Hidden Heat: Hauberk Protection, Book 4 (21 page)

He lifted his head and took a deep breath as he stared at the sky. “I got him for you, Scott. Sleep well tonight, buddy.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Don’t worry, Sandy.” Chad muted the television mounted on his office wall. Not that Sandy needed the sound, the images of the burning cars and dead bodies in the streets of Kinshasa had done their damage. “Troy’s smart. He’ll lay low and stay out of it.”

“How come he’s not carrying his satellite phone?” Crap, that made her sound whiny and needy. Three days of silence and she was ready to install handholds on the wall she was about to climb.

“I don’t know. Maybe it lost its charge or got busted somehow. Don’t read anything into it. Their communications have been shut down by the military.” Chad rubbed his shoulder where he’d been shot the previous month. “It’s none of my business, but how serious is it between you two?”

Good question. Would she be feeling as queasy if they hadn’t been dating? No. She’d been worried about him when he flew to Colombia to rescue the hostages, the whole office had been on edge, but this was different. “I don’t know how to answer that. We’re dating. We agreed not to see anyone else but neither of us are looking for something long term.”

Well, she wasn’t. At least she didn’t think she was. Troy, she wasn’t so sure.

“You realize this is part of his job, Sandy. Part of who he is. If you can’t live with it, then it’s better to find out now than to expect Troy to change.”

She started to say she knew all that, that she didn’t want Troy to change when Sam loomed in the doorway, his thick brows drawn together. “Sandy? Can you come in my office for a moment? Chad, you’d better come too.”

Oh God, maybe he’d heard something. Chad must have sensed her worry. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “He’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that. You’re just saying that.”

“He’s a survivor. Now let’s go into Sam’s office and find out for sure, all right?”

Once she was seated in his office, Sam sat at his desk and glanced between Chad and John Lake, his IT manager and fellow Minnesotan, his frown deepening. “First off, Sandy, I want you to know that I consider you a valuable part of this company.”

Oh shit. This wasn’t about Troy. If it was, John wouldn’t be in on the conversation.

“I’ve never had a problem with your work,” he continued. “You’re conscientious and you keep this office running better than any previous executive assistant I’ve had.”

“Thank you.” Oh, God, this didn’t sound good. There was a
but
coming, wasn’t there? Was Hauberk having financial difficulties? Was she about to be laid off?

“I know you’re trusted with a lot of private information but there are some things in this office that you have no need to know. That’s why some files are not open to you.”

What was he getting at? “I know.”

His brows drew together so hard a line formed between them. “You know John has a program set up to alert us if anyone tries to get into the secure files, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Did you also know we monitor all attempts to access those files?”

“Yes.” She shook her head. “What’s this about?”

John handed her a printout. “Your ID is shown as trying to access protected files numerous times throughout the weekend.”

She flipped through the printouts. Most of it was gibberish but her username had been highlighted in fluorescent pink. The first attempt was Friday night at 11:35 PM, the last Sunday at noon. “There must be some error in the program. I wasn’t online at all this weekend. I wasn’t even home.”

“Sandy, the system logs the IP address of everyone who logs in.” John pointed to a number following her username. “Each connection on your ISP is assigned a unique number. And that’s the number that comes up every time you log in from home. We checked. Your user name. Your IP number. They all match.”

“We need you to be honest with us.” Sam pressed his thumbs together as he leaned forward. “We can tell you were looking for the location of our safe houses, Sandy. If that information gets out, that puts our clients and our agents at risk. Are you prepared to accept the responsibility if someone gets killed?”

“This wasn’t me, Sam. Honest. I didn’t even take my laptop home this weekend. It was sitting right here in the office. You can ask Scott. He’ll vouch for me.”

“Do you have a password on your router?” John asked.

“Yes, of course. One of your guys set it up for me when I started working here.”

“Have you changed the password lately? Or given it to anyone else?” John took over the questions.

“Jazz knows it—we share the apartment—but she doesn’t know either my VPN password or my Hauberk passwords. So I don’t think it could be her. Besides, she was with me both Saturday and Sunday.”

“Is Jazz short for Jasmine? And what’s her last name?” Chad tapped the screen on his tablet, Sam ready at his computer.

“Jazz is her nickname. Her real name is Jessica Guidry, but she couldn’t have done this. I told you, she was with me all weekend.” Okay, not Friday night but that shouldn’t matter, should it? The logins were the entire weekend, not just Friday.

“What does Jessica do, Sandy? Is it possible she needs money?”

Shoot. They’d find out if she lied. “She tells people she works at a call center for a pizza company but she’s really an exotic dancer at a place named The Blue Angel off Woodmont. I know she’s got money in the bank—she’s saving up to go back to college.” She leaned forward in her chair. “She doesn’t think I know about it though, so please don’t tell her.”

Sam snorted. “Why the hell do you need to live with a stripper, Sandy? We pay you enough that you could rent your own place.”

“Because when I moved here I needed somewhere to live. She was my friend and she offered. And she’s still my friend so I don’t see why I need to move out. I like having someone there, all right? Holy cow, Sam, I can’t believe you’re judging her like this. She’s trying to find another job but she doesn’t have many skills other than being able to dance so it’s not like there’s a lot out there, especially in this economy.”

“I’m not judging her. But why the deception, Sandy? Why lie to you about it?” Sam asked.

“You’d have to ask her, but I’ve always assumed it’s because she was embarrassed about it.”

“How long have you known her?” Chad asked this time.

“In person, since I moved to D.C. three years ago, but we’d been chatting online a couple years before that. She’s a good person and I like her a lot. She gets me.”

John cleared his throat. “Do you write your passwords down, Sandy?”

Thankful that he was getting the conversation off of Jazz, Sandy held up her spiral-bound notebook. “Do you have any idea how many passwords I have? I have the laptop’s power-on password, which is different from my VPN password. Then there’s my email password, the password to Sam’s email for when I have to check it for him. Not to mention Chad’s password, and Troy’s. And all my personal email addys. I can’t keep track of them all. They change every month, and none of them make any sense. I can’t remember passwords that are nonsense like Tm79Bx3. It’s impossible to remember them all.”

“Where was your notebook this weekend?”

“On my desk at home. I went out Friday night, came home to pick up a change of clothes on Saturday morning and Jazz left with me. The apartment has been empty and the security system turned on since then. So unless there was a burglar—which your security system should have registered—no one could have used it.” Damn, now she was getting pissed. “Look, I really think you’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

“We’re hoping we are.” John’s patient manner only served to tick her off more. “Does anyone else have the password to your router? Because they could access it without actually getting into your apartment.”

Oh. All right, now she saw what he was getting at, she calmed down. “Jazz’s boyfriend has used our system to check his email. Well, he was her boyfriend but they broke up Friday night.” Something big must have happened but Jazz had refused to say exactly what. She wondered if perhaps it had something to do with this. But wouldn’t Jazz have told her? “His name is Mitch Young. He’s a fund manager at some financial firm in Silver Springs. I don’t know anything more about him, but Jazz could tell you.”

Chad tapped Mitch’s name into the search box and pressed Go. “We’ll check him out. How about any other friends who’ve stayed over and needed to check their email?”

“Maybe a couple friends.” She gave John their names. “Jazz may have told a couple of her friends too. But that only lets them get on the router not into the Hauberk system, right? Because I swear I’ve never given my Hauberk passwords to anyone. And if someone did get in, they wouldn’t have to do it from my apartment, would they? They could be in Asia or Europe and send out some false signal making it look like they’re in the area, couldn’t they?”

“They could, but they aren’t,” John said quietly. “We’ve tracked the hacker and every single time we’ve traced him back to your location. I’m sorry, Sandy, but we use state-of-the-art tracking systems. They’re not wrong.”

Oh crap. There had to be some other explanation.

A moment passed, and another before Sam broke the silence. “Is there anyone else who has a key to your apartment and would know the code to the security system?”

“Just Jazz knows the code, of course. And I’m assuming the landlord has a key. And I guess someone here at Hauberk probably knows the security code?” Troy had it too, but since he was out of the country, there was no need to mention him, right?

“Is Jazz home right now?”

“No, she said she’s got a doctor’s appointment this afternoon.”

“All right.” Chad looked between Sandy and Sam. “I want to send Scott and Andy and one of John’s technicians over to your place to check out the system. Maybe one of her neighbors is piggybacking off the connection.” He looked directly at Sandy. “They’ll check your router’s security and set you up with another system.”

“Of course. Let me get my key.”

Chad held up his hand before she stood. “One other thing, who else knew you were going to be away for the weekend? It’s possible that whoever you were with deliberately invited you so they could use your system without interference.”

“Scott invited me to stay at Troy’s place so we could paint it while he was away.” It wasn’t a lie. Exactly.

“Chad, why don’t you get started on checking on Miss Guidry and her boyfriend? John, have your guys look into Sandy’s work laptop.” Sam locked his gaze with hers. “I want to talk to Sandy alone for a moment.”

Once the door closed behind them, Sam sat back in his chair. “You may have been with Scott and your friend Jazz on Saturday and Sunday but you were with Troy Friday night. I find it interesting that you failed to mention that detail. Anything you care to tell me?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

His jaw jutted out for a second before he nodded. “Just tell me he didn’t force you to go there.”

There was no use asking where
there
was. But how did he know?

“Of course I wasn’t forced to go. Troy wouldn’t do that.” Oh God. What if Sam had been one of the members who had been watching them? Her cheeks burned red hot. Damn her father for passing on his fair skin. “You weren’t there, watching, were you?”

A strange look crossed his face and he mouthed
watching.
“No, I wasn’t
watching
. I wasn’t even in the damned house—no one was allowed in until after midnight. But I did see you get out of the limo and walk up to the front door.”

No one was allowed in? But that couldn’t be right. There had been people there. She’d heard them.

“Damn it, Sandy.” Sam tossed his pen onto the desk. “I hope you both know what you’re doing, because if this whatever you have with Troy goes sour, I don’t want to lose either of you.”

“I have no plans to leave Hauberk, but again, not your business. And you have no right to judge considering you’re dating one of your employees.”

“Fine. You’ve made your point, now why don’t you go back to your desk? John’s people need that key to your apartment.”

Sandy stood, wanting to say something more, but Sam had already picked up his phone. Fuck it. If he didn’t like that she was seeing Troy, that was his problem. If he didn’t like the idea of them going to the club, that was his problem too. She returned to her desk to find one of the computer geeks in the process of unhooking her laptop from its docking station.

“I’ll only be a minute. We’re switching it out with a new one so we can run diagnostics on yours and make sure the hacker didn’t leave any password programs behind. Make sure you don’t download anything onto the new one, will you?”

His triceps burning, Scott flexed his fingers around the barbell and finished the last of his reps. Where the hell was Troy? He was damned sure he wasn’t anywhere near the Congo as he’d told both him and Sandy. But where was he? And why the hell hadn’t he at least phoned Sandy to let her know he was all right? Damn it, the man hadn’t a clue about communication some days.

“I tried to reach you Friday night. Where were you?”

Scott glanced at Andy as he set his barbell back on the rack. “I was busy.”