Chapter 1
Zach “Moto” Sato wiped sweat from his brow, hot on the trail of a kidnapper. Four thousand miles away, a teenage girl’s life hung in the balance, a series of keystrokes here in New York HERO Force’s only hope to find her.
This was what he was good at, his skills honed like the tip of a bowman’s arrow. He could wield a firearm as surely as his SEAL team brethren, but computers were his weapon of choice, the system of interconnected machines and languages the currency with which he would secure the girl’s freedom.
This job was a dream come true, a chance to go after the devil himself on his own terms. It was as if he’d spent his life preparing for this job, his education and military training converging on his position at HERO Force like a laser.
Somewhere out there, the girl’s desperate parents waited for her return, and Moto was hell-bent the men who’d taken her would pay the price for their actions.
The door behind him opened and a deep voice belched. “There’s pizza in the conference room,” said Trace.
“I’m a little busy here.”
“They make the drop?”
“Late last night.” Moto had been at his computer ever since.
“And the girl?”
“Not yet. Supposed to be returned by sundown.”
“Tell me you got the bastards.”
“Almost.” The ransom had been paid in electronic currency, as demanded by the kidnappers, and immediately disappeared into an internet labyrinth hidden behind firewalls and state-of-the-art encryption.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred computer programmers would have lost the trail right out of the gate.
Of the one percent capable of tracking it, Moto knew he was one of the best.
It wasn’t arrogance, it was confidence and an accurate understanding of his abilities.
God willing, the girl would be returned safe and sound.
But if not, or hell, even if she was, their only chance of finding the people responsible for her ordeal and getting any kind of justice lay in his hands.
“I tracked the funds to an account in Liechtenstein, where they split up into hundreds of individual packets, each routed to a different destination.”
“How the fuck do you track ’em all?”
“I don’t. I make the computer do it. I created a virus that investigates each individual transaction routed out of the account in Liechtenstein.
A little bit of code that follows each electronic signature and reports back to me.
All those packets need to converge again at their final destination, which means my code will recognize itself and tell me where the money went. ”
“You can do that?”
“I can.”
“Is it legal?”
Moto narrowed his eyes. “Kidnapping is illegal.”
Trace took a swig of Mountain Dew, then raised it in a mock toast. “I’m good with that logic.”
Moto considered Trace a friend, a position only a few of his teammates occupied. He respected the others, had put his life in their hands on several occasions, but true friendship was a matter of another kind. His trust was hard-won and unable to be restored when broken. Moto trusted Trace.
Mac walked into the room. The leader of HERO Force had stayed the night at the office, just as Moto had, the older man’s youthful gait belying any fatigue. “Moto, you’ve got a phone call on line two. It wouldn’t ring through for some reason.”
“I put it on do not disturb.”
Mac clicked it off. “Someone named Davina.”
Moto’s head snapped up. He hadn’t heard that name since he’d left home ten years earlier, and the very sound of it made the wall he’d built around the past vibrate and shake. He refocused on his computer screen. “Take a message. I can’t talk to her now.”
“She says it’s important.”
He hesitated, his mind instantly flashing to his brother with a painful lurch. Was Ben okay? He wouldn’t have thought he could be so affected by the thought of his brother hurt or in need. Memory was funny like that, refusing to bow to distance or apathy. He set his jaw. “This is more important.”
Trace perched his hip on the opposite side of Moto’s desk. “Davina, huh? Nice name. She pretty?”
Moto glared at him, even as her image floated up from his mind. He’d once thought her more beautiful than any woman could be, but betrayal had a way of turning even the sweetest features foul. “No.”
“That the chick from the party last week?”
A petite brunette with a low-cut blouse and a particularly small vocabulary. Moto had thrown away her number. “No.”
“Tinder?”
He’d never even downloaded the app. “God no.”
Mac gestured to the phone. “So, why don’t you answer it?”
“I’m working.”
Trace frowned. “Is there a whole lot you can do until those packets arrive at the end of the line?”
“I’m monitoring the process. Making sure the tracing virus is doing its job. Tell her I’ll call her back.”
Mac picked up the phone on Moto’s desk. “He’ll have to call you back.” He listened for a moment, then put the handset on his chest. “She says it’s an emergency.”
Moto hesitated. That phone was a connection to his past and the people he’d left behind, and he wasn’t so keen on accepting it. But what if something was wrong? What if Ben had been hurt or needed a kidney?
That fucker’s not getting one of my kidneys.
His hand reached out for the phone as if in slow motion. What if Ben was dead, the rift between them cementing like some kind of cosmic stone, unable to be rewritten? A twinge of regret pierced his consciousness. “Hello?”
“Zach, I need your help.” Her voice cut a slice down deep into bone. No one had called him by his given name in years, the sound of it like an echo he hadn’t expected. But it was the concern in her voice that alarmed him. “What’s wrong?”
“Ben’s been arrested.”
Moto squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. Anger with his brother and this woman was instantaneous. He shouldn’t have gotten on the phone. “This is why you called?”
“Please. They think he killed a federal agent.”
“Murder?” That got his attention. Ben had always been looking for the easy way out, a shortcut designed to thwart hard work and provide the greatest reward with the least amount of effort, but murder? He squeezed the skin between his eyes. Who knew what time and desperation could do to a man?
“He needs your help,” she pleaded.
She sounded so concerned for her husband.
Were the two of them still together after all this time?
Had the young girl who’d stolen his heart and then gutted him with her betrayal been living this whole time with his brother, sharing Ben’s bed?
The idea hurt like alcohol on a wound, bitterness like a storm over a raging sea.
“What he needs is a lawyer. What are you calling me for?”
“He has a lawyer. He was set up, Zach. He’s being framed.”
Moto rolled his eyes. Someone else was always responsible for Ben’s problems, no matter how big or how small. “Of course he is.”
“He is! And he says you’re the only one good enough to help him, that somebody created all this fake evidence on his computer.”
“Look, there’s nothing I can do to help him.
If there’s a trail of evidence, it’s probably because he did it.
” His eyes went to the computer screen as the machine spit out a string of IP addresses and electronic routing numbers.
The packets he’d been tracking had arrived at their final destination. “I have to go.”
“Please, he needs you,” she begged. “It’s all this computer stuff, and his lawyer says they have an open-and-shut case, but it’s all fake evidence. You have to help us.”
Us.
The pronoun scratched at his insides like he’d swallowed a beast. No way would he go back there.
No way would he let them in. Ben didn’t need his help.
Yes, Moto’s skills were some of the best in the world, but it was highly unlikely such a detailed knowledge of forensic computing was necessary.
“Someone else will have to help him. I’m sorry. ”
“He needs you. No matter how you feel about me, you have to know how hard it was for him to reach out like this. How can you just leave him in his hour of need?”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
“Damn it, Zach, come home.”
“I am home, Davina.” He hung up the phone, aware of the curious eyes of the other men as he worked.
He homed in on the guilty account, printing out a name and account number before locating their tango in the national database of scumbags.
His heart was racing, the kidnapper in his sights having nothing to do with the adrenaline overwhelming his system.
“John Patrick Kilbourne, age thirty-nine. An Armenian national with a hell of a rap sheet and a very public bone to pick.”
He handed the printouts to Mac.
“Good work. You trace all the money?”
“Every last dime.”
The intercom on the phone buzzed. “Moto, you’ve got a call on line one.”
His head dropped to his chest and he forced himself to breathe. “Take a message.”
“She says it’s an emergency.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled under his breath, punching the blinking light and answering the phone. “Damn it, Davina—”
“Shut up and listen,” she snapped. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.
I swore to God in heaven I wouldn’t give you the freaking satisfaction of stooping to this level, but your incredibly selfish attitude leaves me no choice.
If you can’t find it in your heart to help Ben, if you truly hate your own brother so much because of some stupid misunderstanding that happened years ago, then come back for your son. ”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But Ben—”
“No, Zach. Wyatt is your son. At the very least, you owe it to him to meet him face-to-face. Just don’t stay too long or else he’ll figure out what an egotistical, self-centered jackass you are.”
The phone went dead in his hand. He took it away from his ear and stared at it.
The clock ticked loudly on the wall. Davina’s baby had been his child.
His child, not Ben’s. Sweat broke out across his body as an image appeared in his mind, a pregnant Davina in the distance, waddling down the high school steps as Ben gloated in Moto’s ear. “We’re getting married.”
He hung up the phone with a trembling hand and covered his mouth with his fingers.
Mac cocked his head and eyed him questioningly. “What’s up?”
“I need some time off.” He swallowed against the panic that rose in his throat like bile. “All the information on the kidnappers is there. I printed it out. I gotta go.”
“Where are you going?” asked Trace.
Nothing scared Moto. Not gunfire. Not a steady stream of tangos headed his way. But this was fear, sure as the blood was draining from his head and weighing down his feet like concrete in his boots. He looked from one man to the other. “I’m going home.”