Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Stormi hugged her notebooks to her chest as she walked up the pathway to her front door, mentally tossing daggers at Lincoln. She had a couple of reasons to be pissed off, but only two that she could share, and they didn’t warrant this level of anger. Not even considering they’d slept together.
They weren’t a couple. Actually, they were perfect strangers who agreed whatever was brewing between them was nothing more than a fling.
They had the hots for each other and it was one way to deal with the sexual tension.
The only problem with that was they were both hiding a secret. Hers was a massive one and it was twofold.
And they’d both caught each other in a web of lies.
That was the irony of the whole fucked-up situation. She knew he’d been in her system but couldn’t say one fucking word about it.
Neither could he.
And now, if she was going to clear her father’s name, she had to come up with a plan B.
She sucked in a deep breath and collected her thoughts.
Lincoln sat in one of the cheap folding chairs she’d picked up at a garage sale when she’d first blown into town. There had been three places for rent that she could afford.
This one. A one-bedroom apartment, and a house twenty minutes away that was a little too close to a community where many employees of Zero Gravity lived. While she wanted access, she didn’t want to live among them.
The one-bedroom was out of the question. There was no way to hide her equipment under lock and key. She needed at least two, but nothing had been available for a short-term rental, and she hadn’t planned on staying too long. She’d hoped she’d be able to be in and out under three months.
It appeared it might take longer than that.
“Good evening.” Lincoln set his laptop aside and smiled as if everything was right and good in the world. “How was work?”
“Fine.” She cocked her head. “Though I’m a little annoyed with you. I expected to see you at the library today.” She waved her notebook. “I did all this work for you and you couldn’t be bothered to call or respond to my texts. And now you have the nerve to sit here on my front porch and assume I want to spend time with you?”
“I appreciate all you are doing.” He rose. “I’m sorry. I should have texted as soon as I got here and asked if it was okay to wait. I haven’t been in town all day. My breakfast meeting lasted through lunch, and then I chased down some intel.”
“It would have taken you all of one minute to shoot me a message. I was honestly worried about you.” That wasn’t a lie. Although, she was more concerned about what he might be finding out about her and her true identity. All day, the nagging question as to why he suspected anything about her and her secret room twisted around in her brain like a snake coiling, preparing to strike. Had he come here knowing all along who she was?
That thought made her sick to her stomach because it meant sleeping with her was simply part of his master plan and had nothing to do with being attracted to her at all.
He leaned over and lifted a bag. “I got a couple of nice bottles of wine. Can we go inside and I’ll pour us each a glass? I took the liberty of ordering food from Zeke’s place. It will be here within the hour.”
“That’s pretty presumptuous of you to believe that I would forgive you that easily.”
“Besides wanting to discuss the research that you did, I’d like to tell you some of things I learned today.”
“That better be some good wine.” She waved her finger. “And I hope you ordered me a nice fat juicy steak with their garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus, or I’ll really be pissed.”
He chuckled. “Looks like I nailed it.” He waved his hand toward the door. “After you.” He bent over and gathered his belongings.
“For the record, I’m only mad that you ignored me after asking me to do you a favor. I don’t want you believing I’m some needy chick or anything.” As she strolled down the hallway past her office, she noticed it wasn’t locked. Her heart lurched to the back of her throat. She tried to swallow, but her muscles didn’t work properly.
Kurt had always told her she had a shitty poker face because she didn’t spend enough time around people. Working at bookstores and now the library, she’d developed a more natural state of fakeness.
But she still sucked at lying outside of her new identity, but she didn’t view that as anything other than survival. While Kurt wasn’t coming after her, the men he helped to launder money might. Though Kara did mention those men could be facing real prison time for other crimes.
That would certainly make her feel a lot better.
“I would never think that about you.” He set his computer on the counter. “And it’s nice to have someone care.” He kissed her cheek.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I’d hate for you to wrap Tal’s Jeep around a telephone pole.”
“Ouch.” He laughed as he took the corkscrew to the bottle.
She pulled two glasses from cupboard and checked them to make sure they were clean. It was rare that she used anything other than paper plates and red Solo cups. As wasteful as that was, she was too lazy these days to do anything else. Besides, she often ordered out, and those came in perfectly good containers that she could eat from.
“Come on. Let’s sit out back. It’s a nice night,” Lincoln said.
“I don’t have anything in the backyard to sit on.” She lifted the glass and took a sip. Damn, that was good. She kept her gaze on the red liquid and away from Lincoln’s scrutinizing gaze. Something definitely had his panties in a twist. While she wanted to know, she didn’t feel like dealing with this delicate dance they’d begun.
He tucked his laptop under his arm. “I picked up a couple of Adirondack chairs in my travels, so you do now.” He wrangled the sliding doors, which she wondered if they were going to fall out of their tracks every time she opened them.
“And how much did those cost? Because I’m on a budget.”
“They’re plastic, so not very much. I bought a bunch for my patio and picked up two extra for yours. Consider it a gift.”
“Thank you,” she managed behind a tight jaw. “But please don’t do anything like that again.”
“If you really want to pay me back, they were thirty dollars apiece.” He eased into one of them and set his computer on the table. “The table was forty, I believe.” He stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, and tilted his head toward the sky. “I need you to let me talk. It’s going to be hard for you to keep quiet. You’re going to get mad. Scared. All sorts of things. But I’m begging you to let me get through everything I have to say before you open your mouth.”
“Not sure I can do that, but I’ll try.”
“I appreciate the honesty,” he said. “I started my day with more than conflicting emotions.” He laughed. “I had every intention of keeping you in the dark. Of controlling the situation. Of manipulating you by manipulating your system.”
“You had no right to?—”
“That’s not the point.” He reached over and pressed his finger over her lips. “I got one hell of a good chuckle when you stopped me dead in my tracks for half a minute. The popup was funny. I loved the reference. That might have scared someone else off, but you failed to account for the fact that I know who you are… Amanda.” He lowered his chin and arched a brow.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll let you have your lie for now.” He raised his glass, swirled the wine, and then brought it to his lips and took a long swig. “I believed that if I could watch what you were doing, while I dealt with some things that weren’t adding up, I could isolate the issue and keep you from doing something stupid. However, as today progressed, and I learned some things that I plan on filling you in on, I realized that the two of us working together would be better.”
“I’ve already agreed to help you with research. I’m not sure what else I can do for you.”
“Really? You’re going to keep this up?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I know you saw that your office was unlocked. We both know it was you I saw in the digital hallways in Zero Gravity and that it was me who hacked your computer system this morning.” He leaned closer. “Not only are you Amanda Norris, but you’re also the ethical hacker known as Twister. I’d know her work anywhere. I’m quite impressed.” He pressed his mouth over hers in a soft, but tender kiss. “And before you go and deny it again, I’ve got sources with the FBI. I’ve confirmed it. And your secret is more than safe with me. I also want to help you. Something very wonky is going on with Zero Gravity. My boss?—”
“You mean your ex-girlfriend.”
“Semantics, but yes, her.” Lincoln nodded. “I want to help you find the proof you need to exonerate your father’s name because I believe he’s innocent. But I need your help because I think Samantha is setting me up.”
“For what?” She wiggled her finger. “And I’m not admitting to anything or agreeing to help. I just want more information.”
“That’s fair.” He set his wine on the patio table and opened his laptop. “There are a couple of things that Samantha didn’t tell me when I took this job. She sort of owned up to one, but she is still keeping certain information from me about it.” He tapped the keyboard. “To make a very long story short, she wrote the original security program for Zero Gravity.”
“Why didn’t she go in and immediately patch it when I breached the system?”
Lincoln smiled and winked at her admission.
She poked his arm. “Just answer the question.”
“Because they chose a new company. Her company. And she wanted to save face.”
“She didn’t want David to know it was her system that got breached out of fear he would fire her ass.”
“Something like that.” Lincoln nodded. “But I think that’s only one small piece of what’s really going on. Here. Look at this.” He handed her his computer.
She set her wine aside and scanned the code. Her pulse raced. Her palms grew sweaty. “Where did you get this?”
“Three years ago, while I was still with the Special Boat Service, Samantha asked me to take a look at that. I was already familiar with your work as Twister because of Operation Turncoat, but Samantha couldn’t have known that.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve honestly never heard of that.”
“A digital bank heist involving international terrorists. My government worked with yours to take down this ring. You were hired as a consultant by the bank after their system was hacked.”
“Okay, that part I remember. Kurt was a little butthurt they only wanted me, but the president of the bank was someone my father knew.” She turned her gaze. “Why does your ex-girlfriend have the code that landed me in prison?” Stormi saw no point in lying anymore.
“I don’t know,” Lincoln said. “When she showed this to me three years ago, it was all about finding out who the second coder was.”
“That’s easy, it was Kurt. He fucked with my code, making it look like I was the one helping those thugs. But again, why would someone across the pond care? The only people this affected were the companies Kurt was helping and using me to do it.”
“When she asked me to look at it, I was deployed more than I was home. I wasn’t working with her or doing any contract work for her company. But she did occasionally ask for my advice and opinions.” He tapped the screen. “In this case, she wanted to see how quickly I could detect the odd lines of code.”
Stormi turned her attention back to the computer screen. She highlighted the lines of code that weren’t her own. “This isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
“These aren’t the lines of code that got me arrested. They’re different. Not as close to my own. What Kurt did was better. He mimicked mine so tightly that on its first run, I missed it.”
“When did you catch it?”
“I always do a second run. He kept trying to distract me and offering to do it for me. He also stated that the customer was happy and it worked fine, so I should leave well enough alone. But I’m a perfectionist. So I couldn’t. That’s when I caught it. I confronted him. I told him I was going to turn him in, but it was too late. The Feds were already knocking down my door.”
“They arrested you. Not him, right?”
She nodded. “It was my code. My client. It wasn’t until Special Agent Kara Martin got me alone and listened to me. Really listened to me.” Stormi narrowed her stare. “Have you looked into how your ex and my ex might have known each other?”
“Personally, I can’t do that.” He held up his hand. “But I’ve called in a couple of favors from friends in high places. However, we have to be careful. We can’t tip our hand.”
“Are we seriously going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole?” she asked.
“I did a scan of Zero Gravity’s system today. Not the entire system, just where the breach took place. You left a breadcrumb where you got in. It wasn’t easy to find and when I did locate it, I moved past it quickly and zoomed in on something else. But if I found that line, then Samantha could find it too. And the thing is, I can’t trust that she’s not watching me.” He pursed his lips. “I’m afraid to scan my system in fear she’ll catch me catching her.”
“What’s the likelihood she’s in mine?”
“Since I hacked yours this morning, it’s possible.”
“Fuck,” Stormi mumbled.
“A buddy of mine who works for a very prestigious organization is setting me up with a state-of-the-art computer system. It will arrive tomorrow. It will be free of any possible malware or spyware. You can begin infiltrating both your systems with that tomorrow while I continue to do my job.”
“You want me to spy on you?”
“I want you to do more than that.” He nodded, leaning closer, taking her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “I want you to find the evidence that links Samantha to Kurt. That proves she weakened their system so you could get in, find a few documents, leak them, and sabotage Zero Gravity so she could get the contract.”
“And why would she do that?”
“To do the same thing Kurt did to you. Destroy me. In the process, she’ll destroy you as well.”
“I don’t know. All the dots aren’t connecting for me.” Stormi closed the computer and snagged her wine, taking a big gulp. “Jeannie came to the library today. At first, I thought she might be there checking up on her son, but she didn’t even know he was there and couldn’t have cared less.”
“What did she want?”
“She took out one of the books I was looking at for research. I thought it was strange. Don’t you? Especially when she said my library was the only one that had it, which wasn’t true. Zero Gravity has its own library and they have three copies.”
“Did Kurt ever spend any time overseas?”
“He did a semester abroad and after he graduated, he worked for an international company for six months,” Stormi said. “He fell in love with Europe then and he’d go back once a year. I never went with him. I’m not a huge fan of traveling, and it was always a boys’ trip for him, though he did tell me he dated someone for a few months, but it didn’t work out which is why he came home. We’d been corresponding and I wanted to start my own company, and so did he.” She pushed to a standing position and stared at the setting sun. Her mind rolled to the past. She rubbed her wrist as the memory of metal tightening on her skin tickled her brain. “How old is Samantha?”
“Thirty-four. Why?”
“Kurt’s thirty-three.” She turned. “Did she ever work at a company called Secure Technologies?”
“She did,” Lincoln said. “It didn’t last more than a year, I believe. It was long before me, but it was after that gig that she went to work for Ironclad Securities, which is the company?—”
“That did the original system for Zero Gravity.” Stormi turned and planted her hands on her hips. “So, your ex and my ex were something of an item back in the day. That means, Samantha must suspect I’m alive, which means Kurt must think that too.” She fiddled with a few stray locks of hair. “Who else knows I’m alive? And who in your circle, or mine, have you spoken to about this?”
“Tal knows, but Heather does not. Outside of that, I haven’t told anyone. I have spoken to Kara.” He closed the gap, covering her mouth, silencing her, which pissed her off. “I haven’t told her everything and I don’t think we should because I don’t want her swooping in and relocating you. I can protect you. Besides, I do want to help you find the documentation you need to prove your father didn’t sabotage those rocket boosters.”
She smacked his arm away. “Why would you want to do that? Have you seen something that I haven’t? Know something that I don’t?”
“I trust my gut and that’s telling me everything about this case stinks.” He cupped her chin. “And for some godforsaken reason, I trust you. I shouldn’t. But I do. Therefore, I believe you.”
“Gee, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
He chuckled. “So, are we partners?”
“That depends. Have you told me everything?”
“No,” he said. “And there are a couple of things I can’t tell you. Not because I want to keep them from you, but because the FBI has told me I have to.”
“Kara?” Stormi jerked her head back.
“Someone higher up than her.” Lincoln wrapped his arms around her waist and brushed his mouth over her lips. “And before you go asking a million more questions that I can’t answer at this time, I will fill you in as time goes on when it’s appropriate, even if I’m told not to by Kara and her higher-up.”
“Are you telling me that to shut me up, or do you mean it?”
“We both have something at stake here. Perhaps you more than me.” He thumbed her cheek. “I also find myself doing the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“Care about you.” He kissed her nose. “So, yeah. I mean it.”
She stared into his eyes, hoping to see the lies behind the words, but all she saw was a man with a deep soul and a trusting heart. She should pack up her things in the middle of the night and disappear.
But she wouldn’t.
In his arms, in that moment, she knew she’d found an ally like she’d never known before.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“Once our food gets here, we go back to my place. Your bed sucks.”
“I’m offended.”
“My back is offended.” He laughed. “Tonight we create a plan. Once the equipment arrives from Darius, we go to work.”
“I haven’t done any real hacking except for Zero Gravity in three years.”
“Oh, you forget, I’ve chatted with Kara. I know?—”
“Okay, three jobs.” She gripped his shoulders, digging her nails into his thick muscles. “But this is different. There isn’t going to be anything holding me back. I can be me again.”
He cupped her face. “You’re going to have to be disciplined. More so than ever before. If Samantha knows who you are and knows you were the one I collided with in Zero Gravity, she’s going to be gunning for you, and she’s going to use me to do it. We’re going to have to be on our A game if we’re going to shut her down and clear your dad.”
“Oh, I’m ready.”
“That’s my girl.”
For the first time since she learned of her father’s death, Stormi believed she had half a chance of making sure his legacy lived on.