Chapter 5
Dane went inside the shack through the back door into the kitchen and grabbed a towel to wipe the grease off his hands.
It had been a simple matter to sabotage the van and an even simpler matter for the kid to get out of trouble with his boss.
Money talked. It was a matter of how much. At least with most people.
He’d sworn Ronnie Ryan to secrecy one last time after extracting the kid’s driver’s license from his pocket and reading his home address out loud.
He’d handed the license back to the kid with one of his mysterious smiles guaranteed to instill discomfort.
Ronnie had stuttered a little and promised up and down he wouldn’t breathe a word.
Dane’s last comment to him was, “Don’t worry, kid. I’m not a bad guy. I fix things.”
Now it was time to make a plan to fix this thing. Or two things.
First, he needed to fix Acer’s problem with the sniper and whoever was paying the sniper.
And second—but it was hard for Dane to really think of the second thing as less important since it seeped into every cell and thought and action, making him feel perpetually on edge and disturbing the peace he was seeking at his beach shack sanctuary.
The second thing he needed to fix was his relationship with Shana.
He didn’t have any idea what that meant, what ‘fixed’ would look like or how to do it, except that for a start, he had to convince her to stay and partner with him.
He knew he still had some work to do in convincing her.
He didn’t trust her snap decision for David, especially not now that she had to stay officially on the payroll with Scotland Yard until the FBI got off their backs.
That meant there was technically a third matter that needed fixing—his problem with the FBI.
They’d been here for a reason and he still didn’t know what it was.
He knew it had to do with Acer’s sniper but Peck had held something back.
Some important detail. Dane knew it like he knew his mother’s name.
He tossed the greasy towel in the sink and walked into the dining room.
“What do you have?” he said to Acer.
Acer stopped typing into his computer, pushed it around and looked at him with a grin.
Dane felt Shana’s eyes on him, but didn’t look her way.
There would be time to deal with her later—after David was gone.
Before Cap came by in the morning. Even with his friend Acer crowding their space, Dane would find a way to at least do a Band-Aid fix with Shana.
“We have a breakthrough, boss.” Acer pointed to the screen which he angled for all to see.
“This man was a key witness in a big embezzlement case. I persuaded him to roll on the man who hired him to hack the system of Bryant Enterprises, one of my first consulting jobs back a number of years ago. Harold Small, aka Harry the Hacker, is now deceased.”
“Let me guess,” Dane said, “He was shot by a sniper.” He knew the answer. Acer nodded. David gave him a speculative look. Shana huffed and he could tell she wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn’t. She hated when he grandstanded. Dane smiled at her.
“What’s the next question we should be asking, girlie?”
“What are you—Grasshopper Mentor Man?” She pushed her mostly full plate of food away, sighed, and said in an I’m-not-an-imbecile tone of voice, “Who did the hacker roll on?”
Dane suppressed his laugh. He enjoyed watching her color rise, watching her get agitated and pissed at him.
She knew he knew it was beneath her to be treated like a novice.
She also knew he respected her with absolute certainty.
He suspected she loved his game-playing underneath her annoyed exterior.
“The mastermind was Sebastian Whitaker. Son-in-law of the owner of one of the largest privately owned telecom companies in the country, Fred Bryant of Bryant Enterprises. I was hired when he discovered twenty million dollars was missing. There was even more missing than that but the accountants never figured out how much. It was my first big gig as a cyber security consultant and I knocked it out of the park.”
“So Whitaker is our man. Do you have his whereabouts?” Shana asked.
“First,” Dane interrupted, “Let’s have David confirm with the governor who it was that called him to set up the appointment with Acer. If it was Acer’s old client, Fred Bryant, then Whitaker is our man.”
Shana rolled her eyes at him.
“Want to place money on it, girlie?”
Shana gave him a death-stare scowl. It was going to be either that or the haughty chin-lift depending on how pissed she was at him at the moment. He was pleased with the scowl. She was extremely hot under the collar.
“Last known for Sebastian Whitaker was outside the front gate of the federal pen,” Acer said, “where he spent the last ten years. He was released last month. I got an address for his wife though.”
“I’ll call you after I confirm that it was the Fred Bryant who called for the appointment with the governor,” David said. “Then it looks like you have a plan of action.”
“But why would Bryant set up Acer by calling the governor to set up an appointment?” Shana asked.
“He wouldn’t,” Dane said. “He called because Whitaker was out of jail and Whitaker probably called him and made some kind of threat to scare him, banking on him calling the governor. Maybe his wife prompted the call. Maybe she was scared.”
David pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll get back to Boston now.” He checked his watch and said, “I can catch the last flight off the island if one of you—not Acer—can give me a lift.”
“I’ll do it,” Shana said. Dane wished they could both go, but there was no way to justify leaving Acer alone. Whitaker was not stupid. He knew where Acer was if he knew about his connection to the governor and the unit. They had to assume that the sniper also knew where Acer was.
“I’ll stay and set up extra security precautions here.” That meant extra video surveillance and turning on the motion-activated alarms and the special perimeter security. He said to Shana, “Call me before you get back.”
She nodded. She knew about the alarms. They were silent, but they alerted the State Police HQ—specifically Cap’s office—so they were only used in dire emergencies or when Dane and Shana were working with him.
He could disable that connection for the night.
More importantly, these special alarms also set a few things in motion inside the house that might not be healthy for an intruder or anyone trying to enter through a door or window.
A kind of electric-fence-type shield was activated which gave a nasty shock to anyone touching the windows or doors.
* * *
David left with Shana. The amount of tension that drained from the shack once she drove the old Jeep out of the driveway felt like enough to be measured by a barometer. And not only noticed by Dane.
“Good God, man. How do you stand it?” Acer said.
“Stand what?” Dane knew, but he was interested in hearing Acer’s take on the nature of his problem with Shana.
He only knew it viscerally. If Dane could ever accurately and succinctly explain the problem to himself, he wouldn’t have a problem.
His cluelessness was most certainly part of the issue.
And this was humbling to the point of embarrassment to him, the knower of all people.
Acer shrugged and said, “The tension of unquenched lust? But if you don’t notice it, hell, who am I to point it out to you?”
“You’re a pal, but don’t worry about me.”
Acer raised one brow and shook his head with a quirk of his mouth, but didn’t call him on his exaggerated nonchalance.
Dane had sent his message. He had the situation under control.
Perhaps the message was premature, but he swore to mighty heaven or the devil in hell that he would get it under control before the night was out. Or someday.
Dane busied himself in his living room-office with setting up the extra security. Acer followed him in—it was Acer’s system. Custom designed and installed for Dane a number of years back.
“Still works like a charm, I see.”
“Yeah. I only had to ‘charm’ someone once. But it worked.”
Acer laughed and they went through the punch list of measures and materials, including weapons on hand, before sitting back down at the table with a couple of beers.
“This all you got?”
“I’ll call Shana and have her pick up a bottle of Patron.”
“Liquor stores are closed by now,” Acer pointed out.
Dane smiled. “I got a connection.”
Acer laughed. “Of course you do.”
Dane called Shana to pick up a bottle at the Lucky Parrot. The owner owed him.
“But make sure you pay him for it. Do not leave there without leaving money behind,” he told her.
Shana complied. She arrived back at the shack within an hour and they toggled off the electric shock sequence when she approached the back door, but Dane opened it from the inside to be extra cautious.
Shana stood on the back step in front of him with the bottle in one hand, a pouty mouth and billowing blond waves of hair.
He looked her up from her long strong legs to where her skirt cut across her thighs halfway to the treasure.
She put her empty hand on her hip emphasizing the curve into her waist. He ran his eyes up her taut rib cage outlined by the spandex tank top to the bountiful mounds of her breasts and her noble broad shoulders. Then he looked at her face.
Surprisingly, she smiled at him. Not surprisingly, it was a mocking smile. But he didn’t back down from his admiration, his frank lust boiling through his veins, heating him, making him vibrate like his cock was a tuning fork and had been pinged to life just with the sight of her.
The vision that was Shana was backed up by layers of excitement, the dense excitement of her intelligence, her passion, her need to protect, her sense of right and moral fortitude to put her life on the line. He recognized every one of those things in himself.