The Code Within: A Thriller (Trent Turner Series) (54 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said unconvincingly.

“Well, when you finally figure it out, why don’t you give me a call and see about possibly keeping your job? I’ve heard Lisbon is a great place to visit this time of year, so maybe having some free time wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Cross said before abruptly ending the call.

“Nice closer,” Simpson said.

The president smiled. “You’re sure your man in Europe was able to put out the safety net for the accounts?”

Simpson nodded. “Both Ryan and Trent Turner had helped to put a new system together to flag at-risk accounts and defined a protocol to follow when a restricted account was accessed. Trent passed along the accounts first thing in the morning GMT, before they left Chicago, and they were able to redirect everything leaving Federal Reserve accounts to the predetermined holding account. We were lucky that all of the banks they held money in had already implemented the new initiative.”

Cross shook his head. “This was too close for comfort. They almost pulled it off.” His eyes met each of them. “We take a lot for granted.” He exhaled. “We can’t afford any more close calls like this. How many US consumer accounts slipped through?”

“We lost around thirty million, but the good news is that we know which accounts were affected, and they were used sparingly, so we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again by midweek and nobody will be the wiser.”

The president leaned back in his chair, not wanting to think about the consequences if the hack into the banks had gone public, or even worse, been fully carried out.

“And your operative? Will he be okay?” Cross asked.

Simpson knocked a knuckle on the wooden table. “He’s already had a couple of operations,” he said solemnly. “It’s been touch and go. I hope so…I really hope so.” He managed a laugh and said, “Before he went under, he told Jack they never pressed Enter to send the final command to the bots for the remaining banks.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Unreal.”

The president nodded. “Dumb luck, but I’ll take it.” He looked at the other man who was sitting at the table and asked, “What about our other problem?”

Ivor Hood twisted his wrist, looked down at his watch and then back to the president. “We should know something any time now.”

Alexandria, Virginia

JAKE SANDERS REMINDED himself that he needed to keep cool. He had to check his emotions at the door so he wouldn’t make a mistake. There was no margin for error. This represented a new beginning for him, a way to wipe the slate clean and try to move on from the past—a past that he had once been proud of.

The drive to Pennsylvania and back had been therapeutic. He ran through all the operations HVT squad had done over the years, and it was the events of this past Saturday that grated on him the most. A thirty-second exchange with a mysterious contact in a parking lot interrupted his thoughts, and then he turned the car around and headed back to Virginia. He’d picked up a box and a black bag. Their contents held the key to his future, and he knew better than to break the seal. There would be no remorse for what he was about to do. None whatsoever. In fact, he knew this was the only way to set things straight.

He had never before dared visit his residence. It was located in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood with more luxury cars than minivans and SUVs. He parked the rental car at a shopping center less than a mile away from the house and nonchalantly made his way there and to the sliding glass door off the backyard deck. This needed to be done with the utmost care and discretion. He could see the alarm panel through the glass and confirmed that it wasn’t armed. Gaining entry would be a piece of cake, but that didn’t stop his heart from pounding rapidly inside his chest.

This was new territory for the operative, so he tried to convince himself that the nerves were normal. He made easy work of unlocking the door and began to slowly slide it open. He froze when it began to protest with a loud screech. He held his breath and tried to listen, but the heartbeat throbbing in his ears made it impossible to trust what he heard. Instead, he looked for shadows, any sign of movement in the home. He saw nothing.

He began to slide the door open again, this time pushing inward and upward to take the weight off of the rail. The door was silent. He stopped when the opening was large enough for him to squeeze through and slid inside the home.

Within a minute he found himself at the top of the stairs. He had memorized the layout of the house, and he knew the upstairs room where the light was on was his study. After taking a few deep breaths to control his breathing, he was ready. His heart rate was still high, but his face was a picture of control. He was like a duck—calm on the surface, with the manic kicking below, hidden from view. He took one more deep breath and strode silently into the room.

The man looked up from his desk in surprise. “Oh my God, I thought you were dead.”

“Nice to see you too,” Jake Sanders said.

FBI Director Frank Culder was visibly uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong, boss?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He wasn’t particularly convincing. “It’s just good to see you,” Culder lied.

“So, it’s just you and me now.” He jutted his chin out. “With BlackRock, that is. Rudy’s dead. We lost a lot of guys over the weekend.”

Culder had started to sweat. “I know.”

“It’s funny,” Sanders said, “but if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you weren’t happy to see me.”

The director remained silent but shifted his weight ever so slightly in his chair.

Sanders tossed a package onto his desk and said, “Here.” He knew the director would have a gun hidden somewhere, so he needed to get to the point fast. He doubted Culder had ever shot anyone, but he had no intention of becoming victim number one. Their business together was unfinished; he would soon figure that out.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Culder grabbed a letter opener and began to slice open the manila envelope. He pulled out the documents inside and started to read. His eyes lit up, and his lips formed a smile.

“Where did you get this?”

They were the documents sent from Dr. Charles Reed to implicate the president in dealings with Island Industries.

Sanders laughed. “Come on now. It’s poor form to reveal your sources. It should come in handy while we’re putting the team back together,” he said flatly. “Do you think that will be enough dirt on Cross, or should I try to find another pile?”

Sanders could tell the gears were turning in Culder’s head. His demeanor had changed significantly. He was looking more like his bastard self by the second.

“I’ll have to go over this to be sure,” Culder said, and gave Sanders a proud look. “Do you think you can get more information?” he asked enthusiastically.

Sanders nodded. Now he knew the director didn’t have anything on the president.

“I think so,” he said. “I’ll need some cash. There is something else.”

“There is?” Culder asked expectantly.

Sanders showed him the black bag he was holding. He tossed it up in the air a couple of times before throwing it onto the director’s desk.

“What is this?”

Sanders plastered a smile on his face. His heart rate spiked as he watched the FBI director break the seal and dig his hand into the bag.

The elastic material closed around his wrist as he reached inside.

“Shit!” he yelled. “What the fuck is in here?”

He quickly pulled his hand out of the bag and shot an angry look at Sanders.

“What do you mean?” Sanders asked with contemptuous look.

Culder began to look ill. “What have you done?”

“How could you be so stupid?” Sanders spat. “Did you think we’d never find out what was going on?”

The director fumbled around his desk, his condition was getting worse by the second. He reached desperately for a desk drawer, but Sanders stepped forward and held it closed with his knee.

“Were you hoping we would all get killed eventually so you could just move on, all the fun and games over?” Sanders asked.

He could see the Culder’s eyes begin to glaze over as his skin turned flush. “Shake it to piss them off.” That was the only thing the man had said when he handed him the bag. Apparently it worked.

“At least one of those stupid childhood stories you told me wasn’t useless,” he said, referring to Culder’s tale about a near-fatal bee sting.

It had been less than a minute, but Culder’s breathing was already labored.

“What the hell have you done?” he spat in anger.

“I’m no doctor, but the technical term is ‘anaphylactic shock,’” Sanders said. “Those wasps aren’t half as pissed as I am.”

He collected the incriminating information on President Cross and stared at the man’s pitiful form. “You won’t be needing these anymore. I’ll tell Agent Moynihan you said hello, you useless prick.”

SHE STOOD JUST outside the room and listened. Her mother-in-law’s back was turned to her, and the three occupants were too engrossed in their conversation to notice her. She didn’t know who the younger woman with the jet-black hair was, but she guessed she might be his girlfriend. Her clothes were expensive and refined, and she was incredibly beautiful.

“It’s touch and go right now,” the doctor said in a solemn voice. “He’s extremely fit, so at least he has that going for him, but he lost a lot of blood. The team did an excellent job, but when he arrived at the hospital he was in oligemic shock.”

“Oligemic what?” Cathy Turner said.

“Pardon me,” the doctor said. “It’s shock from an extreme decrease in blood volume. From the gunshot wounds.”

She nodded, and he continued.

“There is great risk of organ failure and disseminated intravascular coagulation. Basically he’s at high risk for blood clots.”

“Do you know the extent of the damage?” she asked.

“Not at this time. I can tell you that his brain scan checked out, but we won’t know for sure what the real damage is until he wakes up.” He furrowed his brow and switched the clipboard to his other hand. “The men he was with had phoned the hospital ahead of his arrival, so the restoration of blood volume to maintain tissue perfusion and oxygenation was done as quickly as it could have been. They were ready and waiting for him when he came through the emergency room door. It seems your son has some friends in high places.”

The doctor smiled. He wasn’t only referring to the operative’s unlikely survival, he also meant the two doctors who were helicoptered in to operate.

“So we’re not out of the woods yet?”

“Oh heavens no, but I have to tell you, it’s not every day you have the best in the world looking after a single patient. Let’s just say the deck’s been stacked in his favor. We just need to hope he’s up to playing the hand.”

April Turner’s thoughts were conflicted as she listened to the doctor brief the women. She clutched the envelope in her hand, and tears welled up in her eyes. The envelope had “Trent” handwritten on the front, and the seal her husband had secured it with was still intact. Opening it to see what her husband Ryan had written to his twin brother had never even crossed her mind. His intention was to send it to Trent to initiate the healing process for their relationship, but mending the bridges would be impossible now.

The conversation she had with Jack Turner two hours ago had given her a lot to think about. She hadn’t known many of the details about her husband’s life, and now things had started to come together. She was proud of what her husband had been doing, but she wished with all of her heart there would have been a different outcome. Now that she knew the details, she wasn’t sure that passing the message in the envelope along to Trent was the right thing to do. The envelope wasn’t something she could leave in his room. She knew its contents would be too toxic for the family to happen upon right now, and the doctors still weren’t convinced that he would survive.

She had just lost the father of one of her children in this very hospital. Ryan Turner had been the love of her life, and mentally she wasn’t sure if she’d ever recover. Based on her conversation with Jack, she wasn’t sure it would ever be safe to let the father of her oldest child know the truth.

Tears streamed down her face as she was overcome with guilt. April contemplated whether it might be better if Trent Turner didn’t make it through, and quickly tried to erase the selfish thought from her mind. She was ashamed. The secret she held, the very reason her relationship with Ryan survived, was something that would become exponentially more difficult to explain to her astute young child as time passed by.

She wiped the tears from her face, turned and walked away. She had two children at home who missed their father dearly, and that’s where she needed to be right now. This was something that would have to wait. She just wasn’t sure if the wait would take a lifetime.

Thank you for reading my debut novel THE CODE WITHIN. If you've enjoyed the book, be sure to leave a brief review on Amazon or Goodreads, and then share the book with your friends through the social media outlets that you frequent. I believe that word of mouth from readers is the most powerful endorsement an author can have.

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S L Jones

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I'd like to send out a heartfelt thank you to family and friends who have encouraged me to follow through with my writing. For those of you who provided insight into three letter agencies, the military and the police, your perspectives and insight have made this novel better than I could have ever imagined, and I appreciate your willingness to help - rest assured the next round is on me. To my copyeditor Marcus Trower: thanks for taking the time and having enough patience to guide me through the early stages of learning to write fiction. I've still got a long way to go, but you're valuable advice has helped me to write a novel that I can be proud of. To Carol and Craig Jones, Ed Quackenbush, Karen Caroscio, Malina Fowler, Nick Selby, Peyton Jones and Teresa Hargett: thanks for helping me to beat down doubt and get back to the task at hand - writing. To Hristo Kovatliev: Awesome work on the cover, you have given the novel a face that will surely get noticed.To my son, Tyler, who will soon turn four: you are a bolt of positive energy and hope that lights up my world with love and gratitude – you’re the perfect little soundtrack to my life and you keep me going. Last and far from least, to my wife, Carey: yes, I am crazy, and thank you for putting up with me and for your love and patience - I love you.