A Secret to Die For

by Lisa Harris

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to get Paige here. The two of you are about the same size. She should be able to pull this off.”

  The ache in her gut intensified. “And when they realize she doesn’t have the drive?”

  “Don’t worry about that. She’ll have something to give them. This is what we do.”

  “Ms. Callahan. How are you feeling this morning?”

  She looked up as Sergeant Addison stepped into the room. “Much better, sir. Thank you.” She started to stand up.

  “Please . . . you don’t have to get up. I just came by to check on you. I hear the doctor is getting ready to release you, which means we need to discuss what will happen next.”

  Grace nodded. “Okay.”

  “Sarge . . . ,” Nate said. “We need to talk.”

  23

  Nate glanced back at Gracie before following his boss into the hallway, wondering why he felt as if he’d just made a big mistake. He’d caught her smile when he first arrived, but hadn’t been able to interpret the expression hiding beneath it. Even he couldn’t deny the chemistry he’d felt between them last night. Today, though, it had vanished, and in its place a sense of awkwardness had surfaced. But that was his fault. He’d told her that kissing her had been a mistake. What did he expect after that?

  On the other hand, if he really believed what he’d said, then why had seeing her make him want to kiss her all over again?

  Sarge strode down the hallway to a small alcove with a window overlooking the hospital grounds, then turned to face Nate. “Before you say anything, I’ve got something you need to hear, but you’re not going to like it.”

  Nate shifted his attention fully back to the issue at hand. “What’s going on?”

  “I just came out of a meeting with the FBI. Six months ago, they opened up an investigation on a group of hackers called r06u3.”

  “R06 . . . What is that?”

  “It’s hackspeak for—”

  “Rogue.” The connection suddenly clicked. “The group Winters told us Jenkins was connected with.”

  “Exactly. We’ve now been able to confirm that there is a connection between this group and Stephen Shaw’s death. They believe that this cyber group Rogue hired Stephen. Whether or not he knew what he was actually involved in from the beginning, I can’t be certain. It’s always possible he knew, and his conscience just got the best of him.”

  “What do we know about this group?”

  “They’ve been behind a string of cyberattacks over the past year, all of which they’ve managed to execute under the radar. They started out stealing computer data from dozens of corporate networks, along with credit card and ATM numbers. With their last round, they did something called ‘zero-day exploits.’”

  “Which is . . .”

  “A zero-day vulnerability is a hole in a program that the company or vendor doesn’t know about. Hackers find it and write a code that will breach the vendor’s security before the vendor is even aware of the problem. Your typical company concerned about security will hire developers who will look for these vulnerabilities as well as create software that will protect the security of the data. But if a hacker discovers that vulnerability before the developer even realizes there’s a problem, he can in turn write a code that will exploit that vulnerability.”

  “That was Stephen Shaw’s job. To find vulnerabilities and ensure that the clients his company worked for had security that couldn’t be exploited.”

  “The flash drive that Grace managed to snatch holds pages and pages of binary data with corresponding details of recent attacks, and contained both the security vulnerabilities Stephen—we’re assuming—found and the patches he designed to fix them.”

  “What about the supposed vulnerability in the grid security he found? Did the flash drive contain a patch for that?”

  “The tech guys weren’t able to find anything that seemed to be connected to the grid. Which is what has us worried. From what the FBI knows about this group so far, it seems to have international backing. If they have access to the grid’s vulnerabilities and we don’t have the patch, they could take down the grid and there would be nothing we could do to stop them. It could take days, if not weeks, for us to come up with another patch, and we don’t have that kind of time.”

  “I don’t think they have the patch,” Nate said. “And I think they want it before they implement their plan to take down the grid.”

  Sarge stuffed his hands into his pockets. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone called Gracie a few minutes ago. They believe she has the flash drive with the patch and offered her two hundred thousand dollars for it.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars? But wait a minute. If she doesn’t have it . . . and they don’t have it . . . where is it?”

  “I don’t know, but here’s our problem right now. Gracie arranged to make the exchange.”

  “She did what?”

  Nate glanced at the time on his cell phone. “She agreed to meet them in about fifty minutes with the patch.”

  “A patch that we don’t have.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, she made the right call. If we can take advantage of this and find a way to use the situation to trace who’s behind this—”

  “She can’t go in there.”

  “I agree. But we’ve got less than an hour to put a plan together. Paige is on her way here right now. She could pass as Gracie for someone who doesn’t know her well. If tech could come up with a flash drive that would stall them—one that included some kind of untraceable malware so we could track them—it might be our one chance to find out who’s behind this and stop them. And in the meantime, we can get Gracie out of here to somewhere safe until all of this is over.”

  Sarge still didn’t look convinced. “All in less than an hour. We’re going to have to pull a lot of strings to make this happen and even then—”

  “The way it looks to me, this is not only our best option at the moment, it’s our only option. How long do you think it will take them to implement Stephen’s code? Twenty-four hours . . . forty-eight? And when they do take the grid down, are we prepared for that? We’re talking about people running out of food and water within the first seventy-two hours. Within days, there will be nothing on the shelves of all the grocery stores. There will be no way to keep up with the increased crime as people begin to panic. There will be no communications, no fuel at the gas stations, and no functioning hospitals—”

  “Okay, I get it.” Sarge held up his hands. “We’ll find a way to make this happen, but first I have to ask you one question. Do you trust Grace?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “What if she actually has the patch? She had to know it was worth something, and she’s just been offered two hundred thousand dollars for it. People have done a whole lot more for less money.”

  Nate shook his head, irritated at the direction his boss was going. “Yes, I trust her completely. Besides, if she had the patch, why would she tell me about the exchange?”

  “I guess she wouldn’t, but I need to make sure we’re covering all the angles. We can’t afford to lose this one.”

  “She’s told us everything she knows. Trust me on this, because it makes sense that Stephen wouldn’t have wanted the two software programs together. Maybe a bit of insurance on his part. If black hackers managed to get ahold of the security vulnerabilities, he didn’t want them to get the patch as well.”

  “Nate . . . Sarge . . . here you are.” Paige stepped into the alcove, carrying her coffee. “What’s going on?”

  “While you were getting your coffee downstairs,” Nate said, “Gracie found out that someone believes she has the patch and wants to make an exchange. She set up a meeting to take place in about fifty minutes.”

  “Hold on.” Paige held up her drink. “All this happened in the time it took for me to wait in line for my large caramel macchiato?”

  “Pretty much,” Nate said.
/>   “And you’re planning to send her out there to make the exchange?”

  “Definitely not.” Nate caught her gaze. “You’re going to make the exchange.”

  “You know I’m game to do anything, but shouldn’t we let the FBI take the lead on this one? I thought they were taking over the case.”

  “They are,” Sarge said, “but we’re here, and this is happening now. We’ll give them what we have, once this is over. Then our primary job will be solving Stephen Shaw’s murder. But at the moment, we need to move quickly.”

  “What exactly is the plan?” she asked.

  “Biggest issue I see is what happens if they, one, realize you’re not Gracie, and two, discover you aren’t really turning over the patch,” Nate said. “But we need to get Gracie—and Macbain—somewhere safe. I don’t trust the setup here. We’ve got a safe house we can take them to.”

  “I’m going to get the ball rolling on the flash drive we need, so in the meantime,” Sarge said, turning to Paige, “you and Grace need to prepare to switch roles.”

  A minute later, Nate headed back to Gracie’s room, still worried that they wouldn’t have enough time to put into place the details they’d just ironed out.

  Gracie stood up as he and Paige entered the room.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve come up with a plan,” Nate said.

  “You and I are going to change places.” Paige set her coffee down on the side table. “I think it’ll work. We’re about the same height and have similar hair color. If we switch clothes, and I let my hair down, I just might fool them.”

  “Gracie?” Nate caught her frown.

  “I’m just second-guessing my rash decision,” she said. “I don’t want to do anything that could get any of you hurt. We know what they are capable of doing—”

  “You did the right thing, Gracie,” Nate said. “It’s because we know what will happen if we don’t stop these guys that we have to go through with this.”

  “Nate.” His boss stepped back into the room and handed him an earpiece. “I want you to take Grace to the precinct. Make it look as if you and your partner are leaving the hospital. Business as usual. Paige, they need to think you walked out of the hospital on your own. We’ll have a perimeter set up around the coffee shop, and a flash drive is on its way here now.”

  “And when he finds out that it’s a fake patch?” Gracie asked.

  “Our tech guys are working as quickly as possible to delay that. What we have to do is buy some time so we can trace it back to whoever’s behind this,” Sarge said. “We have one chance to get this right.”

  Sarge’s phone rang and he moved to the corner of the room to answer it.

  Nate stepped in front of Gracie, resisting the urge to pull her into his arms and promise her that everything was going to be okay. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. I should have thought through what I was agreeing to. Now I feel like I’ve put everyone’s lives at stake. They told me not to tell anyone, and like I said, we know what these people are capable of. I’m just . . . I’m ready for this to be over.”

  “I know, but this is what we do, Gracie. You did the right thing by telling me, because you might have just given us the one opportunity to find who’s behind this.”

  “I hope so.” She nodded, but there was still a glint of fear in her eyes.

  “It will be over soon.”

  She glanced around the room. “They bugged Stephen’s office. What if they bugged this room and know what your plan is?”

  “The room’s been swept several times. It’s going to be okay.”

  He hated the inner turmoil raging inside, but he’d been right about one thing. Kissing her had been a mistake. He couldn’t let any emotions get in the way. He was here to work a case, nothing more.

  “We’ve got about forty minutes to pull this together,” Sarge said, “but here’s the plan we’ve got so far. Our tech team is working with the FBI to get us a flash drive that will look like legitimate code, but more importantly it will also install undetectable tracking software on the computer once it’s plugged in.” He turned to Paige. “Chances are the person you meet with will want to test the drive on their own computer to make sure they’re getting what they’re paying for. Unfortunately for them, they won’t be able to fully test the code. If they ask where you had the flash drive, just tell them you had it in your pocket. If they know Grace has been in the hospital, they probably know why as well. The flash drive will be waterproof like the other one we have.”

  “So what we need now,” Nate said, “is for the two of you to change. Paige will leave the hospital with the flash drive as Gracie, while Gracie will come with me to my car in the parking garage, like we’re headed back to the precinct. I’ll drive you to the safe house. Okay, Gracie?”

  She nodded and this time he caught the determination in her eyes, reminding him once again of how strong she was despite her vulnerabilities. He waited outside the room while the two women swapped clothes. When he stepped inside a minute later, Gracie was wearing Paige’s black pantsuit and bright-pink shirt and a pair of sturdy black boots, while Paige had on Grace’s more casual sweater and black jeans outfit.

  “What do you think?” Grace pulled her hair back the way Paige normally wore hers.

  Nate hesitated, wishing she didn’t look so stunning no matter what she was wearing. He wanted to tell her he was wrong about everything he’d said. That he wanted to see if things could work out between them. Instead, he put on his game face.

  “Are you really okay about this?” he asked.

  She smiled up at him. “If you ask me, I have the easy part.”

  “Personally, I’m happy you’re not going to be caught up in the middle of this anymore.”

  “You make a great detective,” Paige said, undoing her ponytail and letting her hair fall across her shoulders. “Watch the way you walk. Head up, back straight. Look confident. You’ll do fine.”

  “What time is it?” Gracie asked.

  Nate glanced at the clock on the wall. “Ten minutes to showtime.”

  24

  Five minutes later, Gracie headed toward the elevator and the underground parking with Nate. She kept her head held high, making sure there was a note of confidence in her stride on the off chance someone was watching them. But the attempt couldn’t totally mask what she was feeling. Inside she was shaking. In another thirty minutes or so, she’d be somewhere safe where the men who killed Stephen couldn’t touch her. But until then? She’d seen how resourceful they were, and her gut told her she’d made a mistake agreeing to make the swap.

  But it was too late to change that now.

  She drew in a steadying breath. An undercover officer walked ahead of them. She’d been told there were three in total who were going to see that they made it safely from the hospital. Not that they were expecting anything to happen. At least that was what she’d been reassured. No one could make guarantees at this point. She still had a dozen questions. Like why Stephen had been killed if he had the answers they needed. Why they’d tried to run them off the road last night. Who was really behind this.

  Nate walked next to her, hands at his side. Jaw tense. They were simply partners leaving the hospital. Nothing more than friends, as he’d been quick to remind her. But the high-stakes reality of what was happening wouldn’t leave her alone. Part of her wanted to run into his arms. The other part of her wanted to stop where she was so she could call and warn her friends and family of some impending Armageddon.

  But what would she tell them?

  Hey, Becca, call your husband, grab your kids, and run, because life as you know it will never be the same.

  Or, by the way, Dad, you were right. I happen to have inside information and there’s a good chance that the grid is going to crash in the next twenty-four hours. Drag out the toilet paper and beef jerky. You’re going to need it.

  She could almost hear her father’s I-told-you-so reaction. She’d a
lways dismissed his yearly lectures, but he just might have been right all along.

  She glanced at Nate as they stopped in front of the elevator and waited for the doors to open. She’d seen the relief in his eyes when she assured him she wasn’t going to argue with him about having any involvement with the exchange. But she had no interest in playing this game anymore. The police had her statement, and she’d given everything she had. As far as she was concerned, she was finished.

  They stepped inside the elevator with the officer. In another thirty seconds, they’d be on the bottom floor. Another minute, and they’d be inside Nate’s vehicle. Taking her to the safe house was really just a precaution. Nothing more. She knew she’d be safe. Nate would make sure of that.

  Then why did she feel so vulnerable?

  The same sense of helplessness she’d felt when Hannah died swept over her. The feeling that no matter what she did, she couldn’t escape the inevitable. She glanced around the elevator, needing to find a way to control her emotions that were quickly spiraling out of control. Needing to find that sense of stability in her life she’d worked so hard to create. Instead, the walls felt like they were closing in on her. She shifted her gaze to Nate, whose solemn expression reminded her of just how seriously he was taking the situation. Somehow, over the past three days, he’d become her shelter in the storm. Her rock when she couldn’t figure out how to deal with the terror surrounding her. And yet just when she’d felt a small tremor of hope coming back to life inside her, he’d closed the door.

  Do not fear.

  Verses from Isaiah she’d memorized when Hannah had died surfaced.

  I will uphold you with my strong right hand.

  Nate could never be her rock and sense of security. There was only One who could do that.

  The admission worked to slow her heart rate and force a bit of balance into her thoughts. If the situation wasn’t so serious, she just might laugh. Becca had told her she needed a distraction this week. Something to help her make it through the flood of memories surrounding Hannah’s death. This was some distraction—she felt as if she were in the middle of a scene from prime-time TV.