MISSING PERSON ALERT issued for kidnapped woman in Denver, Colorado.
They had Marco’s truck down to the license plate number.
“No, that—that’s not—no.” She stared at the alert.
Marco was right. For one, short moment she’d doubted him, wondered if he was paranoid or crazy, but he’d been right. She didn’t know what kind of people she’d worked for, but they were bad news.
Marco hauled their things into the dump of a motel. They’d gone thirty miles south of the highway to a sleepy little town after Ghost had boosted them a four wheel drive truck and changed the plates. Fiona was holding it together, but barely.
He needed to get her changed, her hair up, something to disguise her appearance.
Things had gone to shit pretty fast. He’d known going back to Denver was a mistake, but he hadn’t known how to tell Fiona without admitting his guilt.
This was all his fault.
Fuck.
“Marco…”
She stood between the two queen beds, remote in her hand.
The news played the security tape loop on repeat.
There was Fiona, walking toward the camera. The video glitched, and then the truck was there, Ghost was pushing her into the cab…
Son of a bitch, they’d worked fast.
Fiona sat down on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slumped.
Whoever was behind this would trace the truck back to his dad if Ghost didn’t get ahead of this fast enough. He and Ghost had known someone, either NueEnergy or the people Scott were working for, would do something. Marco’s bet had been on intimidation, sending some numbskull to harass her. An abduction was a whole new kind of bad. And now they wanted to peg Marco and Ghost as the kidnappers. Connecting this mess to his family was the last thing Marco wanted. Fuck. And then what happened when the government got wind of Ghost’s involvement? Marco didn’t know the particulars of how Ghost extracted himself from his previous line of work, and he didn’t want to know.
“What are we going to do?” Fiona turned toward him. “Talk to me, please?”
He sat down on the other bed facing her and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
What did he tell her? Where did he start?
“We are in deeper shit than we realized,” he said, stalling while he did some mental gymnastics. How long until the cops and news connected him to this?
“You think?”
“NueEnergy is bad news. I…I knew they were doing illegal dumping, we just couldn’t prove it. Fiona, I had no idea things were this bad.”
“Is all of this over dumping? I mean…what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Ghost is going to work on it. We are going to figure this out together.”
Her burner phone buzzed again.
She’d been trying since they switched trucks to get the Missing Person Alert to shut-up, but each time it just kept buzzing up a storm.
“It’s almost dead.” She made a face and reached into her phone, pulling out a long, orange thing.
“What the hell’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a battery pack. Scott got it for me so I could keep…my phone…charged…” Her lips parted, her eyes went round.
Something was clicking. He could practically hear the gears in her head whirling faster than he could get traction.
He didn’t like this one bit…
“Fiona?”
“Where’s my laptop? My personal one?” She dug her fingernails into the casing and pulled, but nothing happened.
“What do you need?” He grabbed the laptop bag and opened it.
“The roll of tools.” She reached in and grabbed a black roll and laid it out on the bed.
Fiona snatched a tiny screwdriver out of one slot and went to town on the battery pack.
“Come on, come on…” She muttered.
“Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“Scott called me…he called me Sunday, saying he wanted the battery pack back, that it was his. But! He gave it to me. Because he got pissed that I’d let my phone die and that he couldn’t get a hold of me, or he’d want to charge his phone while we were at dinner. Why would he want it back? Why would he even try to get it back after…after everything else?”
Fiona crossed to the small table and turned on the lamp. Her fingers were nimble and quick. One screw after the other came off, and then the casing slid apart easily. She sat back, staring at the components.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
There were three, small, blue cylinders that looked like shrink-wrapped, miniature batteries. A green board with bits on it. Blinking lights. It didn’t make any sense to him.
“Marco?”
“What?”
“Why would a portable charger need a motherboard?” She pointed to the green, cracker-shaped thing.
“I…don’t know…?”
“Bring me my laptop, please?” She was too calm, too quiet.
He brought the laptop case over to her. She set up the laptop, brought out a USB cord, plugged one end into one of the ports on the charger, and the other on her laptop.
“Fiona, what are you doing?” He eyed the setup, wishing Ghost were there.
“Be quiet.”
If there was one thing Marco knew, it was that his realm of expertise only extended to killing and putting people back together again. This? Whatever techno-magic she was doing? Was out of his skill set. He perched on the edge of the bed where he could see her screen. Her fingers flew over the keys and she never once hesitated. Windows popped up and down faster than he could read them.
They sat like that for ten or so tense minutes.
Fiona sat back in the wooden chair, one hand over her mouth. The TV still played softly in the background.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s more of Scott’s work.”
“Okay, spell it out for me…”
“He had some sort of spyware on my cell phone. I guess whenever I was near the charger it…collected it? And sent it to him? Or maybe all those times he was using it, he was pulling the data off here? It’s going to take me time to break the encryption on it all.”
“Is it anything we can use?”
“Mostly…it’s email, I think.” She turned toward him, eyes round. “What are we going to do?”
If only he had an answer. Duct tape and WD40 weren’t going to fix this.
He needed real help. He needed Aegis, except he couldn’t exactly ask them to engage in possibly illegal activities.
“We’re going to stay here for now. Lay low. I’ll make contact with Ghost in two hours. By then we should have a better idea what we’re up against. Tonight, sometime after midnight, we’ll hit the road again, swing by my place and pick up some gear, then go off the grid. We’ll disappear.” It would kill him to know his family was worried, but he’d made this bed. He’d put Fiona in so much danger her life was on the line. Besides, if he disappeared his family wouldn’t be at risk. Or at least not as much.
Being on the run with Fiona wouldn’t be so bad. He liked her. She was…fun. She dove into life with enthusiasm. Her innocence though, she’d lose that. And he’d hate it, but if it kept her breathing. He’d give up everything to keep her safe, his job, his family, his…everything
“I can’t do that.”
“It’ll be hard at first, but—”
“Marco.”
They stared at each other.
“I can’t go with you,” she said. The rejection stung, but he wasn’t ready to give up.
“These guys just tried to snatch and grab you. They doctored security footage in a way that’s…beyond believable. We have no idea what we’re up against here.”
“I’m going to the police. I…I have to, Marco.” The way she was staring at him…it was like she was willing him to understand something else.
“No.” He stood up and paced to the wall and back. Either she agreed or…or…he’d make her. She might hate him for a bit, but when she had
time to process things she’d see he was right. Nothing was more important than keeping her alive. “No, I’m not letting you do that, Fiona.”
“Marco—I’m in the Witness Protection program. I can’t just disappear.”
He stared at her, stunned.
Witness Protection program?
So many pieces clinked together.
Her lifestyle.
The complete lack of history before ten years ago.
Holy shit.
He’d really fucked up.
16.
Fiona shouldn’t have said it, but…it was out there now.
Her hands shook. She hadn’t said those words to anyone. Ever. Not that it mattered now, because when the Marshalls saw the news and the Missing Person Alert, her life was as good as gone. Or at least this one was. Her face was on the news. Nova—and others—would be looking for her. She didn’t think plastic surgery would hide her identity at this point, not that she wanted to go under the knife. Or could.
She wasn’t safe. She’d just been exposed in the very worst of ways. Sure, knowing someone had seen her moments of passion with Marco in her very home was a violation of her privacy, but this was an exposure that could kill her.
“You…what?” Marco continued to stare at her.
“I’ve been in the Witness Protection program since I was nineteen.” She rubbed her palms over her knees. How much should she say? How much could she tell him? She’d begun. It was had to figure out where to stop except…the ending.
“Why?”
“Long story.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“Marco, people are going to be looking for me now. My face is out there. I’m not safe.” She stared at him, pleasing for him to understand, to comprehend the danger she was in.
“Who’s looking for you?” He swallowed.
“It’s…I…” She blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “I was involved with a group of hackers. Activists. I thought…I thought we were doing something good. Something the law wouldn’t be able to touch. We were going to shut down this website. It…people paid money to look at little kids. Bad pictures, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“We…we did it a few times with smaller sites and set-ups. To be allowed access to these sites, a lot of times someone has to be cleared. Vetted. One person in our circle would get cleared. Once they were in, we’d have access to their database, and we’d shut them down. Bombard the system, wipe it, the end.” Her hands shook. She stared into the darkened corner behind Marco, as if all her worst secrets lived there.
“Who was he? There was a he, wasn’t there?” He practically snarled the questions. Marco knew her so well, and yet he hardly knew her. The real her.
“Yeah.” She closed her eyes. “I was recruited by a guy I met at a café named Heath. He was…he seemed like a good guy. Older than me. Nice. He’s how I got involved. We’d talk about what was fucked up in the world and he’d go on about wanting to change things. Looking back, that’s how they got us. Most people were recruited on-line, but Heath…he found me in person. I was eighteen. Mom was dead. I was angry and alone. Heath…was someone to love and together we believed in something. Or I thought we did.”
Marco’s hand wrapped around hers, grounding her in the present. She squeezed back, needing that connection. There was betrayal…and then there was Heath. He’d known what he was doing from the beginning. And she’d taken the bait and spread her legs, all in the name of love and passion.
“The guy in charge was called Black Nova. We all had handles, to protect our anonymity, but the core group, Nova and Heath and the rest, they knew who we were. Our socials. Our addresses. It was how we were supposed to be kept honest. In reality…”
Her mouth worked for a moment. The betrayal still stung, even after all these years.
“They were stealing our identities and racking up credit card debt. The whole thing was for money. While myself and the lackeys were attacking these sites, Nova, Heath and the others were stealing bank account numbers and draining them dry. I thought we were doing a good thing. I told myself it was okay, because we were stopping molesters. When, really? I was the problem. We did it for…a year. More than a year. And this was just when I was with them. They’d been doing this way before me, but they never got found out because who is going to admit they got their bank account stolen on a website that caters to pedophiles? Only, it wasn’t just them. These sites, they’re often hosted alongside something normal and the law abiding people never know. Turns out, we cleaned out a dozen different charities, too.”
She blew out a breath and opened her eyes. Marco stared at her, as unreadable as ever.
“The FBI picked me up from where I was working, laid the whole scam out for me, and made me an offer. I don’t…I’ve never felt bad for what we did to the pedophiles, but the rest of it? That’s on me. I…had to help. Since I could identify half the inner ring and had the kind of access to identify the other half—if I used Heath’s rig—they made me a deal.” She swiped at her cheeks. The people she’d hurt, the wrongs she’d done, she’d never make up for it all.
“What was the deal?”
“Testify against them. They went really easy on me, probably because I was a fucked-up kid in their eyes.”
“What happened after?”
“They rounded up seven of the eight core members over six months.” She swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. “It was…it’s been hell. They’ve changed my name, hair and life five different times.”
“Ever think about surgery?”
“No. Even if I wasn’t allergic to heavy sedatives—just…no. I’ve lost so much of who I am, if I lose this,” she gestured to her face, “I won’t even know me.”
“What about the last guy? The one they didn’t find. What about him?”
“Black Nova. They’ve never caught him. Heath and the others never met him.”
“How do you know he’s still out there?”
“He keeps my old pictures on-line. There’s this site, sort of like the internet’s most wanted list, and…I’m there. There are four sites for hackers that list me. With a bounty, if someone can track me down, harass me. Kill me, even. It’s not just Nova. It’s others. Some of the core group, Heath even, were released. If they ever find me, Marco…” She pushed her hands through her hair. “I can’t go with you. If I do, they’ll find me. Or, what if running and hiding means that if they ever catch Nova, I can’t be part of the trial? I can’t…I can’t run. I have to…figure this out.”
“Then we get you to the Marshalls. Right?”
“They’re the ones who told me to go back to NueEnergy. Act like nothing was wrong.”
“They didn’t know. You have a number you can dial? A contact?”
“Yeah, but no one is answering. I haven’t been an active case in several years. Not since the last time some wanna-be-hacker saw me and outed me. It sort of gets you pushed to the back.”
“Yeah, there was a big Cartel case hitting the courts this week. I imagine they have their hands full.” Marco stared at her, his dark brown eyes seeing too much.
She wanted to cover herself, crawl under the table, anything to escape this moment.
She was a fraud. A fake. A criminal.
“I just wanted to make everything better, you know?”
“Been there.” Marco sighed and scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
“If…I wish…I almost wonder if I couldn’t get back into NueEnergy. Expose them for what they really are, you know?” That was her old self talking. The hactivist. If she’d never been caught she’d have probably joined up with one of the bigger hacking groups like Anonymous or something, because that was who she was. She believed in things bigger than herself.
“What would you need? In theory…and talk to me like I’m dumb.”
“Access to the NueEnergy system. But we can’t get close to them, and the way things are, you have to have proximity to one of their…doors
. The stuff I had on the wall in my closet? That made my house a door.”
“So if you could…say…get close to one of their facilities you could, maybe, get access to their system?”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Huh.”
“What are you thinking?”
“NueEnergy kicked my grandparents off their land because they were too close to the facility they built to pump junk into the ground. Their house is literally in the shadow of the smoke stacks.”
“Shut up…”
“We could do it, but it’s dangerous.”
“Yes,” she said without pausing to think. She was herself now. Not the fake-Fiona, but herself. BadassBrat. And the Brat did what she wanted.
Marco opened his mouth to speak, except his cell phone buzzed. He grimaced and pulled it out of his pocket.
“It’s my dad, I should probably take this.” He let go of her hand and stood, answering his phone. His strides took him from one side of the room to the other, wearing holes in the carpet.
What had she done to deserve this man in her life? Now, of all times? At any other point in time, he’d be gone already. They’d have had their thrills, she’d have checked an item off her bucket list, and they’d never see each other again. Someone upstairs was looking out for her when they put Marco in her path.
“No, Dad, no. That’s not what’s going on… I get that. Yes, yes, that’s how it looks, but I swear to you…No.” He paused, eyes closed. She could pretty much hear him counting to ten. “Here’s my suggestion, Dad. Get everyone together, go to the reunion. Take a long weekend. When you come over, it’ll blow over. Dad—Dad—will you listen?”
The conversation went in circles, with more of the same back and forth.
Fiona excused herself into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub behind the closed door. She gripped the edges, still listening to Marco’s muted voice, and breathed. Her body shook and the knot of anxiety inside of her was threatening to do some awful things to her stomach.
What had she done?
What was she doing?
If only she had a time machine so she could make everything right.
Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) Page 16
