Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It was almost nine o’clock, and after sitting in the back of the stretch limo outside the firehouse for over fifteen minutes, Natasha was getting worried Wyatt would come outside without Jasper.
“You need to relax.”
She eased back into her seat and peered at Finn sitting in the driver’s seat. “I didn’t say anything.”
“All that fidgeting you’re doing says you’re worried.
” He looked back at her and smiled. “Wyatt’s got this.
Don’t worry. And if Jasper won’t come willingly, then he’ll stick a gun in his side and make him.
” He acted as if this was a typical Saturday night.
Then again, his team was probably used to much more intense operations than interviewing a hacker in the back of a limo.
“I normally work behind a computer.” She sat farther back on the seat and picked the lint off her jeans.
“I go out in the field every once in a while, but clearly not enough.” I wouldn’t be a ball of nerves if The Knight wasn’t involved, though.
Of course back in Russia in Boris’s hotel room, she’d been confident, unwavering in her pursuit for the truth to see if The Knight had performed the weapons facility hack.
But now, well, it felt different. Probably because she was on vacation and operating without official authority. If this op went sideways, she was going to have her ass handed to her by her boss, if not POTUS as well. Plus, she was also terrified her actions could get someone she cared about hurt.
“We’ve got this. Don’t worry. You have no idea how many times we’ve hunted down bad guys and won.” He smiled. “I mean, Chris almost getting eaten by a polar bear in Svalbard was unique, but—”
“What?”
His smile stretched, exposing his white teeth.
“Are you trying to distract me with a made-up story?”
He held a palm in the air, his brows lifting. A glint of humor in his eyes. “The story is true, but yes to the distracting part. Is it working?”
She scooted off her seat a little. “Yes. Now, tell me more about this bear.”
“Captain America has no problem putting a bullet in human flesh, but an animal? Nope. He almost got himself captured by the Russians instead of shooting the bear.”
She allowed the insane scene to unfold in her mind. “So, what happened?”
“One sec.” Finn brought a hand to his ear. “Roger that.” He tipped his head to the side, and she caught sight of Wyatt and Jasper on approach to the vehicle.
Finn closed the partition to keep his identity hidden from Jasper before the side door opened.
Jasper slid onto the seat opposite her, and Wyatt stepped in and sat next to Natasha. “Lock the doors. Lose MI6.” Wyatt’s order had been over comms to Finn, but the gun in his lap meant Jasper hadn’t come willingly.
The limo pulled away from the curb, and Jasper clutched his backpack, disdain in his eyes as he focused on Natasha. “You bitch.”
“Bite your tongue, or I’ll cut it off,” Wyatt hissed, his jaw clenching, the 9mm still tight in his grasp.
Jasper shifted on the leather and relaxed the death grip he had on his backpack. “You’re going to get me killed.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t made a deal with Kate Ward, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” she shot back, letting him know she was aware of his betrayal.
Jasper’s chin jutted forward in surprise.
“Don’t bother lying. I know Kate came to your hotel in London in July of twenty-nineteen. What I don’t understand is why? You’re better than this. You’ve been taking criminals down for years.” Hell, he was named The Smoking Gun for a reason.
Jasper leaned forward, his eyes shifting from hers to Wyatt’s gun as he rasped, “And what was my reward for all the work I did exposing arseholes? I got arrested!”
“That was your own stupidity, Jasper. MI6 cut you a deal,” she reminded him, “and we paid you.”
“Oh.” He guffawed. “Sure. I was everyone’s pet monkey.” Sitting back, he added, “The CIA was no different.”
“Tell me, Jasper.” She sought his gaze, hoping there was still some good left in him. “What really happened?”
Jasper looked to the window as they made a sharp turn, then another. Finn was working to ditch MI6.
“Tell her,” Wyatt ordered, his voice thick with an authoritative command.
Jasper’s shoulders slumped, but he kept his eyes on the glass. “When you brought me in to help catch The Knight, well, I was able to track one of the hacks back to the source. When I saw how rich the woman was, I decided to see if she wanted to cut a deal.”
“How’d you make the connection between The Knight’s hacks and Kate Ward?” Wyatt asked, his voice less tense. Leaning in, he whispered to Natasha they’d lost the MI6 tail but picked up a new one, and hopefully, it was by someone The Knight had hired.
Jasper’s gaze cut to Natasha. “You don’t know?” He cocked his head as if he were about to try and cut yet another deal now. Not going to happen.
“Don’t test me,” Wyatt snapped. “Talk.”
“Kate Ward is The Knight.” Jasper swallowed. “Well, one of them. Alexander Balan, the man who dragged us all here, he’s the other one.”
She didn’t want to reveal her shock, to let Jasper have any small victories, so she did her best to hide it.
“At first, Kate was the only Knight. Then she realized it’d throw the authorities off if two hackers used the same online moniker and coding.
It also provided her with an alias for half the hacks, which would throw off investigators, such as yourself, looking into the case,” Jasper explained, maintaining eye contact with Natasha.
“From what Kate told me, she asked this Balan guy to not just help, but to consider it a challenge between them.”
“Like a chess game,” Natasha whispered in understanding, everything coming together now. “That’s why it appeared as a game of escalation. They were going back and forth, trying to outdo one another.”
“Kate’s competitive, and I guess, Balan is the one who made her that way when he was her coach and teacher back in school.” Jasper scratched his forehead. “She brought him in on her plan around January of twenty-sixteen, a couple months after she first started.”
And that’s when Alexander faked his death as Rothus, and a month later, the case fell into my lap. “They never split the money,” Natasha said in realization. “Kate earned that hundred and fifty million herself.”
“The day we thought Balan died, Kate bled his accounts dry. I don’t know where she transferred the funds to,” Jasper said.
The data center in Sweden. “And she told you all of this incriminating evidence?”
“I threatened to turn her over to the CIA if she didn’t tell me.
Also, she wanted me to help her find Balan since he was always on the move.
For me to do that, she had to share everything she knew.
Plus, she needed help locating his stash of money.
She didn’t want millions sitting around going to waste.
I told Kate I would agree to the deal only if she stopped her game.
” He lifted one shoulder. “See, I’m not a bad guy. ”
“You took money in exchange for silence, so yeah, you are,” Natasha scolded, rage burning through her. “You could’ve ended this a long time ago if you’d come to me first.”
“I just wanted my life back, a life not dictated by others.” He covered his eyes with his palm and leaned back.
“What happened?” Wyatt asked.
His hand fell to the top of his backpack with a heavy thud.
“Kate claimed she’d tried to put an end to everything even before the FBI showed interest in her company in twenty-eighteen.
She hacked competitors and made money selling the intel back to them, whereas Balan sold intel to terrorists.
As far as she was concerned, he’d crossed the line. ”
Like the Black Hawk crash in Algeria, Natasha remembered.
“Kate said she finally quit when the FBI started actively looking into Cyber X, but Balan refused. And he stopped hacking for profit after that. He did it just to prove he could. To prove he was better than her or something.” Jasper paused to take a breath.
“Kate thought it was fate I found her because maybe I could help bring him down. Live up to my Smoking Gun name.” He shook his head as if pissed at himself, and good, he should be more than just pissed.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. She assured me he would die. Justice would be served.”
“What was the plan?” Natasha’s hand tightened on her lap.
“Kate said she knew another hacker who might be willing to help kill Balan once we located him,” Jasper began, his breathing evening out to normal. “I was to alert the CIA of Balan’s location once we found him, and her guy would be outside the home waiting for the CIA to send in a team.”
“Why wait for us?” They had their theories, but she wanted confirmation.
“Kate wanted the CIA to know the man in the house was The Knight to put a stop to their investigation. You know, so she could breathe easy again.”
“So, Roland Nilsson was waiting around Romania for our people to show.” That’d been her guess. “And you put a clock on us by suggesting The Knight might move soon, ensuring the government rushed the op.”
Wyatt grimaced, probably disgusted by the idea his team had been pawns in Kate’s game.
“How’d you find out Balan didn’t really die that day?” she asked.
“At first, I thought the message I got last week was a joke from Kate. A sick fucking joke. Because someone had died in that house in Romania. Both Kate and I thought Balan was dead because she paid off the Romanian officials to cremate the body and label him as an unknown squatter.”
“You just didn’t know it wasn’t his body,” Natasha said. “Any idea who else it could’ve been who died?”
Jessica and Harper had spent all day trying to find out more about Balan, but they’d come up empty.
“My guess is that it was his brother. Kate had said Alexander was close to him. Find his brother, find Balan, she’d said. His brother was probably already at the house with Alexander before Roland arrived.”