Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Your father’s alive.”
Stormi stared at Lincoln. Her insides shook like an erupting volcano. Her body was hot lava, filled with rage and an uncontrollable urge to punch him in the throat took hold of her fist. She clenched her hand tightly at her side. “Excuse me? How is that possible?” Only, she knew the answer because she wasn’t dead. She took a step backward, not out of fear of Lincoln, but out of fear that she might actually hit the man. “How could you keep that from me?”
“I could ramble off a litany of reasons. Some of them my own. Some of them the FBI’s. But none of them matter at this point.” Lincoln pulled out one of the stools in front of the island in his kitchen. “I understand you’re angry.”
“You don’t understand shit,” she mumbled. “How long have you known? Before or after we slept together?”
“It was after the first time,” he admitted.
“What else are you keeping from me?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Except for my plan to bring down those who tried to kill him and want to put you back in prison.”
“Gee, that doesn’t really make up for dick.” She poked him in the shoulder. “You’re a liar and a snake. Why should I trust you now?”
“Because if we fail, I’ll most likely end up back in the UK for treason or some such bullshit.” He cocked his head. “The clock is ticking. The investigation into your document leak will be over by the end of the day. I have to finish this program by tomorrow and load it into Zero Gravity before Samantha demands to see it. Not to mention I have confirmation that she’s in the States and most likely not far from Fallport. The only intel I don’t have is what she’s got hanging over David’s head, if anything. I’m still working on that piece. But something other than you and Kurt brought those two together.”
“Not necessarily.” Stormi reached for her hair and twisted her fingers through the strands. “We know that Kurt and Samantha had an affair. We also know that Samantha invested in my company.”
“With my money.” Lincoln shook his head. “And the two of them have been working together, helping businesses launder money in the States and the UK. But Zero Gravity isn’t laundering money. The only illegal activity they have done is blow up the rocket boosters.”
“Plus, murdering good people and blaming my father for it.” Stormi slammed her fist on the counter. “He would never have put people in that rocket ship if he believed those boosters were subpar. But what Zero Gravity showed the world was faulty mechanics. They proved that his energy saving boosters were not what he advertised. That his design wasn’t ready.”
“Your father stated that those weren’t his designs,” Lincoln said. “Someone had to have hacked the system and we both know it must have been Samantha.”
“But why? What does she have to gain from doing that?”
Lincoln lowered his chin. “For starters, if she and Kurt believed you were alive, it was one way to get you to play, and you did do exactly that.” He waggled his finger. “I also think that Jeannie wants to take credit for your father’s lifework. Her dad has never allowed her to be part of the business. Not where she’s wanted to be anyway.”
“You mentioned pictures of all of them together. Do we know who initiated contact?”
“It appears David did.” Lincoln narrowed his stare. “Well, shit.”
“What?”
“I might be grasping at straws, but Samantha’s mother would never tell her who her father was and it always bothered her. For years, she tried to find out but always came up empty-handed. She would get mad at me because I wouldn’t help her.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Stormi jerked her head back. “I’d want to know.”
“Because she wanted me to take the risk of illegally hacking into places. I couldn’t do that. Not with my military career.” Lincoln tapped his finger on the counter. “What if David’s her father? What if this started as a threat to expose his paternity, and Jeanie turned it around into using it for her own benefit.”
“Are you suggesting that Jeannie is the mastermind behind this? That she’s the one who switched the boosters? Caused the explosion?”
“She had access. She had the means. And she’d have the help of Samantha. Especially if that meant she could keep a lid on having a half sister. Or at least control the narrative,” Lincoln said. “Samantha’s drive for finding her father was only about knowing. Not about some dude staking claim over her. But she’s also driven by money and power.”
“Jesus. She’s going to find fault in your program. Hell, she’s going to come in and find me while I’m poking around. She’ll plant a tiny piece of evidence that I’ll think will be the key in exonerating my dad, but in reality will be the one thing that seals my fate. She’ll swoop in, save the day right before Jeannie’s innovative rocket boosters are launched into space.” Stormi jumped to her feet. “We have to stop these assholes at their own game.” She glanced at her watch. “We don’t have much time.”
He stood, reaching for her, tugging her to his chest. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I won’t do it again.”
“I can’t deal with that right now.”
He fanned his thumb across her cheek. “You have to know how much I care about you. It came out of left field, but I don’t want this to end.”
Her heart betrayed her mind and her emotions. She wanted to stay angry at him forever. “I won’t deny that I care about you too.” She blinked out a tear. “But right now, all I can focus on is finishing this so I can be reunited with my dad. It’s that relationship I need to mend. This one will have to take a back seat.”
“I understand.” He brushed his lips over her mouth. “I’ll wait. I can be a patient man when I want something, and I want you.” He patted her bottom. “Now, let’s get to work. I picked up more equipment on my way home. I’ll put on a pot of coffee while you start setting up.”
“You trust me to do that?”
“Babe, I trust you with my life. And my heart,” he whispered.
She wished she felt the same.
Lincoln cracked his knuckles and stared at the screens as his program loaded into Zero Gravity’s system, overriding the previous one. He glanced at his watch.
He and Stormi had worked through the night to finish the coding. Her ability to copy his language had been more than impressive. It had been downright scary. He wouldn’t have been able to complete the project had it not been for her. However, Samantha would be able to see some of the slight variances to how she did things. But that was fine. It was all a trap anyway.
“It will take two hours before this is complete.” He leaned back. “How goes things with the hack into Jeannie’s computer?”
“Interesting.”
“What does that mean?” He rolled his chair closer to Stormi and glanced over her shoulder, scanning the code flashing across her screen.
“I’ve pulled off three encrypted files so far and dumped them to an external drive. I wanted to finish the scan before I tried opening them, but in the meantime, I’ve been able to read some of her emails. I’ve also made copies of all of that.”
“And?”
“Well, she’s been communicating with Samantha since before your ex met with her father. As a matter of fact.” Stormi tapped the keyboard. “According to that correspondence, it was Jeannie who told Samantha that she had what she was looking for and that if Samantha helped her, she’d help Samantha.”
“Interesting, but that was eight years ago.”
“My father began his work on the rocket boosters about ten years ago.”
“Your dad said that Jeannie did spend time in his lab,” Lincoln said. “He mentioned that she was always trying to worm her way in, even though her dad tried to keep her out. For a few years, your father felt sorry for her and gave her different things to do. But then David laid into him and threatened to fire him if he kept using Jeannie.”
“But you said David had a change of heart and told my dad to let her on the team.”
Lincoln nodded. “However, that wasn’t with the development of the project. More like a liaison between David, PR, and all the other teams that went into making that rocket take flight. The key here is that Samantha and Jeannie are working together. The question becomes, is David aware of what they are doing and is in on it, or is he oblivious?”
“I’m sure he’s just trying to save his own ass. Protect his investment. Zero Gravity has been one step behind other companies. David wants to be the leader.”
“That explosion set him back. It had to have pissed him off that his daughter and Samantha, who could also be his kid, fucked him over.”
“Kids do some pretty dumb things to get their parents’ attention.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Lincoln rubbed the back of his neck. “What kinds of things did you do?”
“I married Kurt.” She laughed. “But that backfired on me. All it did was bring a bigger divide. My father knew he was a snake. He told me I could come home, but I wasn’t to bring that dick with me. I dug my heels into the ground and told my old man to fuck off, something I’ve regretted for years.” She swiped at her cheeks. “When Kara told me my only choice was to fake my death, it killed me in a different way because I knew I’d never be able to see my dad again.”
He cupped her chin. “You will be reunited with your father if it’s the last thing I do.”
His computer sent off a warning bell. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?”
He rolled back to his screens. “Someone stopped the implementation of the program.” He tapped at the keyboard. “And kicked me out of the upload portal.” He tried again, but he was totally frozen out. “Well, they’re onto us.” He leaned back. “I can’t get back in; meanwhile, they’ve stolen my system through the portal.”
“Did the Trojan horse make it inside their system?”
“I have no idea. But even if it did, it doesn’t do us much good if I can’t get inside.” He rolled his neck as he tried the back door. “Well, fuck.” He pointed to the screen. “They’re uploading a new system now.”
“Nothing’s unhackable. You know that.” She pushed his chair to the side.
He grabbed her wrist. “No. That’s what they want us to do. It’s a trap.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He pointed to the break in the code that appeared on the screen. A break he put there, but it was bigger. More obvious than he’d intentionally made it. “Because that’s our invitation. That’s part of the Trojan horse. If they loaded it, they will see it. Samantha knows how I operate. Kurt knows you.”
“You’re going to give up that easily?”
He shook his head. “I’m going to call them out directly.”
“I don’t follow.”
He chuckled as he tapped his cell. “Just listen.” The cell rang twice. He tapped the speaker button as he pressed his finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
“Lincoln. How are you?” Samantha’s voice screeched across the airwaves, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Not good,” he said. “I have some bad news regarding Zero Gravity.”
“I thought you said you’d be done with the coding today?”
“Oh, I am. And I was just about to send it to you through the portal, but I wanted to check on something inside their system first. I wanted to see the hole and how it was created in the first place, making sure it wouldn’t happen again.”
“I take offense to that since I’m the one who wrote that code to begin with.”
Lincoln laughed. “That was a long time ago and things change. Cybersecurity is different and so is coding. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He swallowed the bitter taste of that lie. “The problem is someone already uploaded my new system.” He learned forward and stared at the code on the screen, studying the break. He had a couple of choices and decided to go the long way in. He moved his cursor down eight lines and found what he was looking for and started typing. He knew Samantha was watching. Or someone she was working with. Maybe Tony. Fucker. But they would be watching the Trojan horse. The break he created for them to delete. Or for him to use to hack in. They wouldn’t expect him to go in right under their noses. “I’m looking at it right now. It’s my program, only someone fucked with it. There are lines in there that I didn’t write and if you were to enter the system, you’d see it too.”
“I’m not sure I follow. How could it not be your coding? You’re not an easy man to copy. Your style is very unique.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but are you near a computer? Can you log in to the system? If you go to the portal and find line 20098, you’ll see exactly what I mean.”
Stormi scribbled something on a piece of paper.
Is that something Samantha would have written?
Lincoln nodded.
“How the hell did that happen?” Samantha asked. “Who has access to your computer? Or should I be asking, who the fuck have you been sleeping with? You know how sensitive this job is. I can’t believe you let that dick of yours cloud your judgment.”
Bingo.
Stormi folded her arms and glared between him and the phone on the desk.
“First off, I’m not the one with a cheating problem. That would be you.” Lincoln didn’t like having this argument with his ex, much less doing it in front of his current girlfriend.
If he could even call Stormi that.
But the whole point was to get Samantha going down that road. To get her to show her hand.
And that’s exactly what she was doing.
Now all he had to do was get her to come out of the shadows and show her pretty little face.
He found his way into Zero Gravity’s new system and pushed the keyboard over toward Stormi. He scribbled a quick note on a piece of paper.
Find what we need. You have fifteen minutes before they unjumble you.
“Semantics,” Samantha said. “This is a fucking mess. It’s overwritten the old system completely. It wasn’t even backed up.”
“There should have been some kind of protection in place in case the system went down. There’s got to be a copy of it somewhere. Don’t you have it?”
“Not the point, Lincoln. I’m going to have to pull them offline and go through this myself, line by line. Hell, I might as well write the damn system myself.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lincoln said. “I can go through it.”
“No. You’re the whole reason we’re in this fucking mess. I have no idea what I’m going to tell the client now. But you’re to stay as far away from this as possible. Except I want the name of the person who messed with your code. And don’t you fucking lie to me. What she did was criminal.”
“I’ll deal with her.”
“Like hell. She put my company at risk. Left me wide-open for all sorts of legal issues. I’m turning her in, unless you want to take the fall for her, because that’s exactly what will happen,” Samantha said.
His printer hummed to life.
Stormi leaned back, folded her arms over her chest, and smiled.
“Give me twenty-four hours, and then I’ll give up her name.”
“You’ve got two hours; otherwise, I’m giving up yours.” The line went dead.
“What did you find?” He turned Stormi’s chair, pressing his hands on her armrests.
“The goddamn fucking golden ticket, that’s what.” She clasped her hands on his cheeks and smacked her lips over his mouth. “I got my father’s original files. All of them. Every single last one.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Look for yourself.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “She had to do a data dump of the old system. While she was busy looking at your coding and what you did, I quickly opened, printed, and emailed it to me, you, and Kara. I made sure I closed it all out and then dumped it back into the abyss.”
Quickly, he snagged a few pages from the printout. “We’re going to need confirmation from your father that this is his rocket boosters.”
“There were two files. One front and center, tucked away in a digital hallway. But it was the one that was hidden that was clearly marked. I took a chance and peeked inside the one that was filed with letters and numbers that my father would use. That’s the one I printed. Not the one I believe she was trying to bait us with.”
“I hope you’re right.” He opened his top drawer and snagged his weapon, waving it over one of his screens. “Because we have unwanted company and the bitch brought Tony.” He leaned over and tapped a few keystrokes. “At the back door we have David and his daughter, so we’re outnumbered.” He lifted his cell and sent a message to Tal and a second one to Jimmy. “I don’t know about David or Jeannie and what kind of training they have with weapons. But Tony spent four years in the British Navy. And Samantha is damn good with a gun. I know that because I taught her how to shoot.” He took Stormi by the shoulders. “Can you handle a weapon?”
“Nope.”
He took a second gun from his collection and placed it in her hands. “It’s pretty simple. Aim and pull the trigger. Just don’t shoot me, okay?”
“I hate guns.”
“Don’t care. If push comes to shove and it’s a matter of your life or theirs, use it. Otherwise, pretend it’s not shoved in your pants.” He yanked the back of her jeans and placed it in the small of her back before pulling her shirt over it. “Let me do the talking.”
“You should know that when I’m nervous, I tend to shoot my mouth off.”
“Wonderful,” he said under his breath. He snagged the printout.
“What are you doing?” She glared.
“I will give it to them if they ask for it. The bigger problem will be the emails. Not sure how they will handle that because if they know you printed it, they will know you emailed it.”
“Um, Lincoln. They didn’t come here to collect anything.” She pointed to the screens. “They came here to kill us. By fire.”
He glanced up. His heart pulsated as he watched the front of his house flicker with flames. They crawled up the side of his home like a snake. He tapped a few keystrokes. The back of the house was already engulfed.
Crash.
Smash.
The sound of glass breaking echoed in the background.
More shattering glass filled his ears. The roar of a raging fire filled his ears.
The window to the office crackled as a bottle with a rag soaked with gas was hurled into the room.
“Look out!” He shoved her to the side.
The curtains caught fire.
“Can you still access my system?”
“Yeah. But we have to get out of here.” He tugged at her arm.
“No. You need to open lines of communication between our two systems. You need to data dump this into mine. I don’t think mine will be able to handle all of it, so just route the important stuff.” She pressed her hand on the door. “Jesus, it’s burning hot already. Do the dump now, and then we’ll crawl out the window.”
As quickly as he could, he hooked into her system. All he needed was his security files and the information on Zero Gravity. He sent those and then made a beeline for the window just as another firebomb came hurling at him. He ducked, tackling her to the floor.
She screamed. “What the hell was that?”
“Our death sentence,” he managed as he rolled left and right, dousing the fire that had managed to stick to their clothing. “Stay as low as you can.” He crawled toward the window, keeping her close. He lifted his head. Flames and smoke were everywhere.
The sound of the door slamming against the wall caught his attention. He glanced over his shoulder. Someone wearing fire gear and an oxygen mask entered the room.
Thank God.
Only that thought lasted ten seconds.
Whoever that person was raised a large object and before Lincoln could blink, the world went black.