A View to a Thrill (Masters and Mercenaries Book 7) (50 page)

Simon hunched his shoulders and let the ropes slip past them. He was still tied up, but he got his right arm free.

With a powerful thrust that could only come from pure adrenaline, he stood, the chair cracking around him.

Gio cursed and turned, but it was far too late. Simon wasn’t allowing the pain to stop him. He wanted one thing and one thing only. Revenge on the man who’d made him briefly feel small.

He gripped the cuffs in the hand that was still manacled and used it to punch out. Gio’s nose immediately broke, the crunching sound satisfying to his ears.

Simon had him on the floor before he could shout out. He brought his knee right down on the bastard’s cock and let his weight sink in while he hit him over and over again. The world was seen through a hazy film of red and he wondered briefly if his vision was clouded with blood.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was this was the man who’d planned on raping Chelsea. His brain twisted him into the man who had tried, who’d taken something precious from her. And her so called father. He beat on the man who’d broken her bones and sent her into hiding for decades.

Vengeance was his right. She belonged to him. It was his responsibility to make sure she was safe and happy and that her nightmares couldn’t come back.

“Tag, I’ll take this one.” A familiar voice penetrated his rage. “I know a little something about this.”

Jesse? He could hear him in his ear, but it was echoed.

“Hey, partner. That dude’s totally dead. You did a good job but now it’s time to come back from crazyville. I know. Crazyville’s a fun place, but we have a job to do. Chelsea’s still in danger so we need to stop beating a dead horse and get out of here. I’ll try to find you someone else to kill.” There was a short pause. “I always think about killing something else when I’m in this state. Just trying to refocus his attention.”

“You should write a book,” Tag said. “Let’s try this my way. Simon, get your ass up. It’s time to save your girl and get the flying fuck out of here. I’m tired and cranky and I need to get back to the fucking hospital because my wife is there alone.”

Simon sat up, taking a deep breath. That was a mistake because his lungs weren’t functioning properly. “There are at least two more downstairs.”

Tag winced as he looked at Simon. “There were a couple outside, too. We took care of them before we scaled the wall. If you hadn’t killed that fucker I would have for hitting me with a lit cigarette. Asshole. Dude, you are twelve kinds of fucked up. I’ll call and get you a bed next to Charlie’s.”

He must look a mess if Ian was wincing.

Jesse looked worried as well. “Maybe you should lie down. We can get Chelsea out of here.”

Simon stood, every muscle in his body aching, and he was fairly certain he had a couple of cracked ribs, one of which might or might not have punctured vital organs. He reached up and straightened his tie. It was soaked in blood, but it didn’t matter. It was a motion that settled him, let his mind concentrate on something other than the fact that his body didn’t want to move.

He did leave his ruined jacket behind though.

A gentleman didn’t leave a lady waiting. “Let’s go and get my girl.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chelsea stared at the screen in front of her. Damn it. How had she found it so fucking fast and why had she bothered trying to find it at all?

Simon. Because Simon was somewhere in this house and he was being tortured.

Tears blurred the screen. She couldn’t allow them to fall. She’d already given up far too much. She was supposed to be tough, to be able to make the big decisions. Yeah, some tough girl she was. She’d folded the minute they’d touched him.

He was her weakness and her strength. The fact that Simon’s life was at stake had made her focus harder than ever before.

Unfortunately, it also made her more creative. She’d found the tiny little hole in the company’s defenses.

“Are you in?” Al breathed the words behind her, crowding her. His hand was on her shoulder as he leaned in. “Holy shit. I’ve been trying to find a way in for days and you do it in an hour. I always said you were the best.”

She wished she wasn’t at this point. “I used a backdoor. They’re updating the system. They’re fine-tuning the way they deliver their own personal satellite radio. It looks like it’s low security, but it provided a back door into the high-level area. Everything is connected. No one thinks about that. This is a full system. If you can get into one area, you have the keys to the kingdom.”

“That is amazing. I’m going to print out everything you did. I want to read it. I want to see the way your mind works.”

And then he would also see that she’d pinged McKay-Taggart with her location, but it really didn’t matter. She’d either be dead by then or a prisoner who wished she was dead, so it didn’t matter. It was a lot of code. If he wanted to read through it like a juicy thriller, who was she to stop him? “Okay, but it’ll take a while to print.”

“Not now, sweetheart,” he said, his eyes wide as he took in the screen. “We still have a job to do. Have you gotten into Gold’s account?”

She’d been delaying that moment. She needed more time. “I can get into the system. But the accounts have individual passwords. It could take a while.”

“Get up. Let me try. I’ve got some highly specialized code breaking software on here.” He tugged on her hand until she got up.

Well, of course he did. The minute he got what he wanted, Simon was likely dead. She had to think of something. Anything. Distractions. He seemed to like to talk about himself. A lot. “What are you going to do with all that code breaking software when you don’t need it anymore?”

He turned to her, a quizzical look on his face. “What do you mean?”

“The quantum computer. It’s the ultimate code breaker. It processes so quickly that what would take a regular computer years to go through, it can do in seconds.” Normal computers functioned by processing commands one at a time. They did calculations quickly, but breaking a code took enormous amounts of time if the code was properly formulated. There could be infinite combinations of numbers, letters, and symbols. The modern computer would have to test each of them individually.

Theoretically, the quantum computer could run them all at once.

Al frowned. “Only a few people are going to be able to afford the technology, Chelsea. This is another win for the people who truly shape this world. It’s not like Average Joe is going to buy a quantum computer.”

“But you aren’t really worried about the average man, are you? Rival companies will definitely be able to buy the tech and they’ll use it.” She needed to play to his obvious paranoia. “Business is war, right? This is like mutually assured destruction. Everyone will be able to hack everyone else’s systems. I guess that’s not so bad. If everyone can do it, then no one can have complete power.”

His face had gone a nice shade of red, and now he wasn’t thinking about the judge or trying to blow his airbags as he went over a dangerous curve. She wasn’t foolish. The GPS would show where the car was every second. Al would know exactly when the judge was vulnerable, and that was when he would strike. Even a moment’s distraction on a mountain pass could lead to an accident. If the airbag blew, it wouldn’t be a momentary distraction. It would be a disaster.

And the minute that judge was dead, so was her lover.

“I have to figure out a way to keep it out of my rival’s hands.”

She shrugged, happy to have given that big evil brain of his a problem to chew on. “If it’s publically for sale, you really can’t.”

His eyes narrowed and she realized she’d made a mistake. “I can. I can do anything. Don’t underestimate me, Chelsea. If I want to delay the rollout until I find a way around the obvious problems, then I’ll kill everyone who gets in my way.”

“What about all the other companies who are in some stage of production? You’re not the only one working on this.”

He went silent for a moment, and Chelsea was a little worried she’d pushed him too far. Finally he took a long breath and leaned forward. “I told you I’ll take care of it. I will deal with the problems in a way that I see fit. Tell me something. Are you going to get in my way? Are you one of the people I’ll have to take out? Because I would hate to do that. I think after we deal with the problem of the Brit, we’ll get along nicely, but I can terminate any experiment I have to.”

She shook her head, but she was lying. She would do anything she could to stop him. Anything. And if he killed Simon, then she would make it her life’s mission to take him down. She’d done it before, but she would enjoy it this time. She would enjoy making him hurt on every level.

The door opened suddenly and Al stood. “I thought I told you to give us some privacy, Bill.”

Bill, who seemed to be Al’s second in command, strode in with the confidence of a man who didn’t think he was about to die. Chelsea hoped he was wrong.

She was going to kill Adam if he was playing Candy Crush or something when he was supposed to be calling in the troops.

Al turned to her. “I expect you to find his account code and quickly, or else I’ll bring your boyfriend in here and you and I can watch as I let Giovanni cut his balls off his body. I don’t suspect he’s quite as pretty as he was before, but so far he’s still in one piece. You’re the only one who can keep him that way.”

She really hated him. Loathed him. Wanted him dead in the worst way, but she sat down and looked at the computer screen again.

How long until Adam found them?

She glanced back and saw Al and Bill talking quietly. Al had taken to wearing a holster with a nasty looking pistol under his arm. He hadn’t threatened her with it. It simply hung there, a reminder that he was in power. Bill had a weapon as well. Two big guns and she couldn’t even run properly.

If she got out of this, she was working out. Life required too much damn running. She needed to join the cardio club or she wouldn’t survive the next time someone tried to kill her.

Or her man. She had to fix herself so she could defend that amazing piece of British hotness she’d somehow snagged.

She turned to the computer. She was afraid if she didn’t make some progress, he would do exactly what he said.

“He says he’s got information for you.” Though Bill’s voice was low, she could still hear him.

“I don’t need information from him,” Al shot back.

Bill seemed determined to play the voice of reason for his boss. “He’s former MI6. You know he worked with one of the agents we turned.”

Baz. Basil Champion. MI6 agent turned Collective butt munch. He’d shot Damon Knight and sold out for cash.

Someone in the Agency was a mole for The Collective. She had to get that information to Ian somehow. Even if she and Simon died, Ian needed to know that he couldn’t trust Ten until he found the mole.

So much was riding on her. This was actual real power and it kind of sucked because she was worried about letting down the people she loved. The games she’d played as The Broker had been for tyrannical children like Al who had no conscience. She was past that now.

Now power was used to protect her family.

She let her hands fly across the keyboard. He would eventually see what she’d done and she would be punished, but she had to get the information out there. She shot an e-mail to the only address she knew by heart. The main e-mail for McKay-Taggart. It was something Grace would check and she would be able to send it on. She hit send just as she felt a presence behind her.

“What the fuck was that?”

Her whole body went tense. “I’m just trying to get into the system like you asked. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to control though. I should be able to lock and unlock the doors. I don’t know how hard it will be to manipulate the airbags. I’ll have to see if there’s a way to screw with the sensors remotely.”

His hand wound in her hair, and he lifted her out of the chair. “That’s not what I’m talking about, bitch. That was a fucking e-mail. Do you think I don’t know what a fucking e-mail looks like?”

Damn it. She had to try to calm him down. He was on the edge. She went on her tiptoes to keep her balance. Her scalp flared where he pulled on her hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He used his free hand and slapped her right across the face. Pure shock. She heard the crack and felt heat and pain. If he hadn’t been holding her so tightly, her head would have snapped around from the force of it. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I can’t tell what you’re doing?”

She struggled but he was too strong. “Fine. I told my brother-in-law where we are. He’ll be here soon. You might kill me, asshole, but you will not like what Satan does to you.”

“You think I’m afraid of him? Bring him on, sweetheart. And I won’t kill you. Like I said, I have plans for you and they don’t include death. Not yet.” He forced her back into her chair. “Now you get into that system. You’ve already cost your boyfriend. Let’s bring him down and see what he looks like and then for every minute you don’t get into that system, I’ll take a toe. Then we’ll move on to fingers and more interesting body parts. How does that sound?”