The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance)

by Olivia Thorne

  I glance over at JP and Dominique, hoping they’re not going to contradict Mailin.

  I needn’t have worried. They’re career criminals. They know what’s up, and they both keep quiet.

  “If Epicurus has any alarms set in place,” Mailin cautions, “you could set them off. Then we lose the advantage of surprise.”

  My newly-found hope dwindles. “That’s possible, too.”

  “Do you think they know we’re coming after them?” Duplass asks.

  “He might. Although from what I know about him, he’s an arrogant son of a bitch. He probably thinks he beat us and that there’s not a chance in the world we can outsmart him… which is maybe why he didn’t order his men to search for a GPS tracker.”

  “Unless he does know, and this is all a decoy,” Duplass says, pointing at the laptop.

  I hate this guy.

  What I hate even more is, he might be right.

  “This is all I’ve got,” I snap.

  “And that’s what you’re here for,” Duplass sneers. “So do your thing.”

  ASSHOLE.

  But he’s right: that’s what I’m here for. To use my skills to find Grant.

  So I start to do my thing.

  79

  The plane taxis to the runway. Take-off is easy, and so is most of the flight.

  I wish the same could be said for the hacking.

  I’m able to get into every major telecommunication company’s satellite system, but none of them are running any sort of Atlantic Ocean uplinks – at least, not where Grant’s plane is.

  Next I try Russian satellites, Chinese satellites, European Union satellites. I don’t need to speak Russian or Chinese, since I don’t need to read emails or web pages. What I’m hacking is called machine code, which is the most basic of all computer languages, and it’s universal.

  But I still turn up nothing.

  “Jesus, I forgot how good you are,” Mailin whispers as he watches me work.

  I smile grimly. “Coming from an FBI agent, that’s damning me with great praise.”

  “I’m not FBI right now,” he whispers. “I’m your friend.”

  I look at him, and my eyes fill with tears.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “I can’t tell you how much that means.”

  He nods, and we get back to work.

  Since I’m not getting anywhere, I go back to basics and devise a program to tally the satellites capable of running an uplink right now. All in all, there’s supposedly 2271 functioning ones orbiting the Earth. About 1200 of those are Russian, and another 650 belong to the U.S.

  But the thing is, all those satellites are scattered across the globe. There are only maybe 300 U.S. satellites in range above us now; the other 350 are on the other side of the world, where their signals are blocked by the Earth itself, so they’re off the list. Of those 300, two thirds are too far out of range to be much use. And of the remaining 100, most of them are satellites I’ve already tried, or military –

  “Shit,” I whisper.

  “What?” Mailin asks.

  “Hold on,” I say.

  Once I’ve hacked inside a satellite, I can’t actually see what’s being sent or received – the data is all encrypted – but I can tell where the data stream is going and where it’s coming from.

  It takes me thirty minutes, but I find the right satellite. It’s uplinked to the exact spot over the Atlantic Ocean where Grant’s jet is flying right now.

  The satellite?

  U.S. Military.

  More specifically, I can tell where the communications are coming from.

  A server farm in Utah.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Mailin whispers. “It’s the NSA.”

  80

  So.

  Yeah.

  My choices are to do nothing and hope for the best… or try to hack the most sophisticated intelligence network on earth.

  From a plane with a slow-as-molasses internet uplink.

  But the only other option is to gamble everything – and I mean everything – on whether Grant is on that plane or not.

  I freeze with my fingers over the keyboard.

  Mailin stares at me. “You’re not actually considering trying to hack the NSA, are you?!”

  “I’m thinking about it,” I murmur, my heart racing.

  “That’s INSANE. Look, we can radio to Washington, maybe get somebody higher up to look into it – ”

  “The NSA’ll deny it. Besides, they’ll want to know how we know, which will blow our cover and tip Epicurus off.”

  “You have a better plan?” he asks sardonically.

  “If I can hack into the plane, I could confirm he’s there,” I argue, though I’m trying to convince myself more than I am Mailin.

  “That’s a Mt. Everest-sized ‘If.’”

  “I can do it,” I protest, though somewhat feebly.

  “We’re on a plane with limited uplink speed, Eve. You trying to hack the NSA from here is like going up against the Incredible Hulk with a peashooter.”

  “I can do it,” I insist, though it’s my fear for Grant that’s talking, not my reason.

  “Okay. Say you do, and you somehow manage to avoid letting them know we’re chasing them and ruin the one advantage we have. If there aren’t any cameras onboard, how can you tell he’s on the plane? You can’t.”

  “There are probably cameras…” I say, even more feebly.

  “Okay, say there are. What then?”

  “I could infiltrate the plane’s controls. I could write a program to take over the flight system – ”

  “And what, force them down over the Atlantic? What do you want to do, save Grant by killing him?”

  “No – I could trigger some minor emergency once they cleared the Atlantic that would force them to land – ”

  “If you can take it over, then Epicurus can, too. You think he’d let Grant and an entire plane full of mercenaries be captured? Or do you think he’d just crash it so nobody would ever find out who he is?”

  “He wants Grant alive.”

  “Yeah, so he can kill him. And if Epicurus crashes the plane, he gets what he wants, plus he doesn’t blow his cover. What do you think he’s going to do?”

  Mailin is right.

  No matter what I do it’s maximum risk, with the worst possible odds, for very little reward.

  It all hinges on whether Epicurus is so arrogant to think that he’s completely and irrevocably won, and whether he’s foolhardy enough to have let down every single one of his defenses.

  That’s what it all boils down to: arrogance and foolhardiness.

  I can’t afford any of my own. Not with Grant’s life hanging in the balance.

  I hit the ESCAPE button, which ejects me from the satellite feed. I breathe out a huge sigh. “You’re right. Thanks for talking me down off the ledge.”

  Mailin grins. “And you thought I couldn’t help.”

  I look at him and try to smile, but can’t quite do it. I’m terrified for Grant, and I feel so damn helpless.

  Mailin can see it in my face. “It’s going to be okay,” he says soothingly. “It will, I know it.”

  I wish I knew that.

  But what I don’t want to do is make the situation worse.

  So I wait out the entire flight.

  It’s the longest ten hours of my entire life.

  81

  If you’ve ever flown from Europe to New York, that last sentence might have given you pause. That’s because it’s an eight-hour commercial flight. Seven if you only count the time in the air.

  Six hours in, we realize Grant’s plane isn’t landing in New York. The tracking dot on my laptop bypasses Manhattan and keeps on going.

  “Where’s he heading?” Duplass asks. “Los Angeles?”

  I zoom out the map and use a piece of paper as a straight-edge. “Unless they change course… it could be Utah.”

  “You’re not still on that NSA conspiracy kick, are you?” Duplass asks in a witherin
g voice.

  Mailin and I didn’t tell Duplass what we’d found on the satellite feed. No need to admit to more felonies than necessary.

  But Mailin exchanges looks with me. He knows I’m right.

  “It could be San Francisco,” I offer. “It’s the same trajectory.”

  “San Francisco?” Duplass asked. “Why there?”

  I think for a second. “Silicon Valley, maybe. Epicurus is a techie, there’s no doubt about that.”

  I say it just to placate Duplass. I’m pretty damn sure we’re headed for Utah.

  “Huh,” the FBI agent says, and strokes his chin thoughtfully. I guess ‘asshole Silicon Valley hacker’ is much preferable to ‘NSA ghoul’ on his list of conspiracy theories. “Were you ever able to hack the plane?”

  “No,” I say, sticking to the simplest version possible.

  “Yeah, I figured you were more bark than bite,” he sneers, and sits down opposite me again.

  Asshole.

  82

  But it turns out the joke’s on me, because the plane flies past Utah, straight on to Nevada – and in a direct line with the Bay Area.

  “You really think it’s San Francisco?” Mailin asks.

  “I guess. It makes sense… sort of.” I look over at Duplass. “Now that we know where they’re headed, can we get right behind them? Maybe land immediately after them?”

  “We’re not arresting them on the tarmac, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Why not?!” I demand.

  “Because I’m doing this to catch the guy who was behind the deaths of two of my agents, that’s why. Carlson is a distant second.”

  My anger nearly boils over, but I remind myself that I knew Duplass’s priorities from the beginning. That’s how I was able to manipulate him into letting me come along.

  “I understand,” I say, holding my temper. “But we want to cut their lead time by as much as possible… just in case.”

  “Alright,” Duplass says. “Agent Walker, go ask the pilot how close we can get to them.”

  Mailin stands up.

  “Hold on,” I say, and activate one of the GPS trackers left over in the backpack. Within sixty seconds, our position appears onscreen in my computer program. “Tell him we’re about 200 miles behind them.”

  “Okay,” Mailin says, and heads for the cockpit.

  “Have you got a team standing by for when we land?” I ask Duplass.

  “No.”

  That part I can’t believe. “Why not?!”

  “Not until we get confirmation Carlson’s actually on the plane.”

  “We might not ever be able to get confirmation of that! Not if they’re too far ahead of us!”

  “I’m going to have a hard enough time explaining why I couldn’t provide the Bureau with a flight plan for this little trip,” Duplass barks. “I’m not about to risk my job if it turns out that all they did was fly the GPS unit to San Francisco to fuck with us.”

  That’s when it hits me: Duplass really doesn’t give a shit if Grant dies. As long as he gets Epicurus, that’s all that matters.

  And if he doesn’t get Epicurus?

  Oh well, so long as he keeps his job.

  Grant? Fuck him. Dead or alive, doesn’t matter to Duplass.

  I’m about to shout and cuss up a storm – but then I realize that the FBI agent’s assholishness might actually work in my favor.

  Epicurus is tied into the Federal Government somehow. If an FBI team scrambles suddenly in San Francisco, it might alert him that we know where he is.

  I sat on my hands for eight hours in order not to blow our cover; I’m not about to blow it now.

  Not to mention that an FBI crash team might get in the way of what JP, Dominique, and I plan to do on our own.

  How we’re going to pry Duplass off our asses long enough to achieve anything, I have no idea… but I’ll figure it out.

  I hope.

  Mailin comes back. “The pilot said we can definitely get closer, but we’re going to be about 10 minutes behind them no matter what we do.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I say, trying to figure out how to take advantage of the situation. “That’s absolutely fine.”

  83

  Turns out it’s not San Francisco that the plane is heading towards, either.

  It’s north of that, in Marin County. Any nerd worth his salt knows Marin County is the base for Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas’s vast complex for movie sound editing before he sold everything to Disney.

  In short, it’s a beautiful, green countryside that’s home to lots of multi-millionaires. Maybe not as many as the tonier parts of San Francisco, but it has one thing those sections of the city don’t:

  Privacy.

  I zoom in all the way on Google Maps with the satellite view on, and we watch in fascination as the dot approaches a body of water called Tomales Bay. The plane circles an isolated estate with no neighbors around for miles. On the property sits a massive boat dock, an absolutely gigantic mansion, and multiple other buildings.

  As we watch in real time, the plane lands on what appears to be a private landing strip half a mile from the main property.

  “Who does that belong to?” Duplass asks.

  I open another window and begin doing property and tax holding searches. “I don’t know, hold on. Can we land right behind them?”

  Duplass scoffs. “On private property? No. That would be trespassing. Any search we do would be thrown out by the courts.”

  “We’re tracking the GPS chip Grant’s carrying! We have probable cause!” I shout.

  “We don’t know if Carlson is on the plane or not.”

  “I’m going to have to hack into the property anyway to see if he is – that’s illegal, so if we’re doing illegal shit, why can’t we just land there?”

  “We’re not going in without a team behind us.”

  “Which you won’t authorize until you know Grant is on the plane, which you won’t know until I do the hacking, and even THEN you want to wait forever to set it up! WHY?!”

  “This has to be done by the book.”

  “You fucking chickenshit!” I shout. “You don’t care about ‘the book’ – you just want to cover your own ass, you’ll use me to do it, and you don’t give a damn if Grant dies or not!”

  “Agent Walker, get your friend under control,” Duplass sneers.

  Mailin puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers in my ear. “Eve – calm down. He’s not worth it. Think of Grant.”

  I stand there, chest heaving. I want to kill Duplass so bad right now –

  But Mailin’s right. Duplass isn’t worth it.

  And I have to play this right. Grant’s life is on the line.

  “Where can we land, then?” I ask angrily.

  Duplass shrugs. “We could land at San Francisco International – ”

  “Fuck that,” I snarl, and look at the map on my laptop. “There’s Marin County Airport – it’s at least two hours north of San Francisco International, even if it’s… Jesus, probably 45 minutes away from the target.”

  “Fine, I’ll talk to the pilot,” Duplass says, and walks toward the cockpit.

  “Charming asshole,” JP says after Duplass is gone.

  I laugh mirthlessly. “Yeah.”

  “Did you find out who owns the property yet?” Mailin asks.

  I dive into the tax and property records, but it’s a complete jumble of red tape. LLCs inside Class C Corporations inside shell companies inside holding corporations. Everything is smoke and mirrors.

  The only thing is, it’s so ridiculously complicated that it’s like a glaring red neon light. Not to mention the pattern is all too familiar. It reminds me of the tortuous path I followed – and failed – to discover who rented the Bel Air home where Grant found the two imprisoned women.

  The only person this property could belong to is Epicurus. Nobody else would go to this much trouble to conceal their identity. I got inside all of Grant’s various corporate facades wi
th half this much effort.

  “No,” I grumble. “I’m going to have to go with another method.”

  I immediately start work on my ‘other method.’ Which is highly, highly illegal.

  Duplass comes back. “The pilot’s heading for Marin County Airport. We should be there in five minutes.”

  As though to confirm, the pilot’s voice comes over the loud speaker. “Could everyone please take their seats, we’ll be landing in a matter of minutes.”

  “Can you at least arrange a car for us when we get there? One with internet capabilities?” I snap.

  “Sure,” Duplass says snidely as he sits down.

  Mailin glances over my shoulder, and his eyes go wide. “What are you doing?!” he hisses in my ear.

  He’s just seen my ‘other method.’

  “Shhh,” I whisper.

  Again, it’s too complicated to explain – but like the satellites earlier, I can hack local networks and figure out where traffic originates and where it ends up. Without actually hacking into the NSA, I can figure out who they’re hooked up with in Northern California.

  Turns out they’re piped in to a sizable network… in Tomales Bay.

  My fingers fly over the keyboard as I start to hack the mystery network. It’s a bitch, I can tell you that. There are traps, impenetrable custom firewalls, and labyrinthine security processes.

  There’s no way in – at least, none that won’t take me hours… or days.

  I don’t have hours or days.

  I stop, close my eyes, try to calm my inner panic, and think.

  What do I know?

  The network belongs to Epicurus.

  Epicurus’s network is connected to the NSA.

  I could try to hack the NSA, but that would probably take just as long. It’s a government agency filled with hackers –

  Wait.

  I open my eyes and look at Mailin. Who is a hacker, and the employee of a government agency.

  “Do you know anybody at the NSA?” I whisper.

  He gets what I’m trying to do. “Oh – oh, no, unh-unh – ”