Blind Rage (33 page)

Derek’s brows knit. “Well, no, not really. Like I said, I’d need to see a lot more code.”

Travis let out a breath, then reached for another chair. He pulled it close, spun it around, and plunked down in the seat, rolling it so close to Derek’s their knees nearly touched. Derek had traded one black T-shirt for another, this one imprinted with a graphic of the Ramones. His black jeans were clean, too, which led Travis to the conclusion that the artfully tousled hair and trimmed facial stubble were deliberate. He gestured at the memory stick still in Derek’s hand.

“You think this guy is good, huh? How’d you like to see if you’re just as good?”

Derek smiled. “I know I am. Well, I could be, given half the chance. Why?”

“You know what we do on the other side of the building?”

“Government contract work. Department of Defense, mostly.”

Travis nodded. “One of the projects we’ve been working on for a long time got screwed up. Software glitch. We haven’t been able to fix it.”

“A worm,” Derek said. His smile faltered. “Unless that’s urban legend.”

“No, it’s the real deal. Want to take a crack at it?”

“Hell, yes!” As fast as he leaned forward, Derek changed his eager expression to nonchalance and slouched deeper into his chair.

“Good. I’ll send you the background and the program so you can get started. You sure you have time for this?”

His brows flew up then drifted down like a fresh sheet onto a bed into a single line over his frown. “You mean this is the same deal as the memory stick—OMOT? On my own time?”

Travis nodded. “Sorry, but yes. I’ll find a way to make it up to you eventually. Stock options, maybe. In the meantime, I shouldn’t have to tell you—”

Derek quickly put a finger to his lips. “Yeah, mum’s the word. I got it.”

Travis inspected his face like a dermatologist looking for melanoma. “It’s no joke, kid. Unless you haven’t been paying attention, lives are at stake.”

Derek stared back, trying too hard to look indignant. He conceded a nod. “I said I get it.”

Travis held his eyes a second longer, then got up to leave. He took out a pen, tore a scrap of paper off a pad on Derek’s desk, and scribbled on it.

“One more thing,” he said, holding the paper in front of Derek’s gaze. “I want you to hack my niece’s e-mail account and retrieve copies of all the e-mails she’s sent and received in the past week. Can you do that?”

Derek’s mouth hung open. “Well, yeah, but are you sure you . . . ?”

Travis nodded. “It’s important. And she can’t find out she’s been hacked.”

Derek scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know, man. That seems like crossing a line to me.”

“Believe me,” he told Derek, “when it comes to protecting the people close to me, we’re not even close to the line yet. If I didn’t think it would save her life, I wouldn’t ask. Can you handle that?”

Derek drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.”

Satisfied they were on the same page, Travis stepped out into the hall and checked both directions before quickly striding to the fire door and pushing through the door into the stairwell. He went back down to the first floor and wriggled his way through the tide of employees streaming toward the bank of elevators. He nodded at the few faces he recognized and murmured a “good morning” to each. He waved his key card in front of the reader next to the door behind the reception desk and slipped through. A few short steps took him to the security office. He scanned his card again and heard the faint click of the lock. He opened the door and stepped inside.

One of the guards sitting in front of the monitors briefly turned his head and noted his entrance with bored eyes, a stifled yawn, and a short nod before turning his attention back to the screens. The staff was long overdue for a simulation drill. Fire, B&E, earthquake, terrorist attack—Travis made sure Cooper mixed it up and ran each one as if it was a real emergency, not a drill. Travis insisted on staging them as realistically as possible, even using actors, stunt people, and movie props and makeup. But now was not the time.

He crossed the room quickly, knocked on Cooper’s door, and walked in without waiting for a reply. Cooper looked up, startled. Travis didn’t give him time to recover.

“You have James’s business phone.” Travis made it a statement, not a question. “I’d like it back, please.”

A cloud of confusion scudded across Cooper’s face before he grunted assent. He leaned over, opened a drawer in his desk, and took out a cell phone. He held it out.

“Why do you have it, Cyrus?”

“It’s protocol,” Cooper said without hesitation. “You know that, Travis. Whenever anyone leaves this company, in whatever fashion—a better job offer, termination, even death—we immediately retrieve all electronic devices assigned to that person and comb through the contents before destroying the memory. Computers, phones, tablets—doesn’t matter.”

Travis could detect no prevarication there, but he wondered if Cooper’s answer wasn’t a little too slick, offered a tad too quickly.

“How did you get it?”

Cooper tipped his head slightly before answering. “My men went through the Range Rover after the crash, before it was towed back to the house. I thought you were aware of this. Why all the questions now?”

Travis shrugged and lightened his expression with an easy smile. “Sorry. Tess called me and said some of her favorite photos are on that phone. I must have forgotten that a team went through James’s things back then. Shock, I guess.”

“I suppose,” Cyrus said. “James’s death hit us all pretty hard at the time. Well, you’re certainly welcome to take it. We’ve had plenty of time to look through it.”

Travis stepped to the desk and took the phone out of Cooper’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks, Cyrus. Sorry to have barged in like this. Seems to be one of those days.”

“Take a deep breath. Start over.”

“Right. Well, thanks again.” Travis turned for the door.

“One more piece of advice before you go, Travis. Cut back on the caffeine. You seem wound a little tight.”

Cooper smiled at him, but Travis saw no mirth behind it. He forced a smile of his own and left, annoyed with himself for letting his emotions go unchecked. Cooper should not have been able to read him so easily.

Back in his office, he went through the motions—returning phone calls, attending a couple of meetings, reviewing contract terms for a couple of vendors, and reading through a marketing plan for a proposed new video game. But he found he couldn’t concentrate. He was caught more than once with his mind elsewhere, putting a crimp in the contract negotiations for a while and forcing the marketing team to go over portions of their presentation twice.

The distractedness disturbed him. He’d never found it difficult to focus before. It was one of the reasons he’d been so good at his job in Afghanistan. His focus was so intense that he was hypersensitive to sights and sounds and smells around him, able to analyze, interpret, and act on that sensory input in fractions of a second. His innate skills had not only kept him alive all those years, but had made him one of the army’s most effective antiterrorist weapons, its best assassin. He wasn’t proud of the number of men he’d killed. Some of them, the ones that haunted his dreams occasionally, had been mere boys. But he was proud of how many people he’d saved as a result. Even most of those “boys” had been programmed to kill, to sacrifice themselves for their cause—as long as they could take several people with them.

This new feeling of inertia was like being encased in one of those padded sumo wrestler costumes, and as close as he’d ever felt to being helpless. He didn’t know if it was because the rules of civilian life were so different than those he’d known most of his adult life, or because
he
was different.

All the hard edges honed to razor sharpness by combat and living under the radar had been dulled, softened by his new roles as guardian, surrogate parent, boss. Even his budding friendships with some of his teammates, and especially with Robyn, had awakened in him emotions long suppressed. The job in Afghanistan had been almost exclusively black and white, the gray shaded well enough usually to be easily discernible. Now he saw so many colors that he sometimes couldn’t see the composition of the picture itself, let alone tell the good guys from the bad guys. This life was more dangerous, fraught with more ambiguity, than his life as a soldier. He had to find a way to adapt.

The problem was Tess. He’d never felt so responsible before, never carried so much weight on his shoulders—not even when he’d had to decide when and how to take a life. That was nothing compared to protecting a life, to keeping someone from harm, even from the smallest slights from mean kids at school. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t protect Tess, not from everything. But he knew he had to try.

He gave up trying to work at around four o’clock, and stopped at Robyn’s desk on his way out. She stopped typing and tipped her head up expectantly.

“Taking off?” she said.

“I think I’ve made enough of a mess for one day.”

She gave him an encouraging smile. “We all have days like that. And it wasn’t so bad. We got a lot accomplished.”

He sighed. “I think you would have gotten more done without me.”

Robyn shook her head. “We couldn’t possibly do without you, sir.” She blushed. “I mean, Travis.”

Travis felt his own face get warm. “Thank you for saying so. You’re just being kind, but I promise I’ll have more focus tomorrow.”

“Tess again?”

“Among other things. But it’s not your problem. I’ll see you then.”

Her smile broadened; it lit up his world. He felt better despite the memory of all that had gone wrong with the day.

Less than half an hour later, he pulled into the garage at home. It still felt strange to call it that. It was no more his home than the huts they’d “borrowed” in Afghanistan for missions. A temporary place to lay his head, filled with other people’s things, reminders of their past lives. He had none of that, not even snapshots of the men he’d served with, fought with, killed for. He had a closet full of clothes in a guest bedroom in his brother’s house. As he let himself into the kitchen, Travis wondered if he would ever feel truly at home anywhere.

Alice stood at the stove, cooking. The smell of onions, garlic, and spices made Travis’s stomach growl. He realized he hadn’t eaten lunch.

“Smells great,” he said. “What is it?”

Alice turned and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Nothing fancy. The boys haven’t had a decent meal since they got here, I suspect. They’ve been ordering takeout all the time.”

“You’d be surprised at how many of them can cook.”

She shrugged. “Anyway, I’m making a big pot of spaghetti sauce. They can take most of it over to the guesthouse and leave the rest here for us.”

“Good idea. Thanks, Alice.”

She held his gaze. “We need a cook. Especially with all these mouths to feed.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “We’ll be more careful this time.”

“I’ll put the word out tomorrow. Maybe even post something online tonight.”

“Fine. Where’s Tess?”

“In the library, studying.”

“How did her day go?”

Alice frowned. “Fine, I suppose. I haven’t heard a peep out of her.” She paused. “You know, she confides even less in me than she does you, Travis. She’s a teenager. What do you expect?”

Travis shifted his weight. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just let her know you’re there for her no matter what.”

“She’ll never believe that. Not coming from me.”

“She has a hard time believing that from anyone, Travis. She lost her parents. She doesn’t know who to trust.”

Travis studied the stone tile in front of his feet and saw an entire mountain range in miniature in the waves of ridges weathered across its surface. When he finally looked up, Alice had turned back to the pot on the stove, her arm a piston that slowly drove a spoon in circles through the sauce inside.

“How do you think this kid is working out?” he said.

“Oliver?” She didn’t turn. “I think he’s just what she needs, but she doesn’t know it yet. She’s getting used to having him around, and I think he’s gaining her trust.”

Travis considered her words silently.

I’m the one who should be earning her trust, but maybe I missed my chance. It has been a year, and what have I done in that time to make her think I’m even sympathetic? Venture an occasional attempt at conversation when we’ve been together for meals?

He’d been consumed by the task of learning James’s company inside and out, figuring out the best way to keep it afloat without its genius founder. He’d had no time for coddling a blind teenager.

No, that’s not true; I haven’t made time to help my niece, my own flesh and blood, recover from a terrible loss. Two, in fact. Perhaps it isn’t too late to rectify my mistake. At least I can try
.

He left Alice at the stove and quickly strode down the long hall to the library. Tess and Oliver sat next to each other at the rectangular oak study table, Oliver’s chair turned at an angle toward her, his head bent over an open textbook. Oliver looked up when Travis stepped through the doorway, and Tess cocked her head in that curious way that indicated she was homing in on the location of the sound of his footsteps.

“Hello, sir,” Oliver said.

Travis nodded as he approached. “Oliver, could you please give us a minute?”

Wordlessly, Oliver rose and rounded the end of the table, brushing past Travis on his way to the door. Travis waited until he heard the click of the door closing, then stepped toward the table.

“Hey, there, how are you doing?” he said softly. “It’s me, Uncle Travis,” he added lamely.

Tess rolled her eyes. “Duh. I’m okay. Why?”

“No reason. Just thought I’d check up on you. I know things have been rough for you lately. Especially being there yesterday when that woman was shot.”

“Helen,” Tess said. “Her name was Helen. You knew her, Uncle Travis. She wasn’t ‘that woman.’ What’s wrong with you?”