Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (7 page)

Forward of that, a
dinette with deep sea green leather upholstery, filled the port side and a
matching settee faced it to starboard. Book shelves lined the walls above both
benches. A wine rack was built into the bulkhead to port. He looked forward
into the owner’s stateroom in the forepeak.

A queen-sized bed
filled the forward portion of the space with settees on each side, a head to
port and hanging locker to starboard.

Behind him were
two queen-berth cabins going back under the cockpit. He noticed thermostats in
each of the cabins.

“I don’t get it,
Dad, why all the thermostats?”

“She has a Webasto
circulation furnace. There’s a furnace in the engine room that heats water and
radiators carry it to each cabin to provide warmth. Each cabin can regulate its
own temperature. It also provides a continuous supply of hot water for the shower
and galley.”

“Wow! This makes
the
Defiant
look like a garbage scow. How much fuel and water does she
hold?”

Harry slipped onto
the bench behind the dining table and put his arm around Candace. “She holds
about the same amount of diesel as the
Defiant
, but she carries a
hundred gallons of water, plus a water maker. That should be enough to make the
passage to Hawaii.”

“Jesus, Dad. Are
you really thinking about crossing the Pacific?”

“We could go
anywhere. I’ve been thinking that when you get your law degree and take over
the firm for me, Candace and I might finish that cruise you started up to Alaska. I’ve always wanted to sail down the coast to Mexico too, maybe all the way to the
Panama Canal and cross over into the Caribbean.”

Chris couldn’t
remember the last time he had seen his dad so excited about anything.

“How about it,
Candy.” Harry squeezed Candace tight. “Are you up for a little cruise?”

“The salesman said
I could get free sailing lessons with the boat.” Candace smiled at her
husband’s enthusiasm.

Chris could see
the wheels turning in Candace’s head.

“I could learn to
sail,” Candace said. “Then we could go.”

“Yeah.” The words
were out of Chris’ mouth before he could help himself. “I’d like to see
you
sail. You might break a nail.”

A hurt look flashed
across her face, then she recovered.

“You might be
surprised, big boy. Let’s head over to your Dad’s ranch in Montana and I’ll
ride your ass off. I might teach you a thing or two about fishin’ and shootin’
too.”

Chris realized his
mistake. He had to learn to let her be part of the family. “I supposed you
might
be trainable. If Dad could teach me, he can teach anyone.”

“Don’t forget
about me.” Sarah sat on the companion way stairs. “I haven’t sailed since Mom
died, but it might be cool to get back into it. I could be your deck ape.”

“Deck ape?” Chris
laughed. “Are you nuts? You’re not big enough. The genny would lift you off of
the deck in a twenty-knot breeze.” He swatted at his sister. “Uh.” He felt an
intense pain in his left shoulder.

“God’s punishing
you for disrespecting your sister.” She sneered at him.

Donna took a deep
breath as she pushed her cart down the long hallway at Millennium Systems. Her
heart rate increased, she could feel her pulse pounding in her ears.

This was it. This
was what the adrenaline rush was all about, what she had been working towards
for three weeks now. Tonight she would finally get what she was after.

She stopped her
cart in front of Terry Metcalf’s locked door. Taking the step stool off of the
cart, she climbed two steps and dusted the security camera. With her feather
duster, she lifted the ceiling tile, pushed the stop button on the mini-DVR and
replaced the flash drive. This time, she pushed the play button.

She knew there
would be a momentary blip on the screen in the security station. This was the
tricky part. She hoped that the guards weren’t paying attention. They would see
her unlock the door and enter the office. Only they would be watching last
Tuesday’s recording. Everything depended on them not noticing the flicker on
the screen.

Inside the office
she climbed on her stool, lifted the ceiling tile and replaced the flash drive
on the office mini-DVR. Once again she pushed the “play” button.

Donna let out a
deep breath. She had ten minutes. Leaping lightly from the stool, she hurried
back to the desk and flipped open the lap top. She inserted a device in the USB
port and booted the computer.

The computer
whirred and the light on the USB device came on. She was challenged for a user
name and password.

Donna entered “sysadmin”
and hit the “Enter” key. A box appeared on the screen that said

Breaking Password

10 seconds
remaining

“Piker,” Donna
muttered to herself. It took less than fifteen seconds to break the password.
She removed the device from the USB port and slid in a flash drive. In a matter
of moments she downloaded the entire contents of the laptop’s hard drive, then
began poking around in the network.

It was easy
pickings. Her target had a network share mapped to his laptop. Access was
restricted by security policy to the owner, but she was logged in as the system
administrator. She could do anything. She searched the share until she found
the files she was looking for. She opened a Word document.

“How can such a
smart man be so stupid?” She downloaded the contents of the folder to her flash
drive and shut the laptop down.

Total elapsed
time, less than four minutes.

She picked the
locks on the desk drawers and found nothing of interest. She picked the locks
on the file cabinets.

“Bonanza!” She
lifted two files from the cabinets and spread the contents out on the desk.
With a tiny digital camera she began taking pictures. Putting the files back in
place and locking the filing cabinet she looked around.

When cleaning the
office, she noticed that the carpet in front of the half-size book case showed
an unusual wear pattern. With the surveillance cameras running, she hadn’t been
able to investigate. Now she pulled at the edge of the bookcase. It swung
freely away from the wall revealing a two-foot-square steel door with an
electronic keypad on a raised steel disk, a small screen and a polished steel
handle.

“A Baxter 2700,”
she sneered. Donna cut her teeth cracking hi-tech safes. “What is this, Amateur
Hour?”

Donna reached
under the trash bag on her cart and produced another electronic device. She held
it to the digital combination lock on the safe and pushed the button. The
electro-magnet in the device clamped to the safe’s door. A series of numbers
flashed on the screen, then the red light turned to green. She pulled on the handle
and the safe door swung open.

“Loads of cash.”
She put several bundles of hundred dollar bills on the floor. “A Beretta nine
millimeter.” She removed a semi-automatic pistol. “Aha!” She took two flash
drives from the safe. “Damn.” She had turned off the lap top already. She
glanced at her watch. Seven minutes and thirty-one seconds. No time to re-boot
and copy the drives. She put the money and gun back in the safe, locked it,
pushed the bookcase back in place and dropped the flash drives into her pocket.
I only hope he doesn’t miss these for a few days.

She took one last
glance around the office. Nothing was out of place. She pushed her cart out of
the door, positioned it exactly under the surveillance camera in the hallway
using a small mark she had previously made on the wall and pushed a button on
the remote control device she pulled from her pocket. She dropped the remote
back into her pocket, gulped, put her hands on the cart and counted to herself.
Now the surveillance system switches back to real time.
The DVR in the
office would switch back automatically when it reached the end of the file.

This was the
second point of danger. “Thousand one, thousand two, thousand three.”

She pushed the
cart down the hall and pressed the elevator button.

****

“Good, Chris,
good. Keep going. Give me five more reps.” Amy stood in front of the
Stairmaster, feet wide apart, and hands on her hips. Her attention focused
totally on Chris.

God, she looks
hot. Even in gym clothes.
Chris pushed to do the extra five reps. Sweat ran
into his eyes, thigh muscles about to burst.

“Keep going. You
can do it.”

“Damn.” He was
done. This hurt worse than getting shot. “Jesus, Amy. This is worse than
waterboarding. Did you used to work for Homeland Security?”

“I’ve got to keep
you moving. Look at how far you’ve come. When was the last time you had to use
that wheelchair?”

“It’s been a
couple of weeks now. I still get tired, but I keep going.”

“There you go.
You’re a tough kid. Keep this up and we’ll have you looking like Conan the
Barbarian in no time.”

Kid?
He
hated that she thought of him as a “kid.” Maybe she was a couple of years
older than him, but he wanted her to see him as a man, not a kid.

“Thanks for
working so late tonight. I really needed to get an extra session in this week.”
Chris gently dismounted from the Stairmaster.

“You know, you
really don’t need me for these sessions anymore. You can work out on your own
and check in with me once a month.” Amy wiped the sweat from her brow with the
white towel draped over her shoulders.

“I’m not ready to
do it on my own. If I didn’t have to work out with you, I wouldn’t work out at
all.” He leaned against the equipment and breathed in hard.

“Don’t say that.
Don’t even think that.” She looked even hotter when the anger flashed in her
eyes. “I’m not always going to be here. You have to do this for you. You can’t
do it for me. I think you’re ready for the next step. It’s time for you to
start running again.”

“Would you run
with me? There’s some really cool trails at the Arboretum.” Chris drank the
last sip of water from his Nalgene bottle.

She hesitated for
a minute. He could see the wheels turning in her head. He held his breath.

She smiled and
looked into his eyes. “Chris, I don’t think
that
would be a good idea.
I’m not supposed to get involved with clients.”

“Who said anything
about getting involved? I just want a running partner. If you run with me,
it’ll motivate me.”

“Are you not
listening to me? I said you have to do this for yourself.”

“Well, how about
we go out for a Smoothie? There’s a new place that I’ve wanted to try a couple
of blocks from here.”

“What part of ‘I
don’t go out with clients’ don’t you understand?”

“We’re not going
out. It’s late and you’re closing the clinic. You want a smoothie. I want a
smoothie. If we just happened to go to the same place, it wouldn’t be like we
were going out.”

She stopped and stared
at him a minute. “
You
are a smoothie.” She smiled. “Okay, let me get my
things and lock up.”

Ah–May-Zing,
Chris thought. Why didn’t his tongue tie-up when talking to Amy? The link
between his brain and his tongue always short-circuited when talking with
pretty women. Amy was so easy to talk with; she didn’t intimidate him at all.
Maybe
it’s because she’s out of reach?

The chilly night
bit into Chris’ bones as they walked down Yale Street toward Stewart. Amy had
pulled on her ubiquitous sweats and Chris changed back into jeans, a T-shirt
and a leather jacket.
I wonder what she looks like when she cleans up.
He
hiked his gym bag a little higher on his shoulder.

“Look at the
stores.” Amy stopped in front of a shop window. “They already have Christmas stuff
up. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”

Chris took her arm
and kept on walking. “It gets earlier every year.”

She fell in
comfortably beside Chris.

“Here it is,
Emerald City Smoothie.” Chris opened the door for her.

The clean, modern
shop beckoned. A woman built like a body builder looked up from behind the
counter and smiled.

“Okay, Mr.
Smoothie, what did you have in mind?” Amy’s eyes beamed up at him.

“Something with
lots of berries in it. I like strawberries, raspberries, oh, look. They have
one with strawberries and bananas.”

They got their
smoothies and sat at a table near the windows where they could watch the light
nighttime traffic. There were almost no pedestrians at this time of night.

“Chris, I’ve got
to warn you. I can’t get involved with a client. It could cost me my job.”

“I don’t want to
get involved. I’m not interested in meeting someone yet. It’s too soon.”

“Too soon? Did you
just break up?”

“Worse than that.
My fianc… my girlfriend…was killed.”

“Oh, Chris, I’m so
sorry.”

“I just . . . I
guess I kinda need to have someone I can talk to. I mean a girl. I have a
sister. She’s been really great, taking care of me and all, but it’s different.
And I have Ted, he’s my best friend in the world. But sometimes I just need to
look into soft eyes, see that long hair and smell the sweetness of a woman. I’m
sorry. I’m beginning to sound like a soap opera.”

“No, that’s all
right. Really. I’m really sorry about your girlfriend. What happened?”

“She was killed by
al-Qaeda terrorists in the same attack where I was shot. I lost my mom when I
was fifteen. Then I lost Meagan. It seems like everybody I love dies.”

There was a long
silence. Chris sipped at his smoothie. This wasn’t a good idea. He should know
better. Here he was spilling his guts to this total stranger. Ted would tell
him to “cowboy-up.” How pathetic was he?

“It might not be a
bad idea after all.” Amy’s voice was soft and low.

“What? What might
not be a bad idea?” He moved forward slightly in his chair.

“Running. Running
with you. I need to get you running. Doing aerobic exercise. If you won’t do it
without me, maybe I should run with you for a while to get you started.”

****

Donna heard the
bong of the elevator and the down arrow lit up. The doors slid open. Two
uniformed security guards stood in the car.

“Hi. You guys are
working late tonight.”

They blocked her
way into the elevator.

“Just a minute,
ma’am.” The taller guard held out his hand. “We’re gonna have to search you.”

Donna’s blood ran
cold. She felt the moisture spread in her armpits and on the palms of her
hands.

“No. I’m late.
I’ve got to go.”

“Just stand back
from the cart, ma’am.”

What to do? How
could she get out of this? Her mind froze. She didn’t think, she just reacted.
Somehow, the .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol just appeared in her hand.

“Stand back. I
want you both to get out of the elevator.”

The guards looked
scared. Good. Maybe they’d get out of her way. She could still get out of the
building.

She looked at the
taller guard’s eyes. He was looking at something behind her.

Before she could
turn around, she felt the rough hands grab her wrists. The pistol clattered to
the floor. She stomped back with her foot, hoping to step on her attacker’s
foot. She missed. She kicked and struggled. She broke free for an instant. The
two guards were on her.

She was face down
on the floor. All she could see were black Oxford shoes. She felt a knee in her
back and her wrists pulled behind her body. She felt the plastic tie cutting
into her wrists as her hands were secured.

“Hello, Mrs.
Harrison.” The voice was deep and rough, like gravel being poured down a chute.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you. We’ve been wondering when you would commit
breaking and entering.”

Donna struggled to
get free. She tried to turn her head and see who was talking. A black hood was
fastened over her head.

“Don’t feel bad.
When you try to break into Millennium Systems, you have to drop your amateur
standings. You’re in the big leagues now.”

The unseen hands
jerked Donna to her feet.

“Get her cart.”
Gravelly voice was obviously talking to the security guards. “Search it
thoroughly. Frisk her”

Rough hands searched
through her pockets and over her clothes. She felt things removed from her
pockets.
Oh fuck, the flash drives!

The hands took a
little too long, lingering on her breasts, squeezing. She felt hands run up and
down her legs, patting her crotch.

Donna was shoved
forward into the elevator. She heard the cart move and the elevator doors
close.

“Well, Mrs.
Harrison, let’s have a little chat.”