It took an hour of debate with Bradley and coaching from both Megan and Adrian before Rachel actually entered the interview room.
The earpiece they’d given her so they could speak to her during the chat seemed to have been pushed too far into her ear. Rachel smoothed down that side of her hair, conscious of not touching it. The quicker she got this over with, the better she would feel.
Too bad this wasn’t about her feelings.
Or her fear.
This was about finding out why a hacker wanted to talk to her. And how it would help them bring down the vice president.
Not that she could actually mention the VP specifically. That had been part of the coaching Adrian had given her. The other agents, including the special agent in charge, would be watching. None of them were aware Double Down had a suspect—and without proof they would not know. Rachel prayed quickly that she wasn’t going to mess anything up. Adrian was walking a fine line. As the only federal agent among them, he had the most to lose if his coworkers found out he’d been playing both sides.
The older man looked up as she entered. Heavy jowls hung on the sides of his face, peppered with stubble. Dark jeans and a wool sweater with three buttons at his throat. A full head of dark hair frosted with gray.
Rachel shut the door behind her, not moving her gaze from him. She didn’t want to give him her back, even if he was shackled to the table. Which was Bradley’s idea.
She set the water bottle in front of him, close enough so that he could grab it. She pulled out the metal chair opposite him and sat back from the table. She didn’t exactly want to be close to him. That part of Bradley’s instructions she hadn’t minded so much.
He stared at her.
There was something in his eyes she didn’t want to think about. “Maybe you’d like to start.” After all, this was basically an elaborate strategy game, like chess. Would he move a pawn first?
Was she the pawn?
When he said nothing, she said, “How about your name?”
The agents had taken his fingerprints when they processed him, but this would save them having to run his identity. Assuming he answered truthfully.
“I’m Rachel.”
He shifted, a minute movement she almost didn’t notice. Then his lips parted and his gravelly voice said, “Know that.”
He held his body still. So much control. She had to do the same, or he’d know he was getting to her. Freaking her out.
“Would you like to tell me why you asked to speak to me?”
Maybe they could get this over with.
He said, “Figured I’d see you for myself. In person.”
“Because my name is all over what he’s asking you to do? Sending people messages and emails, giving out instructions. Orders to kill.” He’d probably even seen the video of her—like everyone else. She wanted to shudder, but held her body still.
Was that what he meant—in person?
The glint in his eyes got to her. Rachel glanced at the wall behind his shoulder and exhaled, like this whole thing was boring her to tears. Which was a weird expression, when she thought about it. Why would she be so bored she’d start crying? Maybe fall asleep, but not cry. Bored to the point of snoring was probably more like it. But considering the rhyme there, maybe that was why it hadn’t become a thing.
She glanced at him. “But now you’re here. Caught.”
He was older than she’d have thought a hacker would be. Wasn’t that a younger person thing? Not someone born before the computer age hit every household in America.
So was he actually the hacker they were looking for or was he someone else entirely?
A voice spoke in her earpiece. “Rachel.”
She didn’t react.
The voice she assumed belonged to Adrian said, “He isn’t in any US military database, or any branch of the government. We ran his photo through the DMV. There’s nothing. Which means we have no idea who he is.”
If they hadn’t found his ID in any branch of service’s database, that meant he couldn’t possibly be part of Steve’s team back when he’d worked for the CIA. He wasn’t part of it in any way, or his fingerprints would’ve come back with a result that gave them nothing but a reference number for a classified file they didn’t have access to. Either way, there would have been some kind of record.
“Who are you?”
His lips curled into a smile. “No one.” He laughed, the sound sharp against her ears. “That’s why it’s all so beautiful.”
“Killing people is beautiful? Destroying lives by ruining people’s reputations? A woman took her life, and you’re sitting here laughing because you’re ‘so good’ that you give the FBI the runaround?” She dropped her hands from the air quotes, no longer quite so nervous. “Why did you want to talk to me? Because I don’t think it was just to gloat. You seem entirely too enamored with your own intelligence to not have something else going on.”
A thought popped into her head.
“Are you stringing me along while you hack into the FBI’s database somehow?”
His eyebrows rose. “I was searched. There’s no electronics on me. It’s all been seized.”
“And brought here.”
In her earpiece, Adrian said, “On it.”
The hacker’s mouth shifted.
“Is that what this is? A time-waste?” She paused for a second, then said, “What is his end game? What does he want?”
She needed him to spell out the fact the VP wanted to take the president’s spot in the Oval office. Adrian’s job would be a whole lot easier if the rest of the feds knew who the prime suspect was in all of this.
“It can’t just be about revenge.” She took a breath, aware she was—in part—speaking just to fill the silence. A nervous habit. “I don’t buy that. I think he wants something.”
“Power,” the man whispered, his voice full of awe. “Money.” His mouth shifted, and he flashed his teeth. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
“And you get to share a piece of it?”
Something dark flickered in his eyes, and it made her entire body go cold. He’d asked to speak to her. It was a couple of seconds before he said, “If I want my share.”
She jumped on that, ignoring the ickiness of this situation. Leaning forward, she said, “I don’t believe you. I think he’ll leave you behind, you’ll be known as just the hacker he used to get the job done. Now he’s on to bigger things. You’ll be forgotten.”
He fisted one hand and slammed it down on the table. “I won’t.”
Rachel jumped in her chair. She covered the reaction saying, “I think you know the truth.”
His face twisted and he screamed, “He won’t.”
He knew that was a lie. Why else scream at her so loud? There was no need to face off with her if she was wrong. He’d just sit there, content he had the superior position. But he’d lost it. She’d turned the power back on him.
The question she had was, how to use it.
“I can help you.” She let those words hang in the air. He needed to know she wasn’t going to use her power against him, even the slim portion she had. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it so you don’t need him. He won’t control you anymore.”
He stretched his mouth wide and screamed at her, spit flying across the table.
Rachel got up and stepped back.
He slumped in the chair, breathing hard.
The door swung open. Bradley stuck his head in. “You’re done.”
Like this was her fault? She’d been getting somewhere. How was she to know this guy had a screw loose? Rachel smoothed down her skirt and glanced at the hacker—if that was who this was.
“Think about it.” She pushed her chair back under the table. “My offer won’t last forever.”
“Two minutes.”
Steve gripped the phone as he strode down the sidewalk. “Copy that.”
At the street corner, traffic buzzed past. He hung back and waited for the vehicle Bradley had described to make its way along the street. Steve stepped up to the curb.
The big black SUV stopped but not before the painted white strips of the crosswalk, so Steve could cross in front of it. The vehicle came to a stop on the white, the passenger door right in front of him.
Steve opened the door and climbed in.
The whole thing took less than twenty seconds, then Bradley hit the gas and they set off. “Almost didn’t recognize you in that old man getup. They teach you that stuff in spy school?”
Steve said, “Yes. Now tell me what gave it away.” If there was something amiss, he needed to know.
Bradley shrugged one shoulder as he drove. “Nothing specific. If I wasn’t waiting for you, maybe I’d have overlooked you.”
But Bradley would probably have realized it later. Steve thought about that for a moment. If the feds looking for him saw this disguise, then they likely wouldn’t realize it was him. At least not in time to act. The likelihood they would get an image of him from some camera and be able to figure his identity out later using a computer program? That was a whole different set of odds.
Steve dismissed that whole thing. “So what’s happening?”
“Prisoner transfer.”
He glanced over at his friend and saw the tension in his body.
“Rachel baited him.” Bradley twisted his grip on the steering wheel. “Just sat there, cool as you like, and poked the bear.”
Bradley was proud of her. At least, he was as proud as he was scared. His finger shook when he pointed to an armored vehicle a quarter mile in front of them, surrounded by black SUVs. The hacker was in there, being taken to holding at a federal prison? Steve’s brain sparked with ideas—all of which were illegal.
Bradley continued, “He was obsessed with her before. Now?” Bradley blew out a breath and shook his head.
Steve said, “Obsessed?”
Bradley sighed.
“Explain.”
“I can’t pinpoint it.”
“So your gut says what?” Steve asked.
“Something doesn’t add up is all. Not just because he’s older than me, and every computer geek I know is younger. Maybe that’s stereotyping, but it’s true, isn’t it? And they all have this cousin in middle school they call when they get stuck. It’s like a thing.”
“But not with this guy?”
Bradley shook his head. “I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe he’s the most techy, old person ever, or he did what he needed just to get ahead. Stay at the top of the hacker game. What do I know? I’m a grunt with a gun.”
He was a lot more than that, considering he’d been a Tier 1 operator before Steve hired him. “How is your knee?”
He’d had surgery a few weeks ago. Now he barely walked with a limp, though that didn’t mean it wasn’t still healing.
“Hurts.” He glanced at Steve, then looked back at the road. “Don’t tell Alexis.”
Steve pressed his lips together, thinking about Rachel. It was inevitable. Despite the fact it was both redundant and pointless that his thoughts were full of her. Everything that needed to be said had already been said. Unless his life drastically changed, he wasn’t going to ruin the career of the senator because she was tangled up with a fugitive. After all she’d been through, she didn’t need that.
“Get anything?”
Steve heard the tone, as Bradley switched back to operational details. He told his friend about the meeting the VP had at the hotel, and the fact he’d followed his former teammate into that alley so they could talk.
Bradley glanced at him. “And then you just let him go?”
Steve shifted in his seat, as achy as the age his disguise pretended he was. Life on the run wasn’t fun after your mid-twenties. “David is going to feed me whatever he gets, and I have his number. If you pass it to the FBI, maybe they can track him.”
“So far we’ve come up empty on known associates.”
Steve nodded. “We knew this wasn’t going to be—” Brake lights lit up in front of them as traffic slowed to a stop. Buildings flanked them on both sides. “—easy.”
Bradley said, “It’s a choke point is what it is.”
“Huh?”
“This whole street. It’s—” Bradley didn’t get the chance to finish.
The SUV to the right of the armored vehicle exploded. Both of them ducked in their seats. The reflex to a battle they’d seen many times over.
Men poured out of the buildings on either side, dressed in black and armed with high powered rifles. Skull masks covered their faces.
Bradley pulled a weapon from the backseat and flung his door open. Steve did the same on his side with the pistol under his jacket. Behind the cover of the doors, they fired off shots. One fell. Then another.
An agent up ahead lifted his weapon.
Gunmen took him down.
An older lady screamed. Steve spotted her, two cars in front of him. He ducked out from behind the door, then crouch-walked to the passenger side of her car. He opened the door and leaned in. “Come on!”
She blinked at him and closed her mouth. Her earrings swayed, but the screaming ceased. She clambered across the parking break toward him. He hauled her out, and they duck-walked their way back to the SUV. He gave her a little shove in the direction of two other people running away.
“Go with them.”
In the distance, he heard sirens over the sound of gunfire. Smoke laced the air, thick with the scent of cordite. There was a limited amount of time he could stay here before cops descended, and he ran the risk of getting caught.
He turned back to the SUV. Got back in position.
Bradley ducked down, so his face was level with the door handle. “They’re mowing down the agents.”
Another vehicle exploded.
Steve yelled, “Rocket launcher!” He found the open window and pointed. “Up there.”
Bradley nodded. “They’re breaking him out.”
There was no way they could let that happen.
“Ready?”
He didn’t even need to explain the plan. Bradley said, “Go!”
They moved out from behind the doors. Strode between vehicles toward the armored truck. Steve reached a female agent pinned down with a gunshot to her leg. She lifted her weapon. A reflex.
“Stand down.”
“Who are you?”
He decided to opt for truth. “Steve Preston.” He was in an old man disguise. Maybe she wouldn’t believe him.
She yelled, “Hey!”
He kept going and hoped she didn’t shoot him in the back. More gunfire erupted from in front, this time at him. He’d lost sight of Bradley but heard the answering shots from his friend’s gun. Steve took cover then took out two more of the gunmen. Hired. Not Steve’s former team. The blackmailer had other people in his pocket—or just a lot of money. Enough to hire a black ops team to break out the hacker.
A mysterious hacker knew who he was and could even provide them with the evidence they needed.
Steve fired another shot, aware he was going to run out of bullets very soon. Two shots came back at him.
He ducked, then lifted back up.
The hacker strode out in the middle of a group of men. Steve caught a glimpse of his face. Not as old as Steve was pretending to be, but Bradley had been right. He wasn’t your stereotypical hacker. This man had thinning gray hair and a craggy face.
More than that, Steve thought.
This man looked familiar. Steve had seen him somewhere before.