Chapter Six
Alayah’s heart was pounding. Everything was happening so quickly she couldn’t wrap her head around any of it.
Not for the first time in her life, she wished she was braver and wasn’t afraid of the things the guys at Secure One faced daily without fear.
Or at least, that’s what it seemed like to her.
Maybe, just this once, she could be brave.
The ringing stopped, and she swore she heard Derek let out a relieved sigh from the back.
“He probably checked the GPS and noticed I was stopped,” she explained.
“You should have answered,” Derek said as she put the SUV in Reverse and turned it back down the gravel road. It was no easy task, but Cal would start to worry if she didn’t get the vehicle moving.
“He’ll call back, and I’ll have to answer,” she said, pulling into the cabin’s driveway.
“You have two minutes to get what you need or I’m out,” she said through gritted teeth.
He grasped the door handle when something occurred to her.
“Wait.” She put the vehicle in Park and opened the console, coming up with a gun.
“Take this. Just in case. It’s loaded. No safety. Point and shoot.”
“You’re giving a possible murderer a gun?” he asked, accepting it carefully before he grabbed the door handle again.
“If I had any serious concerns that you were a murderer, I wouldn’t have picked you up in the first place,” she answered. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“As the kids say, brB.” Then he was gone, his shadow stealthy as he slid along the side of the cabin.
She noticed it was less a cabin and more a log home, which was probably gorgeous in the daylight.
Tonight, though, it was ominous. It was a good reminder that she was a cybersecurity tech, not a security guy.
She was about as effective in an emergency as a mouse, and fear mixed with the acid in her stomach as she watched Derek peek in several of the windows on his way past them.
He must be headed for the back door to make sure no one was waiting for him there.
She braced herself for the retort of the gun but heard none.
Before long, the light went out in the kitchen, and she held her breath, hoping he’d been the one to turn it off.
The phone rang again, and she jumped at the sudden intrusion to her thoughts.
On instinct she hit the button to answer.
“Secure Watch, Alpha,” she said, using their greeting code. If anyone ever answered without using the greeting, the caller knew there was a problem and would send help. She always thought her code name was hilarious. There was no one less alpha than her, but maybe tonight was her chance to be one.
“Secure One, Charlie. Alayah? Are you okay?” Cal asked, concern lacing his words. “You should be back by now, but when I checked the GPS, you weren’t moving.”
“Sorry for the holdup,” she said, as though she couldn’t prevent it when she very well could. “I got turned around when I took a side road to avoid hitting a deer. ’Tis the season in Minnesota. You know how October is on the roads.”
“Especially out there,” he agreed. “Do you need an assist?”
“Nope, I’m headed back to the highway as soon as we hang up. Gotta use the hand controls.”
“Call me if you need help. Otherwise, I’ll see you in twenty.”
“You got it, boss,” she answered.
“Charlie out,” he said, and the line went dead.
She hated lying to Cal, and she’d make sure to apologize when she got back to Duluth.
If Lady Luck was on her side, their little adventure tonight would help solve the case they were partially on the hook for, at least the way it stood now.
If the jump drive Derek was trying to retrieve could clear him, then it would be that much easier for her to clear Cal.
She had to admit the idea of an unknown murderer got her investigative juices going.
She yearned to put her hands on a keyboard and dig deep into Hugo Victor’s life.
“Just because Derek hasn’t hurt you, doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt Hugo,” she muttered to the empty car.
“But apparently, you’ve already decided he’s innocent.
Is that because you don’t think he’s capable of murder or is it because his handsome face, great sense of humor and kindness have lulled you into a sense of safety? ”
If she were honest with herself, it was mostly the latter.
She didn’t know him well enough to say with all certainty that he hadn’t planned the murder of his boss.
But if she listened to her gut, which she’d done since she was old enough to understand how to, Derek wasn’t a threat.
It was far more likely that he was being threatened, and if she didn’t get them back to Duluth soon, the guys who beat him might return.
Movement caught her eye and she glanced up to see Derek hoofing it back to the SUV. She hit the unlock button, and he dove in, slamming the door behind him. Alayah was backing out of the driveway before he was even upright.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice breathy. “All was quiet, but as I suspected, they had taken my computer bags. Unfortunately, my car key was in one of them.”
“You didn’t want to drive the car anyway,” she reminded him.
“Not until they catch whoever those guys are,” he agreed. “Now that they know my car, it will remain in the driveway. Sure, the dealer could cut me a key, but I’d rather not be caught dead in it right now.”
“Which is what you might be if you drive it,” she said grimly. “They’ll be back once they discover you lied to them about what they wanted.”
“It’ll be too late,” he said, holding up a can of soup and shaking it.
“Soup? You’re going to fix this situation with chicken noodle soup?” she asked incredulously.
“Nope,” he answered, popping off the bottom and holding up a black jump drive. “I’m going to do it with this.”
“That’s what they were after?” she asked as she slowed for the stop sign.
“Well, the files on it, but yes,” he said, throwing it up and catching it in his fist. “Most of the coding for Hugo’s new cybersecurity app is on this drive. I say most, because we aren’t dumb enough to put the entire program on one drive.”
“Ever think about keeping it in a cloud? Feels less dangerous than where we are at the moment,” she said, tongue in cheek.
“Clouds can be hacked, according to Hugo. In fact, this program is designed to make a cloud a fortress. It has all the typical features of a cybersecurity app, such as malware protection, threat detection, firewall management and network monitoring. It also has built-in antivirus software, endpoint detection and response tools. The coup de grace is, once it’s finished, it can bypass a VPN and detect the actual IP address of the user. ”
Alayah’s breath caught in her chest. “If that’s true, Derek, it changes the entire landscape of the digital world and cybersecurity.”
“Trust me, it’s true,” he said, leaning back in the seat as she stopped at the stop sign. “I can’t deny Hugo was a genius at what he did.”
She could hear the genuine sadness in his words.
She didn’t believe for a second that he’d killed his boss, but someone had, and doing it with poison made it a personal vendetta.
At least in her opinion. Why wait until he was in a room full of people to do it?
Showmanship? To make a point? Then it hit her.
To frame Derek.
“Granted,” he continued, “there were a lot of people who worked on this project, but in the end, Hugo’s brilliance got us this far.”
“But why kill Hugo for an app that isn’t complete yet? If they do get their hands on it, can they complete the code without Hugo?”
“No,” he answered slowly as he leaned forward. “While this app has had multiple coders working on it, Hugo was the only one who could finish it. He would code the bypassing of the VPN aspect of the app, as he was the one who figured out a way around it. At least he thought he had.”
“Hmm.” Alayah sat at the stop sign, thinking.
She was confused about why someone would kill the only person who could turn an ordinary cybersecurity app into a groundbreaking one.
“If that’s the case, Derek, it leads me to think someone didn’t want that app to see the light of day.
Did people know that he was the only one who could code it? ”
“That wasn’t public knowledge. A handful of people knew, at most. I also know where he’s stored the coding for the VPN workaround, but no one else does.”
“There’s your motive. If you killed him, you could swoop in and use his code to finish the app.”
“Alayah, I swear on my mother’s life that I didn’t kill Hugo.
He was both my boss and my friend. The real killer wants the police to assume I did it because I’m the easy answer.
If they pin it on me, they won’t dig any deeper.
I must admit, the setup was on point—” The words froze on his lips when a black SUV blocked the intersection, and another pinned them in from behind.
Derek dropped a curse word that told her how much trouble they were in.
“They want me. Don’t get out of the vehicle,” he said as guys approached both sides of her SUV, guns pointed at their heads.
She had seconds to decide what to do. She could try to ram the Suburban blocking them in, but her car was smaller and would never push it out of the way.
The ditch on both sides was too deep to go down and back up onto the road.
Trying to drive in Reverse might work, but she could also land them in the ditch if she wasn’t careful.
“Unlock the doors!” one of the guys shouted.
“Do it, but don’t get out,” he said, far more calmly than she felt, so she reached for the button.
“Do you still have the gun?”
“Yes,” he answered. “But it won’t do me any good when it’s four against one. I’ll go with them. You report it to the police.”
“Ha,” she said, her heart pounding hard against her ribs. “If you think for a hot second that they aren’t going to take me, too, you’re delusional.”
She calculated the distance from here to Duluth and knew there was no way to stall these guys long enough for Cal to send help. After she hit the unlock button, she pressed a button hidden under her shirt. Her panic button was now their only hope.