No Test for the Wicked: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book Five (15 page)

I sincerely didn’t want to know which school offices he’d been picking the locks on. “Okay. You’re first. I’ll follow seven minutes later, and Piper, you bring up the rear.”

“I’ll be here alone?” There was a tremble in her voice.

I heard more than saw Brandon move toward her. “Only for seven minutes, Pip. You can do this.”

He murmured something else to her, but I’d moved away to listen at the door for the patrol and couldn’t hear what it was. I kept my eye on my watch. About four minutes later, I heard footsteps. Brandon and Piper joined me at the door. I put my hand on Brandon’s arm. We listened as they passed and then gave him a thumbs-up. Piper’s breath caught and he gave her a one-armed hug.

I opened the door a crack and we squinted at the light as we peeked out, checking the corridor both ways. The light illuminated Brandon’s face and it struck me how young he was. I sincerely hoped I knew what I was doing. He gave me a grin and sprinted down the hallway toward the stairwell. He made it in just a few seconds and disappeared into the stairwell. I carefully closed the door and we waited, listening for any signs that an alarm had been raised.

Chapter Nineteen

A minute, then two, passed and we didn’t hear anything. My heart was beating pretty fast. Piper remained so still I began to get worried.

“It’s okay,” I whispered awkwardly. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Who are you really?” she whispered. “I know you’re not just a student. Are you the police or something?”

“No. I’m not the police. But you’re right. I’m not a student either. There is no time to explain now. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“I do trust you or I wouldn’t have agreed to do this. You’ve a special skill with the keyboard. I was jealous of you.”

My eyes widened. Someone was jealous...of me? Lexi Carmichael, the klutzy geek girl? Unfathomable.

“Me? Why?”

“You are really good at the keyboard, you’re blonde, and...well, Brandon admires you.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice at the keyboard.”

“It’s more than that. You’re intuitive. That’s pretty rare.”

I wondered how she could know that or recognize it as intuitive. But I didn’t have time to ask her because I heard a noise in the hallway. I held up a hand and she stilled immediately. Footsteps. Faster and more deliberate than the previous ones. We waited until they passed and there was no noise.

I bent my head close to Piper and whispered, “That was faster than seven minutes.”

She nodded and I listened, before lifting a hand. “I’m going now. I may have an even smaller window than Brandon. You’ll have to listen for the guards and decide when your best window for escape comes, okay? You can do this.”

“I know I can. Lara, thank you. I don’t know who you are exactly, but I’m glad you’re on my side.”

“The name is actually Lexi, and I’m definitely on your side. Oh, and I’m not blonde either. Anyway, good luck, Piper.”

Her hand squeezed my shoulder. Steeling myself, I opened the door a crack. I felt the blood rush to my ears as I surveyed the hallway.

Empty.

I glanced over my shoulder, seeing the fear in her eyes, and wondered if it were reflected in mine. Couldn’t worry about that now. I slipped out into the corridor. Piper clicked the door shut behind me. Unlike the previous trip when I flattened myself against the wall, this time I took a cue from Brandon and dashed straight for the stairwell.

I kept expecting to get shot in the back or someone to raise a cry of alarm, but I reached the stairwell unscathed. I skidded to a stop at the door and pulled it open. I slipped inside, taking a moment to listen for any noise. Glancing up I saw the security camera mounted on the wall and was thankful the red dot was not activated. Hopefully that meant it wasn’t filming me right now.

I crept down the stairs. My heart was slamming against my chest by the time I reached the second floor. The stairwell door was heavy and I couldn’t hear a thing on the other side, so I had no idea if anyone was there or not. Regardless, I could waste no more time, so I carefully cracked it open. A glance down the hallway indicated it was deserted. It looked like a war zone with papers, books, pens, pencils and backpacks strewn all over the place. I didn’t see Brandon either, which I decided to take as good news.

Piper had told me that Jouret’s office was the second office on the right-hand side of the hall. I slipped into the second-floor hallway and dashed the distance, coming to a quick stop and pressing down on the handle of the door.

It was locked.

I stood there exposed, not knowing what to do, when the door abruptly opened. Brandon grabbed a fistful of my shirt, yanking me into the room. I stumbled forward as he clicked the door shut behind me.

“Damn, that was fast. I almost didn’t open it. Why did you follow so quickly?”

I doubled over, trying to catch my breath and calm my racing heart. “The guards changed up their pattern. It seems they’re increasing the frequency of the patrols. Maybe something is going on outside.”

“Does Piper know?”

“She knows.”

I straightened. The room seemed overly bright, perhaps because I had just spent so many hours in the dark. There were no windows and the room was about as large as my bedroom.

“Did you turn on the lights?” I spoke in a whisper, but even that seemed abnormally loud in the empty office.

Brandon shook his head and answered me in a hushed voice. “No. They were already on.”

“Okay, good. We don’t want to change up anything. The guards will expect a light to be on, so it stays on.”

“Got it.”

I glanced about the office. There were two bookshelves, half-full, with several tomes on cybersecurity arranged in a neat display. Two visitor chairs sat in front of a standard teacher desk. Jouret’s desk was clean except for two inboxes with a few papers inside manila folders, an empty coffee mug and his computer monitor. On the right corner of the desk stood a large statue of a South African totem pole. I picked it up and examined it. It weighed a freaking ton.

“Come over here, Lara. I want to show you something. You were right. Jouret is still logged in here.”

I set the statue down and joined him behind the desk. “Don’t touch anything on the keyboard. Leave that to me.”

“I’m not touching anything.”

I bent over the monitor, tapped a key and got a feel for Jouret’s personal layout. Two more taps of the keyboard I was in through the back door and into the system, completely undetected. Now I could see everything. Even better, his emails would not be encrypted to me, because the system thought I was him.

It was that damn easy. He’d been either supremely arrogant or exceptionally sloppy.

I glanced through his mail account. “Hmmm...Jouret has been a busy boy. Nine messages since the takeover. Interesting.”

I sat down in the chair. Time to get serious. I had just started typing when Brandon leaned over my shoulder.

“Where the hell are you going?” He tapped the screen. “Finish checking his mail. See who he is talking to.”

I glanced up. “I will, Brandon. But I have to do something else first. Go wait by the door for Piper. If my calculations are correct, she should be here in about three to four minutes. I don’t have time to explain my method right now.”

He hesitated, but then moved from behind the desk. I slipped into my back door, depositing a single clue for Elvis to find. I imagined his relief when he saw it. We’d made it this far. We
could
do this.

I headed back to the mail server and began methodically reading the message train. I became so engrossed I jumped when Brandon spoke.

“Piper’s not here yet. What do you think happened to her?”

I glanced at my watch. She
was
late. If she wasn’t here by now, it meant she’d either decided to wait for another interval or she’d been caught.

I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. “I don’t know. Maybe she decided to wait another round. The patrols were mixing it up. She’s a smart girl. I’m sure she has her reasons.”

He started pacing in front of the door. “Have you found anything interesting yet?”

“Absolutely. I’m starting to get a better idea of what might be going on here. First of all, Jouret is taking orders. He’s not the boss of this operation. He’s being told what to do by someone imaginatively calling himself X, who is sending messages to Jouret’s account via what is certainly a bogus account in Turkey. No way he’s stationed there, but the police will have to spend time tracking it down anyway. The messages are heavily encrypted. It’s going to take the police’s encryption team a hell of lot of time trying to decode these.”

“Lucky for us that we’re on the inside.”

“That’s no kidding.”

He stopped, ran his fingers through his hair. “So, what’s this X guy saying?”

“Well, he told Jouret to post the demands publicly to a specific site.”

“What site?”

“Give me a sec.” I clicked on the link and then let out a breath. “Well, that’s rich. The FBI’s website.”

“What?”

“Yeah, X is playing them good. Given the media attention and numerous hits the demands are certain to generate, the FBI likely has its hands full trying to keep the website from crashing. But they won’t close the hack because it is an open channel of communication. The police and the FBI will keep it open for that very reason. But this makes all communication internationally available and very visible.”

“Unbelievable. What are the demands?”

“The first two are the ones we already know. Keep the Internet connection open and the power on without interference or else they start executing students.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Nothing else. Just that they’re willing to negotiate students’ lives for forthcoming demands. That’s it. Weird. No other forthcoming demands. Yet.”

“That’s it? It’s been several hours.”

“Well, they’re definitely up to something behind the scenes. About two hours ago, Jouret sent identical private messages to The Honorable James Herman and The Honorable Naomi Walters from his account. Ring any bells?”

“There’s a girl here at school I know named Jennifer Walters. I think her mom is a senator. It could be her. Not sure about the Herman connection.”

My mind started racing. “U.S. senators. This could be significant.”

“What did he say in the email to them?”

“He asked them for proprietary information on something called Operation Dove. Ever heard of that?”

“Not a thing. Then again, I’ve got a C right now in U.S. Government.”

“I’ve got nothing either. These emails are odd. But listen to this. Jouret said he’d release the student whose parent got back to them first with the information.”

“Blackmail? All of this insanity for information?”

“I know. Weird. But that’s what it’s looking like so far. From what I can see, neither senator has replied yet. Give me more time to read.”

At that exact moment there was a noise at the door.

“Piper,” Brandon uttered. He rushed to the door, yanking it open.

Willem Jouret stood there looking at us in astonishment.

Chapter Twenty

I have to give credit to Brandon’s quick thinking. Before my brain could even process that Jouret stood there, Brandon had already pulled him into the office and taken a swing. Jouret shouted, but it was reduced to more of a yelp when Brandon’s fist made first contact with his jaw. Coming to my senses, I leapt over the desk and jumped on Jouret’s back, trying to pin his arms to his side. Brandon crashed into us, and the three of us went tumbling to the floor in a mass of arms and legs.

Fists were flying in every direction, and I took several hard jarring hits to the cheek, side and ribs.

In the confusion, I saw Jouret fumbling with something at his waistband of his pants.

“He’s got a gun, Brandon!”

Brandon was pummeling him in such a crazed frenzy I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.

I clawed at Jouret’s arm and he backhanded me hard. I fell sideways and tasted blood. Panicked, I threw my body against his hand, trapping it against his stomach and hoping that he wouldn’t be able to angle it up and shoot me in the gut. Jouret used his other hand to yank me into Brandon. Luckily, I managed to hook a finger on the gun so when I fell sideways, the gun slid out of his hand and went skidding across the floor.

Howling in anger and frustration, Jouret sat up and gave Brandon a vicious head butt. A sickening crack sounded and Brandon crumpled to the floor.

I launched myself stomach-first across the floor, skidding across the tiles with my hand stretched out for the gun.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jouret said. He caught my ankles and landed with a bone-jarring thud on my lower back and legs. I fought, but he used his weight to trap me beneath him and crawled over my body to the gun. I squirmed and thrashed, but he outweighed me by a hundred pounds and he was using every one of them to his advantage.

I was completely crushed beneath him by the time he reached the gun and roughly rolled me over onto my back, straddling me at the waist and pinning my arms by my sides. He stared down at me with a split lip. Blood dripped from his nose, down his mouth and chin and onto my chest. Someone, probably Brandon, had also clocked him a good one in the right eye and it had already started to swell. His breathing was harsh, but he stared at me with murder in his eyes.

“Who the hell are you?”

His accent was so thick, I hardly understood him. He looked like some kind of monster, his face smeared with blood. I figured I probably looked as bad as he did. Maybe worse. Blood filled my mouth and my cheek and lips throbbed. “I’m just one of your students.”

He slapped me on my sore cheek. “Try again. Why are you in my office?”

I tried to catch my breath and stop the ceiling from spinning. Tears leaked from my eyes. “It was a safe hiding place. There are terrorists out there, in case you didn’t know.”

I braced myself for another hit, but instead he studied me. “You kids attacked me. You didn’t ask for my help, so that means you already knew something about me. You suspected I was with them.” It took him about two seconds to figure it out. “Shit. My account. I’m still logged in. How much do you know about what’s going on here?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer because I saw a blur of motion and heard a hard
thud
. Jouret abruptly slumped sideways to the floor and lay still. I blinked several times until Brandon came into view. He was holding the hideous totem pole statue.

Without a word, he stretched out a hand and I took it. He pulled me to my feet and I immediately retrieved Jouret’s gun from the floor. Every part of my body screamed in pain. A quick glance at Jouret indicated he was out for the count.

“Thanks.” I turned to Brandon. “Are you okay?”

He looked awful, with a knot the size of Texas on his forehead. His eyes were glassy, his shirt was in tatters and he had a nasty bruise that took up most of his left cheek.

“I’m alive. How hurt are you?”

I gingerly touched my cheekbone and swollen lip and felt the wetness of blood. My side ached and my legs were shaky. But I, too, was alive. I was beyond thankful for it.

“I’ll live. Do you know how to use a gun?”

“I’ve been hunting a couple of times with my dad.”

“Then that makes you eminently more qualified to use it than me.” I handed him the gun.

A noise sounded at the door and we froze, our gazes locking. It hadn’t been a knock, but it wasn’t a banging either.

“It could be the terrorists,” Brandon hissed. “Maybe they heard us fighting.”

“Only if a patrol was passing by, which one shouldn’t have been,” I hissed back, wiping the blood from my mouth. “But wouldn’t they just unlock the door?”

“It could be Piper.”

“It could. But look what happened last time we opened the door.” I glanced again at the door. “We have to check. If it’s her, we can’t just leave her in the hall. The security camera will be making its rounds. Move back behind the door and hold the gun out in a threatening manner.”

I took a deep breath and opened the door a crack. Piper and Elvis fell inside. Before I could say a word, Brandon jumped on Elvis and pressed the gun against his neck.

“Stop!” Piper and I gasped at the same time.

I put a hand on Brandon’s arm. “Whoa. It’s okay, Brandon. He’s with me.”

I saw the wild look in Brandon’s eyes. Terror and the urge to survive did strange things to people. Brandon was clearly on overload. I began to tremble. What if he accidentally discharged the gun?

I fought for calmness when I wanted to scream. “Brandon, please. It’s safe. He’s with me. His name is Elvis and he’s my friend. Please put the gun down.”

After what seemed like an interminably long moment, Brandon pointed the gun away from Elvis’s neck.

I gave an audible sigh of relief and threw my arms around Elvis. He had the stolen laptop looped across his shoulder and it dug into my hip as I pressed my face into his shoulder and took a moment to be grateful we were both alive. I was shaking so hard, my teeth were chattering.

When I looked up, Brandon gave me an accusing look. “Who is he? Why the hell didn’t you tell me there was someone else running around the school on our side?”

“I had my reasons, but ultimately it was for your safety and his. It’s a long story.” I looked at Elvis. “You got my message.”

Elvis kept his arm around me. “Yes. Lexi, are you okay? Who are these kids? What happened?”

“We had a surprise visitor.” I pointed to Jouret on the floor.

Elvis touched my cheek and bloody lips with his fingertips. “He hurt you.”

“Thanks to Brandon, I’ll live.”

Piper covered her mouth in horror. “So, Jouret
was
here in his office. He hurt you both. Oh, my God. We were wrong. He wasn’t in Computer Central.”

I shook my head and it hurt. “No. Jouret wasn’t here at first. He surprised us. We answered the door because Brandon thought he was you.”

Elvis tightened his arm around me. “What did he do?”

“He tried to kill us. Basically, Brandon and I fought for our lives. How did you and Piper meet up?”

Elvis glanced at Piper. “In the stairwell. We scared the living daylights out of each other, but luckily we came to the quick conclusion we were on the same side. Especially when we discovered we were both headed to Jouret’s office on your instructions, Lexi.”

Brandon looked between Elvis and me. “Who’s Lexi?”

I sighed. “Brandon, my name is not Lara Carson. It’s Lexi Carmichael. This is Elvis Zimmerman. I’m not really a student and he’s not either.”

“
What?
You’re a cop? A cop who doesn’t know how to use a gun?”

“I’m not a cop. I work in cyberintelligence.”

Brandon’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re a spy? Doesn’t spy training include weapons instruction?”

“Forget about the freaking gun. I’m not a spy either. Look, my background is irrelevant at the moment.”

“I totally disagree. Who are you and who is he? Did you guys know this was going to happen?”

“Absolutely not.”

Elvis knelt down next to Jouret. “Sorry to break up this fascinating discussion, but we definitely need to move to Plan B.”

I threw up my hands. “What Plan B? We’re not even finished with Plan A. We need to think and reorganize. Plus, seeing as how I almost got killed a few minutes ago, I’m finding it a bit hard to collect my thoughts at the moment. I know Jouret’s presence here throws a major crimp in our plan, but can’t we just gag and tie him up until we can get our thoughts together?”

“There’s no need to tie him up, Lexi.” Elvis straightened, brushed off his pants. “He’s dead.”