Hidden Heat: Hauberk Protection, Book 4 (23 page)

Finished lifting prints from its case, Andy examined the router and read out the model number.

“Yeah, that’s a wireless N router.” The tech opened a case and withdrew an electrical wand to check for electrical devices. “Company claims you can get a signal from about fourteen hundred feet away, unobstructed of course.”

“So it’s possible our guy could have sat in the parking lot right below and accessed it?”

“Yeah, it’s possible. There may be an extender to boost the signal that may have given him an even wider area. That’s what I’m checking for now. But I’m betting whoever it was sat right there on the couch.” Dan waved the device over the desk. When he didn’t get any reaction, he started scanning around the door to the balcony.

“What the fuck are you doing in my place?” An extremely pissed Jazz Guidry stood in the doorway, her hand in her pocket as if she were clutching a can of Mace. Possibly a taser? If she were really smart, she would have walked right on by and phoned the police without them knowing, instead of confronting them. The color drained from her face. “Oh my God. Scott! Is Sandy okay?”

She was either sincerely worried about Sandy or she was a helluva good actress, Scott had to admit. He bet on the latter. “Sandy’s all right. But we need to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Mitchell Young.”

“Mitch?” Her voice was thready and her color hadn’t returned. “He didn’t come back and hurt her, did he?”

Hurt her? Shit. Just what the fuck type of person was this Mitchell if that was her first question?

Chapter Seventeen

“Where is she? I want to see her.” If Mitch had come back, if he’d hurt Sandy…oh God. Two seconds before her mouth had been dry, now she had to swallow convulsively or throw up. She clutched her purse as her knees wobbled beneath her.

“Whoa, hang on there, Miss Guidry. Sandy’s fine.” The other guy—not Scott—caught her arm and led her to the couch. “Put your head between your knees and breathe in nice and slow for me.”

He pressed her head down before she could object, then crouched in front of her as she gulped in air. “Slow down or you’ll feel worse. Just inhale, then exhale.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s all an act,” Scott snarled. “She copied Sandy’s passwords and gave them to her boyfriend and is now pretending to be all upset to try and throws us off.”

He stomped off to the bedroom. Her bedroom, not Sandy’s. Why was he going in there? And what was his problem with her all of a sudden. He’d been so nice to her over the weekend. She lowered her head to her knees again, wondering if she’d ever learn not to trust guys.

“Come on, Jessica, don’t worry about him.” His partner touched her knee to get her attention. “Look at me, honey.”

Her head fuzzy, she raised her eyes to meet his. He was kinda cute in a rough sort of way. There was a scar over his left eye cutting through his eyebrow, and his goatee had a lot of red in it while his hair was a sort of sandy brown. Just like the guy… “Hey, I know you.”

“I’ve seen you at Rusty’s a couple times. I’m Andy Walters. Now take a deep breath for me, Jessica.” She did and he smiled. He had a nice smile. The type that probably made people tell him secrets without thinking. Which meant she had to be on her guard.

“It’s Jazz. I hate being called Jessica.”

“All right, Jazz it is then.” He picked up Xander, who wound around her feet. The traitor of a cat began purring at the first scratch behind his ears. “Who’s this?”

“Xander. I named him after the guy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer because he’s only got one eye too.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen that show. What night’s it on?” Andy’s obvious attempt to put her at ease worked.

“It’s not on anymore.” She was just starting to breathe normally when Scott reappeared with her laptop under his arm.

He set it on the kitchen table and hit the power button. “What’s your power-on password?”

“I don’t have one.” Was she supposed to have one? It’s not like she had any state secrets on her hard drive. Shoot. They’d find that damned video clip Mitch had sent her the next morning. Oh God. Had Mitch posted it somewhere like he’d threatened? Maybe sent it to Sandy? From the snippet she’d managed to view, she’d looked like she was consenting. That she’d enjoyed what he’d done. Maybe Sandy had shown it to her boss and they’d done a credit check on her. Her employer would show up on a credit check, wouldn’t it? Fuck. “Look, I can explain…”

“You don’t need to. We figured it out. Either you showed your boyfriend where Sandy keeps her passwords or you copied them yourself and gave them to him. All we haven’t figured out yet is what you’re looking for.”

“I never gave—”
You showed your boyfriend where Sandy keeps her passwords.
Crap. She
had
shown Mitch where Sandy kept her passwords. And he’d always booted up his laptop as soon as he’d arrived after that. Crap. Crap. Crap.

“Yeah, okay, he knew about her notebook but I didn’t mean to show it to him. He was teaching me how to create videos with this new software I got. We’d put some pictures we’d fixed on a flashdrive and Sandy left it somewhere on the desk. If he used the passwords to hack into your system, I didn’t know about it.”

Still holding Xander, Andy exchanged a glance with the geek who was waving some wand straight out of Ghostbusters over the top of the bookcase. “A flashdrive? Do you know if Mitch ever used it on his computer?”

“Yeah, it was his.” Oh crap and a half. He’d played her for the sucker she was. God, what a fucking idiot, she’d been.

“He probably had a password collecting program on it then. He wouldn’t have needed the list at all if that’s the case.” The ghostbusting geek put down his wand and started searching the desk.

“He may not have captured the passwords he needed,” Andy suggested. “Maybe Sandy didn’t log onto the network while he was collecting them or maybe she didn’t check Sam’s email or whatever it was he was looking for. Or maybe she changed her passwords because the thirty days were up. After all, he didn’t get into her system until this weekend, right?”

“No,” the geek said with exaggerated patience. “We didn’t notice that someone was using Sandy’s access until this weekend. For all we know he could have been using those passwords for days. Weeks. Months, even.”

“Excuse me,” Jazz raised her voice over the lecture. “Will someone please explain what’s going on?”

“As if you don’t know. Why don’t you tell us what he’s after, sweetheart?” Scott snapped.

“Okay, I get it. Someone’s been accessing confidential files within the Hauberk network using Sandy’s ID. But what makes you think it was Mitch? For all you know, it could be someone over in Europe or China or somewhere who guessed her password.” Even as she said it, she knew it was Mitch.

“Because the connection was traced to this router’s IP address.”

“Can’t that be faked?” Damn it, she should have paid more attention to that computer course she took at night school. And the computer geeks who were always pestering her for a date.

“It wasn’t. Our IT guys checked it out,” Andy said. Shit.

“Since you’re the only one who lives here with Sandy, you’re in the perfect position to steal her passwords, wouldn’t you say?” Scott set the laptop aside and walked over to her, bracing a hand on the couch, his knees on either side of hers, boxing her in.

Jazz couldn’t stop herself from shrinking back. Damn it, what was it with guys bullying her? Did she have a sign on her forehead or something? “I didn’t steal anything.”

“We’ve figured out your game, sweetheart. Now why don’t you make it easy on everyone and tell us what you or your boyfriend want from Hauberk’s database?”

Her mouth went dry. Crap, he really did suspect her. “I told you. If Mitch hacked into the system, I didn’t know about it and I don’t know why.”

His expression hard, Scott leaned down until his mouth hovered less than an inch away from her ear and whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

“Scott. Back off. You’re scaring her.”

“No. He’s not scaring me. He’s pissing. Me. Off.” Jazz flattened her hands over Scott’s chest and pushed. Although she hadn’t expected to move him, he dropped his arm and stepped back with a scowl.

“Jazz,” Andy said softly, “what we need to know is if you have any idea what your boyfriend might be looking for.”

She shifted so her back didn’t touch the couch anymore. She hadn’t needed to see the welts and bruising in the bathroom mirror to be reminded of that night. Her shirt rubbing against her skin did that for her. “I have no idea. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore. As I told this asshole on Saturday, I broke up with him and kicked him out of this place Friday night. He’s history.” Except he hadn’t really left, had he?

“Yeah, yeah, cry me a fuckin’ river.” Scott rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Enough with the violins and tell us the truth for once in your goddamned pathetic life.”

Andy turned to Scott with a scowl. “Did you ever consider that maybe she is telling the truth?”

“Oh, give me a fucking break and don’t buy into her shit, Walters. She’s a hooker. She’s not about to tell you the truth. Look how she’s been lying to Sandy about what she really does for a living.”

Oh, fuck. They did know about her stripping. She’d known it was only a matter of time before someone found out. “I’m not a hooker. I’m a dancer.”

“You take your clothes off for money and give people lap dances. I’m betting for a couple extra bucks you let them fuck you too.”

“Yeah, I take my clothes off for money and let guys watch. You know why? Because it pays me a helluva lot more than I’d make as a waitress.” Fuck this. He wasn’t the only one who could play domination games. She stood up and strode over to Scott. With her heels on, she was almost as tall as he was. “And do you know what else? I like it. I like knowing that guys get off watching me dance.” She skimmed a hand down her belly. “I’m proud of my body. I’m not ashamed of what I do, and you’re not going to change that. But the guys who get to watch me, don’t get to touch me. Ever.”

“If you’re not ashamed, why did you lie about it to Sandy?”

Damn it, she wanted to wipe that smug sneer off his face. “Because not everyone gets that stripping isn’t hooking.”
Like you, asshole.
“And when Sandy moved to D.C., I thought she was this prairie princess that would move out if she found out she was living with a stripper.”

She knew better now, but once the lie had been told, she hadn’t figured out how to un-tell it.

Andy wedged himself between them. “We all tell lies, Scott. This one didn’t hurt anyone.”

How did such a reasonable guy deal with being partnered with such an assho—oh crap, that’s what this was. They were playing good cop/bad cop on her.

“Look, Mitch was always on his computer while he was here, I admit, but he never once said anything about it. All he told me was he had stock indexes in Tokyo he had to keep an eye on.”

“Can you describe him for me? How tall was he? How much does he weigh, what color is his hair, that type of thing.”

“I don’t know. Five foot eleven, maybe. A hundred and ninety, two hundred maybe. But he’s strong.” Too strong. “He’s got short brown hair. He said he was thirty-three.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“He said he has a condo in Silver Springs but I’ve never been there.” Why was that? And why hadn’t she wondered about it before? “He works as a fund manager with some financial group there too. ITF Group? ITR maybe. Something like that. That was a lie too, wasn’t it?”

As Andy nodded, Scott pulled out his phone and walked into the hall, speaking into it in muted tones so she couldn’t hear.

Andy touched her knee, bringing her attention back to him. “You said you broke up with him Friday night?”

Even though she knew it was probably an act, Andy seemed gentler. Safer. Which was strange because he was so much bigger than her. Bigger than Mitch. Who had hurt…
God, no, don’t remember that night
. Jazz closed her eyes. “He was sitting in his car waiting for me when I got home from work.” Shit. She looked up at him, eyes wide. Had he been hacking into Hauberk even then? “He had his laptop out. But I didn’t see what he was working on. He always closed the top whenever I was around.” Which should have tipped her off Friday night.

“Don’t worry about it for now,” Andy said softly. “You came home, he was waiting for you and then what happened?”

“He said we had a date but I don’t remember making one with him. I’d told him last weekend I’d wanted to slow things down. He was starting to crowd me, you know? He was always over here. I needed space.” And he needed her connection to Hauberk. Not her.

“Okay. Keep going.”

God, she’d been so blind. Should she tell them what he’d done to her? No, they wouldn’t believe her. Scott already thought she was a hooker. “I let him in for a while, but then I realized I was right about breaking things off, so I kicked him out and said I never wanted to see him again.”

Scott had returned. “But you saw him again, didn’t you?”

“He was in the parking lot on Saturday.” Maybe he’d never left. But seeing his car parked right there beneath her balcony had made up her mind when Sandy had returned to pick up some clothes. “Wait a minute, he made a phone call Friday night after…”
He hurt me.
“Before I kicked him out. I only heard his side of the conversation so I don’t know who he was talking to, but he mentioned something about getting an address and then the money. He seemed worried, like there was a deadline and the other guy wasn’t being reasonable.”