A Time & Place for Every Laird (18 page)

“I think it is,” Sorcha replied.  “Incredible.”

“Oh, the guys are going to love this,” Danny said, dropping back into his chair and spinning around gleefully.  Love what?  Hugh frowned at them both, waiting for information, but Sorcha was too busy scolding her brother in a low hiss to notice.

“Danny, you can’t tell anyone about this!”

“Why not?  It’s classic sci-fi!” her brother protested.  “You know what it reminds me of?  That old TV show,
Sliders
.”

By Sorc
ha’s reluctant nod, Hugh could see that she agreed with him, but she remained stern in her whispered warning.  “Not a word, Danny!  I don’t want to see this all over the Internet tomorrow.  Swear it!”

Danny sat back mulishly.  “You are where excitement goes to die,
Sis.”

It was a response that only earned him a blacker scowl.  “Swear it!”

With one finger, Danny drew an X over his chest.  “Cross my heart and hope to die … for as long as is deemed absolutely necessary by whatever secret you are keeping from me.”

As
this didn’t seem like much of a promise to Hugh, he was surprised when Sorcha sat back with a humph of satisfaction.

“Fine,” she conceded.  “Will you print
it for me and save a copy?”

Her brother wa
ved his hand beneath his nose.  “I smell the mouth-watering aroma of blackmail in the air.”

That had Sorcha smiling.  “No
, but it’s not a bad idea.  Make a few.”

“As long as I get to keep one for my own personal amusement,” he negotiated.

“Sure, whatever.  As a matter of fact, make as many as you like.”

As Danny went to work, Sorcha turned to smile up at Hugh with the devil dancing in her eyes.  Rising, she grasped his arm, leading him back toward the windows and out of earshot of her brother.  “What do you think?”

“That I hae nae yet a clue to yer discovery,” Hugh admitted reluctantly.  “Ye seem pleased, however.”

“I am,” she said, her eyes still sparkling in a way that made Hugh want to join in her excitement.  “Well, not so much about what I found out
—I’ll tell you about that later—but Danny just gave me a great idea.”

Hugh sifted through their conversation once again.  He hadn’t heard much that might inspire an idea of any sort other than
… “Blackmail?”

“Yes!”  Sorcha squeezed his arm enthusiastically
, bouncing on her toes.  “This might be just what we need to keep you safe from Jameson.  Don’t you see?  They covered up the breakout, right?  They don’t want exposure.  Not only would the public be outraged by the billions of dollars in wasteful spending with the economy as bad as it is, but the backlash from our allies and enemies around the world for keeping the nature of the project itself under wraps would be crippling.”

Hugh looked doubtfully at the screen.  “Is it truly something of such a controversial nature that they would worry so?”

“I think so,” she answered slowly.  “And we can use it as a bargaining chip in your favor, to keep you safe.”

“Tae
keep
ye
safe,” he amended, knowing that beyond his own personal safety, he needed to know that Sorcha would emerge from all of this unscathed.  The billions—Hugh could hardly fathom the amount—wasted in this “project” and the risk of exposure and retaliation, with him standing at the center as not only proof of whatever it was they were doing but also a symbol of their failure, made the entire situation far more precarious than he had originally imagined.

The logical move
of any government would certainly be to immediately subdue or kill him and anyone who knew the truth about him outright.  That was how it had been in his time and Hugh doubted that much had changed in that area at least throughout the past 250 years.  He explained his suspicions to Sorcha in no uncertain terms.

“Then we’ll just have to make sure that the risk to them is greater than the reward in doing so,” Sorcha said boldly.

Her brother called for her then, and Sorcha left Hugh at the windows to mull over her words.

He did not share her confidence that blackmail would assure their safety.  The courts of Europe were filled with intrigue.  Blackmail was a common tool to gain compliance and power.  But Hugh knew that, when backed into a corner, people were often far from predictable.  There
were those who would take a chance at exposure to exact deadly retribution.

To
face an entire government head-on was a hazard to be wary of, but Hugh vowed that he would bring them to their very knees to insure Sorcha’s safety.  Exposure would be the least of their worries if she were harmed in any way.

“Minions are printing for you,” Danny told Claire when she rejoined him.  “Don’t worry, they won’t look.  And here are your copies.”  He held out a pair of utilitarian thumb drives in one hand but lifted the other with a little object swaying hypnotically from one finger. “It’s a USB hidden in a keychain of a little Tokidoki Thor.  Isn’t it cute?” he asked as he sent it swaying again.

“It’s adorable,” Claire said, taking them from him.

“I know Thor is your favorite superhero,” Danny went on, then shot a glance across the room at Hugh.  “Your boyfriend has that whole Thor thing going on, doesn’t he?  Except for the dark hair, of course.  Kind of Old World Shakespeare meets Rob Roy.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she insisted
, ignoring the heat creeping up her cheeks.

“Of course not,” he readily agreed.  “That would be insane, wouldn’t it?”

Claire leveled her brother with a glare that told him she knew he was trying to provoke her.  Normally such a jab about what Danny had once referred to as her “nunhood” would have angered her but now looking at Hugh standing proudly in the light cast through the windows, Claire acknowledged that there were worse things she could be likened to than Hugh’s girlfriend.

She considered him silently for a moment, wondering where this latest discovery would take them
, before turning thoughtfully back to her brother.

“Danny?  How hard would it be to forge a passport?”

Danny barely raised a brow at the unusual question.  “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“No
, it’s not for me.  It’s for Hugh.” Danny raised both brows at that, and Claire rushed to improvise.  “He’s being watched by the NSA…”

“What for?” he interrupted.

“What do they watch you for?” Claire shot back, not wanting to spill the entire truth just yet.

“Many things, but I doubt it’s the same stuff they’d be watching him for,” Danny admitted without shame.  “Is he a terrorist?”

“No.  Does he look like one?”

“No
, but neither did Gertrude Moynihan and look how that turned out.”

Claire didn’t know what to say to
that, as she had no idea who Gertrude Moynihan was.  “He’s not a terrorist, just sort of … undocumented . . . but I’d like to help him get out of the country as soon as possible,” she said, then added, “Before he’s unjustly detained, you see.  Do you know anyone who could do that?”

“
A forged passport alone wouldn’t get you onto a bus these days,” he said as if Claire were an idiot.  “I mean, you can get some good paperwork done, but if you’re not in the system you’re screwed.”

“Then can you put him in the system?” she asked patiently. “If he’s in there,
maybe he can just go to the embassy, swear he’s been robbed, get a new passport, and that’s that.”

“Nearest British consulate is in San Francisco.”

As with any conversation with her brother, there was a moment that astonished.  “I’m not even going to ask how you know that off the top of your head.”

“I always said you were the smartest of us all,” he said sagely.  “
Are you smart enough to understand the inherent danger in what you’re thinking?”

Claire nodded and Danny sighed.  “Well, then
, to answer your question, I could put him in the system but it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Please enlighten me.”

“Well, first of all, if it’s the NSA following him, they can follow him anywhere.  A little international border won’t stop them.”

“They couldn’t
find him if they didn’t know who he was,” Claire pointed out.

“Which leads to point number
two.  Say you do get him a passport with a faked identity, he might still not be able to get out of the country anyway,” Danny began, swinging his chair from side to side.  “If the Feds are after him and have any idea where he might be going or even leaving from, they’ll just watch customs and do a background check on anyone who goes through and catch him on the other side.”

She frowned.  She hadn’t thought of that.  “Shit.”

“Shit is right,” Danny agreed with a nod.  “What he needs to do is get over there with one identity and have another new identity waiting for him so that he can start all over again.  Then poof, he’s a ghost.”

“Which he can’t do without a passport,” Claire reminded
him.

“Right,” he said.
“Why not just make him an American?  Start small. Birth certificate, driver’s license.  Then slowly graduate up to a passport?  He could stay right here, right under their noses.”

Claire exhaled slowly at the thought.  What would it be like to have Hugh stay?  To help him along in small steps rather than cramming it all down his throat?  To build on their friendship and maybe
… one day …  “I doubt he would have that much time.”

Her brother raised a curious brow but thankfully refrained from further probing.  “If you need to get him out
that quick, then I can’t see how … But maybe …” Danny’s words trailed off until he was still as a statue, pizza inches from his mouth and eyes far away.

“
Maybe what?”

He held up a finger, putting her on hold.  She could see the wheels turning in his mind.  “Uno momento,
Sister.”  He took a bite of the pizza, washing it down with a swig of Red Bull.  “I’ve got an idea that might work.”

“Might?  What is it?”

“Let me brainstorm on it awhile and I’ll get back to you.”

Claire r
olled her eyes with a sigh.  She knew that Danny’s brainstorming could last anywhere from an hour to a month.  “You can hack into a high-security server in minutes but
this
takes time?”

“I might be a freakin’ genius
, but defrauding the federal government does take time,” he informed her, grinning wickedly.  “As I’m sure you already know.”

Since Claire wasn’t about to go so far as to call it that, she only said
, “Fine.  Call me when you figure it out.”  She wrote her new number on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“This just keeps getting better
and better.  Someday I’ll demand details.”

“Someday I might just give them to you,” she teased.  “In the meantime, I wouldn’t
boot up my laptop unless you want some company of the type I know you don’t prefer.”

“Better and better.” 
Tossing the pizza aside, he swiveled back to the computer and began typing madly.  “Oh, wait!” He swung back again just as quickly.  Danny pulled his phone from his pocket as he went to Hugh and physically pulled him to a blank interior wall of the loft.  “Smile.  No, don’t,” he corrected.  “No one ever smiles on these things.”  A light flashed as he took a picture and then waved an impatient hand.  “Okay, now go.”

Gathering up the printout, which had been contained in a large binder delivered by one of Danny’s “minions,” and the USBs, Claire gestured for Hugh to join her as she headed for the door.  “Are we finished, then?” he asked, courteously taking the heavy binder from her hands as he blinked away the light flash.

“
Thank you.  Yes, we’re done for now.”

“Ye
r brother is most unique.”

“
My brother is an unemployed college dropout,” Claire told him as they left the loft and headed back down the long hall toward the elevators.  “He’s also so damned smart he could probably head up his own think tank and invent world peace.  I've always wondered what he does to make money.  I mean, those servers didn’t buy themselves.  I probably don’t want to know.”  No, probably not, she thought.  She might have been joking when she asked what the NSA monitored him for, but Danny’s response had been remarkably blasé.

“Why does he call those other lads ‘minions’?”

Claire grinned.  “I think it makes him feel as if he’s some sort of mastermind … either that or he watches too many cartoons.”

Hugh took her words in stride
without asking for clarification.  Whatever the world at large might think about her brother, Danny O’Bierne was definitely far more canny than his shabby appearance might lead a person to believe. He also cared deeply for his sister and was protective of her.  That alone had earned Hugh’s approval.  “I believe he might be ‘hacking’ into yer life.  He knows what ye do.” 
And what you don’t
, Hugh thought.

Sorcha only laughed
, swinging a small object around her finger.  “I’ve suspected as much for a long time.  I’m pretty sure he knows me right down to my Netflix history.  Sometimes I’m tempted to go to lesbian chat rooms just to see if he’ll say anything.”

E
ight languages
, Hugh thought with some exasperation.  He spoke eight languages and still he could not glean the meaning of her words.  Often when she was excited or angry, she seemed to forget that some of her words were beyond his ken.  He closed his eyes against her garble now, sure that one day he would look back on it all and be able to appreciate what amused her so.

“Aren’t you coming?”