Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Growing up poor and on the streets had taught Lincoln about desperation. By the time he’d turned sixteen, he would have done almost anything for a little cash and food in his belly.
Patience wasn’t part of that equation.
That came with time with Tal and time in the Royal Navy.
Now. years later, patience had become a natural state. His best friend. A way of life.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at his computer screens. It had taken him until nearly two in the morning to set up his home office precisely how he’d wanted it so his back wasn’t to the door. That drove him batshit crazy in any situation.
The rest of his home was a complete disaster. The furniture had yet to be placed where he wanted it. The only thing he’d managed to assemble had been his bed, but that’s because his body had demanded sleep.
His mind? Well, that had taken a good couple of shots of whiskey to get that sucker to calm down after yesterday.
Someone had hacked into the library’s Wi-Fi, but that person made it appear as though they weren’t trying to look at what he was doing, but to steal electronic books. How oddly interesting. Not only that, but it appeared they were in Southern California.
Damn, she was fucking good.
Because it had to be Stormi.
Who else could it be?
One of his computers rang with a secure call from Fool’s Gold, Colorado.
Darius.
A few years ago, he worked with Darius and another Brotherhood Protectors agent, Wyatt Bixby, during an op involving two MI6 agents. While Lincoln did have an ego, it wasn’t too big to admit that both Darius and Wyatt had mad skills when it came to hacking. They knew more than Lincoln, and he wasn’t opposed to asking for help when he needed it.
Especially when he knew he could trust these men with his life.
Perhaps not quite like he could with Tal, but there was a lot of history there. And Tal didn’t have the computer experience. Lincoln also wanted to keep Tal out of it as much as he could. At least for now. Lincoln needed more information about the players, especially if he was going to upset the balance in his best friend’s life.
“Hey, Darius. How are you doing? How’s Fenmore? How’s the baby?”
“Not a baby anymore,” Darius said. “And Fenmore’s pregnant again.”
“Congratulations. That’s awesome.”
“We’re pretty happy about it. But this will be it for us. We’re not getting any younger,” Darius said. “I’m sure I don’t have to ask, but I need to know how secure this line is.”
“I followed your protocols.”
“Thank you for that,” Darius said. “Fenmore had to jump through some hoops to get this and it could put Stormi in danger. Not to mention, the FBI agent who handled her case, who got her in witness protection, is in the dark about a few things.”
Lincoln leaned forward, snagging his mug of coffee, and he took a sip while he digested that intel. “Let’s start with, why would Stormi be in danger? Her husband is in jail. It’s believed he acted alone. It wasn’t as if he fucked with the mob. He messed with corporate America and stole money. There weren’t, and still aren’t, any death threats, which begs the question. Why WITSEC for Stormi?”
“One of the things I was able to uncover—which was buried deep—is that two of the companies that laundered money, did so for some pretty nasty people. The kind of people who use bullets to deal with shit, not words. So, yeah, her life could be in danger if anyone ever found out she was still alive and she was the one who blew the whistle.”
“How did I miss that?” Lincoln asked softly.
After he’d found out Samantha was screwing around, Lincoln’s life had turned upside down. He’d loved her. He’d wanted to marry her. Even have children with her, which was something he never thought he’d want. In an instant, she destroyed his soul and crushed his heart.
He spent a couple of months making love to a bottle of bourbon. He couldn’t think straight, much less work. He made dozens of mistakes that cost their clients collectively over a million dollars. Frankly, he wasn’t sure why Samantha kept him on, except maybe her own guilt.
But what killed him now was, Samantha had shaken his confidence. He questioned his abilities. If he even had any real skills to begin with.
“First, it wasn’t reported on. The Feds, the cops, everyone kept that from the press. And for whatever reason, the assholes who were laundering their money through those companies never said anything either.”
“Any idea why?”
“Yeah. They quickly found new businesses. Besides, it was in their best interest to keep their mouths quiet. Bringing attention to it would bring down a world of hurt on them and the focus on their bosses. Not a good idea,” Darius said. “As far as why you didn’t find it, well, that’s because the FBI made it a side note. Fenmore told me they will do that if they don’t even want their people to know the details behind the deal. It helps keep their charges safe.”
“I suppose that makes sense, but don’t they need to know all the facts? What if Stormi’s cover is blown?”
“She has her handler, who knows all the sordid details. But our government can be secretive. It’s both good and bad. Which brings me to the part that Kara is in the dark about,” Darius said. “And I think you need a little history lesson on this FBI agent. You see, she started out in the Violent Crimes Division in DC. She worked a serial killer case with her detective husband, though he wasn’t her husband at the time. That brought her to the Rochester, New York, office as the agent in charge.”
“Why was she even on a case out of Saratoga? Wouldn’t that fall under the Albany office?”
“It would. But the hack was for a company with headquarters in Rochester. She worked as part of a task force but ended up taking lead. She’s well respected. Well-liked. And damn fucking smart. She never believed Stormi had anything to do with the hack and she went a little rogue to prove it. Caused a rift with some other agents. One in particular, whom my wife knows quite well and this is where it gets dicey. Special Agent James Hallenbeck, who worked an undercover case a few years back in your area with one of your search and rescue team members, also worked a case connected to Zero Gravity.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“It gets better,” Darius said.
“What Kara doesn’t know, and now will probably need to be read in on, is Stormi’s father, while not officially in WITSEC, does have the protection of one federal agent.”
“What the fuck.” Lincoln sloshed his coffee down the front of his shirt. “Are you telling me that Dante Norris isn’t dead?”
“Nope. Talk about a clusterfuck of epic proportions.”
“Does this other agent know that Stormi is alive?”
“Yes. While Kara pissed him off when she went rogue, they have communicated a few times over the last year. However, Jimmy is keeping Kara at a safe distance, and Kara most likely isn’t telling Jimmy about what Stormi is up to,” Darius said. “This is what happens when the left hand doesn’t speak to the right hand.”
Lincoln rubbed his temples. “Stormi went into witness protection three years ago. I can see how she might get lost in the shuffle. There was no trial. Her husband pleaded guilty to a slightly lesser charge. But I would think the Feds might want to use her skills on this one.”
“Jimmy doesn’t want her anywhere near it because he doesn’t want her knowing about her dad. Too risky in general and I agree with that assessment,” Darius said. “Are you sure it’s her you saw inside their system?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent positive at this point.” He tapped his fingers on the keyboard, pulling up his files on Dante. “According to all my information, she and her dad stopped communicating regularly after she married. Outside of a few emails or text messages on holidays or birthdays, they might as well have been strangers. But it makes me wonder if maybe she knows he’s alive and is doing his bidding.”
“Anything is possible, but you should know Jimmy is quite computer-savvy,” Darius said. “Which leaves you with quite the conundrum.”
“Wonderful.” Lincoln chuckled. “Zero Gravity is sketchy as hell. I’ve been going down this rabbit hole that’s not what I was hired to do. I mean, I already patched their security breach. I am working on finding the person, and I should be writing code to make sure it never happens again. But I find myself wanting to make a trap for whoever the hacker is, follow them into the system, and watch them search for whatever it is they want. It would certainly give me insight on what their goals are. And if Zero Gravity is on the up-and-up. Or if they are cutting corners, like the leaks suggest. And the worst part is I don’t want to let my boss or Zero Gravity in on what I’m doing.”
“Look, Fenmore is reaching out to Jimmy today. He’s a good man. Once they chat, hopefully, he’ll be willing to talk to you. That might give you some insight on what you should do next.”
“Don’t have her go too far out on a limb for me. I’ve got enough information that I can?—”
“Don’t go hacking into the FBI databases. I’ve done that before and it’s never a good thing. Nearly cost me my job.”
“Are you seriously telling me you got caught?”
“I’m telling you that you will.” Darius laughed. “Wait for either Fenmore to call you, or Jimmy. While she doesn’t know Kara, she knows people who do. She’ll find a way to have a conversation with her as well and maybe, just maybe, Kara will reach out to you.”
“I can be patient.”
“One more thing,” Darius said. “Jimmy has a bigger tie to Fallport you should know about. His brother-in-law is Brayden Gibson.”
“I know Brayden. He and his wife came to the UK for their honeymoon,” Lincoln said. “I guess I’m tossing the no dating rule out the fucking window.”
“Sweet Jesus. Not a good idea and not just because getting involved with the object of an investigation is a recipe for disaster,” Darius said. “But you’re still working for your ex and that’s?—”
“I can handle Samantha. And I’m not actually going to get involved with Stormi. Just take her out. Get her to trust me, and hopefully, she’ll slip up and give me something I can use. If she’s the one hacking into Zero Gravity, I want to know why. Maybe she knows something I don’t. I need to cover my bases.”
“Right. I’ve seen her picture. Her eyes. You can tell yourself that all you want. Just be careful, man.”
“I’ll talk with you soon.” He ended the call. “Jesus, that was a lot to take in,” he mumbled. It totally changed the direction of his research and how he was going to handle his job moving forward.
He glanced at his watch. He had a Zoom meeting with Samantha and David Caulkin in forty minutes. He was going to have to stall. That he could handle.
Reaching for his cell, he pulled up Stormi’s contact information. Time to turn up the British charm. He tapped her number. It rang three times before she answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Stormi. It’s Lincoln. How are you today?”
“Just fine, and you?”
“Trying to get settled into my house, which is never fun.” He chuckled. “I was wondering if you had plans for dinner tonight?”
“I thought you didn’t know me well enough to ask me out on a date.”
“Ouch. That hurt,” he said. “And it doesn’t have to be a date. Not in the traditional sense of the word. I haven’t had the chance to do any major grocery shopping yet and I’m really not in the mood to do it today, much less cook. Nor do I want to eat alone or order takeout because I’ll only sit and stare at my computer screens and work. I can’t call Tal, because his son is a little pissed at me for informing his parents of his budding romance with Suzie.”
“Oh, that was not cool.”
“Chad and Suzie left me with no choice when I caught them making out behind the library.”
“Come on. You were a teenager once. You could have played the blind man,” she said.
“I suppose, only I wasn’t the only one who was there. Suzie’s mom had been looking for them too. While she doesn’t have a problem with the kids hanging out, she doesn’t want them hiding their budding relationship or playing kissy-face all the time at their age. Neither does Tal and Heather. It was for the best. Besides, it evens the playing field with Marisa and her boyfriend.”
“I’m not sure I see how, but it’s not my business and as long as Suzie can continue to volunteer, I’m not sure I care.”
“And this has nothing to do with where we should go to dinner tonight.”
“I never agreed to that,” Stormi said. “But I do have to eat and all I have is the makings for a salad. How about we meet at On The Rocks. I’ve never been there but I know they make a mean cheeseburger and tater tots.”
“Isn’t that the bar that Zeke Calhoun owns?”
“I believe the owner’s name is Zeke, but to be honest, I’ve only ordered takeout. I know the food is good. I can’t speak for the atmosphere. However, Tal and Heather go there every once in a while, and the girls from the book club at the library are always raving about it.”
“On The Rocks it is,” he said. “I can swing by and pick you up, if that would be easier.”
“Nah. That might feel like too much of a date and I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression.”
“It might be too late for that.” His fingers hovered over his keyboard. “I’ll see you at six.” He ended the call and tapped on an encrypted email from one Special Agent James Hallenbeck. It took three minutes to unravel the layers to get at the actual message.
Lincoln found himself a little smitten with Jimmy considering all that the message contained was a date, time, address, and one sentence.
Don’t be late and don’t tell anyone you’re meeting me.
“Trust me, I won’t.” He filed the message in a folder on his computer with the rest of the information pertaining to Stormi. Separate from his work files for Zero Gravity. He had to compartmentalize the two. At least for now. Even though the two were so intertwined it was insane.
He stood, ripping off his shirt, and made a beeline for the laundry room. He treated the coffee stains and found a clean button-down shirt. One that might be worthy of a date and one that didn’t need ironing. His least favorite chore. As if he had one he enjoyed doing.
As soon as he returned to his office, his phone buzzed.
His boss. Or his ex. Depending on how one looked it at. Right now, he didn’t care to ponder either.
“Samantha.” He rolled his chair in front of his main computer and pulled up the latest information he had on the security breach. “You’re early for this call.” Which pissed him off for a variety of reasons. He had so many questions for Samantha, but he wasn’t sure he was prepared to ask a single one.
Mostly because if she was up to her eyeballs in this shit, she’d lie.
“I want a heads-up on where we stand and why you haven’t implemented any new software to their system. You’ve barely even made a patch to the breach.” Samantha had gotten her start at NCSC or the National Cyber Security Centre. She spent eight long years with that department. She told Lincoln it was so boring it reduced her to tears. When they met, she’d been working as an ethical hacker for a different company and was itching to start her own firm.
Enter Lincoln and what few dollars he had saved.
“Besides the fact I literally just landed Stateside yesterday, I’ve barely had a chance to get my office set up, which means I haven’t been able to write the necessary code to close the holes,” he said. “And even then, I’m not sure that will solve their problem.” Holding her off was going to be a difficult dance.
“That makes no sense. You’re one of the best in the business. You can make anything nearly unhackable.”
“I find it interesting that you, of all people, are complimenting me,” he said. “I mean, two months ago, you called me a washed-up asshole.”
“Because you were acting like a dick.”
“I wonder what could have caused that,” he mumbled.
“I don’t want to fight with you. We have a job to do and there’s no reason this can’t be buttoned up nice and neat in a few weeks. Without that breach handled, they don’t feel comfortable launching.”
He found it fascinating that she was pushing him so hard when, before he got on that plane, she wanted things done right, not fast. “But David was sure it was an inside job. He’s yet to give me names. Without anyone to target, I’m going down a black hole of every employee. That makes this part of the job that much harder. I’m looking at keystrokes of at least fifty people over the course of three months. Now why the hell would he want to launch if he’s worried one of his own is sabotaging his company?”
“That’s not our problem. We’re not cops. And you’re not in the Royal Navy anymore. We were hired to do one job. So, let’s do it.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. When he first started working with Samantha, this was the part of the job he liked. In some ways, it reminded him of the Special Boat Service. Get in, take care of the target, don’t ask questions, and get out. Granted, the older he got, the more he wanted to know all the whys.
This was the kind of case that demanded answers.
Lives could be at stake and he couldn’t let it go.
Especially not now.
Time to take a calculated risk.
“Something doesn’t feel right.”
“You and your damn gut instincts,” Samantha said under her breath. “It’s a security system. One they need. One we were hired to provide.”
“No. They wanted us to do a little more than that, like find the culprit. Right? Isn’t that why I’m the guy doing this job?”
“If you could, yes. But not if it means delaying this launch any more, or leaving them open to another hack, which is what you’re doing. I knew you’d want a little time to look at their system. I gave it to you. But now is the time to do what the client wants.”
“I have a suggestion,” he said.
“Oh, this should be good.”
“Since the launch and testing is postponed until after this inquiry, we have a little more time to play with things. I will go ahead and set up a new system. I’ll monitor, both from the inside and the outside. But I only want me doing that. No one else, including you. That will give us total integrity of the output. But I want to do it in phases. One that will require opening Zero Gravity up a little.”
“Are you talking about setting up a trap for our hacker?” Samantha asked.
He was surprised she didn’t comment on the fact he wanted her staying the fuck out of his work.
“Something like that.”
“What if they don’t come back?”
“Come on, Samantha. Tell me if it were you and you were leaking that kind of information out to the press, would you stay away?”
“Interesting point,” Samantha said. “But you’re not keeping me in the dark. It’s my ass on the line. I want to be able to see what you’re doing.”
“Nope. We do this my way, or?—”
“Or what? You walk? Because you can’t do that. I either own your ass for another two years, or you finish this job.”
He leaned back and folded his arms. “You have two choices, Samantha. I can upload a new system. A good one. The best. But if someone close to David has been fucking around inside the digital data halls, even I won’t be able to stop them, unless I can sit back and watch, without you or anyone else monitoring. It’s your choice.”
“Are you suggesting that we say the job is done, but then spy on them?”
“Kind of,” he said. “We do it in stages. Starting with a patch, which I can do shortly. But I need you to trust me.”
“That requires you to do the same of me. Can you do that?” she asked.
“I’m going to have to,” he said without any conviction. But he’d also make sure he’d be able to see anyone coming inside his new system, including her.
Especially her.
“I never meant to hurt you.”
He burst out laughing. It wasn’t an appropriate response, but hell, he caught her screwing another man—one he called friend—on his damn desk. Didn’t she think that would tear his heart out?
“Honestly, I didn’t,” she said softly. Her voice trembled and it sounded almost as if she meant it.
Only, Samantha didn’t have true feelings. The only things she cared about were money, success, and… hell, he had no idea.
“You have a funny way of showing that,” he said. “I need you to stay out of the system while I’m working on this job and I want to know why Zero Gravity is so important to you.”
“They aren’t,” Samantha said a little too quickly.
“Seriously? Did you really believe I wouldn’t know immediately that you wrote their initial security system?” Nothing like showing his hand, but he figured it was the only way to get her to agree to back off.
“I wasn’t the only coder on that assignment and it was right before I started CyberGuard Solutions.”
“Are you telling me that they don’t know you had anything to do with the original system?”
“Something like that.”
“Shit, Samantha. David might not be too thrilled with that juicy piece of intel,” Lincoln said. “Not that I’m going to say anything, because I want the fuck out of this insanity. But it’s all the more reason to let me figure this out and for you to go get your nails done.”
“I’ll give you space, but you’ve got three weeks to make sure Zero Gravity has their new system loaded and running.”
“Got it.”
“Have fun with the client. I’m going to ditch out on you.”
“Why am I not surprised,” he mumbled.
“Send me a report.” The line went dead.
He leaned back and rubbed his neck. Samantha was like every other high-caliber computer geek who had worked for the government. While she was always willing to bend the rules when it came to getting information, she wasn’t so willing to do so when giving it. She followed strict protocols when writing security code. Her system was second to none, and her hacking skills were scary.
When Samantha first started her company, she wanted to protect organizations and people from the darkness that lurked on the dark web.
Or so she said.
However, he was so busy with his deployments that he didn’t see the kinds of jobs she took, and honestly, he didn’t pay attention—not until he started working for her himself. The difference between him and everyone else was that he was an independent contractor with a term contract and not an employee. It was a technicality that he demanded.
She hadn’t really been on board with that idea at first, but since he’d invested a lot of money, that’s how he wanted it. He also wanted to be able to do other things, like possibly take jobs that utilized his other skills, which meant he couldn’t afford to punch a time clock. Being a contract employee meant he got paid per job and didn’t have to worry about showing up for work every day. He’d believed it was a win-win. Little did he know, he was giving his fiancée permission to continue cheating.
He pushed all those thoughts to the side. Time to talk David off the ledge. Then he was off to meet a sexy lady and try not to flirt too hard, or worse, take her to bed, because that thought kept popping into his head like a recurring dream that just wouldn’t go away.