Hit and Run: A Thrilling Novel of Romantic Suspense (Callahan Security series Book 3)

by Lori Matthews

  Dani nodded again and sat back down. She pulled her laptop into her lap and opened it up. The screen seemed really bright in the darkness, but Gage knew it was quite dim. He sat down, too. “Jeremy said you’ve been busy.”

  She nodded and smiled. “Yes. The ship’s security system seems to be wonky.”

  “Wonky. Is that a technical term?” he asked with a grin.

  “As a matter of fact, it is. They’ll have a hard time figuring it all out, and they certainly won’t be able to fix anything until we hit Vancouver, so we should be fine.” She shifted in her seat and winced.

  He ground his molars. Those goons had hurt her. He could kill them for it. His hands curled into fists. She shot him a look so he uncurled his fingers and rolled his shoulders. He needed to let that anger go and focus.

  “Work the problem,” he said under his breath.

  “Exactly,” Dani replied.

  He swore silently. He hadn’t meant for her to hear that. He sighed. “So, why are we in the rink? And how did you find Jeremy?”

  “I found a spot with decent Wi-Fi and hacked the system again. Then I looked him up to see where his sleeping quarters were located. In the end, I just got lucky and caught him as he was coming out to start work. And we’re in the rink because it has the best Wi-Fi on board.” Dani leaned back and gestured with her head. “There’s a repeater behind this wall.”

  “You are impressive. Have I mentioned that?”

  Her fingers stilled and she cleared her throat. “Thanks.” The keys clacked softly again. “I figure we’ll stay here as long as we can. It’s safer that way. We’ll move when we have to.” She held up the radio. “Jeremy will check in with us to give us an update if there’s anything going on.”

  “Looks like you’ve got it all sorted. Now I just need to find a way to call my brothers. I think I should update them on what’s going on and find out if they have anything new for us. I sure as hell like to know who the spy is in Drake’s office and how the guys found us on this ship.”

  He wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but he also just wanted to hear his brothers’ voices. He’d always been the one who held the family together since his mom died. Logan and Mitch hadn’t made it easy, but they were getting along better these days, and since he lost Joel, he’d found himself more shaken up by scenes like the one in the cabin. He looked at Dani. He knew very well how he could lose everything in a heartbeat. Enough of those thoughts.

  “I called Janet, and she gave me your brothers’ numbers, but I couldn’t connect with them. Not sure the cell service is working well. Do you want to send them an email or text? We could try a video call if you want.” Dani’s fingers had been screaming across the keyboard at lightning speed, but she stopped typing. “Wait. You don’t think the men followed Jeremy to the cabin, do you?”

  “No. A random purser on the ship? They picked him out of the crowd? Even if he was in our hallway, that wouldn’t be enough to make them suspicious. There are pursers all over the place. No, I think they found us another way. I think there’s a distinct possibility they hacked into the ship’s system as easily as you did and watched the video feeds until they found us.”

  Dani grimaced. Then he watched as she rapidly closed what she had been working on and brought up the ship’s software again. “Let’s see. They might have left a trail if they did. We might be able to trace it.”

  “Wait, will they be able to trace you?”

  The look she gave him could only be described as pitying. “Seriously,” she said as she shook her head.

  Her fingers raced across the keyboard, and what seemed like seconds later, she smiled. “You’re right. Here they are.” She pointed to the screen as the door to the skating rink opened and the third man from the promenade walked in.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dani froze. How the hell did he find them? There was no way he tracked her online. No. Way. She left no trace. Her lungs were on fire. She drew air deeply into her lungs as she slowly closed her laptop.

  With the main lights off, he couldn’t see them. There were only the few downward pointing spotlights, and as long as they stayed directly out of them, they couldn’t be seen. She knew that from when Gage entered, but if he turned on the lights, they were done for. Gage was still beside her. Sweat trickled down her back, and she longed to wipe her palms on her jeans.

  The man peered into the darkness and then walked over to the wall. He appeared to be looking for light switches, at least that was her guess. Gage’s, too, apparently because he nudged her and pointed to the floor.

  Slowly, carefully, they slid to the edge of their seats and then knelt down on the floor. Dani held her laptop in her right hand while keeping her seat down with her left. The seat would pop up as soon as she let go. Had it squeaked when she first sat down? For the life of her, she couldn’t remember.

  Gage was facing her. He let his seat up very carefully with no sound. He glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. She motioned to the seat with her head and then shook it. His lips compressed. She glanced back over at the guy. He was walking to the other side of the door, presumably still looking for the light switches. She turned back to Gage. He put his hand on her seat and motioned for her to move hers. Then ever so slowly, he let the seat rise. She turned back to watch the man. He was moving his hands along the wall when suddenly he stopped.

  She whipped around to tell Gage, but he was already watching the guy. Gage pushed her head down with his left hand and used his right to let go of the seat at the same time as the lights came on. The seat made a slight squeak. She held her breath. Maybe the man didn’t hear the squeak. It had seemed deafening to her.

  Dani couldn’t see anything, but she knew Gage could see the guy between the seats. She noticed a scant bit of tension leave his body. The man hadn’t heard. The rush of relief was short lived. They were still stuck in the rink with no way out.

  The seconds seemed to stretch into hours. Her legs were cramping. Her palms were slick. Was he searching the whole place row by row? She tried to catch Gage’s eye, but he was totally focused on the guy.

  Gage had come around the arena when he had walked up to see her, but the ice was positioned directly between the guy and their location. She heard what she thought was the door leading onto the ice open. Was the guy going out on the rink? She heard it slam closed again.

  An eternity later, she heard one of the main doors to the skating rink close. Her breath left her lungs with a whoosh. She started to stand up, but Gage caught her and held her tight. He shook his head.

  What now? she mouthed at him, but he remained watching through the seats. Her leg muscles were screaming at this point and her ribs were starting to pulsate with pain. What the hell was going on? She needed to stand, to sit, actually. She also needed coffee, about a gallon of it. She heard the door open and close again.

  Gage held her arm for another ten seconds and then let go. “Okay, you can stand now.”

  Dani slowly stood up. She pulled her seat down and placed her laptop on the cushion. Then she shook out her legs a bit and gingerly stretched her arms. “What was that about? Why did you hold me down? Did he come back?” she asked Gage as she massaged her legs.

  “He didn’t leave. I guess he figured if we were here, we might not be able to see him, so he pretended to leave to see if we’d pop up. He searched the rows on the side and then started across the ice but started sliding, so instead of walking around the ice, he just went back and played with the door. Lazy.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a bit strange? Wouldn’t he have been better trained than that?”

  “Yes. It’s weird.”

  Dani shrugged. “Well, I’m glad he was. It would have been ugly otherwise.”

  Gage nodded.

  “Now what do we do?” Dani asked.

  “We go over and sit on the other side of the rink.” Gage walked down to the end of the row and then turned down the stairs. Dani grabbed her backpack and her laptop and followed him.


  She frowned. “I have no idea how he knew we were here. I swear to you I covered my tracks. There is no way he could’ve traced me to the access point we’re using.”

  “He didn’t,” Gage said over his shoulder. “If he knew you were using this specific Wi-Fi access point, he would have searched more thoroughly. He’s just checking every area with a repeater because that’s where the signal is the strongest.”

  They hit the bottom and were walking around the ice. “How does he know where the strongest access points are? He didn’t have a laptop with him.”

  “Yes, and that tells us there are definitely more bad guys on the boat. It also confirms they’ve been hacking the boat’s systems as well. These guys seem organized and well equipped, but yet they are slightly sloppy. They are making mistakes,” Gage said as they started up the stairs on the other side of the rink.

  At the top row, he turned in and went to the corner seat again, but this time there was a walkway behind it. Gage sat down. “Not ideal, but it will do. We can sit here and blend in with the skaters and watch the shows.”

  “What mistakes?” Dani asked as she settled next to him.

  Gage frowned at her. “What?”

  “You said they made mistakes, but what mistakes did they make?”

  “Well, the guy should’ve searched the entire rink. He should’ve walked around and checked each and every door to make sure they were all locked.”

  Dani nodded as she got her laptop back out of her backpack. “What else?”

  “When they came to search the stateroom, they should’ve had at least one guy in the hallway just in case, and if they were smart and had the manpower, at least one more guy with them when they entered the suite.”

  Dani’s fingers found their familiar spots on the keyboard and then took off at full speed. “Maybe they don’t have that kind of manpower.”

  She saw Gage shake his head out of the corner of her eye. He was looking around the rink. “I think they do. There has to be at least four of them, right? The three we saw and someone with a laptop somewhere. You saw at least two more in Juneau, so that’s six. The Chinese government has lots of agents. I’m guessing they sent at least ten.” Gage’s voice petered out.

  Dani glanced over at him. “You sound unsure. You think there’s more than ten?”

  Gage shrugged. “There could be a hundred. What do I know? But that’s not what’s bugging me.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Dani asked as her fingers flew along the keyboard.

  Gage shook his head. “The mistakes. Not very professional.” He paused and shook his head again. “That’s not true either. They are sort of professional.”

  He finally turned to face her. “They’re good, but not quite at the level I would have expected, and that makes me nervous.”

  Her fingers stopped typing. If Gage was nervous, she should be terrified. He knew a lot more about this type of stuff than she did. Her breath caught in her throat. She sat back and wiped her palms on her jeans. She trusted Gage. Not something that happened, like ever, really. Trust usually took years for her to build, and she’d only known Gage for a few days.

  Had it really only been a few days? She was tired. More tired than she’d ever been. She blinked rapidly to keep the rush of emotion from spilling down her cheeks. She didn’t want to cry in front of him again.

  She glanced at Gage. Her heart fluttered. It was definitely too late. She trusted him. Well, she’d had to. He was sent here to protect her. To save her life. But it was more than that, and she knew it. Deep in her heart, she felt it was more, and that had her wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans yet again.

  The trust had been built when she wasn’t looking. It had happened when he didn’t press her on things, when he accepted her word. When she’d told him about her foster mom, and he understood. It’d happened when she cried about Carly and he’d held her. It’d happened when they’d had mind-blowing sex.

  She swallowed hard again and closed her eyes. It was bad. Trust was bad. Once she trusted someone, they could disappoint her, and she’d get hurt. Getting hurt was just not something she wanted to go through again. She’d fought long and hard to come back from the pain her foster mom had caused. Trust was a painful word for her.

  One of the great benefits of being a hacker was she rarely had to deal with anyone face to face and the only person she had to trust was herself. It was a dream job for an introverted, trust-deficient person like herself. Or it had been.

  Rebuild the wall, she reminded herself. Keep your distance. This wasn’t going to end well for her. Gage didn’t want a criminal in his life, especially a hacker.

  “What are you working on?” Gage asked.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m using their tactics against them. I figured out their access point, so I know their general vicinity. Then I went back into the video logs and captured pictures of the three guys. I ran them through my software. They are staying in a cabin on deck eleven. They are using the repeater on the bow to get the best signal.

  “Now, I think if we watch the last couple days of video feed of the hallway the room is in, we can figure out how many guys there are and what they look like.”

  Gage whistled softly, as though impressed.

  Dani shifted in her chair. “Also, if you want to, we can send pictures to your brothers to see if we can get some kind of identification on them. Not sure that’s going to help any since we know they’re Chinese government.” She shrugged.

  “Your software can’t identify them?” Gage asked.

  “I don’t have anything to compare them to so my software is not helpful here. The software can only identify someone if it has something to compare it to. If you have an old picture, it can say yes this person that walked across the street is the person from the photograph. But picking random people out of a crowd and identifying them can only happen if there is another database to compare it to. I could work on hacking some of the Chinese military databases if you want.” She flexed her fingers and smiled.

  Gage was staring at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re amazing. Don’t ever believe anything different, but let’s not hack anything else by the Chinese government. Let my brothers see what they can dig up after we send them the email.” He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss.

  She needed to stop this. No kissing. Keep your distance, she tried to remind herself, but it wasn’t working. Heat crawled up her neck and was advancing into her cheeks when he leaned down and kissed her again. This time it wasn’t so quick.

  She broke off the kiss and went back to her laptop, making a silent vow to avoid letting Gage get close to her again. Panic pooled in her belly. Each breath she drew felt like oxygen was in short supply.

  If she continued to be close to him, to fall for him, it would kill her when this was over and he left. She was already in danger of losing Carly. She just couldn’t take anymore hurt. She needed to focus on Carly and the software. Carly was the only thing she was absolutely one hundred percent sure of in this world, and she wasn’t going to let that little girl down.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “So what are you going to do after this?” Gage asked as he watched the skaters move around on the ice. He glanced at the clock in the corner of Dani’s screen. The rink officially opened twenty minutes ago, but it was filling up fast.

  “After? What do you mean?” Dani asked. The clacking keys on her keyboard sped up.

  “After you finish the software for Drake. What are you going to do?”

  “Go see Carly.”

  Gage ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, but after that. What are you going to do? For a living?”

  The sound of fingers on the keyboard stopped. He looked over at Dani, and their eyes locked. She blinked and then went back to her keyboard, but not before he saw a strange look flit across her face. One he couldn’t name. His gut knotted.

  “There you are.” Jeremy appeared just behind their row. “I have the st
uff you asked for.” He held up a bag.

  “Thanks, Jeremy.” Dani tried to smile but Gage saw her smile was tight. She turned back, shut her laptop lid, and then stood up.

  Gage stood also and eyed Jeremy. “What stuff is that? I thought you were busy today.”

  “Dani radioed me a while ago and asked me to pick up some hats and T-shirts.” His smile faltered as he looked back and forth between the two.

  “You were in the restroom,” Dani said.

  Gage reached for the bag, but Dani took it out of Jeremy’s hand first. She opened it and handed Gage a dark blue T-shirt. He held it up. It had ALASKA in bright white across the front. “Not the best to blend in.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dani grumbled. “Thanks again, Jeremy.” She whacked Gage in the chest with a dark blue ball cap that had Juneau on it.

  Obviously, he’d done something to piss her off. He grimaced. It was going to be a long afternoon. He shrugged and shook his head. Jeremy smirked.

  “Yes, thanks Jeremy.” Gage glanced at Dani. “I’m assuming you think this will help us blend in so we can move more freely around the ship?”

  She took a navy sweatshirt out of the bag and pulled it over her head. It had Ketchikan in small letters over her left breast. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a repair guy over there by the corner camera. I can only stall them for so long. Once they turn the camera on, they’ll be looking for us.”

  She reached up and pulled her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, then used a scrunchie she’d pulled out of the bag to tie it up. She yanked a black ball cap out of the bag and put it on.

  Dani sighed. “As you know, most facial recognition software can’t recognize you unless you look directly at it. Since you haven’t shaved in a couple days, the beard you have is enough to fool most laptops. These guys don’t have much in the way of cutting-edge software, so this should do it.”

  She adjusted her sweatshirt one more time and then picked up her backpack. “Jeremy, you should get going. The software is going to come back online in a minute or so. You need to be somewhere else.”