Three minutes, ten seconds.
Three minutes, eleven seconds.
Arden watched the second hand on the old grandmother clock creep to twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Every second seemed like an eternity. Every minute that passed brought them closer to disaster. Someone had been outside. Silas’s dog had made that clear. If it were one of GeoArray’s thugs, there’d be more assassins waiting in the shadows.
She shuddered, sliding the laptop back in her pack. Now she understood why GeoArray had been so desperate to retrieve the files and stop her from opening them.
She understood, and it terrified her.
There had to be a way to keep them from releasing the information, and she planned to find it. Standing around waiting for Kane and Silas to return wasn’t helping her do that.
Besides, she wasn’t just terrified. She was worried.
Logically, she knew that Kane and Silas didn’t need her help, but logic had nothing to do with the heart. And her heart was telling her they might be in trouble, that even with all their combined training and expertise, they might have run into a situation they couldn’t get out of.
She grabbed the baseball bat that Henry had abandoned earlier and walked to the back door. She peered out the little window beside it.
The light above the garage door was still glowing, illuminating footprints and tire tracks left in the snow. A shadow moved near the corner of the garage, and a man appeared. Tall. Broad shoulders. Moving toward the house, a dog beside him.
Silas. It had to be. The dog wouldn’t be walking beside anyone else.
She unlocked the door and stepped onto the back stoop, still clutching the baseball bat.
“Where’s Kane?” she asked, and Silas gestured toward the back corner of the house.
“Coming. You need to get your things. We need to move out.”
“My things are ready to go.” She stepped back as he walked up the steps, crowding into her space and making no apology for it.
“Go back inside, Arden. It isn’t safe out here.”
“Did you find the person who was out there?” she asked, peering around him and finally catching a glimpse of Kane.
He was moving across the yard, something flung over his shoulder. A bag of some sort? An animal?
The closer he got, the more it looked like...
A person?
“In the house,” Silas repeated, and somehow he had her moving backward, across the threshold and into the mudroom.
Once she was inside, he moved past her, the dog trotting along beside him.
Seconds later, Kane appeared in the doorway.
“You were supposed to stay inside,” he growled. He closed the door with a little more force than she thought was necessary.
“Shh!” she cautioned. “You’re going to wake up your parents.”
“You were supposed to stay inside,” he repeated, his eyes flashing with irritation as he strode past. The person he was carrying hung limply over his shoulder.
A man.
She could see that now.
In a police uniform.
“Is he dead?” she asked as Kane set the guy in a chair.
“No.” Kane’s response was terse. He grabbed Arden’s backpack and was sliding into it. “Did you leave anything upstairs?”
“Just Sebastian. I’ll get him. He’s not going to be happy when I put him back in the carrier. I think he’s sick of traveling. Cats aren’t known for being fond of it. I read an interesting article about—”
The floorboards in front of the kitchen doorway creaked, cutting off the rest of whatever babbling diatribe Arden had been about to deliver.
Nerves.
Because she knew Kane was upset, because there was an unconscious police officer in a chair at the kitchen table, because everything was riding on them being able to stop GeoArray before the company transferred the system to a buyer and she was scared they wouldn’t get the opportunity.
“What’s going on?” Henry asked, walking into the kitchen. Jules was right behind him. “Why is Chuck Moran here?” His focus jumped from the officer to Silas. “And who are you?”
“Silas is my business associate,” Kane explained, taking the baseball bat from Arden’s hand and setting it on the table. “The officer ran into some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Jules hurried across the room, lifting the officer’s wrist and checking his pulse.
“He was outside the house. I thought he was trying to break in. I knocked him out before I realized he was law enforcement.”
“Did you also think he had something to do with whatever Arden has gotten herself involved in?” Jules asked.
Arden met Kane’s eyes. He looked as surprised as she felt.
“What are you talking about, Mom?” he asked.
“Arden was on the evening news last night. That’s one of the reasons why Henry and I remembered that article so well. Right, honey?” She plugged in the coffeepot and filled the reservoir.
“Right. They even had a picture of you, Arden. Apparently, the FBI has you on its most wanted list. Someone spotted you at an airport in Maine. I heard your name and remembered you from that article, so I looked it up online to refresh my memory. Very interesting read, Arden. Very interesting.”
“Why,” Kane began, and Arden thought he was doing everything in his power to hold onto his patience, “was the local evening news running a story about Arden, Dad?”
“It was a short piece, really. Simply said the FBI believed Arden to be traveling with an unknown male companion and that they were likely headed toward Massachusetts and one or both could be armed. Once you showed up here, we realized that the FBI was totally wrong about whatever they think Arden did. You have too much integrity and honor to ever get involved with someone who deserves a spot on the most wanted list, Kane.”
“So you didn’t call the police?” Kane asked, glancing at the officer.
“Good gravy train! Why would we do something like that?” Jules exclaimed. “We trust you to know what’s going on and to find a way out of it.”
“That’s not going to happen if we stay here much longer,” Silas grumbled.
“Right. Logic dictates that if there’s one police officer here, more are probably coming,” Henry said. “You three go do what you need to do. We’ll take care of Chuck.”
“If he realizes we were here, you both could be in trouble,” Kane warned.
“He’s still out cold. We’ll wake him up after you leave and tell him we heard a noise and went out to investigate. That we found him unconscious in the snow, poor man, and dragged him into the house out of the cold.”
“He’s going to ask about me,” Kane said.
“We haven’t seen you and have no idea what’s going on.” Jules pulled a bag of corn from the freezer.
“And that last part, of course, is true. We’re clueless. When it’s all over, I hope you’ll fill us in.” Henry took Arden’s arm and walked her through the mudroom to the back door.
“I need to get Sebastian,” she said, pulling away and not promising anything. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to tell the Walkers what was going on. She wasn’t even sure if she’d see them again.
“The cat? Is he really going to want to ride in the car with that dog?” Henry asked.
“He’s not going to have a choice.”
“He will if you leave him with us. We’ll take good care of him until you return,” Henry offered.
“I can’t. He’ll think I abandoned him.” Arden turned, ready to get Sebastian, but Kane blocked her path.
His expression was grim. “Chuck is starting to come to. We need to move out.”
“I need to get Sebastian.”
“I know you love the cat, Arden, but you’re going to have to make a decision here.” He opened the back door, letting cold air blow into the mudroom. “You walk back into the kitchen, and you’re going to be seen by a guy who is going to be happy to tell every police officer in the area that you were here. There’ll be blockades up from here to Boston, and we’ll be fortunate to make it onto the interstate before we’re caught.”
He was right.
She knew it.
She still didn’t want to leave Sebastian.
“Arden?” He touched her cheek, and she found herself looking into his eyes. Found herself thinking about all the ways he and his parents could be hurt if she was caught.
She loved Sebastian, but he’d be fine without her for a few days.
“Okay.”
He smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering for a moment. She could still feel their warmth after he stepped away, after they walked outside, after they climbed into the back seat of Silas’s vehicle.
That should have bothered her.
It should have made her nervous. It should have set off alarms and warning bells, made her toss up walls and create boundaries.
Should have, but all it really did was make her wonder why she’d spent so much time with Randy when he’d never ever made her feel what Kane did.
“Where to?” Silas asked as he started the engine and pulled away from the house.
She hadn’t thought about it. Not much. She’d been too busy thinking about decrypting the files, escaping GeoArray, outwitting the FBI.
Now, though, she’d accomplished her first goal. She knew what GeoArray planned. She also knew exactly what she needed to do to stop it.
“Boston,” she answered. “We need to get into GeoArray’s offices and take down its network before the system prototype is transferred in two days.”
* * *
“No way.” Kane didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think it through. He didn’t need to. There was no way he was bringing Arden anywhere near GeoArray.
“Hear me out, Kane,” she said calmly.
“I’m listening.” But listening didn’t mean he was going along with her plan.
“The day after tomorrow, GeoArray is getting paid to deliver the weapons control system. Once that’s leaked, our own weapons systems can be used against us and our allies. We need to take down GeoArray’s network system to prevent that from happening.”
“Then remotely log onto the network and take it down. You hacked in before, you can do it again.”
“I can’t. Once I took the files from their network, they knew it had been breached. They took their system off the net. It’s completely inaccessible to anyone outside their facility.”
“So we’ll take the information to the FBI and let them handle it.”
“They may not be able to get a search warrant quickly enough to give them time to stop this from going down,” she argued. “Plus, we know Emory has the FBI’s ear. Someone could tip him off. By the time they get into the GeoArray systems, the information could be out, and our national defense will be compromised.”
“They’ll move quickly. They’ll have to. We take the evidence to Grayson, he’ll know who to trust,” Kane said grimly.
“Even then, the government doesn’t always move quickly,” Silas said. “I’m going to have to take Arden’s side on this. We should move in now while there’s still time. Take GeoArray by surprise.”
“I disagree,” Kane argued. “There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t. If I’d had time to leave a worm while I accessed their system, I could have wiped out their network. Unfortunately, their network monitoring system found me too quickly. There is absolutely no way to wipe out that system except from the inside. We go in, or we allow the country’s entire defense system to be vulnerable.”
“Then you tell us how to do it. Silas and I will go in. You call the shots via phone.”
“Statistically speaking, there’s more chance of a meteorite falling on GeoArray and taking out the system than there is of that plan succeeding.”
“Ouch!” Silas said. “You don’t have much confidence in us.”
“I have plenty of confidence in you, but this will only succeed if we work together. If you go it alone, you’ll be in enemy territory, talking to me over a phone, trying to do something it took years for me to learn. All I need you to do is get me in the building. I can do the rest.”
She had a point.
Kane didn’t want to admit it.
But they’d need to get in and get out quickly and silently. Stay under the radar. That would be hard to do while trying to communicate with someone on the outside.
“Fine. You win.”
“I do?” She sounded shocked.
“Why are you surprised?”
“Because I haven’t won a debate with you yet.”
“There’s a first for everything.”
She smiled and leaned her head back against the seat, sighing.
“Tired?”
“No. Just enjoying the victory.” She met his eyes, and he found himself smiling right back at her, because she was Arden. She loved cats and Christmas and her country. She was smart, quick-minded and honest as they come, and he liked that. He liked her, and he was starting to think he could feel a lot more than that if he let himself.
“No one should be claiming victory yet. Not until we’ve gotten in and out of GeoArray without getting ourselves killed,” Silas muttered, merging onto the highway.
“You have a point,” Arden agreed. “We can’t just waltz in the front door and demand access to the server.”
“Once we get to Boston, we may be able to track down the blueprint of the building and get an idea of what access we can use.” Kane could think of a dozen areas that were probably weak in security: upper level windows, ventilation systems, delivery bays.
One of his company’s specialties was identifying physical security weaknesses for clients and shoring them up. Most companies didn’t bother hiring outside experts, though. Most thought their security could never be breached.
Most were wrong.
“We can probably do that now.” Arden tugged at the strap of her backpack. Kane hadn’t removed it when he’d gotten in Silas’s SUV. He’d been in too much of a hurry to bother. “Hand me my laptop. I can take a look through city records and see what I can find. I’m sure there’s a digital file of it somewhere.”
He shrugged out of the pack and pulled out the computer.
Seconds later, she had it open, booted up and connected to the internet through her wireless network card.
They bounced over a rut in the road, but she didn’t seem to notice. She also didn’t seem to notice the landscape changing, the lights of the city shining in the distance, time passing. She was completely engrossed in what she was doing, and he let her be.
He had things to do, too. Plans to make.
They’d go into GeoArray together. They’d come out together.
That was the goal, but anything could happen.
The company had money, resources and a lot to lose if they were unable to deliver the information in those files. If something were to happen that prevented Arden from taking down the server, GeoArray would successfully pass on information vital to national security.
Kane couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t take a chance that they’d fail and that the secrets they’d discovered would be kept. And of course he wanted to clear Arden’s name. Give her life back to her and have her home in time to enjoy Christmas with her family.
He had every reason to succeed and he had no intention of dying before he completed the mission. He had no intention of allowing Arden or Silas to die, either. But he’d be foolish if he let them walk into GeoArray without a backup plan.
He couldn’t call in the local authorities. They’d stop the operation before it began. He couldn’t contact the FBI for the same reason.
He could contact Grayson, though. But not yet. Not until right before they went in. He’d need to convince Arden to email him the files, too. That was the only way to be sure the information would get into the hands of someone who would know what to do with it if the mission went south.