Marked (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (7 page)

“I’ll let you know. Right now I need you to call your brother back and change the meeting place. We need to bring him in
now
.”

As a shiver of foreboding snaked down her spine, Rachel got on the phone to Brandon. Thankfully he answered and she asked him to meet her at a restaurant close by, refusing to give him any details other than it was important he meet her there right away.

She hung up and followed Jake to his truck, her imagination conjuring up eyes watching their every move from the shadows. Xang wouldn’t seriously be crazy enough to still be here, would he?

But when Jake kept glancing in his mirrors as if checking for someone following as he drove away from her building, she knew those fears weren’t unfounded.

****

Xang pulled the hood of his hoodie off his head and replaced it with a ball cap as he walked away from the building at a fast clip and headed for the closest subway station with his heart pounding. That had been exhilarating in a way none of his stupid hack jobs had ever been.

His hands were trembling with excitement in his pockets, the right one rubbing over the treasure he’d taken with him. He’d waited just out of sight long enough to observe Rachel enter the underground parking in a newer model silver pickup driven by a man, then leave with him about a half hour later.

He was careful to keep his face averted during the journey so the CCTVs and security cameras on the subway didn’t get a clear shot of him. Once back safely in the downtown Baltimore apartment he’d been loaned for the job, he used his burner phone to call his contact. The place was owned by someone in the network, a rich businessman back in mainland China. It was said he was connected to this current op and was tight with Xang’s contact. He and the others were all watching Xang’s progress closely. If he performed well, the potential for advancement within the organization and a lucrative payout were huge.

“I didn’t find anything else,” he told the man in their language when he answered, “but the woman showed up and left with a man I’ve never seen before. I texted some pictures to you.”

Not the greatest quality since they’d been taken with his phone, but Xang hadn’t been expecting anyone else to show up with her so it was all he’d had. He’d been lucky to get out of there undetected after his little redecorating project. Had they seen what he’d done in her place yet?

“You’re sure no one saw you?”

They’d figure it out shortly, if they hadn’t already, and Rachel would freak when she saw her room. He wished he could have seen her reaction, but that was way too risky, even for someone with his skills.

“I disabled a bunch of security cameras beforehand and silenced the alarm when I went in. I checked her place myself, every room, and didn’t find anything more.” Desperation had required him to take the significant risk of infiltrating Rachel’s secure building. He didn’t like having to do ops when he was desperate, but he’d had no choice this time.

“You need to get into her work server.”

Xang pursed his lips. He was fucking well aware of what he
needed
to do, but it wasn’t that simple. He had to figure out how to pull off this next dangerous step without getting caught.

It was already embarrassing enough that he, one of the best hackers in the business, had so far been unable to crack the encryption on the server. It was an intranet, and from his initial research, much more sophisticated than pretty much anything he’d come across, with layers and layers of encryption that rivaled the damn NSA. Every time he’d tried to hack into the system so far had failed, much to his frustration.

It made him look like a fucking loser, when he was anything but. The only option now would be to break into her office building and try to access it from there. But he’d researched the firm and they hired the best security analysts in the world to keep everyone out, which was why he couldn’t hack it from the outside.

That also meant that the odds of him walking away from the op without getting arrested or shot were way less than that of actually retrieving the damn files he needed.

“You need to do it tonight,” his contact said. A command, no matter how quietly stated. Xang knew exactly what was happening.

They were testing him. It infuriated him. He’d already proven his loyalty and his skills—skills that included far more than being slick with a computer—more than once. If they hadn’t given him such a tight timeline he might have been able to come up with a much better plan. This felt too much like he was flailing around in the dark, like they were setting him up to fail so he could take the fall.

“You brought me on board for this as a hacker,” he reiterated, face burning with humiliation as the man forced him to point out the obvious—that he wasn’t acting as a warrior this time. He was well aware that only his reputation and freedom were on the line if he got caught, and that they didn’t give a shit about him other than his skill set and what he could do for them. Which was why he didn’t plan to stay at the bottom rung of the cell’s ladder after this op.

“Not my problem. I can’t send in more resources without risking blowing the entire op. Get me those plans, tonight.”

The threat was implicit in the man’s tone. Xang knew exactly what sort of “resources” the man had out there, including a hit team he could send out on Xang with a single phone call.

He opened his mouth to argue but the man hung up before he could respond. Rage boiled inside him. Left alone in the room with his contact and the head of the cell, he could kill them both with nothing but a single knife—something he’d already proven to them when they’d checked into his past. They thought that just because they were rich that they could control him, render him less dangerous or less of a threat by making him act only as a hacker on this job. They didn’t seem to understand that he had carried out their orders so far only because he
chose
to.

As he was about to put the phone down, Xang’s personal cell buzzed with an incoming call. Brandon.

“Hey,” he answered in Mandarin, playing it cool even though he was still pushing back the anger. He wasn’t worried about security because he’d added plenty of encryption to the phone previously. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Hey, I know I asked you already, but are you sure you didn’t take anything from my sister’s place last night?”

“I told you I didn’t.” But he’d certainly left her a message today, he thought in satisfaction.

After the way she’d snubbed his attempts to win her over—like she was too good for him—and the inability to get the files he needed, scaring her had seemed like the perfect outlet for his frustration. She was just like everyone else, thinking she was better than him. Well, she wasn’t, even if she was smart and fucking hot.

Posing as a college transfer student and hanging around Brandon for the past few weeks to get to her on direct order from the cell hadn’t been that much of a hardship. When he’d checked her room this morning he’d come across her underwear, and they were every bit as sexy as she was. The idea had hit him then. Maybe they’d think he was after her and it would throw off any cops who started investigating him, at least long enough to allow him to do the rest of his job while they were distracted.

After he’d cut them up and scattered them across the bed and floor like those whacked-out stalkers did in movies, he’d stuffed one into his pocket on impulse for two reasons. To terrorize her, and to make her think this was about her personally, rather than the files he needed. With luck it would throw off any investigators long enough for him to skip town.

And besides, it gave him a rush to know he’d invaded her most personal domain and likely left a psychological mark on her. Made him understand why some guys got hooked on shit like that. Rape wasn’t part of his credentials yet. Maybe he could change that with her.

“Why?” he demanded when Brandon didn’t reply. Rubbing his fingers over the lacy thong in his pocket, imagining the look on Rachel’s face when she saw what he’d done, he turned to face the tall windows that gave him a commanding view of the city and Chesapeake Bay in the distance.

The view was spectacular, the best money could buy, but what he enjoyed most was being able to look down on the world. From this height the people moving around on the sidewalks looked like insignificant little ants running around in their meaningless lives.

He’d lived like that once, back in Xinxiang with his family when he was young. Every day the same monotonous drudgery of struggling to find enough work to put food on the table. Then one day Chinese soldiers had come to take his father and older brother away, calling them terrorists for their affiliation with a radical group from their mosque.

Xang hadn’t fully understood what had happened to them both after that; he’d only known that they never came back. It wasn’t until he was older that some of the elders had shown him the pictures of what had been done to them that he’d truly understood and started on the path that had led him here.

Brandon sighed. “Look, man, just be straight with me. If you have something just give it back to me and I won’t say anything.”

“I don’t have anything,” he said, this time with a sharp edge to his tone.

A few seconds passed, as though Brandon was searching for the right words. “My sister just called to say she got into an accident earlier. I don’t know how bad she’s hurt, but she doesn’t need to get in trouble at work because of missing files on top of that.”

Xang was unmoved by the not-so-subtle plea for the USB drives, and if Brandon thought about it for two seconds he’d realize that even if Xang admitted it and returned them, he’d already have made himself copies.

Still, he frowned. Had she been in an accident? She
had
shown up in that guy’s pickup. Or was the story a lie? It didn’t sound like she’d told Brandon about the underwear thing. Why wouldn’t she? Unless she hadn’t noticed yet? She was quite intelligent. Xang had a feeling she was up to something.

His heart rate barely picked up at the thought. “Did she call the police?” Not that they’d find him. He might not be military or special-police trained but he knew enough about field craft to cover his tracks and make sure no one could trace him via phone or other electronic devices.

“She didn’t say, but I assume so. Look, sorry, just forget I said anything, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah.” He hung up and stared down at the busy city spread out below him, his for the taking once he got the money from this job and put it to good use buying pieces of Baltimore’s underworld. Then he could continue the fight his father and brother had begun.

He was still admiring the view when the burner phone rang again a few minutes later. Xang answered immediately, already knowing who it was because his contact was the only one who knew the number. “What’s up?”

“I thought you said no one saw you.”

Xang’s muscles tightened in reflex at the buried rage in that voice. For the first time a trickle of unease slid through him. “They didn’t. Not other than some footage on the cameras I couldn’t disable, and I kept my face pretty well concealed.” He hadn’t cared all that much about being seen on camera at the time, since he never planned to go back there.

“Well someone did, and the woman is on to you. I had someone run those pictures you sent through a Chinese security database. The man she was with has connections all over the military contracting world. Word is he’s FBI now.”

What?
“That’s impossible,” he rasped, a sick feeling taking hold in his stomach. The security cameras would have picked him up from time to time as he moved through the building. Though he’d worn gloves, he’d no doubt left some DNA behind in her room, and with the underwear thing they’d be even more motivated to find him.
Shit.

The man grunted in irritation. “Get out of there and disappear, but keep this line open and available. I’ve put my personal reputation on the line by recommending you for this op—you’d better do everything in your power not to ruin it.”

Or else
.

Xang heard the unspoken threat in those words and had no doubt it was real. One misstep and he was as good as dead, no matter how fancy he was with computers or how careful he was with his field craft. In the cell, there was always someone they could replace him with. His gaze shot to the full length windows, to the view he’d been admiring moments ago. There could be men down there hunting him right now, ready to take him out because of what he knew.

A ripple of trepidation shivered up his spine. He couldn’t be taken or killed yet. Not now.

He moved back from the window, suddenly feeling paranoid. “I’m on it.”

Xang hung up and ran a hand through his hair, frantically going over his options. No doubt about it—he was being hunted. He needed time to clear out of here and erase his tracks before either a hit team or law enforcement officials closed in on him.

At this point his only real chance of survival, let alone living long enough to collect his money at the end of this op and put his next plan into action, was to get himself some collateral. Lucky for him, he knew just where to find some.

But instead of going after it, he would bring the collateral to him.

Reassured by the feel of his weapon stuffed into the back of his waistband and the weight of the knife strapped to his calf beneath the leg of his jeans, he fished his personal cell out of his pocket once again and dialed Brandon, who answered on the first ring.

This plan would work. It had to. “Hey, I feel bad about your sister, especially now that I know she was in an accident.” He paused, sighed for effect. “Are you on your way to her place?”

“No, she just called again and I’m meeting her somewhere else now, why?”

“Because…you’re right. I took the files, and I’m sorry.”

Brandon made a sound of outrage. “Tim, why the hell would you—”

He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. This was almost too easy. “Meet me at the diner on the corner now and you can take them to her.”