Chapter Nine

Mara Garrett stared at the computer screen. Ivy’s emails didn’t sound like Ivy. Everything about this was off. Of course, she’d been assaulted and had taken off in the middle of the night without seeing a doctor or talking to the police beyond a phone call. The trauma of it all was likely catching up to her.

But still, it had taken her hours to get in touch, and Mara found it hard to believe Ivy had that much trouble with the uplink. Ivy could make a toaster talk to a coffeemaker, networking them through the microwave. Hard to imagine anything less than a catastrophic crash could take her hours to fix, and when she did run into glitches, she was the type to go into detail over what the problem was, not realizing that Mara’s brain blanked out the moment the explanation got technical.

It just wasn’t Ivy. Which meant there was something wrong.

She reread the last email for the third time. Formal to the point of being stiff. They’d passed that stage of their email communications when CAM had crashed and Ivy worked sixty-eight hours straight to fix it. Or rather him. Ivy had made it clear in her hilarious, ranty emails sent during the coding marathon that CAM was male in her mind. He was a bad, obnoxious, boastful boy who made all sorts of promises but failed to deliver. And then, when her bad boy started working again, even exceeding her expectations, he was all muscles and abs and bytes and bits.

Ivy on a rant was one of Mara’s new favorite things.

She’d wonder if the emails really came from Ivy, except the biometric coding would make it hard for anyone to pretend to be her, and there was just enough Ivy in the word choices.

She scrolled down the last message, and her eye landed on the attachment list. Ivy had sent a jpg file?

She opened the attachment and studied the photo. There went her doubts about the email coming from Ivy. Her brown eyes looked haunted, and a tear ran down one cheek. The photo wasn’t posed. It was a quick snapshot of Ivy with a man by her side, neither one of them looking at the camera. It was almost as if neither of them knew the computer camera was even activated. Yet clearly Ivy had known. She’d attached the photo.

Mara had never seen the man by Ivy’s side before. The photo backdrop was nothing but blue sky. She opened the photo’s metadata file, and it had been taken just minutes before and included the UTM location where CAM showed up as a red dot on the digital map.

Why had Ivy sent the photo? To prove she was the person at the keyboard?

That there was no mention of the photo could mean Ivy was under duress.

It was just after nine in the morning in Palau, but it was after eight p.m. in DC. An hour ago, Mara had sent Cressida and Trina home. It could be a long night waiting for Ivy to report in, and Mara’s husband had insisted on being the person to keep her company in her anxious vigil.

After all, as the US attorney general, Curt could get answers from the Pentagon as to why the Navy hadn’t demanded that Ivy be brought home. Nothing added up, but if anyone could get answers, it was Curt.

Sometimes it was incredibly convenient being married to the head of the Justice Department. She’d miss that aspect of his job when he stepped down in a few months, but she was eager to have more of his attention, eager to start their family.

But right now, she was damn grateful he was a cabinet member and even the highest brass at the Pentagon had no choice but to take his calls.

Curt paced the length of her office, deep in phone conversation with a general who’d ignored Mara’s repeated calls. She caught his eye and pointed to the computer. “I need you to look at something.”

He nodded and wrapped up his conversation. A minute later, he stepped behind her at her desk. His hands fell to her shoulders, and his thumbs dug into her shoulders in a quick, casual massage. She leaned back. The top of her head brushed against his stomach, and she smiled up at him.

He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. “What’s up?”

She nodded toward the computer. “Ivy attached a picture but didn’t mention it in her email. I’m wondering why.”

“That’s Jack Keaton?” Curt asked.

“I presume.”

He pulled his computer glasses from his breast pocket and slipped them on, then leaned toward the screen. There was something about when he put on his glasses. Like he was Clark Kent. Sweet. Nerdy. And hot as hell. She never got tired of it.

He stared at the image. “Holy crap. That’s Parker Reeves.”

She sat upright, her infatuation with her husband brushed aside. “Parker Reeves? The Coast Guard lieutenant who turned out to be a Russian spy? You’re sure?”

“Not a hundred percent. I never met him in person, but I saw enough photos when we investigated him after the fact. We need to get Luke Sevick or Undine Gray on the phone. Luke can confirm if it’s Reeves.”

Dimitri had hoped it would take Ivy longer to figure out how the Pentagon was using her, but those were the breaks when working with a woman with a high-genius IQ. Then again, her brain had also created CAM, which just might find Sophia and Yulian’s salvation, so he couldn’t complain.

“I’m not a spy,” she insisted.

“No. Not intentionally, yet there’s no doubt you’re collecting data. The same kind of data spy technology would gather.”

“Data you intend to steal.” She frowned. “Have I mentioned it’s illegal to collect artifacts or debris from the Peleliu wreckage or from any archaeological or historic site? Artifact trafficking is closely tied to drug trafficking. If you’re looking for something to be used in the drug trade, you can bet your ass I’ll make sure you fry for it.”

He huffed out a sigh. “The object I’m looking for isn’t part of the Peleliu battle, and it isn’t an artifact.” His gaze flattened. “I’m also not a low-life drug smuggler.” Ridiculous that the accusation should rankle so much, considering she had no reason to believe he was even a remotely decent human being, but still it did.

“So it’s some sort of spy thing, and you’re going to take it and leave me holding the bag.” Her vocal cords sounded dry. “I’ll be sent to prison for aiding and abetting a spy.”

“Not if they never know you found it. Right now, no one has given you any orders regarding anything except mapping Peleliu. It’s not your fault the Pentagon is scouring your uploads to the database for the object. And not your fault they haven’t told you what to look for.”

“They’ll see it, and you’re going to take it. I am so fucked.”

There was nothing he could say to that. Would it have been better if he’d stayed Jack? He could have spent the next week screwing her brains out and she’d have trusted him completely. However, she still wouldn’t have given Jack access to the GIS mapping database, and it would have come down to this anyway. After a life of lying, it was refreshing to choose the truth. And at least going this route, he’d given her a modicum of power. If she was half the hacker he believed her to be, she’d follow the trail that would lead straight to Luke Sevick, and then maybe she’d find a reason to trust him.

Luke probably received his card today. He would vouch for Parker. At least, he hoped the former SEAL would. Sending Luke the card had been the ultimate gamble—and he’d wagered his life. Ivy’s too, if he couldn’t protect her from others who were after CAM.

No further messages arrived from her boss, and she logged out of the system, then fixed him with a hard gaze. “Take me to Peleliu. I need to pick up where I left off on the survey.”

“No. We’re going to the Rock Islands. Your boss will understand why you’ve switched to the more remote survey areas. It’s safer to hide there when boys from ISIS will be coming after you.”

She glared at him. “Patrick’s terrorist group wasn’t affiliated with ISIS.”

He laughed. She was quibbling over that? “Sweetheart, a terrorist is a terrorist—you can try to console yourself thinking at least your ex was in deep with better terrorists than ISIS, but really, it’s a bullshit argument. Better how? Al Qaeda better? Taliban better? Al Shabaab? Boko Haram? Does that ease the sting for you? They’re all killers who believe in raping little girls. They’re the kind of people who board school buses and shoot fifteen-year-old girls in the head. That’s who your ex aligned with. And you can bet your ass that once Dr. Patrick Hill was out of the equation, his followers turned to ISIS. They’ve got the money and recruiting, and now they could get CAM. Your CAM. Handed over to ISIS thanks to your husband’s promises. You picked an evil sonofabitch to marry.”

She flinched, and he suspected she wanted to lash out. But she couldn’t, because he was right. She scanned him from head to toe. “Apparently, my taste in men hasn’t improved since the divorce.”

“There’s one major difference: I’m protecting you and CAM from ISIS.”

“You haven’t given me a single reason to believe that.” She crossed the deck.

“Put together the drone,” he said before she disappeared down the hatch. “So you’re ready to work when we reach the Rock Islands.”

He turned back to the helm. He’d known she’d lump him in with the likes of her ex, but the words grated anyway. Dr. Patrick Hill chose his path. He actively sought to become a player in the Middle East and was nothing better than a slimy arms dealer, buying weapons from lowlifes who’d managed to stockpile them when the Soviet Union dissolved. Hill had sold arms to all sides of the conflict in Syria and Iraq, because conflict meant more access, more customers, more power.

Dimitri’s life had been proscribed from the moment he was plucked from the orphan home. He’d been part of a new wave of fully embedded spies, like the Soviet sleeper agents dispatched during the Cold War, but he was from the new Russia. A post-Yeltsin-era spy.

He’d done his duty for his country on one condition: his sister, Sophia, had to be removed from the training program. Of course, that was his fatal mistake. He’d let the spymasters in the GRU know he cared about his little sister.

When he found the man who’d hurt his sister this time, he’d break every bone in his body with a ball-peen hammer.

His breaking point as Parker Reeves had come when he received orders to take out Luke Sevick if needed to maintain his cover.

He could have done it. There’d been a moment when they were pulled into the Osprey, when Luke was removing his harness. One little push, and Dimitri would still be in the US Coast Guard, stationed in Neah Bay, no one the wiser that he was a Russian agent. He’d have been the surviving hero of the night, and Luke would have been mourned for his tragic, heroic, accidental death.

But Dimitri had reached out and pulled Luke into the Osprey without regret.

Luke had calmly met his gaze, said thanks, and handed Dimitri a parachute. “Better get going,” he’d said. “Because it won’t go well for you if you stay.”

Dimitri jumped moments later, thus killing his alter ego, Parker Reeves.

In Ivy’s eyes, Dimitri was every bit the lowlife her ex was. She wouldn’t give a damn that he was protecting the only family he had.

He ran his hand over his face, trying to erase his thoughts so he could focus on the job at hand. It would take a few hours to reach the Rock Islands. He could get there faster thanks to the souped-up engines, but there was no point in tipping off the Navy as to what Liberty could do. Plus, Ivy needed time to hack.

He started the engines, setting a course for the islands where Russia’s prototype Air/Underwater Unmanned Vehicle went missing, hoping to hell he’d be able to find it before other hostile nations got their hands on it.