Chapter Four
Stepping outside his Bernal Heights home, Jamie’s world narrowed to a single point ten feet down the sidewalk. The racket of the morning commute dimmed, the riotous mix of city odors faded, and all his attention focused on the gleaming black sports car parked at the curb.
And the man standing beside it.
When Aidan texted a half hour ago that he’d pick him up on his way into the office, Jamie wasn’t sure what to expect. His partner standing in the open door of an Aston Martin Vanquish Carbon Edition had been nowhere on the list. Two things of beauty first thing in the morning. Not a bad start to his day.
“We’ve got a meeting with Mel in twenty.” Aidan tossed him the car keys. “She’s got a new case for us.”
That snapped Jamie out of his daze. Not the flying keys, nor the mention of a new case, but the insane notion of driving from here to UN Plaza, during rush hour, in anything less than thirty minutes.
“Did you get into narco’s evidence stash over the weekend?” Jamie asked.
“Mel wants you assessed for fieldwork. I want to see these legendary driving skills.”
“Those were closed courses.”
“If you don’t think you can handle it, I’ll drive.”
Jamie grinned. “Oh, I can handle it.”
Growing up seven miles from a NASCAR track, he’d spent countless hours of his childhood watching cars race and racing a few of his own. He still had relatives in North Carolina who ran moonshine down the mountain in Christmas trees. He could drive with the best of them. San Francisco drivers, however, were far from the best.
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s the rest of the idiot drivers in this city.”
“Hey now...”
He speared Aidan with a you-know-I’m-right look.
“Okay, fine. Most Bay Area drivers belong in remedial Driver’s Ed. What better way to assess your defensive driving skills?”
“It’s your car.” Jamie rounded the hood, waited for a car to pass, then opened the driver’s side door and slid in, surprised at the amount of legroom. He’d auditioned his share of sports cars and ended up with a Jeep SRT because it was the only thing he could comfortably fit in. He’d never tried one of these, though. “It’s roomy.”
“It was Gabe’s,” Aidan replied curtly and slammed the passenger door shut.
Jamie mentally kicked himself for being a thoughtless jerk and started to apologize.
Aidan cut him off again, reaching across the console to punch the ignition button. “You need the blue lights?”
Jamie let the deflection slide, for now. “I don’t need them, but if you don’t want to attract a tail of black and whites, you might want to put them on.”
“Fair point.” Aidan tapped a button on the electronic console, activating what was obviously a custom feature on the Vanquish. “Every minute we sit here is a minute lost.”
“You sure about this?”
“You break it, you bought it. I know you’re good for it.”
Yeah, he was good for it. The buyout of his NBA contract provided him with a nice little nest egg. He wouldn’t need to tap it for this, though. He ran his left hand over the stretched leather steering wheel and used his right to knock the gearshift to manual.
Giving Aidan his most evil grin, he tapped the shifter paddles and revved the engine. “Start the timer, Irish.”
He spotted an opening and gunned it, the car roaring to life before settling into a seductive purr. He dodged, swerved, cornered without brakes, feeling out the Vanquish’s handling in case he never got the chance again. It was a thing of beauty and he was in the zone, speeding across Cesar Chavez and into the Mission.
“All right, Whiskey,” Aidan said, humor in his voice. “Time to come back to earth.”
He stuck out his bottom lip and pouted. “But I like it here.”
His partner laughed, the warm sound filling the inside of the car and Jamie’s chest. He’d missed Aidan the past few days. Granted, they’d really only worked one full week together, but that one week, as harrowing as it had been, made up for their rocky beginning. Aside from Aidan’s annoying habit of referring to him as “kid,” he treated Jamie as a full-fledged partner, not a rookie mentee. He was included in meetings and decisions, and Cam and Aidan had trusted him to run all technical aspects of the operation. Working a case with two men he admired, he’d proven his worth behind the computer and in the field, and in doing so, they’d rescued those kids and saved God only knew how many more from falling into the ring’s trap.
Jamie was starting to think this partnership with Aidan could work, as long as he could rein in his desire. Aidan believing he was straight helped, but he’d only be able to keep up that charade for so long. He thought for sure Cam would blow it. Hell, Tina had caught on within ten minutes of their meeting, but Aidan remained oblivious.
For now.
“Tell me what you found on the flash drive,” Aidan said, bringing Jamie out of his thoughts and back into the car for another impromptu debrief.
“I started by cracking the other two files.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, tamping down his tendency to gesture while explaining technical matters. With a quarter-of-a-million-dollar automobile at his fingertips, he kept his hands firmly on the wheel. “More bank ledgers, as you’d expected. The encryption was very sophisticated. I’d like to meet this sister of yours who cracked the first file.”
“She’s eight months pregnant and married to an army field surgeon bigger than you.”
Jamie shrugged. “So?”
Aidan rolled his eyes, probably thinking he meant to hit on her. In reality, Jamie just wanted to get to know better the people who knew Aidan, hoping to gain more insight into his partner. Added bonus that she shared his interest in computers. He needed more friends like that. Not hangers-on who were only interested in his former fame or money and who’d sell him out to the tabloids for the right offer.
“Who’d the bank accounts trace back to?” Aidan asked, getting them back on track.
“Still working on that.”
He glanced over as disappointment flashed across Aidan’s face. “They’re offshore. I can’t access them through official channels without a warrant.”
“And unofficially?”
“I’m working on it. I did check travel records for the detectives on your case.”
“Visits to nonextradition countries?”
“Not yet.” Jamie swerved to miss a delivery truck that pulled out in front of them, earning a serenade of car horns. “They did, however, make trips to the Cayman Islands.”
“Not exactly the number one vacation destination for cops.”
“Not even in the top ten.”
Aidan smiled. “And what is?”
“Psycho Donuts, Voodoo Doughnut...” He continued listing off famous doughnut shops as they sped through a yellow light across Mission, narrowly missing a Muni bus. Aidan’s hand shot to the oh-shit handle above the passenger door, reminding Jamie of the other question he’d meant to ask. “The dates on those files...”
Aidan glanced out the window. “They’re all dated that date.”
“All?”
“I’ll get you the rest,” he said, as Jamie pulled into the parking garage with two minutes to spare. Once parked, Aidan turned back to him, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Mel will want us to prioritize whatever case she’s got for us. We will, same as with Byrne.”
It seemed unfair to ask Aidan to work any other cases when the most important one of his life hung over his head. If they could just tell Cruz...
“Mel knows,” Aidan said, as if hearing his thoughts. “She’s the one who gave me the flash drive. But for all our sakes, we continue to keep this investigation off the books and out of the office. Everything proceeds like normal. Got it?”
Jamie nodded. “I’ll keep looking.”
“I’m counting on it.”
* * *
Last week with Cam had been a field case with cyber elements. The case SAC Cruz assigned them—a series of hacks at Galveston National Laboratory—was right in Jamie’s wheelhouse and he couldn’t be happier. The SAC down there, Gary Clark, was a friend of Cruz’s, and he’d called in a favor, requesting reinforcements for their overworked cyber teams. Practically bouncing on the edge of his seat by the time she dismissed them, Jamie couldn’t wait to dive into the intrusion reports and catch the scent of their hacker. While he loved a good car chase, a hunt through ones and zeros was like no other high.
Recognizing his barely contained excitement, Aidan tasked him with reviewing the intrusion reports while he coordinated with GNL and the local field office. He wanted to get a read on the personnel situation at both and determine whether they’d work the case from San Francisco or go to Texas. They worked until Janitorial kicked them out, and Jamie was back in the cave first thing in the morning. He only looked up, hours later, when the smell of food reached his nose and the increasingly familiar cadence of his partner’s gait reached his ears.
“I’m guessing by that half-crazed hacker look, you haven’t eaten yet?”
Jamie shook his head, and after a moment of indecision, Aidan side-stepped his cluttered desk in favor of the adjacent empty one. Eyes growing wider with each take-away container Aidan unpacked from his tote, Jamie’s mouth watered at the food truck bonanza laid out before him. Assorted bao and sliders, garlic noodles, deep fried bacon mac ‘n cheese balls, bowls of curry, étouffée and jambalaya. “I wasn’t sure what you liked.” Aidan held a paper plate out to him.
Ignoring the offered plate, Jamie went straight for the carton of pork buns, gobbling one whole, then belatedly, and uselessly, waving a hand in front of his mouth to cool it off.
Aidan laughed. “Food’s hot.”
“No shit.” He grabbed another bun and went through the same motions—the scorched roof of his mouth was worth it for the delectable taste and his partner’s easy laughter. “Something to know about me,” he said, after washing it down with a sip of Dr. Pepper from the Big Gulp he’d nursed all morning. “There ain’t much in this world I won’t eat.”
“Good to know.”
They piled their plates with bits of everything, Jamie sank into his chair, and Aidan claimed the one behind the empty desk. “You’ve had the file over a day now,” Aidan said after a few minutes of stuffing their faces. “Give me the rundown.”
Jamie pulled his eyes back from where they’d rolled after taking a bite of the rich, hearty étouffée, and gathered himself. “Three reported cyber intrusions on the firewall for the Biosafety Level 4 Labs at Galveston National Laboratory. Triggered the access control watchdog. No discernable pattern as to when the breaches occurred. First one was on Sunday at two in the morning, the second Monday afternoon at three, and the last at nine on Tuesday morning. The breaches lasted less than fifteen seconds each, but first responders were called to the scene, per GNL, University of Texas, and City of Galveston safety protocols. Everyone in the affected labs was quarantined and the building locked down until emergency hazmat teams gave the all clear. No additional breaches, so those first three attempts were probably knocks.”
“What do you mean by ‘knocks’?”
He tapped his knuckles on his desk. “Knock, knock.”
Aidan took a sip of his Thai iced tea. “Okay, I’ll play along. Who’s there?”
“Exactly. That’s what our hacker wanted to know. Who’s there?”
“They were checking the monitoring framework.”
Jamie nodded. Finishing his étouffée, he moved on to the jambalaya and momentarily lost control of his eyeballs again. When they righted themselves, Aidan was watching him, equal parts amused and impatient. Best get his shit together. “They were probably also testing whether they could get through GNL’s outer firewall to remotely flip access switches.”
“Outer firewall?” Aidan asked. “The reports from the field office only mentioned one.”
“Which is why on my way in this morning I had a chat with GNL’s chief information security officer. The field office only requested logs for the firewall around the exterior access points. I’ve requested all the BSL-4 logs, including those for the internal access controls behind the air gap.”
“Meaning they’re on their own intranet?”
“Correct, Agent Talley. Not a Luddite after all.”
Avoiding his gaze, Aidan pushed garlic noodles around on his plate with a pair of chopsticks. “Not just a jock after all.” Before Jamie could contemplate the rush caused by his simple retraction, Aidan asked, “How is it you know so much about BSL-4 lab security?”
“A crypto classmate from MIT works at USAMRIID. I called him last night.”
“Busy bee,” Aidan said, pleased. “Tell me about these additional access controls.”
Jamie shoveled several bites of dirty rice, sausage, chicken and shrimp into his mouth before setting the plate aside so he could talk with his hands. “GNL has multiple BSL-4 labs within the GNL building on UT Med’s campus. Each lab spans four floors. There’s an access keypad on each interior door and on the doors to the cabinets holding biological agents.”
“A list of which was also missing from the case file.”
“I noticed that too. A call to the field office was next on my agenda.”
Aidan shook his head as he rose, dumping his plate into the trashcan at the end of Jamie’s desk. “Let me make that one. I spoke to Gary earlier, but I need to get a better read on his agents, whether they’re going to work with or against us and why they left gaps in the file.”
Jamie tossed his plate and helped Aidan pack up the leftovers. “Maybe they’re just overworked and haven’t had time to do the follow-up.”
“Maybe.”
Aidan’s cautious tone had Jamie leaning forward and lowering his voice. “You think we’re investigating our own?”
“I’m reserving judgment until I get more facts.”
“Well, then, unless you want me on the call with Texas City, I’m going to keep digging through these reports.”
Aidan flashed that wicked grin of his again. “I’ve got something else in mind.”
* * *
Jamie got to drive the Vanquish again after all, this time to the SFPD firing range across town. Twenty-eight minutes, door-to-door, record time in Jamie’s book, the Vanquish’s tires spit gravel as he swung it into the parking lot. Glancing over, Aidan looked both impressed and green around the gills.
He recognized what Aidan was doing—putting him through the Academy paces. Firing range today, roadwork yesterday, stamina last week, though there were other ways besides a basketball game to test that last one. Equally sweaty and far more enjoyable. Jamie let the image of Aidan writhing naked beneath him carry him out of the car, past the front desk clerk who winked and slipped him her number, and into the shooting booth.
His happy thoughts withered, though, as he watched Aidan drill fifteen rounds into the bullseye of the black-and-white silhouette. Aidan held and fired the Glock 22 like a natural, like he’d done it a million times. Jamie practiced often, but before joining the FBI, he’d touched a gun only a handful of times. Give him a car chase any day of the week.
Aidan pushed a button to swap the targets out and stepped back from the shooting table. “All right, kid,” he said, voice tinny through the comm device inside the earmuffs. “Show me what you got.”
Jamie held his breath as they squeezed past each other in the narrow booth and approached the shooting table. Assuming the stance he’d learned in Academy, he raised his weapon and fired, hitting the target to the right of center mass.
“Nice try,” Aidan said. “Now, back to our case.”
Jamie glowered over his shoulder. “You brought me out here for one shot?”
“No, you’ve got fourteen rounds left in that mag. We’re multitasking.”
“And shouting.” Even with the earpieces, they had to raise their voices.
“Yes, well, rules.” Aidan waved dismissively at the earmuffs. “Now, who would normally have access to the BSL-4 labs?”
Another basic training test. In the field, there’d be more than him in a booth shooting targets, more than just Aidan buzzing about his consciousness. There’d be live targets, and he’d be expected to assess and solve problems on the run. He needed to fire automatically, naturally, like Aidan. Recalling his training, he lifted his arms and fired while answering Aidan’s question.
“Docs, med students, lab workers, building and network security. Anyone with an authorized key card. Those were not what triggered the breach. No unusual activity was logged on any of their cards.”
“We’re looking for an outsider, then.”
“Maybe.” Jamie sent the last bullet through the silhouette’s bull’s-eye and smiled over his shoulder.
“Should have made that shot the first time.” Aidan flashed him the bird. “Next mag,” he said, turning his finger upside down and flicking it in a get-back-to-business gesture. “Why ‘maybe’?”
Jamie punched the button for a new silhouette and loaded the next clip into his gun. “As we discussed, the logs we have are only for the external firewall.”
“So if it turns out the air-gapped firewall was also breached, there’d have to be someone on the inside who could access it.”
“Unless there’s an outside network or connection GNL and UT aren’t aware of.”
“How do we find that?”
Jamie emptied the clip as fast as he could, one round after another, aiming in the general vicinity of the silhouette’s center mass, then slammed the gun down on the shooting table. Whipping off the earmuffs and tossing them next to the gun, he spun and explained, hands flying free. “We’re looking for a similar signature to connect access to the outside hack and any potential inside hack.”
Aidan eyes slid not so subtly to the discarded gun. When Jamie didn’t budge, he huffed, removed his own earmuffs, and leaned one shoulder against the glass enclosure, resigned for the moment. “What do you mean by ‘signature’?”
“Same IP address, even if it’s a bogus one.” Jamie ticked off the possibilities on his fingers. “Points of origin. Token the hacker left behind.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Think of our hacker like any normal perp. It depends on how good he or she is. A bad hacker, like a sloppy unsub, may leave evidence behind without realizing it.”
Catching on, Aidan smiled that knowing smile that did weird things to Jamie’s insides. “And some perps love the chase. They want to get caught, so they leave clues.”
“Or, third option, they’re just cocky little shits.”
“Assuming you’re on the cocky, skilled end of the spectrum, if you weren’t on this side of the law, would you leave a token behind?”
“Oh yeah,” Jamie drawled with a smirk of his own.
Aidan abruptly pushed off the wall, looking anywhere but directly at Jamie as he slipped past him, donned the earmuffs, and reloaded the gun. Was that a blush staining his partner’s cheeks? Was it possible he affected Aidan as much as the other man affected him?
He waited for Aidan to send several shots through the tattered silhouette’s bull’s-eye before picking up another investigative thread. “Are we sticking with the bioterrorist motive the local field office posited?”
“That’s the obvious answer.” Aidan squeezed off a few more rounds. “Get your hands on a BSL-4 toxin, build a dirty bomb, kill a bunch of people.”
“I’ve seen that movie too.” That earned him a side eye. “Other ideas?”
“Going on your cocky-little-shit theory, I won’t discount hubris. Fame, glory, chicks, dudes. Or maybe it’s someone looking to make a few bucks.”
“You think our hacker might try to sell it?”
Aidan nodded, and that feeling in Jamie’s gut turned from the good kind of odd to the bad variety. This case was high stakes, not just Academy training with his attractive instructor.
“I’ve already set up alerts and contacted a few fences,” Aidan said. “We’ll know if anything connected hits the market.”
“And I’ve got alerts on the network security system in case there’s another breach.”
Lowering the gun, Aidan removed the earmuffs and turned, resting back against the shooting table. “GNL Security know you did that?”
“Nope, cocky little shit, right here.” Jamie grinned, jutting two thumbs at himself.
Aidan shook his head and smiled indulgently. “Well, I think we’ve got another cocky hacker on the inside.”
Jamie’s smile died. “Which means we have to go to Texas.”
“Don’t look so thrilled. What’ve you got against the Lone Star State?”
“We would have gone undefeated my senior year, if not for the Longhorns.”
“You did make them pay for it in the Final Four.”
“I did.”
Aidan pushed off the table, handed Jamie his weapon, and brushed past him, rolling down his sleeves as he went. After grabbing his jacket from the hook outside the booth, he shrugged into it, adjusted his sleeves, and clipped in the cufflinks.
Jamie tucked his gun into its harness and pulled on his own jacket. “When do you want to leave? We could catch a red-eye out tonight.”
“You said you had alerts in place for further intrusions?”
Jamie nodded.
“Assuming nothing comes up, we’ll take the red-eye Saturday night. My niece Katie, her birthday is Saturday. Gabe and I...” Eyes cast aside, he paused to clear his throat. “We were her godparents. She doesn’t understand why he’s gone. I need to be there for her.”
“Aidan—”
“Let’s go.”
Aidan turned for the exit and Jamie grabbed his arm, spinning him back around. “Dammit, Talley, let me say it, then you won’t have to keep avoiding it.”
“I’ve heard it enough already,” he snapped, tortured gaze locked on Jamie’s hand around his arm.
“Believe me, I know better than most.” Between his father’s death and his injury, Jamie had heard more than enough condolences.
“Then why?” Aidan asked, gaze still averted.
Jamie’s hand glided down his jacket sleeve to the shirt cuff and sparking cufflink, straightening it. “Respect. Not for what you lost, but for what you had. And my Southern mother would kill me if I didn’t.”
Aidan looked up, one corner of his mouth slightly hitched. “How’s she ever gonna know?”
“You weren’t raised in the South. They always know.”
Aidan raised his wrist, the afternoon sun catching the emerald clover. “Irish, as good as.”
“Then shut up and let me say it.”
Aidan pressed his lips together and nodded.
“I’m sorry, Aidan.”
“Thank you.” His autumn gaze held Jamie’s several long seconds until Aidan held out his open palm. “I’m driving back.”
Jamie dropped the keys in his hand. “By all means.”