Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) (6 page)

“I know what a fucking transmitter does,” she snapped.

“Okay. Okay. Sorry.” He let go of her and took a step back.

“Sorry—I’m sorry—it’s just…this is crazy, right?”

“Maybe. Now, I have two friends that can maybe reconfigure the transmitter to send the data to us.”

“Oh, fuck it. Move.” She pushed him out of the way and jerked the transmitter cords out of the modem.

“Fiona!”

“I can’t change the signal without taking it apart, so—just move.” She pushed past him into the depths of the closet stacked with boxes and other storage containers.

She hauled a black laptop bag and a tool box out of the depths and marched past him, out into the office.

Just what was the pretty lady going to do?

Marco wanted to find out, so he kept his trap shut.

Whoever was using her modem to send stuff would no doubt be aware that their transmitter was offline. Unless it was unmonitored on a weekend. But then, if it was, why would Scott be here on a Saturday to get it? What did Fiona know or have that was so important someone would spy on her?

Shit, he’d picked the wrong mark.

Whatever Fiona was involved with, whatever was going down, Marco was pretty sure he’d just stepped in it.

Fiona pulled apart the
transmitter, laying its internal components on her desk. It wasn’t the cheapest piece of equipment, but it wasn’t highly sophisticated either. Easy to operate, easy to fix—this was a workhorse device. Something someone used. A lot.

Were the U.S. Marshalls watching her? Observing her activity? Was this part of their security? She knew they weren’t telling her everything, that they were very active on the fringes of her life. They wanted Nova, still, after all these years, for reasons she didn’t understand, and the best way to find him was through her. Which was why she needed to be the one to reconfigure the transmitter. If Marco’s friends did it, if they figured out what was going on…

Nope.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Marco asked.

“Hush.” She wasn’t about to explain herself to him. She couldn’t. There was no way to explain why an executive administrative assistant had any reason to know how to do this.

Fiona carefully examined the inner workings, the wires, the mother board and processor.

“So?” Marco hovered.

“So—what?”

“What’s it doing?”

“It’s…basically taking wireless signals from somewhere in probably thirty yards of the transmitter and sending them somewhere else. There will be a sister receiver that gets this data.”

“Okay, so we re-route them.”

“You know how to do that?”

“No…”

“Be quiet, then. Give me a moment.”

Rerouting the devices would be difficult. The transmitter wasn’t that sophisticated. She’d need to replace pieces. Unless…unless she used her kit.

Marco was going to exit her life soon. Probably today. And he’d never give her a second thought, as much as that stung. He didn’t know her well enough to realize she was behaving out of character. She could risk it.

Fiona opened the laptop case and began setting up her rig. Or as good of a rig as she kept these days.

In her hacking prime, she’d had a considerable amount of equipment. Now she got by with the basics because it was more about the memories than hacking.

“What’s this?” Marco asked.

“I’m going to plug the transmitter into my offline laptop and route all the feeds here. See what they’re doing.”

Since the transmitter was hardwired into the modem, it couldn’t transmit on its own, but it would still receive signal if it had power.

She held her breath, booted up her laptop, and plugged the transmitter in. It took a little massaging to get the device to play nice with her set-up, but a few tweaks and…

“Holy shit.” Fiona sat back, four video screens filling her display.

“It’s…” Marco turned around.

She didn’t have to watch him, she could see him in the video feed.

Holy fucking shit.

Someone was watching
her
.

Fiona could only sit there, dumbfounded as all the nightmare possibilities whistled through her mind.

Marco crossed the room, climbed onto the spare chair and unscrewed the vent with nothing but his fingers. Her mouth dried up at the sound of the ice machine humming from downstairs.

Someone was watching her.

Watching—and listening.

She could see the office, her living room, her bedroom and the kitchen. The four areas of her house she spent all her time in. How long had they been watching? Was this what Scott was after? This? Why would he record her? Why would he need to watch her this closely? Was he jealous? Did he want to make sure she didn’t cheat on him? Or was this about NueEnergy like Marco had suggested? Could it be…Nova? Was that crazy? Were the Marshalls involved?

“What else is it transmitting? What are those other…things?” Marco leaned over her shoulder the microphone and camera device in hand.

“I don’t know.” She clicked the data packet with the most recent time stamp.

An error message popped up, warning her about encryption and zipped files. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. A little encryption had never kept her out of anything, and this wasn’t all that sophisticated. It was a formality. A proprietary stamp, more than a road block. If she spent time pouring over the encryption, she’d figure out who was behind it, but first she wanted to know what was so important they’d make her life public access. Whoever they were.

What if it really was Nova?

What if this was some elaborate plot to get back at her?

She had no idea what Nova looked like. The FBI did, but they’d always kept him a secret in an attempt to protect her or to keep her from jumping at shadows, she wasn’t entirely sure. But the fact remained, Nova could be anyone.  He could be Marco.

Her throat closed up at that thought.

But—no. Nova and Marco being the same person didn’t make sense.

“I’m in,” she announced. “What are we sending?”

She clicked on a file and another window opened, files upon files listed for her perusal.

Some were familiar, because those project names were the stuff of nightmares.

“Wait, wait, wait a second.” Marco was hovering over her shoulder now. “What is this?”

“Oh, fuck.” She scrubbed a hand over her face and clicked the file for the project she’d slaved over Thursday and Friday.

There it was.

All of her work.

Every bit of it.

And the consolidated bits from every other team member.

“How—?” She didn’t have to wonder how. She knew precisely what she’d do if it was her.

Because he’d taught her.

Her boyfriend, Heath.

Heath had been Nova’s best friend.

Fiona swallowed.

It wasn’t a unique way to set up a data skim, but it was sophisticated. It took time to set this up. She’d done it during their large-scale hacks because she had an eye for detail and typically missed less than the others.

“Okay, shut it down.” Marco grabbed the wires and yanked.

“Hey!”

“Turn everything off. I’m going to send this to my guy. He’s going to work on this.”

“Marco—no. Wait.”

She couldn’t have some guy she didn’t know snooping in her life.

“Pack a bag. I’m going to drop this, and I’ll be back to get the rest of the shit out of here, and you’re getting somewhere safe.” Marco charged out of the office, not even bothering to ask if she needed his help—or anyone else’s—with this.

Fuckity. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This was bad.

Epic bad.

6.

Marco rolled the Harley
into the alley between a café and a bakery a couple miles away from Fiona’s house. Ghost wasn’t going to like this.

He left the bike parked out of the way and went into the café through the back, then up a flight of stairs to the space overhead.

It was the closest available space they could get on short notice in her neighborhood.

“Ghost, it’s me,” Marco said loudly.

He waited for a count of three, unlocked the apartment door, and stepped through, ignoring the man with a gun aimed at his head. The space was a single room. The landlord rented it to illegal aliens. Except for now it was theirs.

“I could have shot you,” Ghost said without inflection.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t. Here.” Marco handed the transmitter over. “I’m going to get her out of there. Can you handle the security system?”

“Of course.” Ghost sat down at the table shoved into the corner and peered at the bit of tech. “Dare I ask what this is?”

“Transmitter. There are cameras, microphones and some sort of piggy-backing leech on her system that’s siphoning off data from her work. Our job’s already done, man. Can you stop the crawler?”

“What? No.”

“Ghost—man, you have to stop the spyware shit.”

“It’s too late.”

“You don’t understand.” Marco shifted and Ghost stood.

Right.

Ghost was about as programmed as a human could get.

Marco relaxed his shoulders and uncurled his hands—nonthreatening. Ghost couldn’t help that the government had fucked with his head and his very DNA to the point that he just wasn’t right anymore. Ghost mirrored Marco’s pose, the only difference being a thinning of the other man’s lips.

Ghost didn’t like being reminded he was barely human.

“Something’s not right with Fiona. And I mean…I think someone is after her. That security system. The way her house is laid out. The cameras. Her. I think…I think she’s hiding from something. And if we don’t pull back, if we don’t abort, it might cost Fiona more than her job.”

“She’s Fiona now?”

“She was always Fiona.”

“Yesterday you were calling her
your mark
, remember?” Ghost tilted his head to the side. “She’s a human to you now. I warned you.”

“Can you stop the spyware?”

“Can I stop the spyware, stop the transmitter, get all the data, and figure out who your girlfriend is running from? No. Pick one.”

They had to stop the spyware before it spread too far. As it stood, someone else was already copying the company’s data—down to their electronic sticky notes and trash bins. There was no reason to collect it if it’d already been done. Especially if Fiona was going to get caught up in everything.

Marco was pretty certain whoever she was on the run from was also after the NueEnergy data. Two birds, one stone. It was the only reason the cameras made sense. He didn’t know how it all fit together, but it had to.

Find where the transmitter was sending its info, and they’d find the person after Fiona.

Problem solved.

“Work on the transmitter, and then stop the spyware. You good?” Marco eyed Ghost.

He didn’t know what the man’s real name was, or even if he had one. What Marco knew about Ghost could be written on a page with room to spare.

“You mean am I going to have a psychological break from reality and go on a killing spree? No, man. My screws are in tight.” Ghost sat down at the computer with his back to Marco. A first.

Either Ghost was learning to trust him or choosing to pretend he did.

“Just checking,” Marco muttered.

They’d met when Marco was still a SEAL. For three hellish months, he and three other SEALs had been assigned a mission they could not speak of. The paperwork alone could fill a filing cabinet. Marco’s job, besides holding a gun and shooting at bad guys, was to administer first aid to Ghost when needed. What the man had walked through would have killed Marco. Ghost was a living, breathing weapon. A true Jason Bourne-like soldier.

Except Ghost was real. And now he’d been cut loose. Marco wasn’t certain, but he doubted Ghost allowed many people close, much less in the same room as him.

“Are you going to stand there and watch me work, or are you going to go do something?” Ghost laid out several tools alongside the transmitter.

“Oh, hey, did you think about that gig I told you about?”

“Some friend’s sister lost in India a couple years ago? Would you like me to drop everything and go look into that for you?”

“Man, fuck you.”

“I’m kind of working here.”

“Fine.”

“I did look her up. If she’s still alive, she probably doesn’t want to be.”

Marco’s stomach churned. Those words spoken by men like them…the average person didn’t know hell. But Marco had seen it in Ghost’s wake.

“I figured, but I said I’d ask.” Marco swallowed and turned toward the door.

“Don’t come back here, Marco. I might not remember you’re a friend.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Ghost bent over the desk.

The rules were different with Ghost. Marco wondered at times if the guy had been designed, down to his average-Joe looks. It was easy to look at him and see a regular dude. But Ghost wasn’t normal. He bled, he pissed, and he ate like a man, but something about him wasn’t right.

“You got me?” Ghost said.

“Loud and clear. We’ll be gone in an hour.”

Marco let himself out of the apartment, locked the door, and drew his first easy breath.

Working with Ghost was a necessary evil. Marco didn’t know what the guy’s deal was or why he wasn’t still leashed by the government, and he didn’t want to find out.

He took the stairs two at a time down to the alley and back to his bike.

What the hell had he gotten into?

Fiona stared at the
pile of clothes on her bed.

If she had to pick up and move right now, if Nova had found her, what should she bring?

Clothes to blend in, regardless of where she was. Jeans. A few shirts. A few pairs of slacks. Blouses. Yoga pants.

Fuck, the bag would be too big. She needed to be able to literally run if it came to that, and one hand would already be dedicated to her kit. There was no way she was leaving that behind, even if she did have to junk it and start from scratch.

She should call the Marshalls. That was the logical thing to do. It’s what she should have done when Marco left, but all she could do was pace the house, trying to figure out where the cameras were.

A knock at the door made her flinch and take a step toward the bathroom.

Her phone vibrated with a text message from Marco.

It’s me.

Shit.

That was fast.

She’d thought she’d have more time. She was torn where he was concerned. On one hand, she was grateful he’d been here, that he knew what to do, that he’d jumped in ready to protect her. On the other, he knew too much already. What was supposed to be a one-night thrill was becoming dangerously close to something else.

What if Marco knew more? What if his expert friend had found out something new? She had to know if she was jumping at shadows or a real threat.

She crossed the living room and approached the front door slowly.

Marco stared at the monitor camera, right at her. He was on the phone, listening.

Was it news? Already?

She needed to know.

Fiona flipped the locks and let Marco in. He nodded at her and stepped over the threshold, pushing the door shut behind him.

“Yeah…shit, okay…yeah…”

His side of the conversation wasn’t very illuminating but the stern set of his face was.

Whatever he was being told, he didn’t like it. It could have nothing to do with her. Nothing at all. Yet her gut said it did.

Marco went into the kitchen, pulled the napkin with his phone number off the fridge, ripped it up, and stuck it down the garbage disposal. It was strange, and yet…she’d done similar destructive techniques with anything that had anything remotely personal on it. Like when she kept forgetting her name was Fiona.

The phone call dragged on.

She sat on a bar stool, watching Marco stare off into space, and waited.

Maybe the call wasn’t about her at all?

What had he said about his cousin last night? Maybe it was family related?

He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the counter.

Fiona’s mouth dried up and she couldn’t speak. What if it was about her? What could they have found out in such a short time that would take that long to hash out?

“Your bag packed?” Marco asked.

“Not really. How bad is it?”

“Bad.” Marco gripped the counter with both hands and stared at her. “Scott is a corporate spy. It’s his job. He goes into companies, get their secrets and turns them over to the competition. What my guy thinks is that Scott’s been hired by one of NueEnergy’s competitors. The transmitter is sending to a shell company owned by a shell company that down the line is owned by Good Global.”

Fiona’s mouth worked in silence, she couldn’t form words.

This was…fantastic news. The best.

Oh my God.

She could kiss Scott, except she’d rather not.

Marco’s kisses were far superior.

She didn’t have to move. Her world would not have to be turned upside down.

Oh, thank goodness!

The Marshalls would grumble, there’d likely do a security sweep, they might insist she move, but she was okay. They weren’t going to turn her life upside down again.

Marco was suddenly next to her, his hands wrapped around hers.

“Scott used you, Fiona. I’m sorry. There’s a lot my guy is guessing at, but he’s not often wrong. He’ll get to the bottom of this, I swear.” He was so serious, so…earnest. He almost looked…responsible. Then again, he was a SEAL and worked in security. Even he said his job was protecting people. It was probably in his DNA to react like this.

Whatever happened to NueEnergy didn’t matter to her. They’d merely been the best company to offer her a job when she’d needed to reinvent herself, and she’d stuck with them. Sure, she didn’t want anything bad to happen to the people she worked for, but this wasn’t her life on the line anymore.

“But…what about the cameras? Why those?” Those were what frightened her. The eyes on her at all times, at all hours.

“Did you ever bring work home? Could they have seen something of use through the cameras?”

“In my bedroom?”

“Hey, I’m just throwing out ideas. Maybe their plan was to blackmail you in the future if they couldn’t get what they wanted?”

“I could just go to the police. Why don’t I do that now?”

“You could. And I bet they’d figure out it was Scott, and the blame would stop there. He’d be the fall guy. Its one reason why hiring a contractor like Scott would be so appealing. The company hiring him wouldn’t be at risk.”

Some corporate whack-job had watched her. At home. In the only space she felt safe, the only place she could be on her own. It was a violation, of not just her, but the girl she’d been, the woman she’d been forced to become. And…oh God, last night…

“I want them to pay.” She curled her fingers into fists.

“They probably also wanted to keep an eye on activity in the house. In case anyone suspected the hack was coming from here, they could…I don’t know. Shut it down. My guy’s good. He’s working on it.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“You’re right. You can’t.”

“I’ll…go to a hotel…” A cold, impersonal room, where everything felt sterile. She’d practically lived in a hotel room during the trials. All of them. It’d taken over a year of one hotel room after another. She hated hotels. The memories they brought back. How she’d slowly lost herself as they’d cast her in this role. As this person.

“Or. This is just a suggestion. Come with me. Just for a few days while my guy works this out. Once we have all the pieces, once it’s all on the table, we can turn it over to the cops and they’ll all have to answer for what they’ve done.”

“Where?”

“Moab. I grew up there. I’ve got a place there. This time of year it’s quieter, not as many tourists. Fewer people to see us. My guy can come in, take stock of the spyware, track it back to the source, and we can use that against Scott and GoodGlobal.”

Fiona rolled the idea around in her head. She didn’t know Marco’s guy. Could she trust him? She’d already decided she could trust Marco, but she could always be wrong about him. Sex and her heart complicated things. She didn’t want a stranger in her space, but she also couldn’t risk exposing herself in the process of tracking down who was behind this invasion of privacy.

The Marshalls should know.

She should tell them.