed—if not overstaffed—before I had to…leave. His references were excellent, and he’d served with my very first commanding officer.”
I tuck a stray curl behind my ear. “He told me he handled radar.”
Royce slides over to a free terminal and launches a browser. “Let me pull up his employee file.” A few moments later, he snorts. “He lists his army commission as ‘Specialist.’ Given who he served with? That’s bullshit.” He picks up his phone. “I still know a few guys I can call for intel.”
After he exchanges several off-color jokes and vague updates on his life—no mention of the tumor—with someone he calls “Ace,” he asks about Al Hagen. I can’t hear what the man on the other end of the line says, but Royce sits up straighter, asks a few quick follow-up questions, then shakes his head. “You’re sure?” As he pauses, anger churns in his eyes. “No, that’s what I needed. Pretty sure he’s involved in some underhanded shit, and the authorities are going to be calling you before long. Thanks a lot. Give my best to Marta.”
Defeated, Royce slumps back in his chair. “Well, that’s all the evidence I need. Al served four years as a Cyber Operations Analyst. Surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber-attacks, digital forensics, and threat analysis. Sound like skills he put to use breaking into Oversight?”
I can’t help my wry laugh. “What the hell do we do now? He’s covered his tracks. All we’ve got are card swipes and logins at times I can prove weren’t Lucas or me.”
Royce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Keep working on Oversight. Get her up and running. Let me handle the rest. I’m going to have a little heart-to-heart with the rest of the cabling crew. They still on the rooftop deck?”
“Yep.”
Pushing to his feet, he looks better than he has in a week. Purpose shines in his gaze, and he rubs his hands together. “This ought to be fun.”
“Go get ‘em, Lieutenant.”
Oversight launches without a single hiccup, even though Lucas and Royce had to finish installing the last three cameras alone—Royce didn’t trust any of the crew Al brought in, and though we don’t have any hard evidence, the three men who showed up today are currently downtown talking to the police.
I can’t help but take a minute and stare at the software’s main interface on the screen in front of me. “We did it, baby. You and me. And Lucas and Orion and Abby and Royce, and even Al, as much as I’d like to kick his ass right now. You’re better than you would have been if he’d never touched you.”
She throws up her regular system status message—All Clear—and I grin. “Yeah, you are.”
Coana’s security team waits for me in the employee lounge so I can train them on the new system. The service elevator carries me swiftly
to the first floor, where tablet in hand, I check each camera along my route, happy to find the images crisp and clean and perfectly in sync with my movements.
Activating the next camera, I freeze. He’s got a hat pulled low over his blond crew cut, but I know that walk, and Al’s headed right for me at a fast clip.
My hand spasms as I try to send an alert, and I miss the on-screen button. Al turns the corner, looks up, and stops short.
“Hey, Cam. I…” He shakes his head. “I won’t insult you. You’re too smart not to have figured it out by now.”
“HuskyFan.”
With a sigh, he holds out his hand. “Give me the tablet.”
“Don’t do this.” I try to shift my grip so I can send out the alert one-handed, but he snatches the device away.
We’re alone in the hall, in an employee-only area, but if I screamed, surely someone in the lounge would hear me. His gaze holds such sadness, though, that I can only take a step back—putting enough distance between us that I can defend myself with my cane if I have to.
“Why?”
“I didn’t know you were FlashPoint.” Regret softens his tone. “When we started talking, I’d just landed this job. Money was tight, and with losing my vacation pay, I panicked. A couple of my old army buddies knew about this crew out of Seward Park who needed my skills. Ten thousand dollars for what should have been a week’s worth of work. I couldn’t turn that down.”
“Is your wife really pregnant?” My fingers curl tighter around the handle of my cane.
“Yes. Everything I said to you was true.” He meets my gaze, and if he’s lying, he’s the best actor I’ve ever seen. “You don’t understand what’s at stake here. They bring in over a hundred thousand dollars a month at each hotel. If I’d tried to leave Emerald City or quit working for them, they would have killed me. They still might. I only came here today so I could prove to them that I tried one more time to reinstall my code. When they find out I failed…”
Breaking His Code (Away From Keyboard Book 1) Page 15
