Edge of Control: An Edge Security Novel (Edge Security Series Book 1) (8 page)

She passed it over the card reader beside the office entrance. The click of the door unlatching sounded like a gunshot in the quiet. She slipped inside and trotted down the dark hall, keeping her penlight pointed at the floor as she read the names off the small plaques beside each office door.

Boris Gromov, VP of Marketing. And beside that one was Ivan Gromov’s office. Apparently he was VP of Sales. They must have laughed at those titles. What was going on? She shivered and kept moving.

The next nameplate stated Vladimir Levkov, VP of Business Development. She panted as if running up a hill and focused on controlling her breathing.

If the Public Prosecutor was investigating the company for something, then Levkov’s involvement with Tassia looked seriously suspicious. Even though Tassia couldn’t have known that Vadim was really Vladimir, and connected to the company she investigated.

But then, if Levkov was who Dani thought he was, Tassia would have had a hard time resisting his charms. Dani prayed she was wrong.

Inside Levkov’s office, Dani made sure to shut the blinds so her penlight wouldn’t be seen from outside. She didn’t turn on the lights—she didn’t need to. The light from his computer monitor revealed his office as she touched his mouse to wake it. It asked for a password.

She pulled her laptop out of her tote, and after setting it beside his computer, she plugged it into his system. She’d recently upgraded the graphics processing card that would let her brute-force cracking code run faster on the GPU rather than the laptop’s CPU. She set her program parameters and let it fly.

While her system went to work, she explored the office. A bookshelf held a few books on art, though dust covered them, as well as the rest of the empty shelf space. A check of his desk drawers revealed two pens, a pad of paper, and some receipts from a nearby Chinese restaurant. No pictures or anything personal sat anywhere in the office.

Dani frowned as her laptop beeped at her. It had taken all of two minutes to crack his password.

Kotyonok
.

The Russian word for kitten. It was the pet name Vladimir had called her.

Ice traveled from her core outward, while her heart thundered in her ears. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to slow her racing heart. She should have followed Tass on her date rather than indulging her curiosity and cracking E.D.G.E.’s inner firewalls.

She ignored the impulse to run and forced herself to go through Levkov’s system. Though she knew that wasn’t his real name. A few minutes later she sat back, frowning. Nothing. As far as she could tell, only video games had been played on this computer. Even the email was nonexistent.

What was going on here? She packed up her system and decided to dig deeper, her curiosity driving her as much as her need to find her friend. She walked down the hallway until she came to the corner office. The president of the company.

Dmitri Levkov.

She paled. She could no longer deny it. It wasn’t the right last name, but the name Dmitri confirmed her suspicions. The Levkov name had to be a cover for Dmitri and Vladimir, the ruler and heir-apparent of the Rusakov family—one of the largest Russian mafia families in North America. She’d been hiding from the
Bratva
for five years now. The only reason she’d thought she was safe in Montreal was that Vladimir had been sent to Russia by his family as punishment.

For killing her.

He was obviously back and working in the family business again. And here she was, breaking into one of their offices. Nausea threatened to bring her to her knees.

“Just get the information, Dani,” she muttered to herself.

Inside, she ran her fingers over the books decorating one wall. A small filing cabinet only held a few files of art transactions. She sat down at the large, polished wood desk and sighed.

Dmitri had a Cyrillic alphabet keyboard, which would make things more difficult, but not impossible. Her Russian reading skills were rusty, so she added a translating program from Russian to English before she started the cracking program.

As her system went to work, she checked Dmitri’s desk. Nothing interesting, and she prayed for Tassia’s sake that there was something more useful on his system than video games.

Her laptop came up with Dmitri’s password and she set to work. She dug through his files, moving slowly because she had to translate what she was seeing. She tapped her fingers on the desk and glanced at the wall clock. 11:45. She bit her lip. She’d already been here longer than she wanted.

His email revealed sparse conversations with a couple of galleries in the city. Not enough for a healthy art-import business. There were a few messages from the Office of Public Prosecution relating their intent to investigate Volka.

The clock now said 12:15.

The back of her neck prickled with unease. Cutting off the email, she inserted a backdoor program into Dmitri’s system so she could enter remotely, bypassing the major firewalls she’d found earlier. She bit her lip and surveyed the sparse office. Why have such sturdy firewalls if there wasn’t anything to find? He must have information somewhere. Probably on a home computer or laptop. She needed to dig deeper.

She found files on imports and exports for the company and a list of shipping records. She downloaded that onto a flash drive as well as her laptop. Sweat trickled down her back. She needed to get out of here, but she wanted to explore just a bit more.

She did a quick scan of his calendar and sucked in a breath. Dmitri Levkov, business leader, was hosting a party this weekend. The details included a guest list of over a hundred people.

She bit her lip and then added a name to the list.

D. Everett
.

Jake kept his Sig Sauer P226 in the holster at the small of his back as he ran silently down the stairs to the fourth floor. He didn’t expect any action, and he could handle any security he might encounter with his hands. He’d much prefer a guard to wake up with a headache than to kill an innocent man just doing his job.

Before he opened the door to the fourth floor, he keyed his mic.

“Zero, this is Alpha, over,” he said quietly.

Rhys’s voice came over the earpiece. “Alpha this is Zero. Five by five, over.”

“Zero, I’m heading in. Wait out.” He entered the dark hall and made his way down to the Volga Group, one of the business fronts of the Rusakov family. He pulled out a metal piece of tech about the size of a credit card that Mike had given him. He swiped it over the keycard scanner and the doors clicked open.

After a cursory look around, he planted bugs under the receptionist desk and in the phone. Apparently with these cool toys, Mike and his team would be able to remotely access Volga’s servers. They’d wanted it in an innocuous system, figuring they might be detected in the VP’s offices.

“Zero, the rats are deployed. Over.”

“Copy that, Alpha. Exfil. Over.”

“Roger, Zero. Wilco. Out.” Jake went back to the stairwell, planning on heading back to the roof, where he would rappel down to the street. But as he touched the door, a flicker of light from Volga’s hallway made him pause. Someone with a flashlight was coming this way.

He faded into the shadows near the bathrooms and waited, wondering who else was breaking and entering tonight, and why.

“Zero,” he breathed. “We have trouble. Over.”

“Define trouble. Over.” Rhys’s voice sounded resigned. Did he think Jake went looking for it?

“Looks like another nighttime visitor, Zero. Will investigate. Wait out.”

A figure in black wearing a ski mask like his paused on the other side of the glass doors, in the shadows, waiting like a mouse to see if a cat was around.

The figure was slight. Female. She knew not to rush and hadn’t set off any alarms. She’d obviously done this before. She moved slightly and recognition flared through Jake. His lips compressed.

Danielle.

What was she up to?

Jake kept his muscles relaxed and his breathing unhurried. He could out-wait her. He wanted to see what she would do next.

Five minutes later, Jake smiled. Dani crept toward the glass doors and opened them quietly before cautiously stepping into the hall. She carried the large tote that she’d had earlier. Jake waited until the doors swung shut before showing himself.

“Nice night for a little breaking and entering,” he said.

Dani’s eyes rounded behind the mask. She dropped her bag and swung her leg into a roundhouse kick. He blocked it, and the following punch-kick combination. She was good, but not good enough.

He grabbed her arm and twisted it up behind her. “What are you doing here?”

She stiffened, but didn’t answer him. Suddenly, she went limp and became dead weight in his arms. Jake eased her to the floor, a plan forming in his mind.

He let go of her arm. “Did you really just faint?” he asked skeptically.

She swung a punch at his dick. He jerked aside while she leapt to her feet and spun into a back kick thrust to his stomach. He let it hit with a grunt and didn’t grab her leg to subdue her, though he easily could have. She had to think she’d bested him.

Dani grabbed her tote and sprinted for the stairwell.

Now, it was time to see where the rabbit ran.

Dani nibbled on her pencil as she stared at the files she’d dug up on Dmitri’s computer.

She yawned and sipped at her glass of wine. It was closing in on two o’clock in the morning, and she should get some sleep or she’d be a mess at work tomorrow. She’d just been too wired when she first got home. Jumping at every sound, thinking Jake had followed her. Eventually she’d changed into a tank top and boxers and poured herself a glass of wine. Jake couldn’t know it was her.

Could he?

She shook her head. When he’d first stepped out of the shadows, her heart had leapt so hard she hadn’t been able to recognize his voice. But she’d known who it was after he’d spoken the second time, when he’d shoved her arm up her back. She rolled her shoulder where it still twinged. He’d been fast and strong. She’d never fought someone like him. She shivered at the thought of all that strength.

She gulped her wine. Enough of that. If he’d suspected who she was, then he’d have already shown up here. No. She’d gotten away with it.

Barely.

Now she just had to figure out what Dmitri and Vladimir were hiding and how it connected to Tassia.

She stared at the Excel database of import and export transactions. The import side had about twenty items come in every six to eight weeks, but there was no reference to what they were or how much each cost.

Each piece of art should be a different price, but it looked like the same amount of money was paid no matter the amount of items shipped and received.

The export side of things was even stranger. The company took advantage of the same shipping crate and sent back only one or two items each time. These few items usually paid almost as much as the entire batch of imported ones.

Dani leaned back in her desk chair. Dmitri wasn’t an art dealer. The Rusakov family mainly trafficked drugs. There was no way they’d gone legit. She ran her fingers through her hair.

Her skin prickled as a cool draft brushed over her bare shoulders. She whirled in her desk chair. Jake stood by the balcony door in black combat gear and boots. A belt with various pouches on it emphasized his narrow waist. He no longer wore the ski mask.

She screamed and chucked her empty wine glass at him. He dodged it and stepped closer. Her heart thudded hard in her chest. She threw her wireless mouse, a romance novel, and her mug of pencils, her hand scrabbling along her desk for something else.

“Would you relax?” he said in between dodging projectiles. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She picked up her cellphone, changed her mind, and put it back down. “Like I’m supposed to believe you?” She grabbed a glass paperweight and heaved it. “You broke into my apartment!”

He caught the paperweight easily and set it on a side table. “Like you broke into the Volga Group tonight?”

Dani stilled, her mind racing. “What do you want?”

He studied her for a minute, and she remembered she stood there in her skimpy black tank and boxers. She crossed her arms. “I
said
, what do you want?”

He sighed. “I’m not sure, really. I should have reported you immediately, but…” He rubbed a hand through his dark hair, his gray eyes on hers. “I’m giving you a chance. I want the truth. Why did you break in? What were you doing?”

Dani stepped back. Could she trust him? Would he help her? She wasn’t used to being able to depend on people; most had turned on her at some point.

But Chuck hadn’t.

And neither had Tassia.

Tassia needed her, and everything Dani could do to help her, even if it included trusting Jake. Dani stared into his pale eyes so full of questions. He stood with his arms loose by his sides as he waited for her decision. It was as if she could feel him silently imploring her to trust him. She opened her mouth to explain when his gaze flicked to her laptop screen and the open files.

He scowled and his whole demeanor changed. Gone was the solid, compassionate man, and in his place stood a ruthless soldier.

“You hacked into their system?” He shook his head. “Do you know who these people are? What they’re capable of?” He stepped in close, looming over her. She hadn’t realized he was so tall, but this close she had to tilt her chin to keep eye contact.

She couldn’t tell him that she knew the Rusakov family. That the prodigal son had been obsessed with her. He wouldn’t understand. And he’d want to tell the others at E.D.G.E.

She’d been a fool to think she could trust him. He was a SEAL who got the job done, no matter the cost.

He stepped closer, as if trying to intimidate her. “Tell me, do you?” he ordered.

She refused to back up, just lifted her chin higher. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His lips twitched slightly before his face became cold again. “Seriously?” He now stood so close that if she took a deep breath her breasts would brush his chest. His voice lowered. “Do you realize what I could do to you?”