The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (10 page)

“Well, he
did
have to make sure you became an international fugitive,” I point out.

“Yeah,” Grant sighs. “There
is
THAT
.
”

The wheels in my head start turning. “Did you happen to have any sort of tracking devices on the paintings?”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know –
in case they got stolen?”

He gives me a wry look. “If somebody found them in the first place, I wouldn’t worry about them being stolen. I’d worry about my reputation getting trashed and having to go on the run – kind of like I am now.”

“So you didn’t use any kind of tracking?” I ask, disappointed.

“You saw them. Did you notice any cell phone-sized gadgets attached to them?”

“Cell phones do a thousand other things than GPS, dumbass,” I snap. “That’s why they’re so big. You could have used transmitters the size of a pill and glued them to the insides of the frames.”

He looks at me, dumbfounded. “Really?”

“Yes, really – as long as they had a power source to keep them charged. And if you
had,
then I could have tracked the transmitter anywhere in the world – including back to Epicurus’s home base.”

“…shit…”

“In fact,” I say, thinking aloud, “it might not be a bad idea for
us
to wear some GPS tracking devices…”

“What?! Why?!”

“Well, for one thing, we’d be able to keep track of each other. If one of us was wounded or kidnapped – ”

“Fuck no,” Grant says, his knee-jerk reaction at high alert.

“I agree,” JP says. “Fuck no.”

“Why not?”

“Because then Epicurus could find us!” Grant says, as though it’s obvious.

“What?!
No.
That’s not how GPS works. You’d have to know the specific ID of the transmitters to track them. Otherwise you’d never know they were there. Except, you know, unless you physically
searched
and found them.”

“But the government can track cell phones.”

“Completely different. That’s computer devices that have to be connected to a network to – ”

“NO,” Grant says.

“But I could make it uncrackable – ”

“Forget it.”

I sigh.

All great ideas are always initially rejected out of hand.

After my sudden, glorious discovery of a clue, it’s almost immediately proved worthless. There’s no way to use the knowledge about the missing paintings, and nothing else in the police report is useful.

At least the spaghetti is delicious. JP may be a slob in the housekeeping department, but he’s a damn fine cook.

Things thaw out a bit as the wine begins to flow. There’s some reminiscing about the past, some jokes, even a little bit of speculation on how we can find Epicurus.

Throughout, Dominique is pissy and refuses to speak. Which is A-OK by me.

As the meal is wrapping up, JP gets a phone call. He talks in French a little, but mostly he just listens. When he hangs up, he looks the most depressed I’ve seen him since Grant walked in this morning and dragooned him into helping us.

“Who was that?” Grant asks.

“
Mon ami de la police
. ”

“Why the long face? Did he not have any info?”

“Au contraire.
He had a great deal to tell me.”

According to the mole, the police were tipped off last night by Interpol, who knew that a private jet with ‘international fugitives’ would be landing in France. Apparently Mike had had to provide a flight plan upon entering French airspace so as not to get shot down by the military. (After 9/11, national governments take things like unidentified airplanes very seriously.) Once the flight plan was filed, it was a simple matter of scrambling officers to intercept us at the landing field.

“Why did the cops get involved?” I asked. “Why didn’t Interpol show up?”

“Contrary to what you see in movies, Interpol’s just an organization where a bunch of different countries’ law enforcement agencies share information with each other,” Grant explains. “The U.S. and Europe don’t want some kind of super law enforcement agency that can override their jurisdictions, so Interpol doesn’t have any agents capable of making arrests. All they could do was let the local cops know we were coming.”

“Sounds like you’ve had some experience with Interpol,” I say.

“As an international cat burglar? Oh yes. Most definitely.”

“Fucking Interpol…” JP mutters under his breath.

“The question is,” Grant continues, “how did they know we were coming?”

“Epicurus must have told them,” I say.

“Yeah, but how? It’s not like there’s some sort of anonymous Interpol tip line.”

“Epicurus could easily find out the right person to contact,” I point out. “All he would have to do is hack their directory.”

“Could you hack them, too?” Grant asks. “Find out where the information came from?”

“Actually, yeah,” I realize.

“Quoi?!”
Dominique cries out.

“
Putain d’merde,
” JP swears. “No. Bad idea. No.”

“Calm down,” Grant says. “She’s good –
really
good.”

His vote of confidence makes me feel warm inside, even if it does nothing to reassure the others.            

JP is noticeably agitated. “Look –
pas d’offense –
but
banks in the Caribbean are one thing. One does not fuck with Interpol.”

“Oh yeah?” I say with a lot more smugness than I would normally allow myself. “Pull up a seat, you’re about to watch Interpol get fucked.”

That was probably the wine talking.

“Eve…” Grant cautions me.

“Sorry,” I say. “Couldn’t resist.”

Dominique and Jean-Paul are freaking out now.

“Relax,” Grant says to them. “It’s fine. If she says she can do it, she can do it.”

“You want to fuck with the devil and expect us to say, ‘Oh, sure, go ahead’?” JP snarls. “You are fucking insane.”

“I am leaving if you do this,” Dominique threatens.

“Then leave,” Grant says coldly. “I trust Eve. If you don’t trust me, then get out.”

Oooooooohhh.

Little Miss French Film Star just got her ass handed to her.

She stands there, deciding on which is the worse option: losing Grant totally and completely, or trusting me.

Apparently she decides she must still have a shot at stealing Grant, because she throws up her hands, scowls at me, and lets loose with a barrage of French curses.

Jean-Paul’s not going down without a fight, though. “This is my apartment, you asshole!” he shouts at Grant.

Grant jabs a finger at him savagely. “You signed up for this, remember? Ten million dollars,
remember?”

JP sinks down on a chair and buries his head in his hands as he whispers repeatedly, “
Putain d’merde, putain d’merde, putain d’merde…
”

I set about my business with an unusual amount of glee.

Time to hack Interpol.

It turns out Interpol is one of the hardest hacks I’ve ever done. Not because of their system; far from it. No, because of the bullshit going on around me.

The entire time, JP and Dominique are at my elbow, watching the monitor like it’s the Super Bowl and they’ve got a hundred thousand dollars riding on the team currently down six points in the fourth quarter.

It’s pointless for Dominique to be glued to the screen, since I’m pretty sure she has no idea what the strings of numbers and codes mean.

JP knows just enough coding to be dangerous – and annoying. He makes panicked comment after panicked comment, non-stop.

“
Bordel –
do you want to do that?”

“
Merde –
really?!”

“
Putain d’merde!”

“Would you shut the fuck up?” I hiss at one point.

“I thought you do not know French!” he exclaims.

“I don’t.”

“But Interpol is based in Lyons, France!”

My face goes blank – then my eyes widen in terror.

“OH NO!” I scream. “OH MY GOD!”

At that point, both he and Dominique proceed to have a heart attack. JP actually ends up on the ground in a fetal position, while Dominique dry heaves in the bathroom.

Grant stands next to me calmly and watches the chaos. “That was cruel.”

I grin. “But it was fun. And they’ve stopped the backseat driving for at least a few minutes.”

“But JP has a point – Interpol is based in France, so how can you understand their stuff?”

“Interpol’s composed of international agencies, right? The only language they all have in common is English, so their system is designed for that.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense…”

“Not to mention that Unix is Unix, no matter what language the operators speak.”

“…I have no idea what that means.”

“Just stand there and look pretty while I do my thing,” I tease him.

When our French comrades finally pull themselves together and start planning their escape from the apartment, Grant explains my prank.

The only thing that keeps them from killing me is the fact that if I mess up at this point, Interpol really
will
find out our location.

Or so I tell them.

That keeps them quiet.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m in.

“You are inside Interpol?” JP asks in awe.

“Yes.”

“Really?” Dominique whispers. For the first time, she’s not being a bitch towards me. More like a wide-eyed little girl.

“Yes,” I repeat.

“There is no way they can find you?” JP asks.

“No.”

“…can you erase some criminal records for me?”

“NO!”

“We’re here to find out one thing and one thing only,” Grant scolds him.

“But – ”          

“NO,” both Grant and I say at the same time.

I plow through the system for another ten minutes, getting JP to translate, until I come across a file marked ‘Confidential,’ delivered this morning at 12:17 AM local time. I open it up and JP reads it to me in English. It’s all pretty standard – until he stops speaking. He staggers back a little, blindly reaching for his chair with one hand, then sits down.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

“
Putain d’merde,”
is all he can reply.

I look at Grant. “Does it reveal the source of the leak to Interpol?”

“Yeah,” Grant says grimly.

“Is it Epicurus?!” I ask excitedly.

“I hope not.”

“Why?”

“Because the leak came from the NSA.”

It takes me a second to get my head around that.

“…
our
NSA?”

“Yes.”

The National Security Agency.

The United States’ National Security Agency ratted us out to Interpol.

As far as national bugaboos go, most conspiracy theorists would list the CIA as the most threatening organization officially sanctioned by any government on Earth.

Sure, true-blue American patriots might go with the KGB – but the KGB is gone, a relic of the Communist past, now rolled into some other agency.

The CIA is still alive and kicking. In the last five decades, you’ve got multiple ventures to overthrow other countries’ democratically elected administrations… collusion with drug traffickers to fund arms deals for foreign paramilitary groups… and assassination plots up the wazoo. Not to mention the roving torture ‘black sites’ used by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Allegedly.

Pretty scary, right?

For my money, though, the NSA is scarier, because it’s the biggest global intelligence agency on the planet.

The CIA is only supposed to work internationally. They can’t legally do anything on American soil, and they only concern themselves with foreigners.

Not so the NSA. Their territory is the internet, which is both domestic
and
international. They are possibly –
probably
– monitoring every email you send, every phone call you make, every GPS coordinate on your phone.

But wait – they shouldn’t be keeping tabs on
you!
YOU’RE an American citizen!

Hahahahahahahaha!

SO?

You think that makes any difference?

The CIA has been well-known for decades, with a public hierarchy of officials who regularly report to Congress.

The NSA is largely unknown, with a legion of faceless bureaucrats who control a budget equal to the CIA’s. Which is pretty incredible, since the CIA has secret agents stationed in every country on earth… and the NSA has a gigantic server farm in Utah.

Nobody knows anything about the NSA for sure, because their funding is buried so deep in the federal budget that not even Paul Ryan could find it with a backhoe and a spotlight.

The NSA are the only people on the planet who know what you are doing, what you have done, and what you are likely to do, all from watching you online. Facebook accounts, cell phone calls, porn site visits, emails, doesn’t matter – they have access to it. Legal or illegal, it doesn’t really matter, because they almost never get held accountable. The only reason why anyone knows they were spying on American citizens at all is because Edward Snowden blew the whistle on them. Whether you hate him or love him for it, Snowden’s the only person who has shined any sort of light on the vast behemoth that tracks our every digital interaction on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis.

Again… allegedly.

Because no one really knows for sure… except the NSA.

In his book
1984
, George Orwell called his fictional government’s all-seeing, all-knowing intelligence agency ‘Big Brother.’

That’s another way of spelling ‘National Security Agency.’

As a hacker, I am very wary of the CIA.

I am terrified of the NSA.

Why?

Because they’re the only people on earth who have a decent shot at catching me.

If Epicurus is in any way connected to them, that means he has the full weight of the biggest spy agency on Earth behind him. Not to mention the backing of the United States Government. Plus a team of people at his disposal who are uniquely qualified at finding me and Grant.