Relocating to Maryland took less than two hours. Renee’s heartbeat still hadn’t returned to normal despite the reassurances of Kade and the Saint Squad that the most recent threat had been neutralized once and for all. Maybe they could switch gears from mission ready to relaxed in an instant, but she didn’t work that way. She only had to blink for the sound of the gunshot to echo through her mind, to feel the impact of her body meeting the ground when she’d rolled to her right and fallen from the motorcycle.
She had realized when she’d borrowed Kade’s motorcycle helmet and jacket that they were similar to police issue, complete with bullet proofing, but that hadn’t stopped her life from flashing before her eyes when someone had shot in her direction.
Kade had insisted she take the rest of the day off from work, and she hadn’t argued. She had opted to sit in the cab with him when they drove, neither of them speaking. How odd it was that even Kade’s silence gave her some comfort.
The sun had nearly set when Kade pulled onto the main road near several RV campsites. He navigated his rig into the one on the end, backing in so the trailer was partially shaded by some trees. After he escorted her into the trailer, he set about hooking up their utilities at their new campsite. Like their previous location, Kade had somehow managed to park away from the other campers, and she hadn’t seen any sign of life for more than a mile. Searching for some semblance of normalcy, Renee cleaned up the dishes from their earlier dinner.
When Kade came back inside, he went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands before turning to look at her. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay.” Renee said the words in an effort to convince herself.
Kade’s eyes narrowed. “Seriously, how are you?”
Renee drew in a deep breath and felt a tremble work through her. She tried to swallow it but didn’t trust herself to speak. With a tenderness she hadn’t experienced before, Kade pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled her into his arms, his hand running lightly up and down her back. Tears surfaced, several escaping before she managed to regain control.
A minute stretched into two before Kade said, “I’m so sorry I let that happen.”
Renee swallowed hard and pulled back enough to see his face. She lifted a hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my fault. I should have checked your go kit before I brought it back here. There’s no excuse for that kind of carelessness.”
“You’ve saved my life more than once. Maybe you should cut yourself a little slack.” Renee took another deep breath and felt herself calm down.
“Still . . .” He stepped from her embrace as though needing to be able to see her clearly. “I’ve been trained better than that.”
“So have I,” Renee pointed out. “It’s not like I’m one of the other analysts in my office. I went through all of the classes to become an operative.”
“I thought you were in operations.”
“I was trained in operations, but I’ve been working in a security office. Computer forensics, cybersecurity, that sort of thing. Everyone else I work with came from the admin side of the house.”
“Wait a minute. You’re telling me you work with cybersecurity, and someone still managed to trace your search on José Perez?” Kade’s eyebrows drew together. “Either you’re not very good at your job, or we’re missing something here.”
Renee’s jaw set. “I’m very good at my job.”
“Then we’re missing something.”
* * *
“We’ve got to be missing something,” Brent said as he sat at the Whitmores’ kitchen table with Amy, Seth, and Jay. After returning from their outing with Ghost, they had sat down to compare notes. Seeing how close Renee had come to being like the rest of the guardians’ support staff gave them all a new sense of urgency. “Ghost said Renee works in cybersecurity, and Vanessa confirmed that she couldn’t find a trace of her computer activity.”
“Then how did anyone know she could be a potential threat?” Seth asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Amy replied.
“Keystroke logger?” Jay suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Brent tapped his fingers on the table. “Anyone in cybersecurity wouldn’t fall for something like that. In fact, it’s probably part of their protocol to check their systems before they start working every day.”
“Surveillance camera?” Seth asked.
“Someone would have had to zero in on her to know to watch her,” Brent pointed out.
“We’re missing something,” Amy said, repeating her husband’s earlier comment.
“You know,” Seth began in his slow, deliberate way. “If Renee didn’t do anything to draw attention to herself, there has to be something on the other side of her search that led to her.”
Brent let his teammate’s comment sink in. “You think the database she searched had some kind of tracker on it.”
“Exactly. Even if she purges her computer when she starts up and closes down for the day, if an alert was set on the database side . . .”
“It would only take a few seconds for someone to identify which computer was used for the search,” Brent finished for him.
“Exactly.”
“We need to narrow our search to the agency employees who have administrative access to that database,” Amy said.
“I’ll call Vanessa and see what she can do about narrowing the field further,” Seth offered.
“Thanks.” Brent turned to Jay. “Check in with Craig and Damian. Have them reset the alerts on Vanessa’s laptop to make sure no one will be able to find her the same way.”
“Even if someone does manage to trace her IP address, she’s operating out of a dummy network. No one would be able to find her.”
“Yes, but we might be able to find the guys on the other end of the search.”
“Gotcha. I’ll give Damian a call.”
“Thanks, Jay.” Brent turned his attention to his wife. “I assume we don’t have any activity on the budget yet.”
“Nothing,” Amy said. “It’s Saturday night. I still don’t see anyone digging into it until Monday.”
“What do you say we go have a chat with your dad? I’d like to pick his brain on what he has planned for his next campaign.”
“Doesn’t he still have four more years on his current term?” Seth asked, confused.
Brent pushed back from the table and stood. “Yeah, but I have a feeling he’s already thinking ahead.”
* * *
Vanessa studied the data before her, amazed at the amount of information the guardians had access to. A phone call to a woman named Hannah had granted her access to their database when she had arrived in New York yesterday. In every spare minute since then, she had worked to familiarize herself with the assassination of José Perez and the various members of the intelligence community with access to the guardian program.
With the facts laid out before her, she now understood why Ghost had insisted on going to such extremes to make sure the Saint Squad could protect their loved ones. Literally everyone who had been involved with supporting the program was now dead, except for Hannah, whoever she really was. Vanessa had been involved in intelligence long enough to know that the woman was likely living under an alias for the exact same reason Vanessa had been banished to a safe house with the rest of the wives. Safety.
The analysis of Renee’s computer activity revealed little except that she had done a good job erasing whatever searches she had conducted the day before the assassination attempt. Her phone rang, and she answered it to find Seth on the other end.
“Hey, hon. How is everything going?” she asked.
“Okay, but we have a job for you.” Seth proceeded to explain the squad’s theory about how Renee had been identified.
“Let me check with Hannah and see what we can find.”
“Thanks. Before you do any more searches though, Damian is going to reset the alerts on your computer.”
A knock sounded at her door, and she opened it to find Damian on the other side.
“He’s here now.” Vanessa waved Damian inside and unlocked her laptop to give him access to the security controls.
“Let me talk to him for a minute,” Seth said.
Vanessa handed the phone to Damian. “Seth wants to talk to you.”
The conversation was one-sided, and Vanessa suspected her husband was walking his teammate through the security procedures. After a couple minutes, Damian shifted away from the computer and handed the phone back to Vanessa. “You’re all set.”
“Thanks.” She waited until Damian left and had closed the door behind him before she lifted the phone to her ear. “Damian is all done.”
“Give me a call if you find anything.”
“Will do. Love you.”
“Love you too.” After she hung up with Seth, she traded her normal cell phone for the one she had used to contact Hannah.
Hannah picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hannah, it’s Vanessa. I have an idea, but I need your help.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can’t find any evidence of Renee’s searches, but obviously someone must have seen something to know to come after her. The Saint Squad thinks Renee triggered an alert.”
“That would explain her being found so quickly.” Hannah fell silent, and Vanessa heard typing. “I’m running a diagnostic on the agency database to see if there is any hidden code that could have compromised her.”
“Computer programming is beyond me, but I’m usually pretty good at analysis. I figure if I can’t find any trace of Renee’s computer activity even though I know where to look, I doubt anyone else would have found it.”
“I agree,” Hannah said. “I’m not sure how long it will take to run the diagnostic, but I’ll give you a call when I finish.”
“I’d appreciate it. Thanks.”
“One more thing. Have you looked at any of the video feed from where Renee is supposed to be staying?”
“Not yet. Do you want me to do that next?”
“Yeah. I thought you might have a better chance of knowing who shouldn’t be there than the rest of us would,” Hannah said. “We already have a dozen people identified who have come into the camera’s view.”
“I’ll take a look.”
“Thanks, Vanessa. I’ll get back to you.”
Vanessa hung up and accessed the message board where she could retrieve the digital surveillance files as well as the notes her husband and his squad had made on the individuals they had identified. For the next hour, she added her insight to the names. Reggie Barnabus, the housing coordinator; Collin Valentine from security; Jamal Witold from personnel; Tad Coleman, who worked as a shooting instructor; two people from housekeeping she didn’t know personally but had seen around the compound, and six others who were currently living in the same housing area as they underwent training.
She was adding the home offices of the trainees to the notes when her phone for Hannah rang.
“The Saint Squad was right,” Hannah said, a combination of excitement and trepidation in her voice. “A well-hidden tracking program was embedded in the search engine on the agency’s database. Anytime someone typed in ‘José’ and ‘Perez,’ an alert was triggered.”
“And since the information on his death was tightly held, I imagine those searches were not very frequent.”
“Except for Renee’s search, they were nonexistent,” Hannah confirmed. “The only other searches were the ones you and the Saint Squad did.”
“Can you tell who planted the tracking program?”
“Whoever did this hid their tracks well. I can narrow it down to the headquarters building, but beyond that, I can’t see what terminal was used without possibly compromising my system.”
“Now what?” Vanessa asked. “I put some notes into the message board on the people seen at the training facility, but there wasn’t anyone who seemed out of place.”
“We’re still looking for Roland Sava. Renee thought he might be our sniper, but he dropped off the grid at the same time Perez was killed.”
“I know him slightly,” Vanessa said. “He’s an excellent shot, that’s for sure.”
“Do you think he could be our guy?”
“I don’t know. Snipers tend to be a unique breed, but he never stood out to me as being a problem.” Vanessa thought of the slender man of average height and pale-blue eyes. “Do you want me to try to track his movements?”
“Actually, that would be great,” Hannah said. “Maybe if we both keep digging, one of us will find the needle in the haystack.”
“Without getting poked.”
“Exactly.”