Arden dreamed of Christmas.
Of family gathered in her parents’ large home. Of good food and conversation, of laughter and off-key singing. She dreamed of hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, a fire glowing softly. Kane smiling at her from across the room. Cold wind whipping in from an open door. A dog barking.
A dog?
She opened her eyes, still groggy with sleep, and stared into Dutch’s dark eyes. He leaned in so close, his nose touched her cheek and his hot doggy breath fanned her face.
“Are you going to eat me?” she asked.
“Kee-gur’-lah!” Silas commanded leaning into the open front door of the SUV and eyeing her dispassionately. Dutch immediately backed away. “I see you’re awake.”
“I see you’re still grumpy.”
Someone laughed.
No. Not someone. Kane. She could see him now, standing next to Silas, his hair covered by a black cap. He had a couple days’ worth of stubble and a rugged outdoorsy look that made her wonder if he spent most of his life tromping through forests.
She was stretched out across the back seat of the SUV, her backpack under her head. Her laptop was still open and sitting on the floor, the battery charging in the SUV’s power outlet. She’d spent a couple of hours prepping for the night mission and waiting for Kane. She wasn’t sure when she’d dozed off, but it hadn’t been dark.
Now it was.
Which had to mean that it was almost time.
She sat up too quickly, saw a million tiny stars dancing in front of her eyes as she opened the door. Her foot caught on Kane’s duffel, and she nearly took a header on the cement.
She would have if Kane hadn’t grabbed her arm, his fingers curving around her biceps. “Slow down, Arden. We’ve got time.”
“It’s dark,” she pointed out. “And I’m ready.”
“Not until you eat.” He handed her a paper bag, his hand sliding from her upper arm to her wrist. “I brought back cold-cut subs. I thought you might be hungry.”
“I’m starved, thank you.” She began unwrapping the sub. “I’m going to love you forever for this, Kane,” she said, just like she would have if he’d been one of her brothers.
Only he wasn’t.
“We’ve moved on from like to love pretty quickly, Arden,” he said, urging her back until her legs hit the SUV and she was sitting on the bench seat again.
“Just a figure of speech,” she muttered. She removed the last of the wrapper from the sub and did everything in her power to not look in his eyes.
He was special, and he was trouble, and he was exactly the kind of guy she should not be saying things like “I’ll love you forever” to.
Because she thought that she could do that.
She could also get her heart broken, her dreams crushed and all her silly little fantasies about forever dashed.
Again.
Only this time it would be worse, because this time, she’d be dreaming all those things about Kane. And he was so much more than Randy had ever been.
“I bought it so you could eat it,” Kane said quietly. “Not stare at it like it’s going to bite you.”
She took a bite, swallowed. “This is so good.”
“Eat up. We can’t afford to have you distracted tonight.” He crouched in front of her, brushing strands of hair from her cheek. “I know I don’t need to tell you that I’m worried about what we might come up against in there. If I could take down the system myself, I’d leave you here and do it.”
“I know what’s riding on this. National security—”
“I’m worried about you, Arden. Which reminds me.” Kane reached into a large pocket in his jacket. “I bought you dessert. It’s gingerbread. It seemed appropriate. Since you like Christmas so much.”
“You’re kidding.” She opened the small white bag, got a whiff of spicy ginger and sweet molasses. “You aren’t kidding.” She took a bite, savoring the lightly iced desert.
“A gun would have been more appropriate,” Silas grumbled, polishing off the rest of his own sub.
“We’ve got those, and the security team at GeoArray doesn’t look armed,” Kane responded. “Not that that means much.”
“Did you see the ventilation shaft?” she asked, finishing off the gingerbread and brushing crumbs from her hands.
“I did,” Kane acknowledged. “I also saw your ex and Marcus Emory. Emory has all of his things packed on a yacht. He’s ready to leave the country once this deal goes through—unless he can find you and eliminate any threat of discovery.”
“Is Randy going with him?”
“Emory may take his girlfriend. Randy’s on his own. Both of them are going to be disappointed.”
“When they don’t get the payoff because they failed?”
“When the FBI takes them in before they have a chance to escape the country,” Kane replied.
“That’s definitely the best-case scenario,” Arden agreed.
“Speaking of the FBI, I think we should fill Grayson in on what we’ve learned before we head into the facility.”
“What! I thought we weren’t going to get him involved in this until it’s over? If he has knowledge that we plan to break into GeoArray’s secure facility, he’ll have a duty to report it.”
“You’ve decrypted the files, Arden. We have all the proof we need. Marcus Emory is selling proprietary national secrets. If we weren’t under time pressure, I’d turn this over to Grayson and let him and the FBI deal with GeoArray from this point forward.”
“We already determined that could take too long.”
“Right. We’re going in. We’re taking the system down. I’m planning on all three of us getting into that building and getting out of it,” Kane responded. “But if that doesn’t happen, someone has to know what’s going on at GeoArray. I want you to send your brother the files before we leave. He won’t see them until it’s too late to stop us.”
She knew what he was saying.
She understood his fear.
If they were captured and killed, GeoArray would get away with an act of espionage that would rival the Robert Hanssen case, which was the worst in FBI history.
She grabbed her laptop. “I’ll send them to his work email. That way I can encrypt them with the FBI’s encryption program. We can’t take a chance of the files leaking out.”
“You have access to the FBI’s encryption program?” Silas asked.
“Yes, I’ve consulted for them before on special cases,” she answered. She attached the files to an encrypted email and sent it to her brother. “Done.”
“You’re quick.” Silas opened the SUV’s hatchback. “Now, how about we get moving?” He tossed several things in her direction. Somehow she managed to catch them. Black gloves. A black cap like Kane was wearing.
She put them on, then set her computer on the seat, the screen glowing blue-white.
“Are you leaving Dutch?” she asked. The computer had to stay on. If the connection was disrupted, she’d have no way to reset it from inside the building and nowhere to send the command and control application once she removed it from the network.
“He’ll stay back here,” Silas said. “Oh-wahn’-kah,” he commanded, and the dog hopped into the cargo area of the vehicle.
“If he comes up here and steps on my computer, we’re sunk. The connection needs to remain open so I have a safe place to send the files.”
“Dutch will stay put. He’ll also keep people away from the SUV.” Silas shut the hatchback and rounded the side of the vehicle.
“Ready?” Kane asked, offering a hand to Arden.
She took it, allowing herself to be pulled from the vehicle. December wind blew through the parking garage as they made their way to the stairwell, and she wanted to press close to Kane, gather a little of his warmth.
She wasn’t just cold.
She was scared.
There was no guarantee they’d be able to make it into GeoArray through the ventilation system. If they did, there was no guarantee that she could accomplish her task before they were discovered.
She didn’t say what she was thinking.
For once, her nerves didn’t cause a stream of words to spill out of her mouth. She was going through the steps she needed to take, mentally rehearsing the quickest, most efficient way to infect GeoArray’s server with a worm that would disrupt system operations. She’d have to be careful to stay out of the system storage to preserve the network’s integrity. If she did it right, there’d be no chance that anyone connected to the system could retrieve files from it until she restored the server and turned it over to the FBI.
They stepped out of the parking garage and stuck to the shadows as they approached the rear of the darkened GeoArray facility. Arden waited impatiently while Kane and Silas unscrewed the vent cover.
They set it against the brick wall, then disconnected and removed a fan that blocked the ventilation duct.
It took merely moments, but it felt like hours. Cold, moist air blew in from the harbor and seeped through Arden’s layers of clothes. By the time the fan had been removed, she was cold to the bone, her teeth nearly chattering.
“This is going to be a problem,” Silas said quietly, and she moved closer, eyeing the dark shaft that led into the building. It was small. She’d be able to fit, but there was no way either of the men would.
“Time for plan B,” Kane said.
“Which is?” Arden asked.
“We try to get in one of the back doors.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” He scowled. “I’m not kidding. There’s no way Silas and I are getting in through this vent.”
“You don’t need to,” she argued. “I can fit through, and I’m the only one who really needs to be in there.”
“You’re not going in alone.”
“We could stand out here all night arguing,” Silas said. “But that’s not going to do us or the country much good.”
“We’re not arguing. We’re switching gears.” Kane started to walk away, but Arden grabbed his hand.
“We don’t have time to switch gears. We don’t have time to try something that might not work. This is our best chance, and I’m taking it.”
“She’s right, Kane,” Silas agreed. “We try to get in one of those doors and set off an alarm, and that information will be out before anyone can stop Marcus Emory.”
“No,” Kane said again.
“You’re letting your heart influence your head. That’s a good way to get people killed,” Silas responded.
Kane scowled. “What’s your point?”
“If I were the one who could fit through there and take down that system, you’d let me go.”
“You’re a trained professional.”
“Who can’t fit through the shaft,” Arden cut in. She needed to get moving before her nerves got the best of her. “I memorized the blueprints. I know the easiest path to the server room. It should take me forty minutes tops. If I’m in there longer, call the cavalry.”
She released his hand and would have climbed into the shaft, but he touched her shoulder.
“Arden,” he said quietly. She turned, looked into his gorgeous eyes. Even in the dim alley light, she could see his concern.
“Don’t stop me, Kane, okay? This has to be done. I’m the only one who can do it.”
He nodded. “You have forty minutes. Not a minute longer.”
“Afraid I’ll fall through the ventilation shaft and start spouting random facts about espionage and the death rates of spies?” she tried to joke.
He didn’t even crack a smile. “I’m afraid of not getting a chance to see your Christmas sweater this year. It’s one of my favorite parts of your family’s Christmas celebration.” His knuckles skimmed down the side of her cheek, and she felt the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of his gloves before he stepped away.
She wanted to tell him she’d be fine.
She wanted to explain facts and figures and statistics that proved it, but her mind was blank, her mouth dry with fear. She tried to smile and failed miserably, so she turned back to the vent.
“Take this.” Silas handed her a multipurpose tool. “You’ll need it to exit the vent.”
“Right.” She tucked it into the pocket of her pants, accepted a flashlight he held out to her and crawled into the ventilation shaft.
The floor and walls were coated with a grimy layer of dust. Not something that Arden was expecting. Then again, her only frame of reference came from watching movies where the heroine escaped through shiny, clean and very roomy ventilation shafts.
She was shimmying through what felt like a toddler-sized hole, elbows and legs kicking up a layer of dust that swirled in the beam of her flashlight. Although claustrophobia wasn’t currently among the list of her idiosyncrasies, Arden could see how this situation could send her in that direction.
Stay focused.
Stay calm.
Think about the blueprint.
Two left turns. A right turn. Straight ahead until she reached the end of the shaft. The server room should be there.
Please, Lord. Let it be there.
If it wasn’t, she’d be dropping down into an unknown room in an unknown part of the building. She’d have to find her way to the server room without being seen.
She took a deep, calming breath—as deep as she dared in the dusty shaft—and pressed on.
After a couple of difficult turns in the vent shaft, Arden’s flashlight beam reflected on the vent cover at the other end. She flicked off her light and peered through the vent slats. The hum of the server fans were an audible and very blessed relief.
She was in the right place.
Now she just needed to get into the room without alerting security to her presence. Slipping the multipurpose tool from her pocket, she shoved it between the vent cover and the drywall and began to pry the cover away. It gave easily, and she barely managed to keep it from falling.
She slid it to the side, letting it rest against the wall as she half crawled, half fell into the room. Snapping on her flashlight, she scanned the server room for the local administrator terminals.
The computer was on, two screens flashing a screen saver with the lock-screen prompts. The last user had forgotten to log off.
Perfect. Now she wouldn’t have to come up with a user name, just the password.
She committed the user name to memory and rebooted the system, placing her drive in one of the USB ports and the wireless internet connection in the other. The system came up, detecting both the wireless interface and the external drive.
Bingo.
Her custom password program was now tied in to the computer’s start-up sequence. She needed to degrade the system but keep the evidence of GeoArray’s crimes for the FBI. Not a complicated process, but it would take time.
Arden watched the progress bar scroll across the screen. Just like the watched pot that never boils, it seemed to take forever to upload the worm.
Once it was in, she ran the program and removed her external drive and network card. The worm would immediately affect every computer currently logged on the network without leaving any forensic traces behind. The beauty of it was that the shutdown would occur one system at a time, as users logged on, making it difficult to recognize the full scale of the problem until it was too late.
She smiled as the terminal went black.
Done. She glanced at her watch. With a little time to spare.
She pushed out of the chair and started back to the ventilation shaft. The sound of approaching voices stopped her in her tracks. No way was she going to make it into the shaft in time to shimmy out of reach of anyone who happened to walk in.
She moved the vent cover over the opening, then crawled between two server racks at the back of the room. She was hidden well enough if whoever it was just walked by.
The door opened. The light went on.
She held her breath, afraid even the slightest movement would give her away.
“I’m sure we can just reboot the server and the system will come right back online,” a man said.
She knew the voice, and the breath she’d been holding threatened to spill out in a great gasping rush. She let it out slowly, her pulse racing.
Randy. Of course.
He must have been working in another area of the building. Once he tried the admin workstation, he’d know they weren’t dealing with an isolated computer.
A few frantic moments of fingers tapping on a keyboard, a soft hiss of frustration and she knew Randy had figured it out.
“What?” another man said.
“I think we’ve been hacked. The system’s been compromised with a worm of some sort.”
“What do you mean, hacked? I paid you to make sure this system was impenetrable. If we can’t make the file transfer—”
“We’ll make it. I uploaded a backup copy of the application to the stand-alone system on your yacht yesterday morning.”
“The application wasn’t complete yesterday. There’ve been dozens of man-hours of work on it since then, and it’s all lost! If we don’t meet that deadline—”
“We have bigger things to worry about. We were hacked. It had to be an inside job. I took the entire system off the web after we were hacked the first time. There’s no way someone could have accessed it externally.”
“Call security in here,” the second man growled. “I want everyone in this building rounded up and brought to this room.”
That was her cue to get out.
She was inches from the vent and out of view of the men. They were distracted, and she could either wait to be discovered, or she could try to make a run for it.
The fact that Randy had uploaded a backup copy of the application to an off-site, stand-alone system made the decision for her. She had to find the yacht and infect the system there. Otherwise, the rest of the work she’d done would be fruitless.
Randy was calling for security, his voice ringing through an intercom system. She used the noise to mask her movements as she shifted the vent cover and crawled into the hole.
Her feet scraped against the metal floor of the shaft as she tried to shimmy farther in, the noise echoing loudly.
Someone grabbed her ankle and tugged her backward with enough force to send her flying. She tumbled out of the vent, landing on the floor with a thud that stole her breath.
She bounded up, swinging wildly, connecting with a jaw, a nose, a soft abdomen.
She could have won the fight.
Would have won if it had just been her against Randy.
But the door flew open and two security guards rushed in. Four against her, but she still couldn’t quit. She grabbed a chair, would have tossed it at the two guards, but a man stepped between her and them. Marcus Emory. She recognized him from photos posted on GeoArray’s website.
“Enough!” he growled, yanking the chair from her hands. “You’re done, Arden. It’s over. You lost. Take her to the harbor and throw her in,” he said, striding to the door.
“If they do that—” her brain clicked along at hyperspeed, making connections so swiftly, her mouth could barely keep up “—you can kiss goodbye any chance you have of meeting your deadline.”
“What are you talking about?” Emory swung back around, his gaze going from her to Randy. “What’s she talking about?”
“Don’t ask me. She’s always talking. Mostly about nothing.”
“Randy just told you that nearly two days’ work has been lost. Currently destroyed by the worm I uploaded to the system here.”
“Get rid of her,” Emory spat.
“It will take more than a day to rebuild what I’ve destroyed. That means you’ll miss tomorrow’s scheduled transfer time,” she continued as one of the security guards grabbed her arm. “I can restore the data in an hour.”
Emory turned again. “How?”
“This.” She took the drive from her pocket. “I copied everything here. It’s encrypted. It would take the best expert in the world months, if not years, to break my encryption.” If it could be done at all.
“Take it,” he said to Randy. “We’ll go to the yacht, and you figure this mess out.”
“I can’t,” Randy grumbled, his cheeks red with anger. “If she encrypted it with a custom program, there’s no way I’m going to be able to get the information off of it before the deadline.”
“Then I guess she comes with us. Cooperate and you might survive, Arden,” Emory said. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her arm in a vicelike grip and dragged her into the hall.
She didn’t bother fighting. She was getting exactly what she wanted. A trip to the yacht and to the server. Once she plugged the drive into the system, the worm would do what it was supposed to.
Randy and Emory weren’t going to be happy when they realized it.
Hopefully, Kane would figure out that she was in trouble long before that happened. She had a really cool Christmas sweater to wear this year—a Christmas tree with real lights that flashed on and off with the push of a button. She’d hate for him to miss out on that. She’d hate to miss out on it herself.
But what she’d hate more than anything was dying knowing that she hadn’t done what she’d intended.
People like Randy and Emory?
They should never ever win. And if she had it within her power to stop them, she had every intention of doing it.
* * *
They had her.
Kane knew it before his cell phone buzzed, knew it before he glanced at the text message that had come through.
There’s a black car pulling up in front of the building. Looks like someone’s going for a ride. Get the SUV.
Silas’s message was brief and to the point.
Kane knew Silas, hidden in the shadows near the building’s main entrance, had a clear view of the front door, but there was no way he’d heard what Kane had—the tinny voice echoing through the ventilation system, calling for security in the server room—but he knew trouble when he saw it. Silas had impeccable instincts.
So did Kane.
Yeah. They had her, and he wanted to run into the building to get her back. If he hadn’t thought that would get them all killed, he would have.
A car meant they were taking her somewhere. A car meant there was still time. He hadn’t heard a gunshot, and he didn’t think Emory would be foolish enough to have someone killed in his building.
No. He’d want the dirty work done somewhere else.
Kane sprinted to the parking garage and jumped into the front seat of the SUV. He grabbed the keys and started the engine. He didn’t turn on the lights, just sped down the ramp that led to the garage exit.
A dark Mercedes was pulling away from GeoArray, its taillights glowing in the night as it headed east.
Seconds later, Silas emerged from the shadows and yanked open the passenger door. “They’re heading to the harbor,” he said as he climbed in.
“You’re sure?”
“Arden was talking nonstop and loudly enough for anyone nearby to hear. She mentioned the harbor and a server and something about fixing what she’d broken.”
“If there’s a computer system on the yacht, that would make sense.”
“Do you know where Emory is docked?”
“Yes.” Kane had done a little research, talked to some people at the marina’s fishing supply shop and gotten a pretty good idea. He hadn’t been able to access the dock, though. It was guarded during the day, and he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself by climbing the fence that surrounded it. “How many men were with Arden?”
“Four, including the driver,” Silas answered. “At least one is a security guard.”
Kane drove them toward the marina, keeping the taillights from the Mercedes at a safe distance to avoid drawing attention.
The thought of Arden being in the hands of Marcus Emory made his blood run cold and he had to push back the worry. He’d flown critical extraction missions in the Middle East for the last seven years, a number of them under enemy fire. But none of those compared to this.
He’d promised Jace that he’d bring Arden home, but there was so much more to it now. There was something special about Arden, something that the world really needed—uninhibited joy and curiosity and intelligence.
She was uniquely beautiful inside and out, and he thought that maybe that was something he really needed. He was no longer that dumb kid. He’d spent years atoning for his mistakes. Perhaps it was time to embrace the possibility that God wanted more for him than a life of regret.
Up ahead, a set of modest iron gates were swinging closed, the Mercedes’s taillights glowing from the other side of it.
The gate, which was open and guarded during business hours, was unmanned and closed at night, requiring an access code Kane didn’t have. Instead, he found a meter on the street and parked. He was out of the vehicle and over the fence in seconds. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way across a sparsely treed patch of snow-covered lawn.
Whispered movement drew his attention. A glance over his shoulder registered the shadow of a dog in motion. Dutch scaled the fence in an impressive leap, his chain collar jingling as his paws touched the ground. Silas followed suit, landing almost silently. Joining Kane in the shadows, he motioned to the dog, who immediately heeled at his side.
“You said you know where the yacht is docked?” Silas asked. His voice was barely a whisper on the cold night air.
“This way.” Kane jogged through the silent marina, passing several piers. He’d struck up a conversation earlier with a couple of retirees he’d met in the bait shop and discovered that the Relentless Journey was docked at Pier Six, the farthest from the gate. Ostentatiously extravagant, it had its fair share of detractors. Kane had spoken to more than one person who was less than impressed by both the yacht and its owner.
The guy might have friends. They apparently didn’t hang around the harbor.
That had worked to Kane’s advantage. The yacht was exactly where he’d expected it to be, the Mercedes parked on the street near the pier. Doors closed, lights off, it looked empty. The yacht was well lit, though. Shadowy figures moved along the foredeck.
Kane motioned for Silas to stay near the Mercedes and headed to the yacht, the soft lap of water against the hull drowning out his footsteps. A ladder to the aft of the vessel led to the foredeck. He climbed it quickly, taking out a guard who’d been smoking a cigarette near the life raft.
He dragged the guy to a dark corner, using tether lines to tie him up and a signal flag to gag him.
This was what he’d spent his military career doing: going in silently, taking out the enemy, making a way for the team to get in and take out weapons caches. Kane dragged the guy to the railing, used his own handcuffs to imprison him there. He grabbed a small Maglite from his cargo pocket and pointed it at the pier, clicking it on and off twice.
He didn’t wait for an answering signal. Silas would board the vessel, search out the rest of the security team and take it out.
Kane was going to find Arden. He was going to get her off the yacht. He was going to stop Emory and Randy, and then he was going to make Arden’s ex very, very sorry for underestimating the woman he’d supposedly loved.