INTO DANGER (Secret Assassins (S.A.S.S.) Book 1) (31 page)

By the time he reached the same elevators, du Scheum and Birman were gone. He keyed in his access codes, leaning back against the wall as he watched the elevator numbers lighting.

First he had to find Cam. Harden wouldn’t see him immediately anyway, if he was around. Cam would give him a brief update of the situation. Nodding at a few colleagues, he headed down the passage that led to the small office he shared with Cam.

Good, there was light under the door, so he didn’t have to waste time looking for him. He opened the door and almost walked into Cam. The office was too small for two people, especially when one of them tended to be a packrat. With three people, it was like a standing-room only show, and Steve was in this case the spectator.

Cam lifted his head and muttered softly, “Get out of here, Stevie.”

Steve saw Patty Ostler’s glazed eyes opening wide in shock when she saw him. She was trapped against a tall file cabinet. “No!” she called over Cam’s shoulder, in a furious, husky voice. “Let me go, Cam, or I’m going knee you in the balls.”

“You would do that to your future children?” mocked Cam in horror, and took a step away from her. “You just wait. I’ll tell them what you did to them when they grow up.”

“Oh, you...you!” Patty pushed up long tendrils of her hair that had fallen out of their knot. Her eyes were stormy with emotion as she tried to find the words to berate Cam, obviously trying not to swear.

“I know, I know,” Cam said soothingly. “The speechlessness disappears after a few more kissing sessions.”

“Oh!” Obviously the poor woman was having a tough time with words, and Steve tried his best not to show any emotion. He quickly opened the door wider for her when she pushed Cam out of the way and rushed out of the office.

Cam rubbed his lips and gave a sigh. “You have lousy timing, McMillan. Don’t you know how to knock?”

“It’s my office, too,” Steve dryly pointed out. “What were you trying to do with her, file her for future reference?”

Cam adjusted his rumpled clothes. “I was trying out my rendition of Kisser of the Millennium. Wow, Patty gives some serious lip lock. My brain’s still not functioning right.”

Steve chuckled. “Looked to me like the lady wasn’t willing.”

“Pfft. There’s how little you know about kissing lessons. You just stick to your games.” Cam sauntered to his desk and sat on the edge. “Me, I’m a great teacher. The woman had her tongue down my throat. She was attacking me.”

“Yeah, that’s why she was pinned against the cabinet.”

Cam smiled wickedly. “She was grabbing on to my shirt, so appearances can be deceptive.”

“Man, you’re going to appear so popular with her now. You’re lucky she won’t press sexual harassment charges against you.”

Cam sighed. “I know. But then I’d get the chance to tell the whole world what a great kisser she is. The case of the lip-lock woman.” He licked his lips noisily.

Steve laughed, shaking his head. The man had it bad. “Your ass, not mine,” he said as he dropped into his office chair. He pulled open the drawer of the file cabinet next to his desk, then flicked the switch to turn on the desktop computer.

“I think I’ll give her fifteen minutes. Then she’ll be back up here to give me an earful.”

“She’ll probably avoid you for a while, Cam,” guessed Steve.

Cam grinned. He picked up a brown shoulder bag from his desk. “I have her purse.”

Steve wondered how Patty Ostler had found her way into their office in the first place. “Well, make sure you make up with her real good because I’m going to need both your help.”

“Another favor? Let me guess, something to do with the divine Marlena?” Cam settled into his chair, his hands behind his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be off that case?”

“What’s happening at your end about it? Anything?”

Noisily munching on some snack, Cam stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds. “Nope. Nothing I can think of that’s important. Harden let the woman walk, so he’s basically left with an empty file in hand. In other words, he’s not too happy at the moment.”

“He’s got my file on her. Surely he would use that in his report.”

Cam shrugged. “The intel we collected was to stop an assassination. We used valuable manpower to set up an expensive downtown apartment for the bait. We paid for an expensive automobile that the lady hasn’t returned yet. The only good thing was the free lackey and the twenty grand which wasn’t ours.” He arched a brow at Steve. “You tell me what that kind of report is going to do to Harden! No amount of explaining would make the top guy happy with the end result.”

Steve fell silent for a second. The deputy director knew about him? Of course he would, since any SEAL team member transferred here by the admiral would be made known to the department head.

“Hey, Cam, have you ever met the deputy director of the department? What’s he like?”

“Are you going to eat that pack of chips on your desk?”

“It’s open.”

“So?”

Steve reached over to grab the snack he’d left there a few days ago and sniffed it before using a paper clip to secure the opening. The stuff had probably lost its taste by now. He tossed it in Cam’s direction. “You know,” he told his office mate, “you’re a human garbage disposal.”

Cam threw a fistful of chips into his mouth. “At your service,” he said in between munches. “Where were we? Oh, Mr. Gorman. I’ve met him during my interviews for Task Force Two but we aren’t drinking buddies of course. Terribly aloof, but what would you expect if you’re one of the DOD directors?”

“You were interviewed by Gorman?” Steve frowned. He’d never met Mr. Gorman. That suddenly struck him as strange.

“All of us were approved by him. Weren’t you? I mean, you were transferred here with his approval, right?”

Steve wasn’t sure. After all, Mr. Gorman hadn’t interviewed him. “I thought I was transferred here with Harden’s approval, since he is ops chief.”

Cam snorted. “Harden doesn’t have that power. Everything we do must be approved by the big guy himself. He doesn’t get along with Harden, either, but then our O.C. doesn’t seem to get along with many people. Anyway, Gorman has stood in Harden’s way to a promotion several times now.”

“Why?” There was something wrong here. Steve could feel his instinct kicking in again.

Cam shrugged. “Politics, I suppose. It has to do with Harden’s past, the one that got him in hot water in the first place. I heard Gorman was promoted over Harden because he reported some intel Harden didn’t or couldn’t produce. Who knows? It’s history. Why the interest?”

Steve looked at Cam across the room. The lanky man and he had gotten along since his first week at TIARA. Cam munched on the rest of the chips with serious dedication, his intelligent eyes looking back at him. Steve took a chance.

“I’m making a list of names of possible rats in TIARA,” he told Cam calmly. He gave a condensed version of what had happened. “Someone has been leaking information for a long time now. I’m only aware of it now because Marlena’s files you and Patty helped me compile were in Cunningham’s hands almost immediately.”

Cam finished chewing as he continued staring back at Steve. “Could have been me,” he stated in a matter-of-fact voice.

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

“So why tell me?”

“You can help me prove it isn’t you,” Steve offered, “or Patty Ostler.”

“You mess with my woman’s integrity and I’m going to shit all over you.” Cam crushed the empty foil bag in his hands.

Steve studied his friend. There was no anger in his manner. Yet. But he wasn’t smiling any longer. “I’m just making a list, and I’m not Harden, Cam. I know how to do things without twisting everything into a battle of friendship and hatred. If it’s nothing, you and Patty and anyone else on my list would never hear a thing about it. If it’s treason, then I’ll track it down. It’s my job.”

“But you aren’t working for Harden on this.”

Steve shook his head. “It’s more than that now. I’m taking a chance by letting you know.”

“Think I might slit your throat after this?”

“That would save me from buying you that dinner I owe you.”

“Ha, you aren’t getting out of that so easily, pal. A real meal, man. Like at one of those hundred-dollar restaurants.” Cam stood up from his chair and picked up Patty’s handbag. “Let me go get Patty. Maybe she’ll treat me better when I tell her you think she’s a rat.”

Steve grinned. “Yes, use me to deflect danger, I don’t mind.” He turned to the desktop. “I’ll be here for a couple of hours. I really need your help to get some info.”

“Patty’s department.” Cam opened the door. “Okay, I’ll use you as an excuse to get back into her good graces. She thinks I can’t kiss like you. That was a demonstration I was giving when you came in earlier.”

Steve glanced up, surprised at the statement. “Well, hell, tell her I’ll gladly give her a kiss to compare, if she’ll help me out.”

“Like hell you will,” Cam returned, his tone fiercely possessive. “You do that and you’ll kiss your ass goodbye.”

“Fine,” Steve retorted. “I’ll kiss you and you can tell her I’m no good.”

Cam made a face. “You’re disgusting, you know that? I don’t know how I put up with you,” he shot back, and closed the door behind him.

***

“S
o what did they say?” Marlena asked as she turned on the replica laptop she had brought to D.C. with her.

Tess slipped her cell back into her purse. “The encrypted programs are all original. Command double-checked the codes. It’s the right laptop.”

Marlena nodded. There had been a possibility that Cunningham had somehow broken the encryption and copied everything on a similar laptop. The only way to detect a fake was checking for special laser codes embedded in the hard drive in all government-issued laptops. Most civilian labs wouldn’t know about this, and even if they did, the chances of someone able to copy the exact laser depth and burn mark in a specified location onto an exact laptop was low. Only a few people in the field would have the ability or technology to do that. Like her agency, for instance.

The laptop she had with her was one of a kind. Some entity or country, owning sophisticated encryption devices and the technology capable of detecting the laser codes, would find it an authentic United States specially embossed laptop. Even the codes were sequenced in the exact manner of the missing laptop she’d regained.

“So my projected calculations of the seller’s secret weapon being the missing laptop were right,” she said with smug satisfaction. She always liked to be right.

Tess placed the real laptop side-by-side with the other one. “Yes. And of course you were right the culprit would try to sell it to middle men like Max Shoggi rather than deal with the embassies himself.”

“That’s an easy calculation,” Marlena said. She turned on the real laptop. “The probability of someone without influence getting hold of this baby is very low. It had to be someone at that meeting, able to get very near to the demonstration and discussions.”

“And someone who could go in and out of NRL without thorough security checks.”

“Someone who works there,” agreed Marlena.

“Like Cunningham,” continued Tess.

“Yes.” Marlena took out the disk Tess had given her at du Scheum’s party from a panel under her oval compact powder. Its surface shone like polished silver. “You said this thing would do the necessary work to create the worm?”

“Yes.”

“Who wrote this?”

“Someone named Nick Langley. Heard of him?”

Marlena looked up sharply. “The Programmer? I heard he’s dead.”

“Hmm.” Tess smiled. “So he is.”

“Does Alex know?” Marlena asked curiously. “They were best friends, weren’t they, before the explosion?”

Tess turned away, tapped a few keys on the keyboard. “No, Alex doesn’t know. I didn’t get the chance to tell him that before we...parted ways.”

“So he still thinks they all died except him?” Marlena studied Tess for a few moments. “That’s not right. He should be told.”

“He’s no longer my concern. If Nick wants him to find out, I’m sure he’ll contact Alex.” Tess looked up, her gaze blank. “Ready to start this? I’m sure Pierre will make sure Mad Max Shoggi is the highest bidder and the next phase of our operation can start.”

Marlena looked down at the disk in her hand again. “Hard to think this thing will direct all communications back to us, telling us what they are doing with the program.”

“With our Nick’s modification, this virus will be transmitting back to its originator with the same micro-solarbot technology they’re trying to copy.”

Marlena had read up on the subject of solar robotics before going to D.C. It was essential to understand the importance of what was stolen, why it could be a weapon in the wrong hands. For so long it’d always been weapons of war that attracted arms dealers, but technology had changed supply and demand. Solarbot, using solar energy and robotics, was getting popular in the scientific community. Experiments were done on solar robotics for low-end as well as military technology. There were deep-sea probes called aquabots being perfected for oceanic mapping. There were equally devastating opportunities to use the new technology for destructive weaponry and international espionage.

“Let’s hope Stash can help find our leak,” she said, inserting the disk. “One slip that we’re offering a modified one for sale, and we’re done.”

“That’s why we haven’t told anyone about our laptop. If there is a leak, we can narrow this down.” Tess frowned. “Did you show it to anyone?”

“Stash searched my things before I was hauled in,” Marlena informed her. “They were looking for weapons, didn’t touch the laptop.”

“I don’t like it, what with a leak in TIARA.”

“How do you know it’s not Steve?” challenged Marlena.

“He’s too new at that place. There’s been a leak in TIARA for a long time, and that’s why the admiral transferred him.” Tess angled her head. “If you think he’s on the other side, why don’t you stop taking him to bed and just let me take care of him?”

Marlena paused in the middle of typing and gave Tess her full attention. Her friend returned her gaze with a serenity that didn’t hide the small lift at the corners of her mouth.