Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lincoln leaned against the hood of Tal’s old Jeep and stared at Stormi’s house. He couldn’t help but wonder what her life might be like if her father hadn’t died. Would she have stayed in South Florida working in a bookstore?
He chuckled. At least her love of books was real.
But he wanted to know more about what she’d been like before she’d made the decision to turn her life into an obsession. To have a singular goal and nothing else.
His cell buzzed. He snagged it from his back pocket. “Hey, Tal.”
“She’s neatly tucked in the library,” Tal said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yup.”
“Not a good way to start a relationship,” Tal said.
Lincoln scoffed. “We had sex. And for the record, I’m not the only one telling lies here. So is she.”
“For good reason.”
“I have valid ones too and let’s remember, I can’t come out and tell her I know her true identity. Not unless her life is in danger, and even then, I’ll work to keep that juicy nugget a secret.”
“Suit yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The line went dead.
Which was fine with Lincoln. Right now, he wished he hadn’t confided in Tal to begin with. He waited ten minutes before hacking into her system, ensuring any security she had in place was turned off. He loathed himself as he shimmied open the back door.
Her house couldn’t be called a home. It was merely four walls in which she came in from the storm that was her life. As he made his way through the kitchen and family room, he searched for something—anything—that hinted at a soul, but he found nothing.
Stormi was lost to the shadows of her past. The person she pretended to be was a cardboard cutout, a doll she dressed up and played with when she was forced to be present in the life someone else, namely the government, had chosen for her. But the other person lurking in her mind's dark recesses no longer existed.
She couldn’t. And not just because she’d unwillingly helped her husband commit a crime and then turned on him, but because that woman had lost everything she thought she held dear. The only thing left was the memory of who she believed her father to be and the drive to ensure his legacy wouldn’t be ruined for eternity.
Lincoln suspected her motivation stemmed from guilt and was fueled by a desire to right all the wrongs she’d done in her old life regarding the one person she loved but, for whatever reason, had stopped communicating with.
He understood regrets. He had a few. But none of them were worth dwelling on. Change one event, and his entire life might be different, and if he were being honest with himself, his life didn’t suck. He sighed. He wasn’t so sure what Stormi thought of hers, though. She had a decent sense of humor and she appeared to be grounded. But her house was depressingly empty, and here he thought he was a minimalist.
But at least he had pictures. People. Things he cared about.
He lived his life outside of the inner workings of technology. Hell, he thrived in a world that didn’t necessarily rely on all things techie. He had a healthy passion for the outside world. He knew how to shut down and get one with nature. The Royal Navy had taught him the balance between the two worlds. They demanded both his brains and his brawn. He had to be mentally sharp as well as a trained killer.
He was a walking oxymoron.
It was something that Samantha never quite understood. If she wasn’t in front of her computers, she wasn’t living. The idea of going for a leisurely walk made the woman break out in hives. Relaxing to her was hacking into the neighbor’s computer to see what kind of porn they watched.
Picking the lock of what he believed was Stormi’s home office, he pushed all those thoughts out of his head and focused on his morning agenda. It would be easier to upload his spyware at the source so he could see inside her system and keep tabs on what she was doing, instead of doing it the hard way, like he had to this morning. That meant he might only get bits and pieces.
He might have missed that Pam was from her hometown or how Stormi had dug a little deeper than she should have into how connected Pam might be to her past and present. That pricked his skin for a variety of reasons. He didn’t believe in coincidences, but Pam had been living in this town for a year.
Stormi two months.
No one could have predicted Stormi would move to Fallport. She could have chosen any number of locations close by. But it didn’t take a genius to consider the possibility that she’d look into her father’s death.
However, that meant someone had to believe she was alive.
Lincoln also had to consider that Stormi and Pam had not crossed paths, which was also odd, but not really. According to Tal, Stormi really didn’t get out much—actually, not at all.
He pushed open the door and a smile tugged at his lips as a sense of pride filled his chest. He ran his fingers across her desk before pulling out her chair. He tapped the keyboard, and two of the screens crackled to life.
This was the ultimate betrayal and she’d never forgive him for it, if she found out.
He inserted the drive and hit the necessary keystrokes to start his program. Glancing at his watch, he noted the time. He needed fifteen minutes. Tal would alert him if there was any sign of her coming home. However, the library was set to open in two minutes.
Lincoln was safe.
That was until the screen froze and his code got hung up.
“Shit,” he mumbled. Probably some extra special firewall that she’d written herself. He should have been prepared for that. He scanned the last line of code, working backward until he found the stop line.
Holy shit. Leaning forward, he studied the coding. No way. It couldn’t be. He hadn’t seen this work in years. Four, to be exact. And he’d only come across it twice. The first time had been when the British government had butted heads with an American security company. The only reason he’d even been remotely familiar with this particular code had been because someone had created a back door.
But it hadn’t been the creator who had done that. He knew this because the coding had been vastly different.
The second time he’d seen it was when Samantha had asked him to look at something similar three years ago. Again, a back door was written vastly different from the original coder. That was never good.
He pushed those thoughts out of his head for the time being as he wormed his way into her system and rewrote her code so his program could continue to run. But he also added two lines, ensuring that his software wouldn’t halt again.
Only, three minutes later, a popup appeared on the screen with a dialogue box.
I know who you are and what you did last summer.
Lincoln chuckled. He folded his arms across his chest and watched while she tried to stop his hack. She was good, but unfortunately, her keystrokes were not fast enough and the Wi-Fi at the library not strong enough. Even if she was on a hardwired computer, she wouldn’t be able to catch up.
“Well, fuck.” He leaned forward as he caught the one line she managed to insert.
A kill code.
“Not going to happen, sweetheart.” He cracked his knuckles and removed the line, but noticed the code was broken. “Oh, you’re a sneaky little devil.” Had he not done something similar on a previous job for the Special Boat Service, he might have missed the attempt to distract him while she worked on shutting her system down. “Sorry, babe. Time to give you the boot.” He managed to cut her off at the pass. Before he shoved her all the way off, he decided to leave her with a parting message. It was a calculated risk and it could totally backfire on him, but it would be interesting to see what she did.
In fifteen minutes, you’ll be able to access your system. I’m of no threat to you. But what you are doing is dangerous. I can’t do my job and protect you if you get in my way.
He logged her off and locked her out while he finished loading the software. Not only would this give him the ability to watch everything she did, but now he’d have full access to her files. He’d be able to see what she had on Zero Gravity, and her father.
He was going to hell, that was for damn sure.
It didn’t matter that he told himself he was doing this for her own protection, because that was utter bullshit. Sure, he did want to keep her safe, and this was one way to go about it. However, the reality was he needed information, and this was just one more way to get it.
After shutting everything down, he locked the door and exited out the back. No sooner was he climbing behind the wheel of his Jeep than his cell buzzed.
Unknown Caller
Well, shit.
“This is Lincoln Walsh. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“This is Special Agent Kara Martin with the FBI.”
Interesting. “And what does the FBI want with a retired Royal Navy guy from the UK?”
“That’s funny, because you came looking for me through an old colleague of mine. A woman by the name of Fenmore Ford.”
“That’s right. I did.” He turned the key over and punched the gas. He had twenty-two minutes to make it to his meeting with a different agent. “My line is secure, is yours?”
“It is,” she said. “But I’m not comfortable mentioning certain names.”
“I don’t believe we need to.” He glanced in his rearview mirror. While he had no reason to believe he would be followed, his paranoia was at an all-time high. Besides, Jimmy asked him to take an odd route out of town, and to double-check, just in case. Lincoln respected the badge. And he didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize Stormi or her father. “Do you have any idea what she’s up to?”
“Why am I speaking to you?”
“Because I was hired to fix Zero Gravity’s security problem,” Lincoln said. “And I found her in their digital hallway.”
“Does she know this?”
“She knows someone saw her and my guess is she’s trying to figure out if that someone is me.” Lincoln didn’t trust many people, but Darius told him that if push came to shove, Kara would be on the right side, which didn’t always mean she’d follow the rules.
That was a good thing.
“Only, I don’t want her to know for sure it’s me, and I want her to stop poking around Zero Gravity. I need you to make that happen.”
Kara laughed, but it wasn’t a funny ha-ha kind of laugh. “Look. She’s well within the program to be living and doing what she wants.”
“Um, I believe this constitutes illegal actively. She changed some of her history and?—”
“Don’t tell me this shit. I don’t want to know. If she’s living her life as a bookworm with the identity that was created for her, I don’t care. As far as what she might be doing that could be affecting what you’ve been hired to do, well, I have one question for you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Is it possible that Dante Norris was set up to take the fall?”
“Can I get back to you on that?” Lincoln pulled into the old motel on the outskirts of town, put the car into park, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’m asking because when Fenmore reached out, it got me thinking. Got my husband’s mind spinning too,” Kara said. “It seems like you’re taking your sweet time with their new security cyber system and that makes me wonder if maybe my girl wasn’t onto something. But what really got my panties in a twist was learning there was a connection to Fallport and a one Agent James Hallenbeck. After doing a tiny bit of digging, I found out he’s been researching Zero Gravity. Any idea why that might be?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Lincoln said with a slight hint of humor to his voice. “But perhaps we can work on our communication skills.”
“That might be a moral imperative.”
“I’ll be in touch about that because I also need a little more information regarding why our friend is in the predicament she’s in and it might be related to my current employment,” Lincoln said.
“That’s cryptic. Care to elaborate?”
“Let’s just say my employer once had me look at coding that matched her underground name a few years ago, but it had been fucked with by a different coder.”
“That makes me wonder what your employer knows and that’s fucked up for a whole different set of reasons,” Kara said. “Would Darius and Fenmore be able to get us both what we need?”
“I’m sure they would,” Lincoln said. “Do you think you can get our mutual friend to stand down and stay out of my way for the time being?”
“She has never once listened to me except for one thing and that was to sever all ties to her past. She’s done that.”
“Not really. She’s still hacking and you use her for that,” he said. “Every hacker, even an ethical one, has a language. You can see it in their coding. I saw her system today and while I might be considered a genius, anyone with half a brain would have known that the woman behind those computer screens was known as Twister in the hacker world. If I can pick up on that in fifteen minutes, my boss could have picked up on that in half that time.”
“Maybe it’s time I pluck her right the fuck out of Virginia.”
“Nope. I can protect her and she can help me. If we can get her to stay out of Zero Gravity until I’m ready for her to go in.”
“You want to use her?”
Lincoln checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting in three minutes. Trust me. She’ll want to be part of this. And so will you. But right now, there are a few different parts that aren’t moving in the same direction. I need to pull them all together. Will you help me?”
“Fuck me,” Kara muttered. “If Darius didn’t work with a few people I know who are the best in the world, I’d tell you to go screw yourself. That and our friend is the kind of person who will go it alone because she doesn’t feel like she has anyone in her corner.”
“She’s got me,” Lincoln said. “I’ll be in touch.” Now all he had to do was convince Jimmy that working with him and Kara was a good idea.