CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Callum sat frozen, staring at the metal trashcan containing the infected computer.
At a loss, I glanced at Payton.
He caught my silent plea for help and cleared his throat. “Mr. King?”
Callum hunched over, his voice broken. “I need to know. Callie, do you think you’re ready to try…”
He couldn’t even finish his sentence, and my heart panged for him.
I’d been tearing apart and redoing every aspect of my new idea since we arrived here. At this point, I was procrastinating beneath the guise of nitpicking because I was terrified of failing everyone for the third time in a row. I’d beta tested this program forwards, backwards, and upside down. The last hurdle was jumping into the deep end.
After a deep breath, I exhaled, releasing some of the tension bunching my shoulders. “Yeah. Is that alright with you, CJ?”
“Of course. I’ll go get mine. It’s in my room. I was programming something earlier.”
As CJ left, Paride glanced between my father and me. “Care to explain what we’re about to do?”
Callum climbed to his feet, dusting himself off. “You? Nothing. No, wait. You can be the arm candy, big boy.”
Paride crossed his arms. “Funny.”
Taking pity on the man, I said, “We’re testing if the program I’ve been working on can regain control of the infected computer.”
When a beat passed where I continued setting up the newly built laptop, Paride crossed his arms. “And that’s… good? I thought you guys made three more computers. How many do you need?”
That question sparked an idea to explore later if this didn’t pan out.
“We’re not restoring it. We want to use it to map a path back to the hacker.”
“And you can do that, right?”
I glanced at Callum. “Well, that’s the goal.”
Paride frowned. “You’re not inspiring feelings of confidence here.”
“Got it!” CJ called as he raced into the room, setting up beside me. Between the three of us, we boasted enough collective know-how to break through any security in the world, and now, we were lined up at a single table with a unified end goal.
It was enough to give me goosebumps.
This has to work, I assured myself.
My internal pep talk would have normally been about the time that Ivanov reared his ugly head, but he’d been absent since I stood up to him, confronting him in the very place he’d died.
“Don’t worry, Paride,” I comforted him, “everything will be fine.”
“Sweet jinxes and jam, Callie-Cat,” Corbin yelped. “Did you have to go and whammy our luck?”
“You’re too superstitious. She’s right. The program will work,” CJ said. “Mr. King, would you do the honors?”
With trepidation, Callum withdrew the infected device from the metal container and placed it on the table in front of him.
“Jesus,” Jace whispered. “Why am I waiting for it to spring open and take on a life of its own?”
Callum pushed the lid up. “Few people truly comprehend the immense danger the internet poses, and the ones who learn firsthand earn that knowledge at a premium price through blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Welcome to our world,” I intoned.
“We have cookies,” CJ continued, carrying on the joke.
Callum pressed the power button, and the computer booted up. “Here goes nothing.”
Paride grunted. “I don’t like this. I’m too antsy. Let’s get a perimeter set up in case things go badly.”
Payton nodded, addressing the others. “Brock and Jace, you’re on the front. Grab a walkie and switch to channel eight. Duane and Corbin, take the back. Aleks—”
“You want flying, da?”
Duane clapped Aleks on his broad shoulder. “If that means up on the rooftop with your sniper rifle, then yeah, man. We want flying.”
Bryce put his hand in the air. “Hi, yeah. Remember me?”
Payton tilted his head. “I’m sure nobody wishes to be saddled with you if you’re going to complain about your grievous injury for the duration.”
“I’ll behave,” was Bryce’s succinct reply as the pairs filed out.
“Alright. We’ll require a walkie-talkie to relay what is happening or send an alert if we need to leave in a hurry, and vice versa. Would you fetch it for us?”
“You’re joking, right? Running? On this ankle?” Bryce backed off a step at the sight of Payton’s face and lifted his hands in a universal show of surrender. “Kidding! I was kidding.”
Bryce took off, leaving three hackers and two leaders.
The screen flickered, drawing our attention.
“Ready?” Callum asked.
I plugged in the fruits of my labor to both my and CJ’s computers, hesitating before connecting it to the third.
“It’ll work, Callie,” CJ soothed. “You’ve been tweaking ALPHA for days.”
“Yeah, but I had to start from scratch. That’s a lot of coding and potential for mistakes—” I paused. “Wait, alpha?”
CJ’s cheeks pinkened. “What? Iron Man names all his cool tech.”
My lips twitched. “What does it stand for?”
“Automated Linking Program for Hacker Authorization.”
“Huh, that’s actually a pretty apt description.” His confidence helped me take the leap. All three of the computers were linked now, for better or worse.
“So your alien octopus looking thing will give you control of the infected computer?” Paride asked.
“That’s the goal,” I said, my eyes lit with the glow of the screen as the code did its job.
Bryce returned with the walkie-talkie and peeked over our shoulders. “Shouldn’t you be typing or something?”
CJ laughed. “This isn’t a movie. Some things can be hacked on the fly, sure, but normally typing is done beforehand, especially with this kind of attack.”
“Oh,” Bryce replied.
“Consider what Callie built a weapon,” Callum clarified. “You wouldn’t ask her to rush into battle and wait to assemble her gun from nuts and bolts after the bullets are already flying, would you?”
“Not if I want her back in one piece, sir.” Despite the confession that Callum had already been well aware of our relationship, none of Bryce’s usual drawl decorated his tone, and I ignored the warm fuzzies that set free in my chest. “And to be clear, I do, sir, want her back in one piece. Uh, not that her body is her most important asset. I’d still be with her if she lost a leg or an arm or—”
“Hey, kid?” Paride cut in.
“Yes?” Bryce sounded relieved that someone had stopped the grave he’d been burying himself in. I was a little surprised Payton hadn’t done so, but he must have been giving Bryce the leeway to hang himself after his injury joke.
“If you don’t mind some unsolicited advice—stop before you dig your way to China. Capiche?”
“I reckon that’s a swell idea. Shutting my mouth now.”
CJ was the first to notice our success. “Hey, I have access to the mouse. It’s working!”
I gasped. “It is?”
At the same time, Callum asked, “Can you follow anything back to the source? What about the keyboard? How far does the authorization go? Here, let me—”
“Relax,” I cautioned him. “CJ knows what he’s doing. Oh, I have access too.”
“Here, Callie. Let me—”
“No, I—”
Callum reached over and plucked the computer from beneath my fingers. “Sorry, Callie, but I have to know.”
I wanted to argue, but I suspected I knew what he was so worried he’d discover. A questioning glance at Payton confirmed he did too. He nodded at me to permit this to play out.
Callum would always have a niggle of doubt if he didn’t find out for himself. His eyes flew between the two laptops furiously as he worked. Without a device of my own, I rolled my chair over to watch.
Lightning fast information flew by as he toggled between different programs he’d created and buried throughout the deep web, discarding one and moving onto another when they failed to produce results. The level of memorization involved in typing the randomized URLs was impressive, and it truly felt like he was my dad at that moment.
Our similar abilities couldn’t have been any clearer.
On top of that, he’d guided me through the majority of my skills when he took me under his wing as an anonymous hacker.
That was why, when he blasted past the final wall of protection and began backtracking until something about the design of the malicious hacker’s package snagged his attention, I knew.
It was a little trick he’d taught me, one of the first actually. When making connections to others’ computers, bury a unique identifier within a benign location. That way, if someone deleted the malware, you’d still have a workable backdoor from what essentially boiled down to a control and find function.
There that strategy sat, plain as day, written within the coding, almost too insignificant to notice, except to us—to this… family?
I wondered when my dad had taught this trick to my sister.
The identifier had been sent to burrow inside the metadata of a computer’s generic background photo, ready to hide indefinitely until the hacker encountered a need to search for it.
Long-lost relative hackers, indeed.
If she, whatever her name was, had paired this with a simple scanner that constantly searched for the specific marker, it was only a matter of time before she discovered what we were up to.
My mind reeled.
She’d also know most of my tricks because we’d pulled them from the same hat.
I glanced at the man in question.
Callum’s face crumpled. Was it because his child had jumped into bed with a monster, or did the pain cut deeper than that? He’d claimed to have kept his distance from my mom and me for our protection, but what if that had been a pretty lie to cover up the fact that he’d had a second family, one he raised?
“What’s her name?” I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper loud enough to reach my dad’s ears, but no further.
“Georgia.” He paused, looking destroyed with his slumped shoulders and his tear-filled eyes that begged me for forgiveness. The problem was he had done nothing that needed forgiving, right?
“You traced them back to Georgia?” Paride repeated. “Are you sure? Why would—”
My dad shot to his feet. “I have to go.”
Payton shifted, moving to block him. “Mr. King—”
“No, I have to go!” He dodged Payton, who did nothing to stop him.
When Bryce moved to intervene, Payton added, “Let him go, Mr. Rost. Callie’s father just received some devastating news. He needs a minute.”
My dad flinched, frozen in the doorway at Payton’s words. Was it because of Payton’s reminder that I was also his daughter? He glanced over his shoulder one more time. “I’m sorry, Callie.”
Sorry for what? I wanted to scream at him, but a lump had lodged in my throat, making speech impossible.
My dad disappeared out the door.
“Was it her?” CJ asked quietly. “Your sister?”
I turned, staring at the screen and trying to fight my tears. My chest ached, but I sniffed and buried my feelings, not letting my warring emotions get the best of me. “Most likely, and she left a nasty surprise behind.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain it later, but we need to build a quarantine around the picture folder strong enough to withstand a virtual nuclear blast.”
“The picture folder? What? There’s nothing in there but—”
The walkie-talkie in Bryce’s hand crackled to life. “Guys? Anyone want to share why the shiitake mushrooms Callie’s dad tore out of the building like howling hellhounds were after him?”
My eyes rounded. “He what?”
“That is not only problem, if is problem at all,” Aleks chimed in. “Is difficult to do sex with daughter when dad is next doorway.”
“Just spit it out, Aleks,” Brock demanded. “He’s probably seeing what Jace and I are—ten government SUVs making their way here.”
“Shit,” Paride hissed, taking the radio from Bryce. “How far out?”
“Three blocks,” Jace answered.
“Hello? Da? Big Russian speaking. I am not seeing CIA spooks like Boulder and twin.”
CJ and I had already begun packing things up. “Unplug ALPHA, Callie. We could still use it—”
“Right, let me disconnect it. One second.” I leaned over, beginning the sequence of shutting it down, but the dialogue box that was supposed to generate wouldn’t pop up.
CJ noted my frown. “What’s the matter?”
Over on the radios, Paride shouted, “Well, who do you see?”
I glanced at CJ. “Something’s wrong. I can’t stop it.”
“Not sure,” Aleks replied to Paride’s question. “Black windows, but I think bulletproof? Not government.”
“Shit,” Paride exclaimed, sharing a look with Bryce and Payton. “It could be Tarasovich.”
“Alright, children,” Bryce drawled, coming over to rush CJ and me along. “Playtime’s over. That’s our cue.”
“No, don’t!” I shouted when he went to unplug ALPHA. “I coded in a protection. If the proper sequence isn’t used to shut it down, then it will fry everything. It was a last resort to protect our secret weapon in case something happened where the hack—err, my sister overthrew our systems and regained control.”
Bryce looked frustrated. “So fix it!”
“I can’t! For some reason the—oh. Oh no.”
“What? Is it Tarasovich? Your sister?” CJ murmured.
I wished. How had things gone so wrong so quickly? With trembling fingers, I reached up and unplugged ALPHA.
It fritzed and sparked, sending up a cloud of death smoke.
“Callie!” CJ gasped.
“It was scrap metal anyway,” I said.
“But—”
“Leave everything. ALPHA would have killed the computers, too, as a safety precaution,” I ordered. “We’ll start over.”
Bryce dragged us out of the door. “Which way, Mr. E?”
Paride was the one to answer. “Out the south exit. I’d rather face Tarasovich’s three-car team than a fleet of CIA agents.”
“Falling back. Corbin and I will meet you there. Ten seconds,” Duane confirmed.
“Time to get down from the roost, Aleks. Jace and I will hold to cover your retreat,” Brock said. “Also, we have local authorities incoming as well. I can see the flash of cherries and berries coming from the opposite direction.”
We were being surrounded.
“That’ll be a fun conversation for Madam Rollins to explain,” Jace quipped. “Why no, Mr. Russian President, the United States government was not conducting illegal intelligence operations in your country without alerting the proper channels.”
“Maybe it’ll work in our favor,” Paride postulated, shouldering through the barricaded door at the ground floor like wet paper. Duane and Corbin waved us over. “The CIA will have no choice but to retreat if local law enforcement is on the scene.”
“What do you have?” Payton demanded, glancing up and out the window we’d huddled under as Corbin and Duane outlined the situation.
“Three black SUVs, illegally tinted windows, and they aren’t with the armada of government vehicles lining up out front.”
“We’re ready,” Paride said into the walkie as Aleks appeared, a gun half the length of his considerable frame slung over his shoulder. “Our Russian friend just joined us. You’re clear to abandon your posts.”
“Sure, but whatever we’re going to do, we should do it quickly,” Brock replied. “The CIA hasn’t backed off, and the locals are almost here. Whatever standoff is about to occur, we need to be far from the blast zone.”
Payton ducked back down. “They are just sitting there.”
“Yeah,” Corbin agreed. “It gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Brock and Jace trotted up as Paride doubled down on his earlier decision. “Better the devil we know. Come on.”
“What, all at once?” I yelped, hating the pressure of a trap closing around our necks.
The sound of the front doors being breached echoed out.
“We don’t have a choice.”
We went out of the frying pan and into the fire.