The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (28 page)

That’s what it all boils down to: arrogance and foolhardiness.

I can’t afford any of my own. Not with Grant’s life hanging in the balance.

I hit the ESCAPE button, which ejects me from the satellite feed. I breathe out a huge sigh. “You’re right. Thanks for talking me down off the ledge.”

Mailin grins. “And you thought I couldn’t help.”

I look at him and try to smile, but can’t quite do it. I’m terrified for Grant, and I feel so damn helpless.

Mailin can see it in my face. “It’s going to be okay,” he says soothingly. “It will, I know it.”

I wish
I
knew that.

But what I
don’t
want to do is make the situation worse.

So I wait out the entire flight.

It’s the longest ten hours of my entire life.

If you’ve ever flown from Europe to New York, that last sentence might have given you pause. That’s because it’s an eight-hour commercial flight. Seven if you only count the time in the air.

Six hours in, we realize Grant’s plane isn’t landing in New York. The tracking dot on my laptop bypasses Manhattan and keeps on going.

“Where’s he heading?” Duplass asks. “Los Angeles?”

I zoom out the map and use a piece of paper as a straight-edge. “Unless they change course… it could be Utah.”

“You’re not still on that NSA conspiracy kick, are you?” Duplass asks in a withering voice.

Mailin and I didn’t tell Duplass what we’d found on the satellite feed. No need to admit to more felonies than necessary.

But Mailin exchanges looks with me. He knows I’m right.

“It could be San Francisco,” I offer. “It’s the same trajectory.”

“San Francisco?” Duplass asked. “Why there?”

I think for a second. “Silicon Valley, maybe. Epicurus
is
a techie, there’s no doubt about that.”

I say it just to placate Duplass. I’m pretty damn sure we’re headed for Utah.

“Huh,” the FBI agent says, and strokes his chin thoughtfully. I guess ‘asshole Silicon Valley hacker’ is much preferable to ‘NSA ghoul’ on his list of conspiracy theories. “Were you ever able to hack the plane?”

“No,” I say, sticking to the simplest version possible.

“Yeah, I figured you were more bark than bite,” he sneers, and sits down opposite me again.

Asshole.

But it turns out the joke’s on me, because the plane flies past Utah, straight on to Nevada – and in a direct line with the Bay Area.

“You really think it’s San Francisco?” Mailin asks.

“I guess. It makes sense… sort of.” I look over at Duplass. “Now that we know where they’re headed, can we get right behind them? Maybe land immediately after them?”

“We’re not arresting them on the tarmac, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Why not?!” I demand.

“Because I’m doing this to catch the guy who was behind the deaths of two of my agents, that’s why. Carlson is a distant second.”

My anger nearly boils over, but I remind myself that I knew Duplass’s priorities from the beginning. That’s how I was able to manipulate him into letting me come along.

“I understand,” I say, holding my temper. “But we want to cut their lead time by as much as possible… just in case.”

“Alright,” Duplass says. “Agent Walker, go ask the pilot how close we can get to them.”

Mailin stands up.

“Hold on,” I say, and activate one of the GPS trackers left over in the backpack. Within sixty seconds, our position appears onscreen in my computer program. “Tell him we’re about 200 miles behind them.”

“Okay,” Mailin says, and heads for the cockpit.

“Have you got a team standing by for when we land?” I ask Duplass.

“No.”

That part I
can’t
believe. “Why not?!”

“Not until we get confirmation Carlson’s actually on the plane.”

“We might not
ever
be able to get confirmation of that! Not if they’re too far ahead of us!”

“I’m going to have a hard enough time explaining why I couldn’t provide the Bureau with a flight plan for this little trip,” Duplass barks. “I’m not about to risk my job if it turns out that all they did was fly the GPS unit to San Francisco to fuck with us.”

That’s when it hits me: Duplass really doesn’t give a shit if Grant dies. As long as he gets Epicurus, that’s all that matters.

And if he doesn’t get Epicurus?

Oh well, so long as he keeps his job.

Grant? Fuck him. Dead or alive, doesn’t matter to Duplass.

I’m about to shout and cuss up a storm – but then I realize that the FBI agent’s assholishness might actually work in my favor.

Epicurus is tied into the Federal Government somehow. If an FBI team scrambles suddenly in San Francisco, it might alert him that we know where he is.

I sat on my hands for eight hours in order not to blow our cover; I’m not about to blow it now.

Not to mention that an FBI crash team might get in the way of what JP, Dominique, and I plan to do on our own.

How we’re going to pry Duplass off our asses long enough to achieve anything, I have no idea… but I’ll figure it out.

I hope.

Mailin comes back. “The pilot said we can definitely get closer, but we’re going to be about 10 minutes behind them no matter what we do.”

“That’ll be fine,” I say, trying to figure out how to take advantage of the situation. “That’s absolutely fine.”

Turns out it’s not San Francisco that the plane is heading towards, either.

It’s north of that, in Marin County. Any nerd worth his salt knows Marin County is the base for Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas’s vast complex for movie sound editing before he sold everything to Disney.

In short, it’s a beautiful, green countryside that’s home to lots of multi-millionaires. Maybe not as many as the tonier parts of San Francisco, but it has one thing those sections of the city don’t:

Privacy.

I zoom in all the way on Google Maps with the satellite view on, and we watch in fascination as the dot approaches a body of water called Tomales Bay. The plane circles an isolated estate with no neighbors around for miles. On the property sits a massive boat dock, an absolutely gigantic mansion, and multiple other buildings.

As we watch in real time, the plane lands on what appears to be a private landing strip half a mile from the main property.

“Who does
that
belong to?” Duplass asks.

I open another window and begin doing property and tax holding searches. “I don’t know, hold on. Can we land right behind them?”

Duplass scoffs. “On private property? No. That would be trespassing. Any search we do would be thrown out by the courts.”

“We’re tracking the GPS chip Grant’s carrying! We have probable cause!” I shout.

“We don’t know if Carlson is on the plane or not.”

“I’m going to have to hack into the property anyway to see if he is –
that’s
illegal, so if we’re doing illegal shit, why can’t we just land there?”

“We’re not going in without a team behind us.”

“Which you won’t authorize until you know Grant is on the plane, which you won’t know until
I
do the hacking, and even THEN you want to wait forever to set it up! WHY?!”

“This has to be done by the book.”

“You fucking
chickenshit!”
I shout. “You don’t care about ‘the book’ – you just want to cover your own ass, you’ll use
me
to do it, and you don’t give a damn if Grant dies or not!”

“Agent Walker, get your
friend
under control,” Duplass sneers.

Mailin puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers in my ear. “Eve – calm down. He’s not worth it. Think of Grant.”

I stand there, chest heaving. I want to kill Duplass so bad right now –

But Mailin’s right. Duplass isn’t worth it.

And I have to play this right. Grant’s life is on the line.

“Where can we land, then?” I ask angrily.

Duplass shrugs. “We could land at San Francisco International – ”

“Fuck that,” I snarl, and look at the map on my laptop. “There’s Marin County Airport – it’s at least two hours north of San Francisco International, even if it’s… Jesus, probably 45 minutes away from the target.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to the pilot,” Duplass says, and walks toward the cockpit.

“Charming asshole,” JP says after Duplass is gone.

I laugh mirthlessly. “Yeah.”

“Did you find out who owns the property yet?” Mailin asks.

I dive into the tax and property records, but it’s a complete jumble of red tape. LLCs inside Class C Corporations inside shell companies inside holding corporations. Everything is smoke and mirrors.

The only thing is, it’s so ridiculously complicated that it’s like a glaring red neon light. Not to mention the pattern is all too familiar. It reminds me of the tortuous path I followed – and failed – to discover who rented the Bel Air home where Grant found the two imprisoned women.

The
only
person this property could belong to is Epicurus. Nobody else would go to this much trouble to conceal their identity. I got inside all of Grant’s various corporate facades with half this much effort.

“No,” I grumble. “I’m going to have to go with another method.”

I immediately start work on my ‘other method.’ Which is highly, highly illegal.

Duplass comes back. “The pilot’s heading for Marin County Airport. We should be there in five minutes.”

As though to confirm, the pilot’s voice comes over the loud speaker.
“Could everyone please take their seats, we’ll be landing in a matter of minutes.”

“Can you at least arrange a car for us when we get there? One with internet capabilities?” I snap.

“Sure,” Duplass says snidely as he sits down.

Mailin glances over my shoulder, and his eyes go wide. “What are you doing?!” he hisses in my ear.

He’s just seen my ‘other method.’

“Shhh,” I whisper.

Again, it’s too complicated to explain – but like the satellites earlier, I can hack local networks and figure out where traffic originates and where it ends up. Without actually hacking
into
the NSA, I can figure out who they’re hooked up with in Northern California.

Turns out they’re piped in to a sizable network… in Tomales Bay.

My fingers fly over the keyboard as I start to hack the mystery network. It’s a
bitch,
I can tell you
that.
There are traps, impenetrable custom firewalls, and labyrinthine security processes.

There’s no way in – at least, none that won’t take me hours… or days.

I don’t
have
hours or days.

I stop, close my eyes, try to calm my inner panic, and
think.

What do I know?

The network belongs to Epicurus.

Epicurus’s network is connected to the NSA.

I could try to hack the NSA, but that would probably take just as long. It’s a government agency filled with hackers –

Wait.

I open my eyes and look at Mailin. Who is a hacker, and the employee of a government agency.

“Do you know anybody at the NSA?” I whisper.

He gets what I’m trying to do. “Oh – oh, no, unh-unh – ”

“Mailin,
please.
”

“NO, Eve, I don’t. And even if I did, there’s no way I could – ”

“Do you know somebody who knows somebody, then? You’re all hackers – you’re all on the same team – you
must
cross paths at
some
point!”

Mailin is silent. I can see the wheels spinning, though he’s trying to hide it.

“Mailin,
please!”

He grits his teeth. “I know a guy in the anti-terrorism division at the Bureau… and
he
might know somebody in the NSA’s anti-terrorism division – but – ”

“Please, Mailin,
please,
” I whisper. “It’s our only shot.”

“Eve,” he whispers back, “this could put me in jail. At the very least, it could make me the FBI’s slave until I die.”

“You’re using the information to track down somebody who killed two of your fellow agents, and who’s about to kill an American citizen.”

“But – ”

“Mailin, I wouldn’t ask you unless the situation was dire, and it’s as dire as it fucking gets. I am out of options. I can’t do this, and Grant is going to die.” Tears well up and spill down my cheeks. “Please, I’m
begging
you.”

Mailin gets a look on his face like he’s in agony… and then he pulls out his cell phone. “Jesus Christ, I cannot
believe
I am about to do this…”

I squeeze his arm. “Thank you!”

“It’s not necessarily going to get us anywhere,” he warns me. “My friend might say no.”

“It’s a chance. And right now, I’ll take any chance I can get. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You can thank me from the next jail cell over when we’re doing 20 years in Leavenworth,” he gripes as he dials the number.

Two things happen in parallel.

The first thing is we land at Marin County Airport. Duplass must have pulled out all the stops with his FBI credentials, because there’s a black limousine waiting for us at the gate as we taxi in. I personally am overjoyed, because the limo has a high-powered wifi connection. I basically log off from the plane and log on seamlessly to the limo during the thirty steps it takes to get to the car.

The limo has one of those ‘everybody faces everybody else’ style of backseats. Duplass, Mailin, and I sit on one side, and JP and Dominique sit on the other. I keep the backpack at my feet.

I have to give it to Dominique: she takes one for the team and distracts Duplass as much as she can. They’re sitting directly across from each other, and she puts her all into, even going so far as to undo a couple more buttons on her blouse. Despite all his earlier objections about her being a criminal, Duplass certainly isn’t above ogling her breasts.

A retractable barrier is up between us and the driver, so he can’t see or hear what’s going on. Once we give him the address over an intercom, we take off at high speed for Tomales Bay.