Chapter 23 #2
After a few spoons of deliciousness, she could totally see why Remi stole it and why Gunnar didn’t want to share it. “It’s fab.”
“Told ya.” Remi nodded to the fridge. “There’s another tub in there. I aim to have them both finished by the time the guys get back.”
“I’ll help,” she promised. “It will do your brother good to have ice cream to worry about instead of work.”
“Hah, fat chance. Gunnar is a workaholic. The most he’s taken off in years has been when he got shot.”
“Is that what happened to his thigh?”
“Yup. He zigged when he should have zagged.”
“How do you know he wasn’t the first target on the list?
” Now that the thought had popped into her mind, she couldn’t shake it free.
“And him getting shot wasn’t a screwup. If he hadn’t zigged, would his name be crossed off the list already?
” Voicing the thought freaked her out more than she wanted to admit.
Remi stared at her for a couple of heartbeats before he dropped his spoon. “Shit.” He bolted out of the kitchen, leaving his ice cream on the table behind him.
Jorja guessed he was heading for the war-room.
She gathered up both tubs of ice cream and recovered them before stuffing them back in the freezer.
She held her hand out, almost touching the door for a second after she closed it, just to check it was actually closed and wouldn’t reopen.
Out of habit, she double-checked the stove even though she hadn’t touched it, and followed Remi.
“Here.” Remi tossed her a file. “I’m looking too, but I’ve searched this file so many times looking for clues that I might not see it.”
She took it to her desk and got comfortable on her chair with her legs tucked in under her. “What am I looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything which confuses you.”
“You mean everything then? Because if you want to know about art or artifact sales, then I’m your girl. I know exactly zero about war or missions. Am I even meant to be looking at this?” She waved the file at him.
“Probably not,” Remi admitted. “But when it comes to family, there are no lines I won’t cross, no matter what the cost.”
His words were so close to her own lines in the sand that she couldn’t help but agree with him.
She nodded and blew out a slow breath. What could it hurt for her to look and see if anything stood out?
She flipped open the folder and winced. Turns out it could hurt a freaking lot.
The ice cream she’d just had threatened to make a reappearance as she stared at the photo on the first page and she gagged.
“Shit, sorry.”
“It’s fine… I’m fine.”
Remi rolled his chair a little further away from her as if he’d been on the receiving end of a woman’s ‘fine’ before and didn’t trust it.
Jorja flipped over the photo so she didn’t have to look at the damage of what had been done to Gunnar’s leg and breathed through her nose.
She was going through this file and praying there was nothing to find.
But just as when she was close to making an epic find for a client, she just knew the information was in this folder… somewhere.
She scanned the first email and the address caught her eye. “Damn, no wonder my email didn’t go through.”
“Huh?”
“Gunnar’s name is spelled with an A and not an E.”
“Yeah, remember how our mom was about me being called Rembrandt and not Remington? She insisted Gunnar have the Scandinavian spelling of his name to honor her grandfather. My dad didn’t care how the name was spelled.”
“I’m an idiot. I tried emailing when I found the list, but it kept bouncing back as I spelled his name with an E. I’m an idiot and should have checked to see if it could be spelled another way.”
“Nah,” Remi said. “Your brain would have registered his name as spelled incorrectly if you saw it with an A.”
“I’ve been seeing it with an A all week, and it didn’t look wrong to me,” she grumbled. “I never even made the connection until I saw it written as an email.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Remi replied. “When your brain is computer-focused like ours is, we make our connections in a format that makes sense to us. Code or emails.”
She’d never looked at it like that before. She still felt stupid, but not as stupid.
“Grizzly at XXXX dot com will get to him too, and Zipper for me. You know, just in case you ever want to use it.” He paused and added on, “Or need to.”
“Thank you. I’d normally make a sticky note for myself, but I’m not home to stick it on the dining room table where I work.” She turned over the page then remembered something else. “Do you have a copy of the email the orders came from, including the headers?”
Remi smacked himself on the head. “Why didn’t I think of that? KISS.”
“What? Have you lost your mind?” He better not try to kiss her for some unknown reason, because… ick. “I should have brought the baseball bat in here. Do I need to go get the bat, Remi? Because if you think I’m kissing you, you’ve lost your mind.”
“No, no.” Remi moved closer to the door as if he expected to get a wallop from her. “I swear that’s not what I meant. I meant K.I.S.S. as in, keep it simple stupid. I know you are Gunnar’s.”
Oh, he did, did he? She wasn’t even sure if she was Gunnar’s or not, although she wasn’t opposed to the idea, never mind Remi knowing. “I’m not going to beat you.” She pointed to him with her pen. “But if you try any stupid shit like kissing me, I’m not keeping that promise.”
“Fair.” Remi smiled like he was ridiculously pleased by what she’d just said and scooted back to his computer. He printed out the email she had asked for. “The email with the headers.” He handed it to her. “I’ve got to be comms for some stuff to get the guys in the air. You search that.”
“Okay.” Having something to do was way better than sitting here scratching her butt, and Jorja got to work, scanning down the lines of code.
After finding the IP address, she cross referenced it with the one on the list website.
Unease filtered through her as the numbers were only out by a digit or two.
“I’m clear to check something online, right? ”
“Yeah. We’re not at mission level yet.”
“Thanks.” She had no idea what happened when they were at mission level, but she figured Remi would let her know when the time came. “These IP addresses are pretty damn close; I just want to check something.”
“Well, shit.”
“Agreed. It’s not good, that’s for sure.
” She pulled up the side and carefully typed in the IP and hit search, then copied the information it spat out and pasted it into notes before doing the same with the second email, then studied the info.
“Both of these senders were using the same VPN through Seattle.”
“Shit.”
“It might mean nothing more than two people using the same VPN server.” Searching for information like this was enough like her day-to-day work that Jorja settled into it happily. This stuff was her jam. “Chill, I’ll look deeper. You keep doing your thing.”
“Okay. If you fin—”
“I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I do.
” She got comfortable on her chair and ran her pen under the lines of code in the headers, looking for any alternate IP.
Only finding one, she switched to the other set of email headers and searched for the same number, muttering to herself when she didn’t find a match.
She searched for the information on her program and copied the information into notes again.
At least it might save her time searching if this information was needed in the future.
“I can’t find any other match aside from that first VPN IP.” She printed out her notes file, and Remi picked them up from the printer. “When you get a second, can you look through in case I missed it?”
“Sure.” Remi scanned the pages. “I can’t find it either.”
“Ugh.”
“If the information is there, we’ll find it,” Remi reassured her. “Do you know why they call me Zipper?”
“No.” And she was curious as all get out about it. “Why?”
“Because I find the gaps in the intel and zip them shut.”
“I find the zipped shut sites and open them up.”
“You sure do.” Remi quirked up an eyebrow. “Maybe you should consider coming to work for us. Between you and me, The Four X’s would be unstoppable.” He held up one hand to stop her from answering immediately. “Don’t answer now. Think about it. Talk to Gunnar, then decide.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about the offer. Her life was in Germany. She had a home there. Clients… friends.
No, you don’t.
Most of your clients are online. You wouldn’t even know them if they passed you on the streets.
Not true…
Name one.
Shut up.
She was so freaking tempted. Living here and working with the systems Remi had would be freaking awesome. There was only one wrinkle in the plan… she didn’t know how Gunnar would feel about it. Plus, the offer had come from Remi and not the brother she wanted it to come from—Gunnar.