Seek and Destroy (34 page)

    She knew better than that. Surreal had his MO. Every person did. That's how she found David, and it would be how she'd find Surreal. He loved to make an entrance, loved every bit of attention he drew. No way would he sneak into a site undetected. He'd make sure she saw him.

    As if on queue, one of the tracers picked up Surreal's entrance and started sending back information. Her beeper started buzzing and blinking. Her heart fluttered. She set her coffee down on a coaster and immediately started analyzing the data.

    "We got a hit," she told him after she positively ID'd the IP address. "It's him."

    "It's about damn time," David muttered and scooted his chair even closer. A series of chills washed up her spine. "Where is he?"

    "Could you..." She motioned for him to move back. He furrowed his brow, but did as she asked. Finally, she reached her keyboard with both hands. That, and could finally draw in a breath.

    "It isn't that easy." She followed his trail from the airport's surveillance site to their passenger database. She smiled as she watched him confirm their flight into Washington DC. Then, just as she predicted he would, he hacked into that surveillance site. "He took the bait."

    He leaned forward. "He thinks we're in DC?"

    She nodded. Surreal may be a gifted hacker, but he didn't have the sense God gave a goat. He always took the obvious path, the one of least resistance. "He'll spend half the day searching their surveillance databanks to try and spot us. Knowing Surreal, he'll get pissed when he realizes it was a decoy and go back to SeaTac's passenger list to see if he can find out where we really went. Hands down he won't even attempt to cover his tracks in his haste to find us. He'd forget his own name when he was in a hurry. He was always predictable that way."

    He sat back, sipped at his coffee. His eyes remained hooded, dark and clouded as he kept them riveted to the monitor. "So you know him pretty well?"

    "Well enough." She didn't want to tell him they'd shared just about every waking moment together the first six months of his recruitment. She'd been completely taken with him. Charming. Good looking. The way his playful blond hair always fell into his brown eyes. Everyone thought they'd be the perfect match for each other. For a short time, she thought the same.

    Thank God she'd seen through that. So they'd shared a few drinks. A moment of weakness. A kiss. It wasn't like they picked curtains out together.

    Closing her eyes, she still felt the way his kiss made her tighten in apprehension. It felt so wrong. When she tried to break the kiss, he wouldn't take no for an answer, confirming her fear.

    He'd attacked her. If she hadn't been a great shot with her knee straight into his groin, who knows what might have happened? She'd made sure they were never alone together again after that.

    When Thomas had his first solo assignment, she kept tabs on him without his knowledge. It was protocol at ICE. The handler had to monitor the recruit for the first year of their appointment.

    He was brilliant, she had to admit. The first few assignments went off without a hitch. He'd been able to successfully track down the intel needed in time to avert whatever impending disaster loomed in the information. He'd been a good data retriever. Great, even.

    The first time she noted the anomaly in his tracking, she'd been unsure what she'd seen. He'd been right there, right at the retrieval point. And then he'd dropped the connection. She'd kept quiet, positive he'd simply made a rookie mistake.

    But then he made the same mistake on another data retrieval. And another. She took a gamble and started mining his keystrokes. What she'd seen still turned her insides, made her sick at the memory, sick knowing she'd taught him everything he knew. Sick knowing she'd given him the power to become what he eventually became.

    Thomas had not only been sabotaging his data retrievals, he secretly collected the confidential data and sold it off to the highest bidder. Seeing that convinced her. Thomas Macy was nothing more than a cold, savage cyber-terrorist. A man who'd used her to gain access into one of the highest intel retrieval agencies in the world.

    It had taken her less than a minute to lock out his access and have security take him into custody. She'd refused to even look at him as they dragged him out of the building. Because the data he'd sold didn't, in itself, threaten national security, he got off with a slap on the wrist and a don't-do-it-again lecture.

    Even now it ticked her off. She'd handed him to them. They didn't consider him a threat, they'd said. And then he'd turned into America's Most Wanted.

    By the time she'd been able to track him down to that shack in the mountains, he'd already been responsible for the destruction of three major database systems by blowing up their server rooms. The explosions collectively killed over a hundred people.

    She pulled up his past keystrokes on another monitor. It didn't make any sense. Why would he be sniffing around so many different sites? None of them had any connection to him, or to each other. Railway Transportation, Inc. Rite of Passage Ceremonies. Ray's Discount World. Riverside Consulting, LLC.

    Her eyes paused on the last name. That had to be it. He was scanning for his next target. She'd heard of Riverside. They were a technology consulting firm based out of Modesto, CA, and the only one he'd pulled down the blueprint for the building. "David, look at this."

    "What?" He stood up and leaned so close to her the warmth of his breath tickled her neck. Her skin hummed.

    Charis watched on another monitor as Surreal successfully hacked into DC's surveillance. She added a data miner to his keystrokes to monitor his progress and went back to analyzing his past keystrokes. "He scanned their server IPs for these four buildings." She pointed at the names on her screen. "He stopped at this one."

    "Riverside Consulting," David read the name aloud. "Is that where he is now?"

    She shook her head and eyed her other monitor, confirming one of Surreal's plethora of IP addresses still logged into DC's surveillance. "I was analyzing his past keystrokes when I stumbled across the different hacks."

    He stiffened. "How long ago were the hacks?"

    Squinting to focus, she continued tracing his steps until she found a date and time. "Looks like he hit them three days ago."

    "Shit," he muttered. "Find me each of their locations and the number to their head of security."

    "You'll only need Riverside's," she pointed out and jumped to another monitor to pull their information, knowing he'd ask her for it.

    "How do you know that's his next target?"

    "It's the only one he pulled the blueprints on." She pointed to the line on her monitor that backed up her comment. He pushed away from the desk. "Where are you going?"

    "I need to pull their security together and start an evac as soon as you have a bead on-"

    "Got it," she cut him off and printed out the information. "It's in Modesto, California."

    "Thanks," he said and grabbed the paper. "I don't want anyone within five hundred feet of that building until our people have done a thorough search. We've got an hour lead on them due to the time difference, but we need to move fast. And I've got to get a team deployed there for retrieval of the device."

    He grabbed her cordless receiver, punched in numbers.

    "What are you going to do first?" she asked, her heart in her throat, not sure whether she liked having this kind of excitement in her life. She didn't feel excited. She felt anxious, cautious.
Scared
.

    He held the receiver to his ear. "His MO is a building a week. We still have four days. I'm calling for transport. I want this son-of-a-bitch, I want to be there and pick him up personally." His attention went back to the phone. "Secure the line." He paused, nodded. "NASSD. Bravo-Delta-Three-Two-Three. We have a situation."

    

    

    His fingers caressed the keys, his thumb resting on the space bar. Why wouldn't they hurry up? The two men inside the server room had been there all morning. No one took that long to install a server.

    Idiots. With the instructions he sent along with the replacement server, a monkey would be able to install the damn thing. After hacking in and mutilating the old one, they had no choice.

    "Come on, come on," he taunted, the tension coursing through his veins. Waiting around for two of the goddamn stupidest human beings to ever walk upright to install the server hadn't been part of the plan. Of course, he still had another four days before he blew the room, but come on. At this rate, they'd still be installing the damn thing next week.

    Even that wouldn't be long enough, not with these two dickstains. Charis waited for him. Every step in his plan ended with her rewarding him by making love to him, showing him her gratitude. This plan went into play two days ago when he blew out their old server. He'd made love to her after that. He intercepted the call for the new server order that afternoon and promised a new one onsite the next day. When it arrived, she'd been so excited at how well the plan progressed, so impressed with how smoothly he carried out his plans, all for her.

    He'd planned two hours for the install. Two! They were going on four hours. Charis wouldn't be pleased. She'd been waiting for him. He'd be damned if these two morons were going to get in the way of him and her joining together in the bonds of their love.

    Wait. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the present. Charis was here, right? He heard her voice, felt her with him. Or, was it her memory he felt? He found it harder and harder deciphering reality from fantasy. And really didn't give a shit. His fantasy world welcomed him, and it meant so much more to him than anything in reality. In his world Charis loved him,
made
love to him. The horny little minx couldn't get enough of his cock. And he loved to fuck her. His dick twitched, anxiously awaiting its chance to bury deep inside her cunt, to come hard, exploding his life in her. He thought about what their kids would look like and smiled.

    He brought his attention back to the monitors. If those idiots didn't hurry up, he'd ignore his conscience, his plan and timeline, and blow them to Hell where they belong.

    Surreal watched as the door buzzed open and a security guard entered the server room. He seemed agitated. Odd. Leaning in, he tried to read the man's lips. Not for the first time, he wished he had installed audio on his device. This would be the last time he left that piece out of his plan. Two of the other buildings had audio in their surveillance feed-an added bonus. But he would not take that for granted again.

    He'd make sure he heard every word from now on.

    The guard motioned for them to follow him out. They both shook their heads, pointing at the server. The guard seemed adamant. He even marched up to one of the men and pulled him out of the chair.

    What the hell was going on? Surreal switched over to their security system. No hits. The fire alarm hadn't gone off. And it sure as hell wasn't lunchtime.

    
Now
. He read the guard's lips. His hands made an upward motion, his fingers expanding out. Surreal tensed. That sure looked like him mimicking a bomb blowing up.

    Oh Shit. Could they be on to him? Nah. They weren't that smart. Two more security guards came in. They seemed to be searching for something.

    And then chaos erupted. The goddamn fire alarm went off. His system picked up on the alarm and sent an alarm to Surreal's monitor. "Son-of-a-bitch. No. No! NO! Not now. Why now?" He scrambled to hack back into the security system to see where it had been set off.

    Screw his secure ID. ICE hadn't been able to track him before, they wouldn't be able to pick him up now. He ignored his usual paranoia for covering his tracks and jumped into their system with his base IP. And hit the jackpot. The fire alarm had been set off from the lower southeast corner.

    Right outside the server room.

    
No!
No way would he allow these ridiculous excuses for IT experts to ruin his plan. Thank God the idiots stayed put for another three minutes as they continued to work on the install. One more step and they'd secure his connection to their server, and to the bomb that would blow them into another zip code.

    "Come on," he urged at the monitor. "Just one more step." He watched as the man executed the step he'd been waiting for, securing the IP. Without that he couldn't connect to the server and detonate the device. Good. Now to see what in the hell set off the alarm.

    He switched views. People scattered in all directions. In the halls. In the stairwells. Starting to gather outside.

    Goddamn it! They were going to ruin everything.

    "Go back inside!" Screaming at his monitor, he doubled-up his fists and started punching his desk. "Go! Back! Inside!" He emphasized his words by slamming his fists against the metal desk.

    Hands now aching, he brought them to the keyboard and switched the view back to the server room.

    The IT idiots stood. One grabbed his coat.

    They were leaving. But...but...they couldn't leave! He couldn't blow them up if they weren't there. If he didn't kill them, blow out their server room, Charis wouldn't be pleased and may not want to service him. He'd have to force himself on her and, although deep down he knew she'd want him to do just that, she'd still be unhappy it came to that.

    "Don't fuck with me," he growled as he pressed the space bar. The first explosion took out the two idiots who couldn't install a suppository up their ass, and the three security guards who had the unfortunate luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.