by Paige Tyler
As they headed toward the back of the building, Holden peeled off and disappeared from sight. According to the plan, he’d slip through a window and gain access to a service corridor near the main lobby. If everything went right, from there he’d hack into the computers that managed the facility’s cameras and security sensors and take all of them offline without alerting the night guards that he’d done it.
When she, Dalton, and Wes reached the building, the two of them dropped to a knee in the darkness. She did the same. A few minutes later, Dalton pressed his finger to the small radio earbud he wore.
“Security is down in this section,” he softly reported to her and Wes. “Cameras are on a loop and door sensors are deactivated.”
It was shockingly easy getting into the building after that. Kimber simply followed Dalton and Wes as they moved to one of the big glass doors outside the cafeteria, then she and Dalton stood there while Wes picked the lock. After he did, they stepped inside and started across the dimly lit space full of tables and chairs.
The break-in was going so well that she almost missed it when both Dalton and Wes suddenly stopped right in the middle of the cafeteria.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she skidded to a halt.
She barely got the words out before Dalton clapped a hand over her mouth, then scooped her up in his arms and sprinted for the buffet line and the kitchen beyond, Wes right behind them.
They slid down behind the salad bar cart just as footsteps echoed on the linoleum outside the entrance. The moment Dalton took his hand away from her mouth, Kimber cautiously peeked out, praying whoever it was hadn’t heard them running. Dennis casually sauntered in swinging a flashlight back and forth.
Kimber held her breath as her friend slowly did a sweep of the room. Her gaze locked on the gun holstered at his hip. Would he actually shoot at them if it came to that?
She stiffened, expecting Dennis to stumble upon them at any minute. Beside her, Dalton was just as tense. Instead of being glued to the guard’s moves like she was, his gaze was locked on the outside door they’d just come in. Crap. It hadn’t closed all the way behind them and the gap was painfully obvious. But there wasn’t anything they could do. They’d already made the decision earlier that Dalton and the other guys wouldn’t carry weapons. If they got caught, there’d be no getting away.
After what felt like a million heartbeats, Dennis wandered past the door they’d left ajar, oblivious that it was open. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or kind of annoyed he wasn’t very good at his job. She crouched down lower as Dennis walked past the salad bar cart less than five feet away from their hiding place. Thirty seconds later he was out the door and heading down the main hallway.
Kimber sagged against the cart. Crap, that had been close.
“Stay here,” Dalton whispered to her.
He didn’t need to tell her twice. Right then, her legs were like noodles.
Getting up, Dalton cautiously made his way over to the door Dennis had just exited while Wes hurried across the cafeteria to close the door leading outside.
“We’re good,” Dalton called softly after poking his head into the hallway. “Let’s go.”
Kimber stood and ran over to Dalton even as Wes did the same from the other side of the room. She couldn’t believe she’d allowed herself to imagine for even a moment that anything about this break-in was going to be anti-climactic.
Once in the hallway, they quickly moved to the steel vault door that separated them from the high-value projects on the other side. There was a nine-button cypher lock above the door knob and a magnetic card reader on the wall to the right of the door.
Back at her apartment, when Dalton and the other guys had talked about getting past the facility’s security features, it had sounded simple. But now, after the near miss in the cafeteria, Kimber wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder down the hallway, worried Dennis or another guard was going to see them.
Wes slipped a large black box over the cypher lock and door knob while Dalton stood beside the card reader with an employee badge in his hand waiting to press it against the sensor on the card reader. She was about to ask him where he’d gotten the access card from—because she sure as heck didn’t have one—but the box on the door started to hum and make little clicking sounds, distracting her.
“What’s it doing?” she whispered.
“Running through all the possible code combinations for the lock,” Dalton said.
Kimber was never going to be a criminal mastermind, but she was techie enough to realize that wasn’t easy. “Isn’t that going to take forever? The possible permutations of five- or six-digit combinations from a nine-button cypher lock is insane. We could be here all night trying to get in.”
No sooner were the words of out her mouth than there was a click. Dalton quickly held up the access card to the reader. A moment later, the LED strip above the card reader turned green.
Dalton gave her a smile as Wes opened the door. “Actually, it’s not as difficult as you’d think. People tend to pick numbers that spell out something on a phone pad because it’s easier to remember.” He gestured to the box Wes pulled off the door. “In this case, the combination is 5, 2, 7, 2, 6, 2, which spells JASCO2. And I’m willing to bet the previous combination was JASCO1 and that the next will be JASCO3.”
Wes stuffed all the high-tech breaking-and-entering gear back in his pack and moved through the door, holding it open for them.
“Seriously?” she asked. “Our security is that bad?”
Dalton nodded and motioned her forward into the hallway beyond the vault door. “Don’t feel bad. You can get into top secret rooms in the Pentagon the same way.”
That wasn’t a very reassuring thought.
“Okay, but what about the access card?” She glanced over her shoulder at Dalton. “Where did you get that?”
Dalton chuckled and let the door close softly behind them. “I swiped it off Henry when we shook hands the other day. What, you thought I was holding onto his hand that long because I was attracted to him or something?”
Kimber gaped. Henry had been wearing his access card on a belt lanyard along with several others. She couldn’t imagine how Dalton had been able to steal it without any of them seeing it happen.
“You stole his card right in front of all of us?” She was both impressed and worried at the same time. “What if he realizes it’s gone?”
Dalton shrugged. “He left the building the same time we did so he’s not likely to notice the card is missing until tomorrow. And even if he does, he’ll probably do what most people would in that situation. He’ll wait until he comes to work, then retrace his steps to try to find it. By then, we’ll already have what we need and be on our way to getting our daughter back.”
Dalton sounded so convinced it was difficult not believing him. Even so, she could think of about a hundred different ways this could go horribly wrong. But she pushed her doubts aside and followed him and Wes as they started down the dimly lit central corridor of the secure part of the building.
She’d never been on this side of JASCO, but it looked similar to the non-secure side where she worked. There was one long hallway with ten lab bays on either side. Each of them were completely independent facilities, each with the raw materials and equipment necessary to create about any electronic prototype a tech nerd could dream up. And the tech nerds who worked there could dream big.
“Crap, this place is bigger than I thought,” Dalton groaned. “Please tell me you know where to find the chips we’re after.”
“I will in a minute,” she said, hurrying over to the computer monitor mounted on the wall beside the door.
It took a few moments for the thing to boot up, but once it did, all she had to do was punch in the product code the kidnappers had given her. A string of codes and names came up, but the only thing she cared about was the number that corresponded with the bay.
“Over there,” she said, pointing
to the left side of the corridor. “Fourth lab.”
It was easy finding the chips after that, probably because nobody was too worried about security inside the vault. They had to use Henry’s access card again to get through the lab door, but after that, it was simply a matter of Wes picking the lock on a storage cabinet and finding the right chips. Even that part was simple since the product code was written on a label stuck on the plastic blister pack holding six of the prototype chips.
The code should have been meaningless because it was merely a random collection of letters and numbers. Whoever had kidnapped their daughter had known exactly which product code they wanted. That shouldn’t have been possible.
“What do these things do?” Wes asked, picking up the package holding the microprocessors and moving them back and forth in the light.
Each chip was about three inches on a side, which was huge. But beyond the code number stamped on top of the silicon wafers, there were no markings to give away what the things might be capable of. Back at her apartment, Wes had suggested they just grab a random chip from the nearest electronics store rather than break into the company. They’d all ultimately rejected that idea since the kidnappers might know what the chips look like. She was glad they had. No way would they have found a chip this size at an electronics store.
“There’ s no way of knowing from looking at it,” Kimber said. “But with a chip this large, you know it’s something that takes a lot of computing power.”
“It doesn’t matter what these things are or what they do.” Dalton took the package from Wes and slipped it into his pack. “The only thing that matters is that they’re going to help us get our daughter back.”
Getting out of the facility was a lot faster and uneventful than getting in and as they headed for the perimeter fence, Kimber found herself believing for the first time that this might actually work. They were really going to bring Emma home.
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO HOURS LATER, Dalton clung to the underside of Holden’s rental vehicle as Kimber drove the SUV into the warehouse where the kidnappers wanted to meet. She stopped in the middle of the big, open space. A few moments later, the metal garage door rolled down, blocking the illumination from the street lights outside and casting the interior of the place into shadows.
Even though his arms trembled from the strain of holding himself rigid against the underside of the van, Dalton stayed where he was. Footsteps approached from the left. That would be the man who’d closed the garage door moving around to cover Kimber as she got out of the SUV.
“Where’s my daughter?” she asked, using the question they’d come up with to let Dalton know Emma wasn’t in sight.
“Do you have the chips?” a heavily accented male voice asked.
Dalton didn’t recognize the man, but he sounded Asian or maybe Indonesian. Regardless, the question was stupid. Kimber had already told the kidnapper she had the things when she’d replied to his earlier texts. Maybe the kidnappers were simply surprised she’d pulled off the robbery. Which was also kind of dumb. They wouldn’t have grabbed Emma if they hadn’t thought Kimber could get what they wanted.
Figuring it was safe, Dalton slowly eased himself to the floor, then scooted to the rear of the vehicle so he’d be ready to slip out from underneath it.
The plan was simple. Kimber would do whatever she had to in order to get close to their daughter while Dalton would move to a position to cover them. At the same time, Wes and Holden would get ready to breach the warehouse from two different directions, the main door to Dalton’s right and a second story skylight directly over the center of the building. When the shit hit the fan—and that was likely going to be as soon as the kidnappers had the chips— Dalton would protect his family while his teammates dealt with the bad guys.
Dalton moved out from under the SUV and was sneaking through the deeper shadows along the back wall of the building when he realized where his mind had just gone. Family? Where the hell had that come from?
Kimber was an ex-girlfriend who’d walked away from him five years ago. Emma was his daughter, but purely by genetics. The little girl had never met him and there was absolutely nothing to say she’d ever see him again after tonight. What did he think was going to happen after they rescued her, that they’d all move in together and be one big, happy family?
He didn’t like the way those thoughts distracted him, so he quickly pushed them out of his head. He had to focus on saving Kimber and his daughter. What happened after that was out of his hands.
Dalton continued to move along the wall, trying to see what the hell was going on. Fortunately, the poorly lit warehouse was filled with rows of shrink-wrapped pallets. Blenders and other kitchenware by the looks of them. They probably wouldn’t stop much in the way of bullets, but they provided good cover.
He worked his way toward Kimber’s voice, coming to a stop between two tall pallets when he saw her standing ten feet away from him, facing three men. Dalton couldn’t see the men’s faces because they were hidden in the shadows, but they were all wearing suits. The glint of gunmetal in the darkness was unmistakable.
Kimber lifted her hand high, one of the chips dangling from her fingers. “Bring out my daughter, or I’ll smash this chip on the floor.”
“Do that and we’ll kill you, Ms. Grant,” the bigger of the three men said in a low, menacing tone.
“Go ahead.” Kimber’s hand trembled a little, but she didn’t lower it. “By then the chip would be damaged and worthless to you.”
Dalton couldn’t help feeling a surge of pride at the conviction in her voice. She was doing what she had to do to get the kidnappers to bring Emma where they could see her. He only prayed it worked. He’d never said as much to Kimber, but his worst fear was that their daughter was already dead. The thought made his gut clench up so hard he was almost sick. He pushed the fear down and slowly lifted the 9mm automatic that Holden had gotten for him. He eased his finger over the trigger, ready to shoot the big man the moment it looked like this was going sideways, whether they brought Emma out or not.
“Then we’ll simply take the other five chips off your dead body,” the man ground out.
Yup, that accent was definitely Asian.
“You’re assuming I brought the other five chips with me and didn’t leave them in a ditch down the street,” Kimber said, refusing to back down even though she had to be scared as hell.
Dalton didn’t know what shocked him more. How smoothly Kimber had handled that challenge or how much the Asian knew about the chips. Not only had they known what product code to send Kimber after, but they knew how many chips there were.
This whole thing was starting to smell like an inside job.
The big man laughed. “Very well. We’ll do this your way for now.”
Dalton caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he ducked just as another man appeared out of the shadows, dragging a little, blond girl by the arm.
Emma.
Dalton’s heart leapt into his throat as the man brought Emma into the faint light cast by one of the overheard bulbs. There were tears running down her cheeks and her eyes were filled with so much fear it was hard to look at her. Dalton’s finger tightened on the gun. He wanted to kill every son of a bitch in this room who’d dared to frighten his daughter.
He was pretty damn close to doing just that when the big Asian stepped into the light and put a hand on Emma’s shoulder to keep her from running to Kimber.
Dalton cursed silently.
It shouldn’t have been possible to recognize the man because there was nothing distinctive about him other than his height and his broad shoulders. He wasn’t wearing any of the camo paint from their last confrontation, either. But Dalton knew in his soul the man was the Chinese spec ops team leader who’d been so interested in getting his hands on an American F-35.
It made Dalton wonder what the hell these chips from JASCO could do. Because he got the idea the Asian wouldn’t be wasting his time if Kimber w
as holding the smoking fast microprocessor for the next generation PlayStation 5.
“You wanted to see your daughter. Here she is,” the man said. “Now, stop playing games and bring me the chips.”
“Mommy,” Emma said in a small voice, her lower lip trembling. “I want to go home.”
“We’re going home, baby,” Kimber said. “I promise.”
Dalton moved closer, ready to fire. His mind spun, ignoring the danger, focusing instead on his sight lines, the distance to Kimber and his little girl, possible cover in between, weapon types and number of rounds in the magazine for each, and the amount of men who stood between his family and their safety.
All four of the kidnappers were within ten feet of Kimber and Emma. Two of those men were even closer. Movements in the darkness told Dalton there were more men back there.
Dalton didn’t overthink it. He had to deal with the men closest to Kimber and Emma so he could keep them safe until Holden and Wes got inside to help. It was that simple. And there wasn’t anything in the world that was going to stop him from doing it.
Kimber moved closer to the kidnappers and Emma, holding the chip out in front of her to the big man. The Asian relaxed a little, releasing Emma. Kimber knelt down, arms wide like she was going to hug their daughter, but the moment she had them wrapped around her, she threw herself to the side, taking Emma with her.
Dalton immediately stepped out from behind the pallets, aiming first for the men closest to his family. That left the three free to get away, but there was nothing Dalton could do about it right then.
Glass crashed overhead as Holden made his entrance, followed a split-second later by the clang of metal as Wes kicked the door in, and Dalton knew his buddies were in there with him as muzzle flashes erupted all over the warehouse, blazing in his direction. He ignored all of it, focusing every ounce of his attention on getting to where Kimber and Emma huddled together on the floor.
