CHAPTER TWO
Chantilly, VA
Tuesday, 7:15 a.m.
HOLY SHIT, SHE DID IT. Scott Kramer was parked across the street from the Janus Aerospace satellite office in Chantilly that Valerie had entered ten minutes earlier with a handful of baby shower balloons and a cake box. He sat in the SUV he’d been using to surveil her for the last few days and tracked her progress as she left the building, now empty-handed.
The poor guard hadn’t stood a chance against her decked out as a full-throttle hottie in that body-hugging red dress and heels. Scott had about swallowed his tongue when she removed her jacket. Through his zoom lens she appeared close enough to touch, and God did he want to get his hands on her smooth skin and glossy brown hair.
Not that he ever would.
Instead he snapped photos. With the wind whipping her dark hair around her face, the self-satisfied smile on her lips, her shapely legs displayed to perfection, she turned more than a few heads on the way to her car. It’d be a shame to waste the chance to capture the moment, even if she’d never have a clue.
Even if she might be a traitor.
Damn. He lowered the camera and sighed.
Palming his cell phone, he dialed his boss at Steele Security.
“How’s it going?” Kurt Steele asked.
“Uh, fine.” Scott was momentarily distracted by the tantalizing reveal of Valerie’s upper thigh as she slid into the driver’s seat of her dusty Prius. “She’s boring as ever.” At least where his assignment was concerned.
She sure as hell wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d taken the job.
“Hollowell wants you to hang in for at least another week. Can you do that?”
“I’m game,” Scott said. “But I think the man’s wasting his money. If she’s not at work, she’s at home or at the indoor rock climbing gym a few miles away. She lives well below her means, doesn’t give off any disgruntled vibes, doesn’t hang out at Internet cafés… I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it.”
Having a drunk dad whose moods changed with every tick of the clock had made reading people a necessary survival skill, and Valerie struck Scott as a straight arrow.
“What about the offshore account?” Kurt asked, referring to the reason her boss had hired Steele to watch Valerie twenty-four/seven.
Investigators performing a routine security audit had tipped off Hollowell that Valerie had a nice chunk of change that hadn’t come from her personal funds sitting in a recently opened account with some Caribbean bank. He wanted to know what she was doing to earn the money.
“There are other reasons to have secret accounts,” Scott said.
“True. But it is suspicious. And you might not be seeing anything, but all her clandestine communication could be happening online.”
“Jay Suresh is supposedly keeping track of her online activities. So far, nothing.”
“All right,” Kurt said. “Maybe you’re on surveillance for another week for nothing, but stay sharp.”
“No problem.” So far, the gig had been a piece of cake. It was his first undercover assignment since he started at Steele Security in June—a nice change from security consulting and playing bodyguard. His cover story as a trainee for one of Aggressor’s covert, government-funded terrorist-hunting teams was a perfect fit for his background. “This is my thing.”
“Which is why I put you on it,” Kurt said.
“It’s been a good chance to refresh my skills, especially in an urban setting.” As a former Marine scout sniper, tracking a target without being seen was right in Scott’s wheelhouse, but doing it outside of the desert was an interesting challenge. “Can’t wear a ghillie suit in the concrete jungle.”
“You could,” his boss said, “but you wouldn’t exactly blend in.”
Scott chuckled and agreed to check in the next morning. Time to follow Valerie to work.
Early the next morning, Valerie sat forward in her desk chair and rubbed her eyes. The words on her computer monitor didn’t change. Her cursor blinked happily next to the prompt—a line of text on the screen—the virtual doorway to Westgate’s secrets.
They’d done it!
She glanced at the digital clock on her desk. Was it really three? In the morning?
If Duncan hadn’t assured her that he’d identified and dealt with the source of the leak weeks ago, she’d be worried about her success. But apparently, he’d fixed everything, making some kind of reparations to the affected companies. In typical fashion, he wouldn’t tell her how he’d convinced them to stay quiet about the hacks—Aggressor’s livelihood depended on it—but she was glad she didn’t have to worry about her work making their clients more vulnerable.
She’d been itching to tell Jay about the hacks, but Duncan had threatened her job if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. It chafed not to be able to talk to her partner about what had happened.
At least she had good news for him now. Jay had dozed off in the chair next to her, and unable to hold back a smile, she poked him in the arm and waited for him to rouse.
“Hey.” He sat up and gave her a grumpy look, wiping a trickle of drool from his cheek.
“We’re in.”
“We…” His face transformed from post-nap confusion to a brilliant grin as he hopped up and came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the large flat-screen monitor. “You did it!”
“We did it.” This assignment was their trickiest yet. The two of them had spent weeks using a combination of phishing schemes and well planned social engineering ploys to break in.
This euphoria, this high that came from doing the impossible, was the only thing that had kept her going. That and a jumbo bag of Skittles. She could feel the excitement radiating off Jay behind her. No longer tired, her fingers raced across the keyboard as she entered the commands to take her wherever she wanted to go in the system.
Together, she and Jay had managed to get full administrative privileges to the computer network. She might as well have been sitting inside Westgate Defense’s IT department.
She gave a thumbs up to Harry, the graying, overweight computer operator on the other side of the glass wall in front of her. He grinned and returned the gesture.
Everyone at Aggressor called their office the “Fish Bowl” because it was completely encased in glass so they were always on display. Duncan said the transparency of the room encouraged honesty. He loved his hackers—they brought in lucrative contracts—but their backgrounds were often dubious.
Trust came hard.
She understood. Her papá might have started her down this path as a black hat, but she’d chosen the high road.
And now, she was about to ruin Westgate’s network admin’s day. Poor guy. She didn’t envy being on his end of things. Or John the security guard. Her fake boyfriend Brian must have realized the birthday decorations weren’t just a coworker’s prank, because at some point, he’d removed the device she’d planted. But he hadn’t done it in time to stop her and Jay from getting what they needed to infiltrate the servers.
And it wouldn’t matter even if he reported the breach to security. Ultimately, Westgate was paying Aggressor to find their weaknesses. She had a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Jay signed out of his computer and swiveled toward her. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get this one,” he said, his dark eyes shot through with red.
They’d both been pulling crazy hours for this op, while having to put in time on other contracts—like Janus—as well. “Your code was the key,” she said.
He stood and grabbed his messenger bag, slinging it over his head so it crossed his chest. “But you got us access.”
Yeah, she had. Since she signed on at Aggressor three years ago, her skills had grown exponentially. “We make a good team.” She smiled.
He looked away and gave a jerky nod, focused on wrapping a plaid cashmere scarf around his neck. Unlike most hackers she knew, Jay had a keen sense of style. Whereas she usually wore jeans and a T-shirt—the typical geek uniform—he routinely wore slacks and oxford shirts with shiny leather shoes. He donned a long, wool coat, still not meeting her gaze.
“Hey.” What was behind his sudden change in demeanor? “What’s wrong?” He was acting the way she did around Scott Kramer, Aggressor’s newest field operative. Flustered, awkward…except Jay didn’t think of her that way.
Did he?
They’d worked together for years, but he’d never shown a hint of interest in her. Not that she encouraged it from her coworkers. It was hard enough being a woman in a man’s field without being a walking set of boobs. Unless she was going undercover—like this morning—she dressed to play down her figure, and to be comfortable. Her beauty routine started and ended with lip balm.
She studied Jay. As far as she knew, he was still hung up on Priya, even though the woman had moved on to a tech company exec who actually came home at night.
He finally looked up. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just exhausted.” He gave her a weak smile. “We both could use some rest before the briefing that Hollowell’s sure to call.”
Rest? She was amped up right now. And she had work to do. “You go. I’ll start updating the client report while I’m still coherent.”
He buttoned his jacket and looked at her with a slight frown. “Promise me you’ll go home before the meeting.”
She nodded. No, he wasn’t attracted to her, but he cared.
An hour later, the adrenaline—and her bag of candy—were vapor, and she was dragging ass. Finally admitting defeat, she logged off her computer. Donning a thick parka to ward off the colder-than-normal November chill in northern Virginia, she gathered her purse and long-empty lunch tote, and said goodbye to Harry.
Even the fatigue couldn’t dampen her mood. Maybe after the meeting with Duncan, she’d go buy herself something to celebrate. Like a new pair of rock climbing shoes she’d spied in the latest REI catalog.
She waved to the guard in the lobby, swiped out through the security turnstile, and pushed through heavy doors into the frigid pre-dawn air.
Her blue Prius sat by itself under the streetlamp, one of only five cars in the lot. Someone had scrawled “I’m saving water” in the grime on the back window.
“Ha ha,” she muttered, unable to suppress a smile.
As she approached the curb, a man emerged from a dark Jeep. He hunched against the bitter wind, his jacket collar flipped up. She halted and glanced back at the building. From her position, the guard wasn’t visible.
Her adrenaline spiked as the man’s pace increased, and he headed straight for her. She held her car key between her thumb and finger and stepped back.
The man looked up. “Hey, Valerie. Are you just now leaving?” he asked, the words punctuated by puffs of his breath, visible under the overhead lights.
Her heart thundered against her ribs even as recognition dawned. Scott Kramer. She put her hand on her chest and blew out a little laugh. “You scared me.”
His handsome face turned serious, and he stopped right in front of her. “Sorry.” The moonlight brought out pale highlights in his dark blond hair and sharpened the angle of his high cheekbones. He chafed his bare hands together. “What are you doing here so late? Or, early.” He smiled.
Now her pulse stumbled for a different reason. Why was it that she—a perfectly intelligent woman—always turned into an imbecile around this man? He wasn’t tall, broad, and intimidating like most of the field operators at Aggressor—he looked like a California surfer with his casually mussed hair, three-day stubble, and ocean-blue eyes—but she’d seen him in a T-shirt. He was lean and muscled, not an ounce of fat on him. Positively ripped.
She cleared her throat. “I was head down in a hacking run. Lost track of time.”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you getting close?” Scott wasn’t privy to the details of her targets—just like she never knew much about the ops teams’ missions—but he knew the type of work she did.
“No, we’re in.” She couldn’t hold back a grin. It was great to have someone else to share her triumph with, though she probably shouldn’t be so happy that one of America’s biggest defense companies was vulnerable. “I was sure we would crack them eventually—no place is one hundred percent secure—but we got lucky.”
“I doubt it was luck.” He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. And maybe he was. Aggressor was small, so they had already run into each other a few times since Duncan showed him around, but they’d rarely talked. She was surprised he even remembered her name considering how many people he must have met in the three days since he joined the company.
Something in her stomach took a dive. Fool. A guy like him would never, ever be interested in a nerd like her. Saying more than two words to him had probably sent him into shock. Usually her tongue imitated a pretzel when he was around. She wasn’t outgoing under the best of circumstances, but he brought her to new lows of reticence.
Sure, she could fake her way past the lobby guard at Westgate or Janus, but that was acting.
Scott blinked, and his posture closed down somehow so that he seemed to shrink away from her without actually moving. “Well, I better get inside before we both freeze. Hollowell’s on his way in. We’re doing a practice recall.”
She nodded. “I’m sure I’ll be back in a few hours to brief him.”
“Have a good night,” he said. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
Tearing her gaze away, she made short work of the distance to her car. She slid inside, tossing her bags on the seat next to her, and started the car as the cold settled into her bones.
When she looked up, Scott stood with his hands in his coat pockets, watching as she backed out of the parking space.
Scott waited to enter the building until Valerie’s car left the parking lot. He ran his card over the RFID reader and pushed through the turnstile. In the cavernous lobby, he stopped for a second to soak up the heat.
“It’s cold as a witch’s tit outside, ain’t it?” Garth, the muscled guard, asked from behind a tall counter, eyeing him with curiosity.
Scott had never understood that saying, but he chuckled obligingly. “Got that right.” He’d been freezing his ass off in his car waiting for Valerie to leave work. Usually she was done by nine o’clock. His thermos of hot coffee had run dry hours ago. He should have waited inside, but he didn’t want Garth wondering what he was up to. “I’m just going to run up for a minute. I forgot to grab my notes for an offsite meeting I have in a couple hours. Couldn’t sleep,” he added, since it was a little odd for him to show up at oh three hundred.
He just needed to make sure Valerie didn’t realize he was on her tail. And he needed to thaw out.
The temps weren’t dead-of-winter cold, but after a mild October, the sudden drop in mercury was a shock.
The big man nodded and returned his attention to the monitors on his desk.
After a quick run to the team’s bullpen, Scott climbed into the silver Tahoe he’d parked in the back lot and drove toward Valerie’s apartment in Fairfax. She lived in an older cluster of three-story buildings in a busy commercial district, and he could easily keep an eye on her unit from the parking lot or from a garden area in the center of the complex.
Today was the first time she’d said more than two words to him since the day he’d been introduced around the office by Hollowell as part of his cover. Usually, she just mumbled “hello” if they passed in the halls or crossed paths in the break room. He probably made her nervous.
No surprise. Plenty of people turned skittish around a killer.
But today had been an eye-opener. First seeing her on fire, looking hot, and conning her way past the guard—which put a chink in his confidence that she was innocent—and then tonight she’d talked. Not only that, but her eyes had sparkled with excitement, and after her initial fright, she’d given him the most amazing smile.
A smile that could launch wars. It spoke of a light and energy that he hadn’t realized she possessed. He was now at war with himself. Watching her had been no biggie when he didn’t really see her. Now it felt like voyeurism.
Pushing that unwelcome thought aside, he climbed into the rear of the SUV, lowered the seat, and slipped into the cargo space. There were advantages to being “average” in size. He didn’t fit the All-Star quarterback mold like the other guys at Steele, but his shorter stature and narrower shoulders had served him well as a scout sniper.
Illegal tint concealed him from view even in daylight, which would break in another hour or so. From his position he could see Valerie’s windows, but she was a smart woman who kept her blinds closed at night.
The light in her living room blinked out, and her bedroom light came on. He could envision her one-bedroom apartment with its tiny kitchen and inexpensive but comfortable furniture. Not much color. Even the pictures on the walls were black-and-white shots of mountains in plain black frames. And not very good photos at that.
He’d never entered her apartment, but he’d viewed as much as possible through binos from the parking lot. Following someone wasn’t illegal; B&E most definitely was.
Her bedroom window went dark, and his imagination ran away with him. Did she sleep naked? Would she be shy in bed or bold?
Christ. He’d liked this assignment better when he thought she was boring.
Swearing under his breath, he adjusted his position and tried to picture Valerie in oversized sweats.
It didn’t help.
Three hours later, his muscles stiff, Scott woke to an alarm he’d hidden near her door to alert him that she was on the move. Already at the bottom of the stairs, she set a bag of aluminum cans next to the dumpster before sliding into her dirty-as-sin Prius.
The first time he’d seen her leave cans on the ground, he’d thought she was too lazy to throw them in the bin. But when he’d come back to peek through her windows while she was at work, an old man had been digging through the trash with a crutch, the back of his beat-up station wagon packed with bags full of aluminum. Hers sat on top.
So she was nice to the homeless. Didn’t make her innocent.
Starting to feel the pull of fatigue, he tailed Valerie back to Aggressor. Luckily, all the morning traffic was heading the opposite direction. The only slowdown was at 28 heading north toward Dulles. A string of defense contractors and tech companies lined the highway all the way to the airport and beyond, with Aggressor right in the center.
Scott made sure she took the turnoff to work, and then drove past the exit to the next off-ramp. He circled around and parked in the back of the building with the delivery vans and company fleet cars.
If she noticed his Jeep still parked up front, she’d think he’d never left.
The bright sun belied the twenty-degree temps, and the wind brought the air into the single digits. Head down, he hustled into the building.
A new guard sat on duty at the counter. He nodded as Scott passed—comparing Scott’s face to the one that popped up on the monitor when he scanned his ID—but didn’t say anything.
Scott spent the next hour in the break room, pounding coffee and pretending to read a procedures manual while waiting for contact from Hollowell.
The text message finally came, and two minutes later he stood in Hollowell’s corner office with a view of the distant mountains.
“I just met with Valerie and Jay,” Hollowell said. “I finally have the evidence I need.”
Scott’s chest tightened. “What happened?”
The older man frowned, rubbing his clean-shaven chin. “According to the client’s log, she downloaded several key files.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. She had to know she’d be caught.” At Hollowell’s wave, Scott sat in a hard wooden chair. “What did she say when you asked her about it?”
The gray-haired man scowled. “I didn’t ask her about it. I don’t want her to know we’re suspicious.” He circled his desk and sat in a black leather chair, steepling the fingers of his sun-spotted hands. “The Westgate admin had a separate log file that she didn’t know about.”
“Still, she’s not stupid.” Scott just couldn’t see her taking that kind of risk. She did this shit all day long. She knew how it worked. “Why would she take a chance like that?”
Hollowell regarded him closely. “Are you getting soft on this woman, Kramer?”
“No, sir.” Scott ignored the temptation to shift in the uncomfortable chair—if the Marines had taught him nothing else, it had taught him how to be still—and held his gaze. “I’m surprised is all.”
The older man waved his hand vaguely. “A lot of these hacker types are anti-authoritarian and think all information should be free. Except, ironically, their own. They’ll do whatever they can to undermine government and corporate secrecy. For all we know, she’s being paid to hand this stuff over to something like WikiLeaks.”
Scott shook his head, still wrestling with the idea of Valerie being guilty.
“The FBI will pick her up from home later this morning.” Hollowell sat back. “I want you on her like a fly on shit in case she runs or makes contact with her buyer before then.”
“Do you think she’s working alone?” Scott asked.
“According to Jay, she hasn’t made contact with anyone online, and you haven’t seen her using computers anywhere but her home and work.”
Scott nodded, and his spirit deflated. He would have sworn she was innocent. Which just showed how much he knew.
As if reading his mind, Hollowell said, “Her father was a notorious hacker named Filiberto Laredo. I know she looks innocent, but she grew up in that world and started working with him from an early age. I thought she’d made a break from that life, but some people can’t move beyond their past.”
Scott kept his face impassive even as he digested that revelation. He could relate. “Her dad was a con?”
“Yes.” Hollowell let out a long sigh. “I turned a blind eye to it because it’s typical for ethical hackers to get their start cracking systems illegally in their teens. She stayed out of trouble after her father was arrested, and her reputation was solid when I hired her.”
Scott ruthlessly pushed aside the idea that he and Valerie had a lot in common. “Sir, what kind of files did she get?”
“Documents relating to classified weapons systems developed by Westgate Defense. Full specs and drawings. Everything.”
“Fuck.” The value of those documents to some of America’s enemies was astronomical.
“My thoughts exactly.” Hollowell checked his watch. “I have a meeting in five.” He leveled a hard gaze on Scott. “Don’t lose her. If we’re lucky, she hasn’t done anything with the files yet.”
“Why doesn’t the FBI pick her up while she’s here?”
“Warrants take time.”
“And they’re not putting a team on her to make sure she doesn’t run?”
The older man looked down his long, straight nose at Scott, his bony shoulders rigid under a high-dollar suit coat. “You are the team on her. Regardless of what the feds do, I want you as backup.” Eyes narrowed, he leaned in. “Are you in or out?”
Scott swallowed. His scalp prickled in warning, but if he walked off the job, it wouldn’t just hurt his own reputation—and potentially national security—it would reflect poorly on Steele. Kurt didn’t deserve that.
And Scott wasn’t a quitter.
“In, sir.” He didn’t like it, but if Valerie was guilty, he’d make damn sure she didn’t escape.