Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I want to break free,” Logan MacDonald sang, doing a good impersonation of Freddie Mercury—even if he did say so himself. “God knows, God knows I want to break free.”
“If you don’t shut up,” Callum McKay grumbled, “I’m going to take off my leg and beat you to death with it.”
Callum sat on the tiled platform that filled one wall of their small cell. He didn’t seem happy. But then, Logan had known the man for mere hours, and he couldn’t imagine him ever looking happy.
“If you kill me with your leg,” Logan said reasonably, “they’ll take it as evidence, and you’ll have to hop to your interrogation. It’s hard to come across as a tough guy when you’re hopping around.”
Callum held up an index finger and thumb with a tiny space between them. “See this? That’s how much leeway you’ve got before I shut you up for good.”
Logan sat on the edge of the platform with a huff. “Are you always this grumpy?”
“I was perfectly fine until they tossed you in here. In fact, I was enjoying my solitude.”
Of course he was. “I don’t know why they didn’t just put me back in a cell with my brother. Maybe they got confused and thought we were related.” He considered the older Scottish man, with his rust-colored hair threaded with gray. Who knew what height he’d been before he lost his legs in the war, but Logan bet it was about six feet tall. Then there was the chiseled jaw and ice-cold eyes. He looked kind of familiar.
“We could be father and son,” Logan mused. “By any chance, did you donate sperm to a clinic in Glasgow about twenty-five years ago?”
Callum’s head turned an interesting shade of purple as he sputtered half words before regaining control of his ability to speak. “No, I bloody well didnae!”
“Oh well.” Logan shrugged. “It was worth asking. Guess the two of us just look extra Scottish. I sometimes wonder if Mum put that on her criteria at the sperm bank: Gimme a big guy with red hair and a penchant for tartan . It would explain so much.” He lowered his voice. “I guess we should debrief, right? You’re the Benson Security expert here. Should we share the information we’ve gathered so far?”
“I’ve never felt sorrier for anybody than I feel for your boss right now,” Callum said. “Three of you to deal with, plus Violet Lee and Abasi.” He shook his head. “It’s a miracle the woman’s still sane.”
“Rochelle’s tough in her own way. It’s just more low-key than your military approach. She tends to go for the ‘you’ve disappointed me’ tack.”
Callum snorted with clear derision.
“Hey,” Logan said. “It works. That woman can shame almost as well as my mother, and that’s saying something. So, are we going to debrief or what?”
There was a glimmer of amusement beneath the London boss’s irritated facade. “Aye, why not? On you go. Tell me about all the information you’ve gleaned as a barely out-of-nappies security operative.”
Great. He was being mocked. Typical. Logan was always underestimated. Evan wowed people with his smarts, and Harris got them with his charm, but Logan was either invisible or dismissed. If it didn’t work in his favor so much, it would seriously piss him off.
“Whatever, old man,” Logan said. “I’m happy to go first. Mainly, I discovered that the commander has a personal vendetta against Lake, and he doesn’t care who gets in his way while he brings the big boss down.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Callum barked.
“Okay.” Logan pointed at the cell door. “I can pick that lock and get us out of here. There are three cameras between here and the emergency exit, but we could disable them by breaking the electrical circuit behind that call button.” He gestured to the colored tile they were to press if they needed help. “I don’t think the emergency exit alarm’s on the same circuit, but if we take the cameras down, it shouldn’t be that hard to access the door alarm too. I figure with the number of cops around here and the secure facilities, nobody really thinks anyone can get out.”
Callum blinked several times. “So, your big plan is to walk out of here through the emergency exit and into a car park full of police vehicles surrounded by fences topped with razor wire?”
“No.” Logan looked skyward, searching for patience. “My plan is to make everybody think we’ve gone that way. I got a good look inside the staffroom when I passed. There’s a high window on the far wall. We go through it, onto the roof, and make our way to the next building. From there, we decide if we stay on the roofs or go down to the street.” He grinned. “But nobody will be looking up for us. They’ll all be searching the car park.”
“How are you going tae pick the lock, Boy Wonder? The cops confiscated everything when we were in booking.”
“Watch and learn, old man. Watch and learn.” Logan lifted his right foot and rested it on his left knee. He pressed the sides of the heel of his boot, and the heel swiveled out. Tucked inside a hollowed-out crevice was a set of lockpicks. “Used to watch a lot of sixties spy movies. It’s amazing what ideas they’ll give you.”
He wasn’t sure whether Callum was impressed or stunned. It took him a moment to gather himself. “We’re no’ breaking out of here.” It was an edict. His final word.
And seriously annoying. “Why not? We’re being held on false charges by a guy with a bone to pick with Lake. Wouldn’t it be better if we were out there, working to clean this mess up, instead of sitting here doing nothing?”
“You think breaking out of here when we haven’t even been formally charged yet will help the situation?” Callum’s voice rose with every word. “All that’s going to do is make us look guilty and uncooperative.” He leaned forward, scowling. “We’re staying here. We’re going to listen to our lawyers. And we’re going to let the system work for us. We are not going to make things worse. And that’s an order.”
Logan held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I hear you.”
Callum sat back, muttering something about the army being better.
Whatever.
“So, plan B.” Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. “I lifted this from the commander when we passed in the hallway. I was going to try to get it to Evan so he could hack it. But I’m not totally useless when it comes to tech. I’m pretty sure I can at least access the phone to see who he’s been calling and what he’s up to. You got any objections to that, Grandpa?”
Before Logan knew what was happening, Callum snatched the phone from his hand and stomped over to the toilet. He wrapped it in toilet paper and dropped it into the bowl. Then he flushed the toilet.
“Hey!” Logan complained. “There might have been something on there that’d help us. That was a lead!”
“That”—Callum flushed the toilet again—“was theft from a senior police officer. Right now, they don’t have enough hard evidence to press any serious charges, but if they found us hacking that…” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “It’s like you want to spend the rest of your life in jail.”
“I’m trying to help,” Logan snapped.
“Then pay attention.” Callum surveyed the toilet, seemed satisfied that the phone was gone, and stalked back to the platform. “Because I’m going to give you a wee lesson on how to behave like a real security specialist instead of a teenage boy who thinks he’s taking part in a video game.”
Logan opened his mouth to complain, but Callum’s glare stopped him. The London boss stood in front of the platform where Logan sat, his feet apart and arms folded over his gray Henley. He wasn’t happy. And he was seriously intimidating.
“Are you listening?” Callum barked.
“Yes, sir.” The words came out of Logan’s mouth all by themselves, and he blinked in surprise. He hadn’t uttered those two words since his school days.
“Good, then pay close attention,” Callum began. “Security specialists do not steal from cops or run from the law. They investigate. They protect. And most of all, they use their brains to get to the bottom of things. We follow leads, boy. We ask questions. And, if needed, we do it heavily armed. But before any of that, we trust our team to do their job and save the rest of us.”
Logan suspected this was going to be a very long lecture.
To stop herself from going stir-crazy in the panic room, Katrina was keeping busy. These past few hours, she’d divided her time between watching the Metropolitan Police rip the building apart, looking for passwords or maybe a file marked “Evidence of our Crimes,” and going through any documents on the Benson Security server that mentioned the word Fitzwater. Neither endeavor was going well.
“This is impossible,” she said to Julia, who was on speakerphone beside her as she worked one of only two computers still in the building—the other was in the control room. “There are literally millions of files here, and the name Fitzwater is more common than I thought. We’ve got thousands of search results to comb through and only a few of us to do it.” She sighed. “I’m not even sure we’ll find anything useful. Or recognize it as useful if we do find it. There has got to be a better way to help the team.”
“If there is, I haven’t thought of it.” Julia sounded equally discouraged. “If we can find something to use as leverage against Commander Fitzwater, we can make this situation go away.”
“You mean blackmail him into dropping the charges?” Katrina said.
“No, I really mean leverage, as in putting us in a position of power when we negotiate. I don’t want to blackmail anyone. That just isn’t right.”
Katrina smiled. For a second there, she’d forgotten who she was talking to. “You’re right,” she said in an effort to appease the heavily pregnant woman who had to stay calm. “It’s definitely leverage. The good news is that I don’t think anyone’s on the server yet except us. I can’t see any anonymous accounts or unauthorized entries. The only people I see accessing files are allowed to be there.”
“That’s a relief,” Julia said. “I wish I knew how long it would take them to access our server from the facility, but I don’t. Once this is all over, I’m taking a crash course on hacking—if there is such a thing. The office manager should have a good overview of everyone’s skill set, and I have no idea what Elle does.”
Katrina grinned. “It’s probably for the best that you don’t.”
“Probably,” Julia agreed ruefully.
There was a commotion on the other end of the line as voices talked over one another. Katrina carried on speed-reading each document that included the word Fitzwater while waiting for Julia to come back on the line.
Elle kept everything. There were case files, background information on every single person Benson Security had ever dealt with, research on almost every criminal on the planet, information on operations undertaken by good and bad entities, and even a folder called “snitches,” which was full of tip-offs. And that was only the stuff Katrina had noted so far.
It was like getting a glimpse inside Elle’s brain, and it was scary. The server was bursting with information. Thankfully, most of it was saved by people who used standard terms to name their files. Elle’s made sense only to their creator—Thanos wannabes, fairy tale endings that didn’t go as planned, Stormtroopers who can be turned, and next-level Wormtongues. On the notepad beside her, Katrina added another reminder: Make Elle rename her files so mere mortals can understand them .
“That was Belinda, Beast, and Ryan back from talking to Commander Fitzwater’s ex-wife.” Julia’s voice interrupted Katrina’s thoughts. “They said she’s surprisingly nice but didn’t have any information on the commander that we could use as leverage.”
“Great,” Katrina muttered, striking another name off her list of possible leads. “Did she give us anything useful?”
“Yes, according to Belinda, the Fitzwater family is very protective of the commander’s youngest cousin, Darian. He’s the one engaged to a member of the peerage.”
“Gotcha.” Katrina added his name to her list. “So we add Darian to our search terms.”
“Definitely. That gives us two family members to look for—Darian and Garrison. As well as anything related to their surname.”
“Three,” Katrina said, pulling her list of the commander’s relatives and connections closer. “You’re forgetting his aunt, the assistant commissioner of Frontline Policing, Davina Agnew.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Julia, are you there?” Katrina said.
“Oh my goodness,” Julia said. “We completely missed that. Nobody thought to investigate the person who moved the commander into special crimes. We didn’t realize it was his aunt.”
Katrina checked her notes. “According to my copy of their family tree, Davina Agnew is sister of Rupert Fitzwater, who is Garrison Fitzwater’s father. Rupert and Davina have another brother, Giles, who’s the father of Darian.” She glanced at the security screens as she spoke to check on the police’s progress. They were still in the building, but their numbers had thinned. “There are other family members on the tree, but those ones seem to crop up the most in this.”
“I’m putting you on speaker. Everyone, Katrina’s found something interesting. You need to hear it.” There was a pause before the rest of the people in the room called their hellos. It made Katrina smile.
“Hey, gang,” she said.
“Okay,” Julia said. “Let me get this straight. Commander Fitzwater was moved into his role with special crimes, which was a lateral move and not a promotion, by his aunt?”
“Yep,” Katrina said, and she heard someone gasp.
“And his uncle is the minister for police?”
“Yep,” Katrina said again.
“And the nephew is the golden child whom everyone protects?” Julia asked.
“Absolutely,” Belinda said firmly. “And there’s a hidden side to his personality that nobody wants to come to light—according to the commander’s ex-wife.”
“Not to mention,” Rachel said, sounding strained, “this golden child is about to marry into a very prestigious family, and the Fitzwaters will get their title at long last.”
“Shit,” Ryan said, eloquent as ever. “This isn’t about Lake. It’s about the Fitzwaters. We have something that could ruin this Darian guy and put an end to their social ambitions. This is about protecting the family. All those phone calls Fitz has been getting, the ones Grunt mentioned, are probably from this Darian guy asking what the holdup is.”
There were murmurs of agreement as Katrina’s own intuition told her the pieces fit.
“Which means,” Ryan continued, “that Fitz isn’t looking for evidence on the server; he’s looking for incriminating information that could damage his family. Which explains why he wants everyone out of the way for fourteen days. He needs time to find the info.” He let out an exasperated huff. “I can’t believe this is all about making sure some stupid wedding takes place.”
“Never underestimate the aristocracy’s desire to protect their good name,” Rachel said with heavy cynicism. “Personally, I never understood that part of being titled.”
Katrina smiled at the thought of Rachel even remotely caring what people thought of her.
“We need to tell Ms. Patel,” Julia said. “This information has to be passed on to the team, especially Elle. She might have some idea where we can search for the information the Fitzwaters want so desperately.”
“If we even have it,” Isobel said. “I mean, how do they know for sure?”
“They know,” Ryan said. “Nobody goes to this much trouble and risks everything to follow a hunch.”
“I’ll call the lawyer now,” Rachel said.
“Is this it?” Claire asked. “Have we found the magic button that will end all this? Because I really need to get Grunt out of there. I can’t handle my kids as a single mother. We’re already seriously outnumbered as a couple.”
Katrina grinned, remembering all the times she’d babysat for the couple when she lived in Invertary. It required someone the size of Grunt to corral their brood. She’d barely escaped with her life.
“It might be the get-out-of-jail card we’ve been looking for,” Ryan said. “But we still have to find it.”
Katrina’s computer started to flash in front of her, and she clicked on the pop-up window that appeared. Her stomach lurched. “Whatever we do,” she said, “we have to hurry. I just received an alert that an unauthorized person’s in our system.”
“Should it have happened that fast?” Isobel’s voice had risen. “As a security company, shouldn’t we have better server security?”
“We do have good security,” Harvard drawled in his gentle southern accent. “We have a whole building full of it—in a country that generally doesn’t allow the UK access to its facility. But nobody could have predicted that someone would find a way into the server farm. With that kind of access, any good hacker wouldn’t have a problem getting onto our server. This is the perfect storm of security weakness. You can’t prepare for something like this.”
“The Fitzwaters did,” Ryan said. “They knew the British police would get into that facility and knew our files were stored there, and they jumped at the opportunity. They’ve been planning this for a while. Probably ever since the minister was briefed on the police having limited access to the server farm.”
“Gotta agree,” Harvard said with a hint of admiration. “Once they knew this was coming, they moved the commander into place so he could round up our team and isolate the people who could delete our servers. It’s pretty damn smart when you think about it.”
“What they’re looking for must be really incriminating to go to all this trouble,” Julia said. “If you’re right, this plan puts the careers and reputations of three members of their family on the line. Neither the minister nor Fitzwater and his aunt would survive the fallout if this came out. They’d all be fired and charged. It would ruin their precious name forever.”
“Makes you wonder what they’re looking for,” Ryan said. “Claire, call Katy, and get her to do a background on Darian. Hopefully, she’ll dig up something that will narrow our search down. In the meantime, we’ll take shifts hunting through the server. At least that way, we can all get some sleep. Buckle up, people; it’s going to be a long night.”
Katrina couldn’t agree more.