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“It’s two in the morning, Mendez,” he said, hinting not so subtly for her to get to the point of this little visit.
She glared. “I’m well aware of that. I’ve been working all night while you caught up on your beauty sleep.”
Vague surprise registered. What work would keep her up so late? She was a junior flunky—little more than an errand girl—in Chandler’s office. Surely the guy didn’t give her work to do that kept her up this late at night. “Congratulations. You win the workaholic award,” he declared. “So what do you want?”
“Get dressed,” she ordered tersely. “There’s something I need to show you.”
His eyebrows shot up. Since when was she the one giving orders? He was the unit operations officer. She was the lowly support tech. Not to mention, why was she so tense? She’d come to his unit with a reputation for being cool as a cucumber under pressure. That and the girl was a wizard with anything that had wires. She would give James Bond’s tech support guy, Q, a run for his British money. Something must be up. Something big.
Frowning, he stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wear something preppy!” she called after him.
Preppy? What the heck? Off-duty his tastes tended to jeans and cowboy boots. But he was curious enough to dig out a pair of tailored khaki slacks and a dark-green polo shirt. He rooted around in the back of his closet and found a pair of deck shoes, too. He occasionally sailed with friends in Annapolis, and the shoes actually were handy on a boat. In keeping with the preppy thing, he skipped socks and slipped his bare feet into the shoes.
When he came back to the living room, she was perched on the edge of his pearl-gray leather sofa warily eyeing his coffee table and the foot-tall crystal sculpture of a seagull in flight on it. The piece was one of a kind, but he restrained an urge to slide it out of her reach. He snorted at himself. Apparently, it was an ingrained habit not to insult a pretty woman at this time of night.
“What’s going on, Mendez?”
Her dark eyes flashed with something unnamed. He might call it fear if it wasn’t Mendez he was looking at. She didn’t have a fearful bone in her entire body.
She answered, “I found something on Senator Chandler’s computer. I could’ve brought you a copy of the file, but you wouldn’t have believed me if I did. I need you to see it for yourself on his computer, as big as life.”
If he hadn’t known her pretty much his whole life, he’d say she’d lost her marbles. But Alex never had been prone to hysteria and didn’t look as though she was about to start now. She looked … scared.
They stepped out into the sleeping Georgetown street. He glanced around for her piece-of-crap Buick and didn’t spot it. “Where’d you park?” he murmured.
“I took the subway.”
“The Beast on the fritz?”
She snorted at the idea that any car of hers wouldn’t be in perfect working order. Good point. Her old man was the finest mechanic on the planet, and she wasn’t far behind the guy in what she knew about cars.
“I’ll drive,” he announced. Not only did he prefer his zippy little BMW on the Washington streets, but he wanted fast access to the Luger 9 mm semi-automatic pistol in the glove compartment.
Traffic was nonexistent at this hour and they were downtown in a matter of minutes. Shocking. It could take Jim an hour or more to make that drive during rush hour. He even found a parking spot less than a block from the Dirksen Building, where Chandler’s office was.
“How are we planning to get in?” he asked.
“We’re walking in the front door. I told the guard when I left to come get you that I’d be back with someone to help me in a little while. He’s expecting you and will sign you in as a visitor,” she answered disdainfully.
“No spooky ops for you, huh?”
“Hey. If you want to break in, I can take you around back and rewire the service entrance. But it’ll take an hour and then we’ll have to dodge the roaming guards who, contrary to what you see on TV, are very good at their jobs.”
He shrugged. “Why make it hard if we can take the path of least resistance?”
“Like I was saying. The front door.”
Touchy, touchy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her this tense. His curiosity grew even more. What had she found to make her this tight?
“Good evening, Miss Mendez,” a night guard at the front desk said. “I see you convinced your colleague to come in and help you.”
She sighed. “Senator Chandler’s freaking out over some testimony his committee’s hearing tomorrow. He made me dig up a Subject Matter Expert and drag the poor man down here to help me develop a list of questions. This is Captain Kelley, by the way.”
The guard was thorough … and slow. But eventually, the badge with a big red V on it was handed over. Jim clipped it to his collar.
Playing his part, Jim said, “All right, Miss Mendez. Let’s get to work. We don’t have long if this hearing starts at nine.”
She nodded and led him through the metal detectors to an elevator bank. They stepped inside and the door closed behind them. She stared fixedly at the doors as if she was uncomfortable being in a confined space with him.
“What’s going on, Al? I can’t remember the last time I saw you so wired.”
The door opened. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
She followed him down a long hallway to a walnut door with a brass panel on it announcing this to be the office of Chester V. Chandler, the junior senator from Nebraska. She swiped her badge and then keyed a number on the pad below the card reader. A green light beeped and she pushed open the door.
They stepped into a darkened room. She reached past him to turn on the lights. With a quick gasp to announce it, she managed to get her feet tangled up and he had to grab her fast to keep her from falling over. Typical Mendez. He bit back a grin at the sight of her cheeks reddening.
“Lock that door behind you,” she mumbled.
He did so and turned around. Alex had already disappeared into the next room. He followed her in time to see her sit down behind a big mahogany desk and open a laptop computer sitting on it. Interested to see what had her so freaked out, he moved around behind her to look over her shoulder.
It booted up and she rapidly typed in a long password comprised of random letters and numbers.
“Impressive,” he commented. “How long did it take you to hack that?”
“Chet gave me the password months ago.”
“Seriously?” That surprised him. If the guy had secrets to keep, why would he hand out his password to some junior aide?
“Whenever he has computer problems, I’m his go-to girl.” She added dryly, “Turns out I have a bit of a knack with electronics.”
“You’re kidding,” he retorted, matching her sarcasm. By the time she’d hit her teens, it had been clear she’d inherited her dad’s gift for gadgets. He’d never seen a mechanical device of any kind that could best either one of them. Of course, the army had spent years further training her natural talent until she was downright frightening.
“Here it is,” she announced as she clicked on a file icon. As it loaded, she stood up. “Sit down and take a look at this.”
He replaced her in the leather desk chair. An email message popped up on the screen.
The package has been taken. ETA final destination 6:00 a.m. local. Will report when contents have been secured and delivery confirmation sent.
“Mendez, have you lost it? Why do I care about some damned package?”
“Look at the date of the message,” she replied.
“The twentieth of August. Big deal.”
“Wasn’t that the day your sister was kidnapped?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Check out this note.” She leaned over his shoulder to click on another email stored in the same file, and he was startled to register that she smelled good. Like fresh-cut hay, sweet and warm.
Another note popped up.
Delivery confirmation received. Recipient has not responded, however. Request further instructions.
And then a third note.
We need you to lean on HK. Make him understand what will happen if he doesn’t play ball.
Disquiet started to rumble in Jim’s gut. His father, Hank Kelley, had initially kept Lana’s kidnapping secret from the rest of the family. Hank had refused to pay a ransom and had told the kidnappers he would never bend to blackmail. Still, these vague notes didn’t come close to constituting proof that Chet Chandler knew about his sister’s kidnapping.
But then Alex opened one last message. This one contained a video clip and took several seconds to load. A room came into view from the perspective of a camera mounted high in the corner looking down on the space. A woman sat in a chair in the middle of the room. Her ankles and wrists bore metal cuffs secured to the chair. And she was blindfolded. But Jim didn’t have to see her entire face to know it was Lana.
He leaped to his feet. “Sonofa—” he exclaimed. Senator Chet Chandler was involved in his sister’s kidnapping? He’d kill the guy. Or worse, expose him. He’d ruin the bastard. Nobody messed with his little sister and got away with it.
“Copy these files for me,” Jim ground out. “I’ll have them in front of a grand jury first thing in the morning.”
“You can’t,” Alex replied. “We don’t have a warrant to search this computer.”
“Then get one!”
“By the time we get a judge to sign off on one, Chandler would hear about it and erase these before we ever get here.”
“Make me a copy of the damned things anyway,” Jim growled. “Illegally obtained or not, I want the evidence on the slime ball. I will find a way to take him down.”
Without comment, Alex reached into her pocket for a flash drive. She plugged it into the side of the senator’s computer and reached over Jim’s shoulder to strike several keys. “Done.”
“What else has Chandler got on this system?” Jim demanded.
“I don’t—” She broke off as the outer office door beeped. “Get over on the couch,” she whispered. “Write something down on this, fast.” She threw him a yellow legal pad, slammed the screen on the laptop shut, and raced for the outer office door.
He heard her say pleasantly from the other room, “Hey, Parker. Mike said you’d stop by. How’s Marly?”
Impressed, Jim listened to her and the guard chat about the guy’s apparently about-to-have-a-baby wife. Man. Alex really was cool under pressure. The guard poked his head into the senator’s office and Jim looked up from his legal pad casually. He nodded at the guard, who nodded back.
In a few moments, the fellow left and Alex came back into the office. She picked up where they’d left off. “Here’s the thing,” she explained. “If I copy the entire contents of the senator’s hard drive, it’ll only give us a snapshot of what’s on the system this very minute. I’d rather have a way to track what he’s doing from day-to-day.”
“Can you do that?” Jim asked.
“I don’t have the gear with me to do it tonight, but I can get the stuff and plant a transmitter on his motherboard. But I’ll need to set up another computer somewhere nearby to act as the shadow system.”
“Shadow system?”
She nodded. “The second computer will act exactly like the first computer. We’ll see every keystroke the senator makes, every email he receives or sends, every file he opens, saves or deletes. Although, on our system, nothing will actually delete.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re scary, Mendez?”
She smiled wolfishly. “All the time.”
It was a quick matter to wipe down the senator’s desk for fingerprints and turn out the lights. But Jim was surprised when she left the outer office lights on and then led him away from the elevator bank they’d used to come upstairs.
“What’s up?” he murmured under his voice.
“We’re supposed to be pulling an all-nighter working on a set of questions. Unless you want to sit in the office the rest of night, I thought we’d use the back door.”
“But you said it would take an hour to get through its security.”
“From the outside. From inside the building it’s a two-minute job to disable the thing. Our only problems are Parker and the cleaning crew. I’ll take point.”
And just like that, she strode off down the hall, leaving him to follow behind. Memories of a dark, rocky valley flashed through his head. Another woman taking point. His misgivings about letting her do it, the rolled eyes of the other guys on the op, his determination to let her prove herself to the unit …
He shook his head and scowled at Alex’s attempt to play toy soldier. She didn’t get it at all. She had no idea how dangerous it was in the field and wasn’t the slightest bit equipped to handle it, physically or emotionally.
She surprised him by hand-signaling a retreat, Special Forces style. His many years of training kicked in and he obeyed, not questioning the order. He turned, raced down the hall they currently were in, and ducked into the next available side hall. She joined him a second later. They froze in the shadowed alcove, shoulder to shoulder, as a janitor rolled a cleaning cart past them. The guy never saw them. A door opened and the cart creaked inside.
Alex glided out to the main hallway, peeked around the corner, and signaled him to proceed. Amusement flared in his gut. She had all the moves, he’d grant her that. But nobody was shooting at them or hunting them with the intent to kill. And that made all the difference between a real field op and this little pretend game of hers. But who was he to puncture her balloon? He dutifully followed her to the service exit and stood lookout while she disabled the door alarm.
She hadn’t lied. In under two minutes they slipped out into the cool Washington night. He unclipped his badge and passed it to her to hand in to the security guard in the morning. They walked around the corner to his car. He drove away slowly enough not to draw any attention to himself; they were just another pair of weary staffers going home after burning the midnight oil.
But when they were safely a few blocks away, Jim pulled the car over and asked, “When can you have the senator’s computer bugged?”
“Noon tomorrow.”
“How so soon?” he demanded.
“I’ll send the senator a virus in an email. It’ll freeze up his system. He’ll panic and call me into his office to fix it. I’ll take apart the computer, wire the transmitter to the motherboard, and then erase the virus. No sweat.”
Ballsy, to plant a bug right under her boss’s nose. Jim nodded tersely. “I want to know everything. How involved is this guy in Lana’s kidnapping? Who’s he working with? Who did those emails come from? Particularly the one that told him to lean on my old man. If Chandler’s just a pawn in this thing, I want to know who the king is.”
“I’m going to need somewhere to set up the shadow computer. Somewhere close. Like an office or an apartment.”
“I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning,” he replied tersely.
“What about a search warrant for Chet’s computer?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. You were right. We don’t want to spook Chandler. I’ll run the paperwork for your bug through military channels. The people who had me put you in Chandler’s office can green-light us. And they won’t leak anything.”
She glanced over at him sharply, but then looked away hastily. Why had she gone skittish on him all of a sudden? “What?” he demanded.
“Us?” she mumbled. “Are you coming on board my op, then?”
“This scumbucket can lead me to Lana’s kidnappers—or he might even be one of them. Hell, yes, I’m in.” He added grimly, “Call me when the bug’s in place.”
She nodded.
“You need a ride to your place?” he offered.
