Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) (19 page)

A
fter a tense elevator
ride during which we both said nothing and tried to pretend nothing had happened, we come downstairs to find Ryan doing pushups in the middle of the lobby floor.

Connor stops several feet away and crosses his arms over his chest. “Working off some steam, brother?”

“Fifty,” Ryan grunts. He’s breathing a little harder than normal but doesn’t look as if he’s exerting himself all that much. I’d bet good money he could easily do another fifty more without breaking a sweat. With a pointed look at Connor, he says, “I could ask you the same question, brother.”

He glances at me and then goes back to his pushups.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I say, aggravated because we’re so obvious. I set my hands on my hips and huff out a breath.

Ryan stops at the top of a pushup and gives me some major side-eye. “Ex
act
ly,” he drawls.

I throw my hands in the air. “That’s it. He’s your problem,” I say to Connor, and storm off.

Yes, I’m acting nuts. You would be too, if you’d just had the best sex of your life and accidentally said the “L” word to your enemy/fuck buddy in the middle of an FBI investigation into the man who wrecked your trust in humanity and murdered your last living relative.

I really need to rethink this whole no-drinking thing.

I go outside to the valet stand and bark orders at the poor guy on duty to get our Escalade from the garage. When he asks me for my ticket, I snap at him just to bring whichever black Cadillac he finds first.

Then, from behind me, Ryan patiently says, “Here you go.” He presents his parking ticket to the valet guy, who scurries off in search of saner people.

Connor isn’t with Ryan. “Where is he?” I jerk my chin toward the sliding doors.

“Dunno.” Ryan folds his arms over his chest and looks down his nose at me. “Probably in there breakin’ a few heads to make himself feel better about whatever happened between you two upstairs over the last few hours.”

“I slept!”

Ryan snorts. “Yeah? Was that before or after you gutted him like a fish?”

I stare at him, feeling the blood pounding in my cheeks, wishing I had it in me to poke his eyes out with my thumbs.

But I don’t. I actually like the guy.

So damn inconvenient.

I cover my face with my hands and groan. Ryan slings his arm over my shoulders and gives me a little shake.

“Eh, buck up, kiddo. It’s good you’re both this fucked up. If I thought it was only him, I’d have to shave your head while you were sleeping.” When I look up at him, he adds, “To
start
.”

Somehow it isn’t only his lack of a smile that indicates he isn’t joking.

“Normally I don’t like people who threaten me every time they see me, but for whatever reason, you’re the exception, Ryan T. McLean. He’s lucky to have you as a friend.”

“I’d die for him,” Ryan says bluntly, with zero self-consciousness. “He’s saved my life more than once. Even if he hadn’t, he also happens to be the best man I’ve ever known.”

I look away, my eyes prickly. “He basically said the same thing about you.” When my throat loosens enough for me to talk again, I murmur, “It must be something.”

“What?”

I quickly swat at my eyes. “To have someone who’d die for you. How many people can say that?”

There’s a long silence. I feel Ryan inspecting my face, but don’t look over at him because I’m afraid what my expression might reveal. Finally, he leans in and says softly, “
You
can, you hardheaded woman.”

My heart in my throat, I glance up at him. He looks both disappointed and angry, a combination that makes gazing into his baby-blue eyes almost unbearable.

“That’s not…you’re being—”

“Shut up,” he sighs, and gives me another shake. He drops his arm from around my shoulders and stretches his head back. Under his breath, he mutters, “Fuckin’ women.”

At the same time the valet guy pulls the car around the corner and to a stop at the curb, Connor walks through the doors of the lobby and joins us. He nods at Ryan. He doesn’t look at me.

It’s all I can do not to reach for his hand, because what Ryan said keeps echoing over and over inside my mind, a record stuck on repeat.

You
can.

I don’t know whether that makes things better, or so much worse.

* * *

W
hen we get back
to the COM center at the studio, I make a beeline for my computer. O’Doul’s agents are taking a meal break, milling around a table someone has set up with platters of food. They fall into silence when we walk in. Everyone turns to look at us except Rodriguez, who sneers in my direction and turns away.

O’Doul quickly ends the phone call he was on. “Gentlemen.” He nods at Ryan and Connor, and then looks at me. “Miss West.”

I cut right to the chase. “I’ve got something.” I sit down at my computer, enter the password, and hold my breath as I open the traceback program’s compilation report.

Within seconds, I’ve got sixteen FBI agents and two ex-Special Ops badasses breathing down the back of my neck. Everyone watches in tense silence as numbers begin to stream across my screen.

“What’re we lookin’ at?” asks Ryan from behind me.

“Data points,” answers Special Agent Chan. He’s to the right of me, bent over my desk, staring in fascination at the display. “But this report is totally random—how can you tell what you’re looking at?”

“I can’t. Not yet, anyway. This is raw data from Søren’s system. It has to be converted.”

I sense the general disappointment from behind me. O’Doul asks, “I assume you have another program for that?”

“You assume correctly.” With a few keystrokes, I’ve pulled up the remote access tool that allows me to log in to my home system. I upload the compilation report and hit Send.

“What now?” asks Chan.

I sit back in my chair and release a breath. “Now we wait.”

“How long?”

I shrug. “Depending upon how much data we were able to extract, anywhere from a few hours to—”

I break off mid-sentence and jerk upright in my chair, gaping at the screen.

Instantly, Connor is behind me, his presence calming though I’m in complete shock. He says, “What?”

I point at the monitor. In the upper right-hand corner, the program displays a series of bar graphs, indicating how much time is left on various conversions.

Two of ten bars have already turned from red to green. Then, in rapid succession, all the remaining bars turn green.

O’Doul grunts, impressed. “Pretty fast converter you’ve got there.”

“It never works this quickly,” I say slowly, feeling a cold niggle of worry at the base of my spine. I open the file utility and look at the size. “According to this, there was a few terabytes of data to sort through—”

“Let’s take a look and see what you’ve got!” interrupts Chan eagerly, crowding close.

Everyone is silent as I open the first report. I read through a few lines, stunned, and then read on all the way to the end to be sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.

Finally, I’m convinced. I sag back against the chair and breathe, “Holy.
Shit
.”

Though he keeps his voice even, I can feel O’Doul’s aggravation. “Please don’t make us keep asking ‘What?’ Miss West.”

I shake my head. “This is… I can’t believe this.”

In unison, O’Doul, Chan, Ryan, and several other agents bark, “
What!
”

I’m still staring in awe at the monitor, blinking because I can’t believe my own eyes. “It’s Søren’s malware program. The entire thing. All the code he used to cripple Miranda’s system. It’s all just…here.”

Electricity sparks through the agents. There are a few whoops, a few muttered oaths of surprise, one or two low whistles. Everyone knows what this means.

“Get it on disk,” O’Doul says instantly to Chan. “See if we can get any hits in the database.” To the other agents, O’Doul says, “Everybody get on it. I want to know if we’ve got something ASAP.”

In a daze, I copy the report to a thumb drive and hand it over to Chan. He bolts over to his computer station and proceeds to run a virus scan on the thumb drive. When that comes up clear, he uploads the report to the FBI’s system. The other agents head back to their computers as well, all thoughts of food abandoned.

This is big. Bigger than big. The footprint of Søren’s malware can now be compared to a million different fragments of software gained from investigations into various computer crimes conducted by government agencies all over the world.

Whatever else Søren has been up to, the FBI will now be able to discover.

Finally!

“What are the other reports?” asks Connor, still behind me. I turn and look up at him.

“All kinds of digital artifacts from his system. RAM data. Cross-drive analysis—”

“His location?”

There’s something scary in his eyes I’ve never seen before. Something deadly. It’s like I’m looking at another person. He’s wearing the flat, killer gaze of a jihadist.

“If we’re lucky…yes.”

“Thank you for your help, Miss West,” says O’Doul.

I glance at him and notice he’s sweating. His eyes are overly bright.

“Oh. You’re welcome. But we still have a lot of work—”

“Step aside.”

Caught off guard, I blink. “Excuse me?”

“The information on your system is crime scene evidence. Step aside, please.”

It takes a second for me to comprehend him. When I do, I jump to my feet, spin around, and hold my arms out in a protective stance.

“You’re not touching her!” I shout.

“Whoa, whoa,” says Ryan, confused. “Her who?”

“My computer!”

Connor is still wearing his serial killer look. He says calmly, “You must’ve known this would happen, Tabby.”

I look at him, my heart beating wildly in my chest. “Connor. No. Please. Tell him no.”

“It’s not his decision,” answers O’Doul. “And anyway, he’s right. Did you think we would just let you walk away with all this information? We’re the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miss West. You might play by your own rules, but so do we.” His smile is a little apologetic. “And our rules say that your system and everything on it now belongs to us. We’ll take it from here.”

I say vehemently, “Touch my computer and I’ll break your face!”

While O’Doul looks at the ceiling, Ryan tries to reason with me. “C’mon now, Tabby, it’s just a computer.”

“It’s my life!”

“Well that’s just
pathetic
,” says Rodriguez, smiling broadly at me from his chair across the room.

I snatch up a stapler someone has left on my desk and hurl it at him. It hits him square in the forehead.

He squawks, covers his face with his hands, jerks out of his chair, and promptly trips over his own feet. He crashes to the floor, howling. “You crazy bitch! I’m pressing charges!”

I’m so furious, I can’t even speak. I don’t know where to look or what to do. They’re going to confiscate my computer! I have half a mind to yank Connor’s gun from that stupid holster at his waist and start randomly shooting.

“Not sure you want to press charges against the person who just handed us the biggest score I’ve seen in my time on this job,” says Chan, staring in shock at his computer screen.

Everyone stops what they’re doing and looks at him.

O’Doul strides over to Chan’s workstation. “What’ve you got?”

Agent Chan says somberly, “Two dozen hits, sir. So far.”

“Show me.”

Agent Chan points at his monitor. “Shellshock, 2014. The huge slave botnet that took over the Department of Defense.” He scrolls through several more screens and stops to point out something else. “GhostClick, 2013. Millions of computers infected with a surveillance virus.” Another scroll, another point. “The attack on the Chinese central bank last year that put their economy into a tailspin and almost crashed their stock market.”

“Jesus,” mutters O’Doul. “We hit the mother lode.” He flicks me an inscrutable look.

“The hack on Heathrow airport in September that shut down air traffic control for four days. The Ukraine power grid attack last month. The list goes on.” Chan glances up at O’Doul and then over at me. “This guy’s everywhere.”

The room has gone silent. Even Rodriguez has stopped his bitching and is simply kneeling on the floor with his hand cradling his forehead, gaping at Agent Chan.

Into the stillness, Connor says, “Open the location file.”

I make a move to sit down at my workstation, but Connor moves faster than I do. He’s in front of me before I’ve taken two steps, holding out his hand to stop me. “Let Chan do it.”

Blood rushes to my face. I glare at him, outraged. “It’s
my
computer.”

He shakes his head and doesn’t budge.

“Oh, fuck this.” I take two long strides, brushing past him, determined to sit down at my own damn computer in spite of what anyone says, when before I know it, I’m swept up off my feet and am staring openmouthed at the hideous gold carpet on the floor.

Connor has thrown me over his shoulder.

“Be right back, boys,” he says calmly, turns around, and walks away.

I pound on the expanse of his broad back, sputtering, “You—you—
jerk
! Put me
down
! Right
now
! You giant—”