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Viper jogged across 5th Street and stepped onto the brick sidewalk. She was passing the old City Hall when Hawk's deep voice spoke through her ear bud, sending a shiver of awareness through her. Memories of last night made her heart beat a little faster and she shook her head, forcing the emotion away. Now was not the time.
“I'm in position,” he said, “and I have a good view of the Bell. I'm making my way through the exhibits, but it's crowded in here. The good news is that it's an open plan, so not a lot of places to hide the package. The bad news is that there are a lot of exhibits and blind spots.”
“How crowded?”
“Think sardines.”
“Charlie got the timing right, then. I'm heading to security,” she told him. “I saw Kasim from the roof before I came down. He was coming out of the subway station on 5th, heading into the park.”
“Any sign of Tarek?”
“Negative.”
Viper strode up to the line for security. She had timed it perfectly, reaching it ahead of a large crowd of students and their chaperones. She got into line behind only four people and glanced at her watch.
“Security won't take long,” she said, switching to Russian. The language was the last part of her disguise. “I just beat the rush.”
“Nice generic Moscow accent,” Hawk said approvingly, switching to Portuguese without missing a beat. “We should work on a good southern dialect. Not that yours is bad, but it's always beneficial to have a few different dialects in your arsenal. Maybe something around Kursk.”
Alina resisted the smile pulling at her lips as she watched the woman ahead open her purse for inspection.
“Never been,” she said, moving forward with the line as the woman was cleared. “I've only ever been to Moscow. But hey, I'm up for the challenge.”
Hawk chuckled in her ear.
“Of course you are,” he murmured, the warm tone in his voice sending another shiver through her. “We'll add it to the list of cities we're going to explore together.”
“If we ever get to that list,” Viper muttered. “At this rate, Philadelphia will be it.”
“Oh no you don't. You're not reneging now. A deal's a deal.”
Another smile tugged at her lips and was repressed as Viper stepped up to the security point. She pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her skinny jeans and held it up, pointing to the Bluetooth hooked into her ear.
“Sorry. My friend is stuck in underground,” she told the agent in heavily accented English. “Is ok?”
The man nodded brusquely.
“Phones are fine,” he said, motioning for her to open her jacket. “Open your jacket, please, and turn around for me.”
Alina did as he asked, turning slowly in a circle while he waved a metal detecting security wand over her.
“No bag?” he asked when she had finished.
She shook her head.
“I travel light,” she said with a smile. “I want to see much as I can before too late.”
The agent nodded and cracked a smile.
“Well, enjoy your visit. The line for the tour starts in front of Independence Hall.”
“Thank you.”
Viper moved away, tucking her phone back into her back pocket as she walked toward the line in front of the iconic building. She was dressed in skinny jeans and a gray, hooded, anorak-style jacket, with a small camera hanging from a lanyard around her neck. Large black sunglasses perched atop a shoulder-length, black wig, and her black t-shirt proudly proclaimed ‘The City of Brotherly Love’ with a huge image of the Liberty Bell. Her pristine white sneakers made no sound on the bricks as she moved to get into line.
“I think you got the better gig,” she said in a low voice, still speaking Russian. “Independence Hall is on timed tickets. If neither of them show up for this time slot, I'll have to dodge a lot of park rangers to shift into other tour groups. That's gonna get real old, really quick.”
“Make some friends,” came the unsympathetic reply. “Everyone loves an accent. Be so happy and outgoing that everyone loves you. They won't harass a friendly tourist who's just excited to be here.”
Viper grunted, pulling the sunglasses off her head and settling them on her nose as the ranger who would be leading her growing group walked over to the head of the line. The sunglasses concealed the majority of her features, making facial recognition a challenge. She pulled out her phone and lowered her head as she settled in to wait, simply another tourist engrossed in her phone while standing in line.
“I'm sorry, have you met me?” she demanded. “I don't get excited.”
“Then what would you call last night?”
Alina sucked in air and felt a warm flush steal up her neck.
“I'd pay money you're turning red right now,” Hawk continued with just the barest tremor in his voice. “Are you?”
“Hawk?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
A low chuckle reverberated in her ear and Viper ground her teeth, torn between an urge to laugh and an equally strong urge to break cover and go strangle him.
The line behind her had grown substantially over the past few minutes, and Viper cast a swift glance at the newcomers from behind her dark glasses. The majority of the crowd were students wearing a school uniform, accompanied by their teachers and chaperones. A few adults were scattered in with them, and she swept her gaze over every face standing over four feet high. A shock of recognition shot through her as her eyes landed on one towards the back of the line.
Kasim Jamal was dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt bearing an athletic logo. He carried a rugged, black backpack over one shoulder and, like her, sunglasses covered his eyes. Unlike her, his were light in color, almost blending with his skin tone. He wasn't trying to hide his face, only his eyes.
Viper took it all in with a single glance, then her gaze returned to the backpack. How the hell had he concealed a bomb in that? Security would have searched it before he got this far. Her lips tightened.
Please don't let there be two packages, she thought as the ranger at the front moved into everyone's line of sight. I don't have time to hunt for another one if that turns out to be empty.
“Welcome to Independence Hall!” the ranger said, her voice carrying clearly. “I'm Ranger Morris and I'll be your guide today. If you'd like to follow me, we'll go into the East Wing and I'll tell you a bit about this wonderful building's history before we start the tour.”
The line moved forward and Viper moved with it, resisting the urge to glance behind her. Kasim would wait until he was inside to do anything.
“Hawk?”
“Yeah?”
“You're looking for Tarek. Kasim's with me.”
There was a brief silence, then he spoke in a low voice.
“Copy that. Good luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” she replied, following the crowd through a door and into the building.
“Then give him hell,” he said, “and be careful.”
Viper smiled at the note of sincerity in his voice, and a warm rush of contentment rolled through her.
“Always.”
Stephanie stepped out of the elevator and made her way to the open door of Matt's lab. He'd called her ten minutes before, but she got side-tracked when Rob summoned her to his office. Although she’d told him about the break-in the morning after it happened, she hadn’t told him she was hit over the head until this morning when she got into the office. He had been in a tizzy ever since. Her laptop was taken away to be wiped and re-formatted by the IT department, all her access codes had been changed, and now he wanted to have an agent with her around the clock. The man really was overreacting. While she freely admitted that the whole incident went above and beyond a normal home invasion, she also knew that the likelihood it had anything to do with her job was slim to nonexistent. She hadn't yet figured out what was going on, but she was confident that it didn't involve the case she was currently working. As Blake had pointed out, if the Cartel had gone through the trouble of breaking into her house, they would have killed her, not just bumped her on the head.
Matt looked up when she entered his lab and reached for the remote to turn down the music blaring through the large room. She raised an eyebrow.
“Movie scores?” she asked in surprise. “What happened to the techno?”
“It's actually electronic instrumental. It helps me think,” Matt retorted, turning to watch as she hobbled toward him, leaning on her cane. “That looks painful.”
“It's not too bad now,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “I'm getting there. What's the verdict? Any joy?”
Matt ran a hand through his sandy hair, making it stick up on top even more. With his wrinkled lab coat, khaki pants and polo shirt, he looked more like a mad scientist than the forensic wizard he was.
“Yes and no. I can tell you where the messages got routed through, but not where they ultimately ended up. As you already know, they didn't end up where they were supposed to go.” He turned and woke up a monitor a few feet away, motioning her over. “The only reason I was able to get this much was because you sent three messages, so I had a few to work with. The interesting thing, though, is that none of them took the same route. That tells me an algorithm is behind it, routing them through different servers according to some predetermined criteria coded into it.”
“English, Matt. Speak it.”
He grinned.
“Each message you sent got directed by an algorithm that had been programmed to redirect it somewhere based on something in the message. Think of it like a mail sorter. The zip code determines which bin it gets chucked into.”
Stephanie frowned.
“What could an algorithm use for that?” she asked. “Everything was encrypted.”
He shrugged.
“It was obviously able to read it. Here's what I was able to piece together. All the messages followed the same pattern, if not the same route.” Matt clicked on a tab and Stephanie found herself staring a one-dimensional global map. “They got bounced into Russia first, then Belarus, then into Kazakhstan. From there, they went into Mongolia. Here the pattern split, and each message took a different route before ending up here.”
“Where?”
“Guerrero.”
“Where the hell is Guerrero?”
“Mexico. South of Mexico City, actually. It's pretty far down there.” Matt pointed on the map. “All the messages went there, but then the signal disappears.”
“Could that be where they ended?” Stephanie asked, staring at the map.
“Not likely. The signal would still be live if that were the case.”
“So, we've got nothing except that they passed through Mexico?”
Matt shrugged. “Sorry. I did my best.”
Stephanie nodded and accepted the tablet and phone that he handed her.
“Thank you for trying. I knew it was a long shot. I was just hoping that I could track this hacker down.”
Matt had turned away to another monitor where some test results were silently flashing, but at that, he turned back.
“Hacker?” he repeated, his brow furrowing. “This wasn't the work of a hacker.”
Stephanie stared at him.
“What? I thought the end server had been hacked. Isn't that why the messages were re-routed?”
Matt shook his head, his glasses slipping on his nose. He pushed them up again impatiently.
“Where did you get that idea? Nothing was hacked. The messages never even reached the destination server. They were hijacked as soon as you hit send.”
Stephanie felt her stomach lurch, and she grew cold.
“There's no way to trace that?”
Matt shook his head.
“Nope. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately.”
He turned back to the other monitor, his mind shifting to one of his other puzzles. Stephanie turned to leave the lab, clutching her tablet and phone in one hand and leaning on her cane with the other.
Her mind was spinning by the time she pressed the button for the elevator. How the hell had someone gotten hold of a classified email address, located on a secured server, and hijacked it? And why did someone else break into her apartment and clone her laptop?
“Agent Walker!” Matt called, poking his head out of his lab. “Are you here the full day today?”
Stephanie turned to look at him as the elevator doors slid open.
“No. I'm leaving soon. I'm still on part-time hours. Doctors’ orders.”
“Well, tell Blake that I'll have something for him in about an hour or so. I'm making some headway on that Cartel stuff you two brought down on Monday. Tell him to check in later this afternoon.”
Stephanie nodded. “Will do.”
“Have a good weekend. Stay off that leg! The sooner you're back, the better. It's depressing enough with John gone. Only having you here a couple days a week isn’t helping.”
Stephanie smiled sadly.
“I'm doing my best,” she assured him. “Believe me, I'd rather be working than sitting at home thinking about it.”
Matt nodded sympathetically.
“We'll get through this,” he said, turning to go back into his lab.
Stephanie stepped into the elevator. We'll get through this as soon as the bastard responsible pays for it, she thought as the doors slid closed.
Hawk turned away from the placard attached to the exhibit that he was pretending to read and glanced behind him at the crowds of school kids. They were an older group, around ten or twelve, and dressed in matching uniforms. The girls had grouped together, giggling, and the boys were ignoring them in the way all boys do before they realize that girls have more to offer than ponytails and sparkly shoes.
His lips curved despite himself. Like the amazing experience he'd shared last night with his fearless, deadly Viper.
The more he got to know his Jersey Girl, the more in love he fell, and Hawk admitted it freely. Ever since that day in Peru when he was blind-sided by the realization that he was in love with Viper, Hawk had been slowly learning more and more about the woman who'd managed to shoot her way into his heart. The more he learned, the closer he got, and the more he loved her. He'd stopped fighting his rational side months ago. There was no point. There was only one person on this planet capable of giving Hawk hope that humanity still had a shot, that there was still loyalty and honor in the world. He'd stumbled across an opportunity to be happy in this death-dealing life that he lived, and he wasn't about to throw it away.
Hawk moved into the next offering of exhibits, his eyes scanning the faces from under his baseball cap. He hadn't told her. How do you suddenly tell someone you've known for years that you love them? Especially when that someone was Viper? She had come a long way since that day in Peru, his Jersey Girl. She was letting him in, and showing him more and more of the woman he was pretty sure she'd forgotten even existed beneath Viper's exterior. So many times, he'd caught himself almost blurting it out, but each time he stopped himself. He didn't want to scare her away, and she'd put up too many walls over the years for him to get a good read on what she felt for him. He was getting closer, though. Each time they touched, it was like another piece of her armor fell away. And last night, well, last night something special happened. He didn't know what, and he wasn't about to question it, but Damon had felt it in the command center. Something had changed, affecting Alina and, through her, himself. It was as if they had crossed some kind of invisible border and entered a new level of their relationship, one that brought them closer together than he would ever have thought possible after his discovery in Georgia. Damon shook his head, leaning forward to pretend to read something behind the thick, plexi-glass exhibit cover. He knew he was being maudlin, but he couldn't ignore the feeling of utter contentment that had been with him since he woke up beside her at dawn. Something had definitely changed, and he planned on enjoying every second.
A shadow passed over the glass before him and Hawk turned his head slightly to the right, casting a quick glance at the crowds moving in and out of the exhibit behind him. A couple was moving into the exhibit alcove, going around a group of students. As they moved to the left, a man in a gray windbreaker emerged from the previous alcove. He had a rugged, black backpack slung over one shoulder and sunglasses sitting on top of his head. Shoulder-length dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail behind his head, and his face was clean-shaven. He glanced up, looking into the exhibit, then moved past it, unaware of the arctic blue eyes following him.
Hawk waited for him to go into the next exhibit before moving out of the alcove to follow. All thoughts of Alina and their new relationship dissipated as he stepped aside to let a group of laughing students rush past him in the opposite direction.
“I've got eyes on Tarek,” he murmured in a low voice.
It was a moment before Viper's voice spoke in his ear.
“Copy that.”
Nothing else needed to be said. They both knew their job, and the stakes if they failed. There was no thought of what would happen if they didn't complete their mission; it was a non-issue. This was what they did, what they were trained to do.
And they were the best in their field.
Hawk moved into the next exhibit, his stride measured and his pulse calm. In one glance, he counted the number of civilians and calculated the percentage of success versus possible collateral damage. His eyes went to the backpack over Tarek's shoulder and his lips tightened. God he hoped there weren't two packages. With all the kids milling around and the overcrowding, it would take too long to locate a second one.
He turned to study the exhibit next to him, pursing his lips thoughtfully. He would have to wait until the terrorist made his move, which increased the likelihood of being noticed by his mark. Every minute he hung around increased his visibility, unless he became part of a group. Hawk slid his gaze to the right as a young woman shepherded a group of students into the exhibit behind him. His eyes met her friendly green ones and he smiled.
It was showtime.