No Strings Attached

by Julie Moffett

  “I don’t want to do it, but I can.” I had no hesitation in my head or heart. At some point—although I’m not sure when—I’d made my peace with this, perhaps much in the same way Slash had.

  “You’d be comfortable doing that?” Despite my confidence, he didn’t look convinced.

  “Not comfortable, but capable. Elvis, there’s something you should know. He didn’t write that code alone. Part of it is mine.”

  “Yours?” Elvis stared at me, giving me a clearer look into his blue eyes. “Lexi, are you sure about all of this?”

  I wasn’t sure if his question referred to the code, my life or something else entirely. At this point I wasn’t sure it mattered.

  “It’s weird, but I’m sure, Elvis. Whether I like it or not, I’ve got the talent, too. But no worries. Despite my former escapades skirting the line with illegal hacking, I’m not going to give in to the dark side. So, abdicate, okay?”

  He held my gaze for a long time before he finally rose. “It’s all yours then, Dark Princess. I’ll work off your laptop.”

  “That would be great.” I sat, my fingers poised over the keyboard. “Thanks, Elvis. You’re the best.”

  “No worries. You need anything, let me know.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  While he started our first pot of coffee in what promised to be a long, long night, I lowered my fingers to the keyboard and dived into the darkness.

  Chapter Forty

  “I’ve got him.” Elvis raised a fist in the air. “Yes.”

  I glanced up from the computer and the six windows I had open. My vision was blurry from staring at the screen. I’d been coding for hours. Calculations were strewed all over the room.

  I set my computer glasses aside and rubbed my eyes. “Who’s him?”

  “Jiang Shi. He bought the watch four months ago in Beijing. Even better, he’s got the Find Watch feature turned on so he can locate it if he loses it or it gets stolen. That’s perfect for us because we can see not only where he is now, but where he’s been, too.”

  “That’s great news.” My mood buoyed. I leaned back, took a sip of my stone-cold coffee. “We needed a break. So what do we know?”

  “Well, it looks like Shi is staying at a rented town house on Connecticut Avenue, a couple of blocks from the embassy. He’s been in and out of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, presumably for the conference. However, he’s spent quite a bit of time at a house on Upton Street in northwest DC, also not too far from the embassy. My initial scan marks it as a private residence owned by a Marcus Grover and rented, a month ago, to one Margie Chen.

  “Who is she?”

  “Well, my guess she’s the Asian woman who’s been after you.”

  “Feng Mei?”

  “Possibly. She could also be an embassy employee, a girlfriend or someone completely random, although that possibility is low on my list. I’m going to cross-reference the list of Chinese Embassy employees to see if I can find her. If I come up empty, I’ll see what I can pull up on Margie Chen from the DMV and other sources. It’s definitely a thread to pull.”

  “Good work, Elvis.”

  “Thanks. How’s the coding going?”

  I stared at the string I’d just written. I hadn’t had to think too hard about it. It was solid, even good.

  “I’m not sure since I’ve never done this before. It’s...a different kind of thing.” That was an understatement, and Elvis knew it, but it was what it was.

  “Want me to review?” he asked.

  “Not yet. Soon. How’s it going on your end?”

  “It’s going.”

  We worked for another hour and a half until I finally pushed back from the desk, exhausted, but exhilarated. “Okay, that’s it for me. I can’t go any further until I’m sure I’m on the right track.”

  Elvis tapped a few more keys and set the laptop aside. “I’m finished, too. Mine and Xavier’s section of the coding is pretty much done except for a bit of fine-tuning. My head is pounding. I need some ibuprofen and whatever food you’ve got in those shopping bags over there. But first things first. I’ve got a hit on Margie Chen.”

  “Really? Excellent. Who is she?”

  “Margie is bogus. All the data she provided on her rental application is fake. Margie Chen doesn’t exist. But—and you’re going to love this—I’ve got a photo of her.”

  “How?”

  “Well, as soon as she rented the house, she put in a top-notch security system, including external cameras. Unusual, right? Well, I hacked into the security system and caught her exiting and entering her own property. Want to see?”

  “Oh, boy, do I ever.”

  He leaned over and brought up a new window. A minute later I was looking at a grainy photo of the woman who had met me in the hotel bar at HACK CON and then subsequently tried to kill me.

  “That’s her,” I said tapping the screen. “One hundred percent certainty. That’s Feng Mei.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got a lock on the assassin and proof that she has a connection with Jiang Shi.” He pulled up another picture of Shi entering the house.

  “That is such good work, Elvis. You’re da bomb.”

  I stood and walked around in circles, swinging my arms and trying to get the blood flowing, before sitting on the bed next to Slash. I picked up his hand, pressing it between mine. It was warm.

  “I wish I could tell him what’s happening.” I lifted his hand to my cheek.

  “He’ll wake up in a matter of hours,” Elvis said. “He’ll be proud of you, of course. He’s got it really bad for you.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.” He looked down at his hands. “Can I ask you something, Lexi? It’s totally unrelated to coding or the situation we’re now in.”

  “Of course. You know you can ask me anything.”

  He thought, apparently formulating his question while I waited. Finally, he spoke. “How did you know that entering a serious relationship with Slash was...well, the right thing to do?”

  His question surprised me, but I took a moment to answer. “That’s the weird thing, Elvis. I can honestly say it’s the first decision I’ve made where I led with my heart instead of my head. Not that I didn’t have a list of pros and cons—I did. But in the end, I kind of just went for it. It felt right.” I held out my hand for his water and he handed it to me. I took a drink and handed it back. “I knew Slash was a good man at the core, even with his flaws.”

  “Wait. Slash has flaws?”

  I laughed. “By the way, speaking of love and relationships, there’s a certain headmistress who is really into you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I think she’s good for you. If my door swung the other way, she’d probably be good for me, too. You might want to talk to her about how she makes you feel and where you want it to go. I think she could use a little clarification in terms of the level of interest you have in her.”

  “Really? How do you know this?”

  “She might have mentioned it.”

  “When?”

  “When I thought about asking her to help me plan Basia’s party. Well, technically I wanted her to do the whole thing. But before I could ask, she told me you’d already asked her and she said no. She thought it would be good for you to organize and accomplish the party by yourself. Give you confidence. So I didn’t even ask.”

  He sighed. “I’m worried Bonnie is too honorable for me. After all, here I am on the run from the FBI and NSA while supporting a black hat hack. Not to mention, a lot of my normal work involves breaking rules. Bonnie is all about rules and stuff. Those kinds of opposing forces could be relationship breakers. How do you and Slash deal with it?”

  I lifted my hands. “I don’t know, Elvis. We’re making it
up as we go along. Somehow we deal. It’s important to both of us to find a way to work it out.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You know, I’m pretty surprised you’ve been engaging in girl talk. I never would have thought it of you.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I mean it, Elvis.”

  He laughed and pulled me into a hug. The tension of the day eased. Elvis and I—we were good. We’d always be good, because that’s the kind of friends we were.

  Chapter Forty-One

  We swapped laptops and started our peer review. Two hours later I stood and walked over to the counter above the mini fridge where we’d set up our coffee station. I poured myself some coffee and drank it halfheartedly. It was burning a hole in my stomach.

  Elvis looked up and decided to take a break, too. He stood, stretching his back. His hair was disheveled and his shirt had ripped during the fight with the Chinese guard. Exhaustion tugged at his eyes. For the first time I noticed the bruise on his chin. He must have been hit during the fight.

  We were all hanging by a thread.

  “I’m done with the review,” he said. “Shall we switch laptops again? I really have no suggestions to fix anything. The code is damn near perfect. Seriously disturbing, but prime. I didn’t know you had it in you, Lexi.”

  “I didn’t know I had it in me either,” I said. “But we are who we are.”

  “So, what do you want me to focus on next?”

  I set my coffee on the dresser to consider. If I was honest with myself, I was exhausted from coding, worried about Slash, terrified we’d be discovered any minute, scared Feng Mei was plotting the murder of another NSA employee and not sure what the heck to do next. I did not have this field agent thing down. It sharpened my admiration for Slash a lot more than I expected. How could he juggle all these options and choose the right one—often in a split second? Then he had to live with those decisions and the resulting consequences. Maybe the FBI agent had been right. I couldn’t do this without him.

  I glanced over at the bed, but Slash still hadn’t moved. This was on me to figure out.

  A noise came from the bed. Was it my imagination or had Slash moaned?

  “Did you hear that?” Elvis said.

  It hadn’t been my imagination. I hurried over to the bed and sat down next to Slash. Gently I cupped his scratchy jaw with my hand.

  “He might be coming around.” I spoke more with hope than realism, but I didn’t see the harm in positive thinking at this point.

  Elvis reached out and patted Slash’s stomach. “You know, he’s got some special padding here around his middle as part of his disguise. The dart may not have penetrated as deeply as a result.”

  “Yes, and I pulled it out fairly quickly, too.” My voice hitched with excitement. “How many hours has he been out already?”

  Elvis glanced at his watch. “Just over nine hours.”

  Wow, had we been working that long? No wonder my butt throbbed and my wrists and fingers were sore.

  I picked up Slash’s hand and squeezed it. “Slash, are you there? Come on—wake up. We really need you.”

  He moaned clearly and I exchanged an excited glance with Elvis. “I think he hears me.”

  “Maybe. Keep talking to him.”

  I patted his cheek and his dark eyelashes fluttered, but didn’t open. “Come on, Slash. You can do it. Wake up.”

  I thought he might have squeezed my hand, but then it went limp. I swallowed my disappointment. “He’s not awake yet.”

  “It’s okay. It still means he’s coming around and that’s good.” Elvis patted me on the shoulder. “In the meantime, you need to take the code across the finish line.”

  Elvis was right. The code had to take priority.

  “Okay.” I rubbed my eyes. They were gritty. “I’ll fix us something to eat if you’ll make more coffee. There are some bagels in the shopping bag along with a small first aid kit. We need fuel to keep us going.”

  We drank more coffee and ate dry bagels and apples while working. Another two hours had passed before Elvis suddenly spoke.

  “Lexi, we’ve got a problem.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I looked up from my code. “Why? What happened?”

  “I just got a message from Xavier.”

  I stood and walked over to Elvis, leaning over his shoulder. “What did he say?”

  “He’s been monitoring your home server. He intercepted a message for you last night. It was heavily encrypted. He’s been working on the encryption all night and just broke it.” He looked up concern in his eyes. “It’s from the Red Guest.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “They sent me a message? How does he know it’s from the Red Guest?”

  “They didn’t try to hide where it came from.”

  My mouth had gone dry. I leaned closer to the screen. “What does the message say?”

  “That’s what’s weird. It says ‘a brother for a brother.’”

  “What?” I stepped back, horrified. “What does that mean? Jiang Shi is threatening my brothers?”

  “I don’t know.” Elvis had a worried expression. “I bet he thinks Slash can get his brother released in some kind of swap.”

  “Could he?”

  “Possibly.” Elvis considered. “As acting director of IAD, he carries a lot of weight with the CIA and FBI. But I doubt he would do it, just as I doubt the CIA or FBI would agree to a trade.”

  “Even if it meant the life of one of my brothers?”

  “Good point. For you, Slash might circumvent procedure. Might even try something stupid and try to whisk him out of custody. Shi would know that—play on it. Can you call your brothers to check on them? Maybe it’s just an empty threat.”

  I didn’t believe that for a moment and the pounding of my heart confirmed it. Despite the fact that Rock’s phones were certainly tapped, I called Rock’s cell and home. No answer at either location. I tried his office at The Washington Post. Nothing.

  Oh, God.

  Heart in my throat, I called my brother Beau’s cell. No answer on his cell, which wasn’t unusual because officers have to turn off their personal cells when on duty. I called his office at the Baltimore PD, which was less likely to be tapped. After four rings, I heard his voice.

  “Robbery. Detective Carmichael.”

  I closed my eyes. “Beau, oh thank God, you’re okay.” My voice shook.

  “Lexi?” Beau heard the distress in my voice. “What’s going on? Are Mom and Dad okay?”

  “Mom and Dad are fine.” I took several breaths to calm down. Hysteria helped no one. “It’s Rock. When was the last time you spoke to him?” I swiped at the tears on my cheeks.

  “Funny you ask. I tried to call him earlier this morning, but he isn’t answering either of his phones. Why? Is he okay? Are you okay?”

  “Can you keep trying to reach him, Beau? Please.”

  “Of course I can. Lexi, what’s happening?”

  “I can’t explain it now. Just trust me. Try to reach Rock. If you reach him, tell him to stay somewhere safe. Also, it’s important you stay at your office at the PD for at least the foreseeable future. Don’t go anywhere alone. I’ll call you back shortly. Don’t call my cell, I don’t have it.”

  Before he could question me further, I hung up, tossing the burner phone in the trash.

  Elvis put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay, Lexi?”

  “No. I’m not. I wish Slash was awake. This is a lot to handle. How does he do this kind of thing all the time without breaking?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry I’m not a bigger help. What can I do?”

  I took a steadying breath. I had to hold it together. I had to think. Logic would save me now, not panic.

  “You a
re a big help, Elvis. More than you know.” Thank goodness I wasn’t alone. I would have fallen to pieces. “Just stay focused on the safety mechanisms for the code, it’s the final piece.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I thought for a moment. “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  It was a risk to make the call and I used our last burner phone, but I was 85 percent certain the NSA and FBI wouldn’t have his phone tapped. I had to risk the other 15 percent. I located the number by secretly accessing my hard drive at home, then sat down on the edge of the bed with my back facing Elvis. I punched in the number. It rang five times before someone picked up.

  “Who is this?” The voice was deep, male and curt.

  I took a deep breath, steadied myself. “Hey, Hands. This is Lexi Carmichael.”

  Hands was a Navy SEAL and a friend. We’d been to hell and back on a recent mission for the US government in Africa. Our time spent together had created a special bond, the kind formed when people go through life-threatening situations together. Plus, he was an all-around good guy, even if I had no idea of his real name.

  “Keys?” I heard the surprise in his voice. “I didn’t recognize this number. How the hell are you?”

  Keys was his nickname for me. He’d named me that because when I first met him I’d been working on my laptop, banging on the keys. I couldn’t ever remember him calling me by my first name.

  “This isn’t my regular phone.” I blew out a breath. “You got a minute to talk?”

  “For you, Keys, I’ll make time. What’s up? You okay?”

  “Well, I’m alive, which—as you well know—makes it a good day. Where are you?”

  “I’m in DC visiting Gray. We were just talking about you. It would be great to see you again.”

  Grayson Reese was a CIA agent who had helped Slash and me bring down a cyber mercenary. The two of them had sort of hit it off during our mission and apparently had continued to see each other. I smiled.

  “Yeah, I’d like that.” I really meant it. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s as sexy and complicated as ever. Just how I like my women.” He laughed and then paused. “Nah, she’s good. We’re good. Taking it slow, but steady. Neither of us is very experienced at this relationship thing, but we’re giving it a go. She’s pretty special. So, why are you calling? From the tone of your voice, I’m going to guess this isn’t a social call.”