Ice Cold (19 page)

“Winston, do you know where my coat went?”

“Closet.”

He walked over, hoping enough water had dripped out to make the damn thing wearable, opened the door, and saw the transparent plastic dry cleaner’s bag with his coat in it. The woman was just full of surprises.

“I found something!” Honey didn’t look up from her screen for a second; if anything, her fingers were flying even faster across the keys. Navarro caught a glimpse of maps, grids, and columns of numbers, but they all went by so quickly, he had no idea what it all meant. “Holy crap! This is off the charts-”

He strolled to her side as he ripped the plastic off his coat. “Want to share your joy with the rest of the class, Winston?”

“Air Gap rootkit worm using EM-” She glanced up, saw they were all just looking at her, and sighed as she went back to scanning her monitor. “Electromagnetic radiation source. Penetrates deep into systems. It’s lying dormant until it wakes up to take complete control without being detected by the best anti-virus software.”

“And?”

She glanced up at him, but it was clear she was still thinking whatever she’d found through. “This was the worm planted five years ago in the Iranian nuclear computers, and only recently discovered, remember? No, clearly not.”

His lips twitched. Of course he remembered, but she was apparently propriety about her intel. “So you’re saying this type of worm could be transmitted over the air using a wireless network carrier?”

Her eyebrows rose at his knowledge. “Yes. Could even use the EM’s from a computer monitor if close enough. No bank that I know of is using a Tempest or Faraday cage to protect their systems from cellular attacks. The Rootkit worm can leap across multiple systems, backup systems, removable backup media, and is polymorphic.”

She turned, arm across the back of her chair. “It can change its own code when detected and look like some other type of user program. This mechanism can swap in and out software components, different penetration methods, payloads, and encryption engines. This new banking sled may be hijacking information for as yet an unknown reason.” She looked around the room. “You get that this is virtually undetectable?”

“You found it.”

She nodded. “Whoever this is, is smart, and very, very wily. He—or she—knows which blind alleys to lead us down. I also found evidence of a hacker attack on the T-FLAC servers. Not successful, but I bet they’ll keep attempting to get in. Yes,” she said as he opened his mouth. “I reported it to HQ, so they can double-check from that end. What’s intriguing is when I tried to trace the source of the attack, the trail led to the south of France before I lost it.” She looked up with a gleam in her eyes. “I think someone needs to go back to that so-called deserted farmhouse in Saint Amans Sout, don’t you?”

“Any closer to finding a digital fingerprint?” Rafael demanded, standing beside her chair to read over her shoulder. There was a lot of code. “Yeah, there are plenty of hackers with serious skills but let’s look at
T-FLAC
. Who inside the company has
this
level of skill?”

She glanced up, meeting his eyes. Her pupils dilated for a second, but she schooled her features and said briskly, “Skill
and
knows me well? I keep coming back to the same answer. Catherine Seymour. But besides being locked up, she has no computer access and no reason to—” She shook her head, then waved the back of her hand to request that he back up.

Instead, Rafael turned slightly to rest his hip on the desk. Her brows drew together in annoyance. He gave her a puzzled glance, smiling inside. Winston didn’t like being crowded, and she didn’t want the sitting-down disadvantage either.

“It
feels
like her but it can’t
be
her. If it ever comes down to physicality, we’re evenly matched. Catherine’s good with computers, but I’m a hell of a lot better. She’s the better sniper. The only person even close to her level of shooting skill is A. J. Cooper, and we all know how Catherine felt about
her
. She doesn’t like competition, and she sure as hell doesn’t like anyone to be better at something than she is.”

As she got to her feet, he rose from the desk so they’d both be standing. In those kick-ass boots they were almost eye-level and her face was close to his. God, had Winston always been this pretty? Yeah, she was beautiful in a sophisticated, touch-me-not way, but this morning she looked-
pretty
. More touchable than usual. Discreet makeup subtly enhanced her pale eyes and long lashes. Her skin was smooth and flawless, creamy pale and stroke-able. He stuck his fingertips in the front pockets of his jeans when he realized he still had the tactile memory of exactly how petal soft her skin felt beneath his fingers. How she managed to look this good on so little sleep was beyond him.

“She thinks she’s prettier, smarter, and more accomplished than anyone else.” Winston addressed the group at large, clearly not having the same reaction to his closeness as he did to hers. The pulse at the base of her throat wasn’t even speeding up a smidge. His was roaring as he remembered exactly how her breast had felt and the taste of her skin.

“It was that megalomaniac approach that got her caught, right? When it comes to computer skills, I surpassed her years ago, and she’s aware of that. She knows I can kick her ass with my keyboard. Savage is smart enough to know that whatever happens, I’ll crunch the data and discover what’s going on—and who’s responsible for it—sooner than later.” Winston looked down at her monitor and the mass of data processing and rubbed her arms. “Fifty percent of me believes it’s Catherine, the other fifty says it’s someone else making it
look
like Savage.
That’s
a whole different set of variables. Different reasons for why and how.”

Rafael stuffed the plastic drycleaner wrap in a nearby trash can, then shrugged into his coat. “Yeah. My thoughts exactly.”

“Prison is too good for that bitch,” Roan added grimly as he pulled on his coat. “In my opinion, they gave her too much fucking rope before they reeled her in.”

“It’s
not
Savage.” Oliver Reid added his two cents’ worth as he wrapped a black wool scarf around his throat. “We all agree, so let’s move on and look elsewhere.”

“Improbable,” Winston agreed. Even though she was standing beside the desk, every now and then she’d lean over to type something one-handed, and the data on the screen would shift subtly. “But knowing Savage…” She slid her eyes to Rafael. “You confirmed with the prison system that she’s where she’s supposed to be. But let’s get a
visual
confirmation.”

She wasn’t going to let it go. Tenacious. Focused. He couldn’t fault her on those characteristics, since they so closely mirrored his own style and that of most of the best operatives in T-FLAC. Rafael took out his comm and punched in Nielson’s code.

The second the comm was picked up on the other end, he said briskly, “We believe Savage is fucking with us. And yeah—we know she’s in supermax. But I want visual confirmation by someone who knows her well—”

“Bitterman and Kepler,” Her brisk voice came through the speaker, “She was intimate with both. Bitterman is in the country, I’m pulling Kepler from— He’ll be there in a few hours.”

How did Control know who Savage had screwed? Jesus. Did they keep that kind of file on every operative? He didn’t want to think how thick his file was. Rafael filled her in on the attack from the previous night and what Winston uncovered.

“This has all the earmarks of Savage, I want no mistakes. I want the visual confirmed and then
re
confirmed. I want to know who’s been to see her and when, for how long, and what she had for breakfast.”

“You’re aware that it’s barely oh three hundred in Montana, Navarro?” Her tone was dryer than the Sahara.

Didn’t matter what time it was Stateside. Nielson apparently never slept. Rafael had never called her when she didn’t sound wide awake and on the ball. Today was no exception. “How soon can you confirm?”

“Will oh eight hundred be soon enough?” The comm went dead.

“Now we wait,” he told the others.

FIFTEEN

 S 
tanding to stretch the aching muscles of her lower back, Honey checked the clock and realized she’d been hunched over the keyboard for four hours straight. The blessed silence of being alone in the suite allowed time to speed ahead. With a quick glance at the special app on her comm—no new bomb updates—she walked to the kitchen for a bottle of water.

When the comm rang, she jumped, startled, then picked it up. Nielson wasted no time. “Both ex-lovers give Seymour one hundred percent positive identification. Facial recognition, the tattoos, everything. In the past fourteen months, Savage had only three visits. All from her attorneys. You’re going to have to look elsewhere for your doppelganger, Winston. This was a dead end.”

Honey took a sip of water, assimilating the information. Her hunch didn’t buy it. Facial features could be duplicated with surgery. Tattoos copied. “We need DNA.”

“That was done when she was admitted—Yes.” Clearly resigned to giving Honey at least that much, Control acquiesced. “I can have it done again. It’ll take a few days to process.”

She released some of the tension in her shoulders. “Thank you. Who was her attorney?”

“Winston—” Nielson blew out a breath. “Lord, you’re tenacious, which makes you excellent at your job and a pain in my ass to deal with when you get the bit between your teeth. I trust your instincts. Do what you have to do. The attorneys on record are Mihm, Geary, and Gipson out of San Francisco. They checked out. You’re wasting your time going down this road. You have enough on your plate without trying to force a square peg into a round hole, but I’ll give you forty-eight hours. Then I’m ordering you to cease and desist. Do I make myself clear?” The subtle tinge of annoyance in her tone told Honey she was damn close to crossing the line between being a tenacious operative and an insubordinate one.

“Crystal. I’ll work the angle in my own time. And so would you if someone was doing God only knows what to make it look as though you’re turning rogue.”

“Neither of us has our ‘own’ time, but I hear you. Just like you hear me—your twin isn’t the priority. The bombings
are
. Focus on what you were sent there to do.”

Honey thanked Nielson and hung up, found the lawyers’ website, and from there, she blithely opened their internal files, using techniques not officially T-FLAC sanctioned.

“Okay Mihm, Geary, and Gipson, let’s see what your records have to say about your client.”

“Hi honey, I’m home,” Navarro called as he walked in, removing his coat an hour later.

She turned in her chair to look at him. His dark hair had slipped the confines of his usual rubber band and looked finger-combed, damp, and as black and glossy as a raven’s wing. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold, the bruising down slightly from that morning. She repressed, barely, the urge to get on his case for removing the butterfly bandages on his temple far too soon.

“Hardly original, Navarro. Where are the others?”

Honey clasped her hands in her lap until her fingers went white as she remembered waking in the night to find herself sprawled over him like a blanket after they’d made love. Thank God, he slept deeply.

The memory of the feel of the crisp hair on his chest under her fingers, and the hard fullness of him inside her, had distracted her all damn day long. Now, he was back in the suite, larger than life, and the tactile memories returned in full force.

“We don’t need to be together twenty-four–seven.” He tossed his coat over a chair. “Unless our mystery woman snuck in last night and took this to the cleaner, I’ll thank you for taking care of it.”

She had no desire to talk about the night before. In any context. “I saw that the prints from Mexico’s bomb matched Andriy Kobevko.”

“Intel says he’s in Prague. Or was as of an hour ago. Wheels up in two hours. We have eyes on him until we get there. Anything from your end?”

“I’ve installed BSU’s- Bot Surveillance Unit’s- that’ll track the time of penetration, time fingerprint the attacking IP address, and follow the time line code back through all the infected machines and servers wherever they’re located in the world right back to the originating Domain and PC. I’ve found a few leads but want to confirm before sharing with the class. I should know more soon.” She rose to go get her go-bag from the bedroom then paused.

“More important right now; I spoke to Nielson earlier. Positive and conclusive ID on the woman in supermax—”

He shrugged one broad shoulder. “Plan B then. Do we have a Plan B?”

“I still believe Plan A is the right plan.”

“Winston—”

Honey cocked her head, eyes narrowed. “Nielson had that same tone of voice. But just hear me out then tell me what you think.”

“Get your stuff and let’s talk on the way to the airport.”

It took her all of three minutes to pack her clothes, toiletries, and computer. He gathered his gear, and it wasn’t long before they were en route to the private airfield at Heathrow, in a taxi, driven by an operative trainee who was clearly straining his ears to hear every word in the backseat.