by Cherrie Lynn
Scrounging in her purse, she drew out a scrap of paper and a pen. Putting the paper against the wall, she scribbled.
Lindsey Morris. Meerkat.
Blowing out a breath, she slipped the paper under his door.
She didn’t bother adding a method of contact.
He would find her.
Chapter Four
It was late afternoon, and he should be asleep. He had a long night ahead. Instead, he was at his system, staring at all the information he’d gathered about the name she had slipped under his door.
Lindsey Morris. Meerkat. She was a decent coder, and he knew a script kiddie when he saw one.
So did she.
She could eradicate their asses.
Now he felt like a moron. He hadn’t known Lena that well outside of frat parties and mutual friends, so who was he to say she didn’t have an identical twin sister? It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But after what she had done to him, even more believable was that Lena was a duplicitous piece of shit. Could he really be blamed for questioning it? Who knew what schemes a mind that demented could cook up?
So the girl he’d practically assaulted was Lindsey Morris, and he should have known it, but he also couldn’t ignore the notion that Lena had probably put her up to whatever scheme they were trying to run. So far, though, she turned up clean.
He’d hacked into everything he could find about Lindsey. He read her emails. Her Facebook messages. Looked at her pictures. She’d known he would, or she wouldn’t have given him the information. She wouldn’t have given up her hacker name.
She was a software engineer at Denicorp. She’d apparently gone to MIT as well, but she must have kept a lower profile than her sister, because she wasn’t anyone he’d known. All her social media pictures were of the girl who’d knocked on his door this morning. And when it came to the resemblance between the sisters, he was fucking seeing double.
The odd thing was that Lena had no online presence. He’d checked up on her a couple of times in the past few years and hadn’t been able to find anything beyond where she lived and some financial information. It was the same today. No social media accounts, no online footprint.
He could have had all the revenge he wanted right at his fingertips. A few keystrokes, and her identity, her bank accounts, her credit information—everything she was—would belong to him.
But he hadn’t done it.
He’d sunk pretty low more times than he liked to think, but there was some shred of humanity that had kept him from ruining her life the way she had his. He liked to think he hadn’t sunk quite that low yet. But if she didn’t stop screwing with him, he might get there fast.
Even if everything Lindsey had said this morning was the absolute truth, and Lena was in trouble, why in the hell should he give a rat’s furry little ass? She was going to have to do way better than that to mobilize his abilities. Way fucking better than that.
Then again, here he was, digging into everything he could find.
Lena hadn’t been the best-looking girl he’d ever seen. It was the way she carried herself, the sultry-siren act down to an absolute science. The fit of her clothes that accentuated every luscious curve. The voracious heat in her eyes, the promise of her full lips. And damn if she hadn’t turned out to be that siren, luring him to his doom, while he’d gone willingly, grinning like a gullible son of a bitch.
One drunken bet at a party, and he had brought her F in computer science to a B with scarcely a thought, enough to keep her scholarship but stopping short of an A because it might be overkill. She sucked at everything else, so an A in computer science might raise some eyebrows, and a quick survey of her records had shown him she’d only earned one A in her entire college career.
Which was in—surprisingly enough—abnormal psych. He’d even changed a few other random students’ grades to take the heat off her in the event the intrusion was found. More fool him. It had never occurred to him in a million years that she would be the one to put the heat on him.
A knock on his door sounded at the same time a text popped up on his phone, jarring him from his thoughts. Me, it said, coming from Helix. He always announced himself, for some reason.
Come in, he texted back without getting up. Everyone in the team knew one another’s entry codes. A second later, he heard the beep of the keys being pressed, and the door opened at his back. Jace glanced over his shoulder to see his hardware specialist walk up behind him, all-seeing blue eyes focused on the twenty-three-inch monitor in front of Jace…where a picture of the woman who called herself Lindsey Morris was clearly displayed, her smiling face between an older couple who, given the resemblance, could only be her parents.
“Cute girl,” he commented, rubbing a hand over his bald head. “I thought the same when I saw her looking freaked out in front of your door this morning. And you hadn’t even mentioned a lady in your life.”
Jace grunted and shook his head, clearing the screen. “That is one lady I want out of my life, stat.”
“I can make her microwave kill her,” Helix commented happily.
Motherfucker probably wasn’t kidding.
The one person Jace would trust with his life—and had on several missions—pulled up a chair and sat in it backward, folding his arms across the top and facing him like an interrogator. “All right. Who is she?”
“You’ve heard me talk about Lena Morris, right?”
“The soul-sucking harlot who got you kicked out of MIT and hurtled headfirst into our festering depths?”
“The very one.”
“I might remember. Let me think.”
Jace chuckled. “Fuck you, man. That woman who showed up at my door out of the blue this afternoon claims to be her identical twin. Said Lena is in trouble.”
“And you would care because…?”
“I don’t.”
“Yet you’ve been creeping on her since she left.”
Yes, he had. And when Jace glanced at his brother—best friend and team member didn’t cut it—he found himself under a scrutiny that made him squirm. It saw everything, inside and out. It could also bring things to the surface better left submerged. “Lena Morris wrecked me.”
“Maybe she rebuilt you.”
“I rebuilt my goddamned self. And I told myself I had moved on. But I still found myself looking her up in the middle of the night sometimes. Wondering if she went on to have a good life when mine all went to shit.”
“And?”
“I really don’t know. She’s a ghost.”
Helix sat up straighter, his dark brows drawing together. “That’s weird.”
It kind of was. A young woman growing up in the internet age, the age of social media and selfies and mass hedonism…why no duckface shots of her clubbing with friends on Instagram, why no record of ridiculous dog-filter pics on Snapchat?
Lindsey was a different story. While her online life was nowhere near as wild as he would have figured Lena’s was, she was there. She was a participant. From what he could ascertain, she was also single. Any pics of her with men were few and far between, so at least he wouldn’t have the headache of some asshole trying to start trouble with him. Not that he would be too worried about it.
“So do you believe her? Is she really her twin?”
Jace thought about it long and hard. Helix had a way of making him cut through the bullshit. “Maybe. But it’s like you said. If everything she told me earlier was the absolute truth, why the fuck would I even care?”
“What exactly did she say?”
Hell, what had she said? He’d been overcome with so much angst at seeing her face outside his door, he could barely remember what color she’d been wearing.
Green, actually. She’d been wearing green. It had brought out her eyes.
Fuck.
“When you weren’t barking at her, I me
an,” Helix added with a crooked grin that made him look more maniacal than he already did.
Jace supposed he could have listened a little more closely. “Just that Lena was in trouble.”
“Well, I, for one, am intrigued, and I know you are, too. She must have some reason for coming to you when she could have gone to anyone else in the entire world, Jace. You might want to find out what that reason is, don’t you think?”
“How dare you be reasonable,” Jace grumbled.
Helix laughed. “It’s one of my most endearing qualities.”
“Hardly. But suppose she does have a reason. It can’t be good.”
“All the more reason to find out what it is.” Helix’s face hardened. Reasonable and jovial as he could be most times, no one wanted to see him when he wasn’t. No one. “So we can deal with it,” he finished coldly.
“This isn’t your problem, man.”
“Now that just pisses me off.”
Sighing, Jace leaned back in his chair and wiped his face hard with both hands. “The all-for-one, one-for-all bullshit gets a little old sometimes, I have to admit.”
“It does, right? Oh well. It’s what we signed on for.”
He hadn’t signed on for a Lena Morris clone to show up here, that was for damn sure, stirring up the world he had managed to build for himself after she tore it all down around him. “The most horrifying thing of all of this is that there might actually be two of her out there in the world.”
Helix burst out laughing. “All jokes aside, I say we get to the bottom of it. If only because it’s gonna drive you nuts thinking about it, and you know it.”
“If Lindsey is who she says she is, she’s a good coder. Goes by Meerkat.”
“Fucking hell, dude. You know sysadmins and coders don’t mix.”
Jace ignored that, true as it was. “Thing is, I doubt Lena could turn on a computer, much less write script.”
“Meerkat, huh? Small, cute. Won’t back down from a cobra. I like it.”
He’d backed her down this morning, though, with that caveman routine he’d pulled and the blatant lie he’d told her afterward.
His response to her soft lips yielding to his demanding ones was probably the only reason he’d even bothered picking up the slip of paper he’d noticed on the floor just inside his door. Reading it and sprinting straight to his desk to sleuth on her, where he still sat now, digesting everything he’d learned.
Hadn’t he known, really, deep down? She had the same face, but it couldn’t be the same woman. That soft, trembling creature standing outside his door had lacked the loud, good-time confidence he remembered. She had felt good. Too good. And when he’d sent her away with those harsh words, he’d lied, but she couldn’t ever know that.
“I don’t know,” he said, if only to fill the silence that had fallen between him and Helix. “I say we let it go. Whatever bed Lena’s made, I’m sure she deserves to lie in it. We have more important things to concentrate on.”
“Well, if you’re sure, that’s what we’ll do. But I still think the smart move is to determine why she came to you. I can try to work on it, if you want to wash your hands of the whole thing.” Just as Jace began to shake his head, Helix put in, “She found you, Jace. How?”
He tried to leave as little a presence online as Lena did. It was necessary in his line of work. Obviously, he hadn’t succeeded. “I thought of that, too.”
“If we’ve been compromised, we need to know. Maybe it’s bigger than you. I say we bring the team in on this.”
Jace didn’t want to admit he was right. Pursuing this meant he wasn’t free to forget about it, but hell, it was too late for that. The door had been opened, and his only choice was to revisit all the dark, festering things that still lingered inside him when it came to Lena Morris.
He shouldn’t give a shit, but he did.
“If everyone agrees to let it go, will you listen?” Jace asked, cocking an eyebrow at Helix, who shrugged and stood, putting the chair back where he’d gotten it.
“Sure. I’ll listen. But you know how we are. No one will let this go.”
That’s what he was afraid of.
Chapter Five
The Captain was having none of their bullshit today.
Snow had begun to kiss the windows of the conference room, a blustery cold having set in that was hindering the efforts of Christmas shoppers…not that Jace was among those. He didn’t have anyone to buy for, except maybe the people sitting in this room, and none of them gave a shit, either. But he found himself zoning out while watching the white stuff fall outside.
It had been snowing in Cambridge the day the Captain had walked into the room at MIT where Jace sat, dejected and destroyed after learning of his dreams being flushed down the crapper, and made the offer that would change his life. For better or worse.
You have a set of skills that caught our attention, Mr. Adams. We’d like to put them to the test. Would you be interested?
Sure, what the fuck else did he have to do with his life? He thought he’d actually said something like that.
And found himself hacking the Pentagon a few weeks later in a bug-bounty program.
The Captain was a shrewd man, no-nonsense and stern. Cold, even, yet every one of them sitting here would put their life on the line for him. And had. The gray peppering his dark hair more heavily with each passing year did nothing to reduce the severity of his appearance. If anything, it somehow enhanced it, as if age was doing nothing but sharpening his edges.
He was the only father figure Jace had ever known. He didn’t know how Cap had pulled this thankless job—leading their misfit ex-military group of ethical hackers—but he was damn glad to have him in control. Ethical hackers. There was a misnomer. But it was their job to outthink the criminals, to find and fix the weaknesses in government and sometimes corporate IT systems before worse people could find and exploit those weaknesses first.
To defeat your enemy, you must first know your enemy.
“Got anything you care to contribute, Jace?” The voice brought his head around. It was cool, always controlled, but commanded attention and respect. Jace racked his brain, trying to sort through the bits and pieces of conversation he’d picked up while he’d been staring out the window like an idiot.
“No, sir.”
“Something on your mind?”
“No, sir,” he said at the same time Helix piped up, “Yes, sir. Ask him to tell you about it.”
Now all eyes were on him. The Captain folded his hands calmly in front of him and waited without a word.
“You have been oddly absent for this entire meeting,” Drake pointed out. He was the malware specialist of the Nest, having created viruses that brought down financial institutions, governments, satellites, and cellular networks all over the world and beyond. And Jace didn’t even want to know the things he’d done back when he wore a black hat.
Ignoring the remark, Jace turned instead to Sully, their resident cybersecurity engineer. “Has our network been compromised lately?”
She scoffed and ran a hand through her short, messy white hair. “Like you wouldn’t have heard about it yet. Besides, anyone who can crack this wall deserves an engraved invitation to join.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What’s this about?” the Captain asked.
“I had a visitor the other day,” Jace said, leaning forward and staring at a neutral spot on the table. “I’m not sure how she found me. Everything seems to be sound, but she showed up, and she claimed to be the twin sister of the woman who got me kicked out of MIT. She’s the mirror image of her, to the point that I thought it was her.”
A collective silence fell across the room. Every one of them had heard his Lena sob story, and he didn’t feel like recounting much of it now.
“And she’s the reason you ended up here,” S
ully pointed out. Jace shrugged.
“Sure, if you want to look at it that way.”
“What did she want?” Drake asked.
“All I got out of her was that her sister—Lena, the one who set me up—was in trouble. She was asking for my help.”
“Does she know who you are?” Who you are in this context went far beyond name.
“Whether or not she’s made me, I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think you ought to find out?” Sully looked around at them all. “If someone can find one of us, they can find all of us. We need better security—physical security—in this building. I’ve been telling you and telling you.”
“We’ll address that,” the Captain said. “Is that all that’s concerning you, Jace?”
He considered his words for a long moment, then shook his head, glancing at Helix. Helix nodded, encouraging him to go on. “Not just the how but the why. Why me. To help her. I don’t get it.”
“Why didn’t you ask?” Sully asked.
I was too busy kissing her brains out wouldn’t be an acceptable response. “I guess it didn’t occur to me,” he said, letting his voice drip with enough acid to discourage further questioning on the matter. “I just didn’t.”
Sully, as unfazed by his tone as always, scoffed at him. “The next time strange women show up at your door, call me.”
“Can I watch?” Helix asked, grinning lasciviously until the Captain put the kibosh on the subject. Yet again having none of their bullshit.
“She’s also a competent coder,” Jace continued once everyone had heeled to the Captain’s command. “Goes by Meerkat.”
“So you got that out of her but not her reasons for coming to you?”
“She wrote it on a note and stuck it under my door. I thought it was Lena fucking Morris standing in the hallway of my building. Forgive me for not being exactly rational.”
“Some of the most high-stakes military operations in the history of the Air Force,” Sully said, “and he’s scared of a girl.” She tsked at him but winked to take the sting off the words. He loved Sully as much as anyone, and she loved getting under his skin. She was just so damned good at it, too. He scratched his nose with his middle finger in her general direction, and she laughed while the Captain sighed.
