Code Conspiracy. Carol Ericson

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      As if that was ever gonna work out.

      After a few hours of companionable tapping, Amit pushed his chair away from the desk and reached both arms up to the ceiling that was crisscrossed with pipes. “I’m calling it a night. You sure you don’t want to hit that party with me and Kelly?”

      “I’m on a trail, so close.” She grabbed the bottle of water she’d pulled out of her backpack earlier and chugged some. “But say hi to Kelly for me.”

      “Yeah, yeah. She’s gonna give me hell for leaving you here by yourself.”

      Jerrica choked on her next sip of water. “She doesn’t know we’re Dreadworm, does she?”

      “Who do you think I am?” Amit yanked a flash drive out of the computer. “You?”

      “That’s not fair.” She wound her hair around her hand and tossed it over her shoulder. “I didn’t tell anyone anything. He figured it out.”

      “Yeah, the last person who needs to know about Dreadworm—someone in the military.”

      Jerrica’s cheeks blazed and she pressed the water bottle against her face. “Maybe that’s why he was able to figure it out. He was Special Forces…is Special Forces.”

      Amit crammed some personal items into his bag. “And he never told anyone?”

      “He wouldn’t do that.”

      “Dude must’ve been crazy about you to keep that to himself.”

      “Crazy about me?” Jerrica snorted. “Yeah, so crazy about me he dumped me.”

      “Kinda hard for a guy in Delta Force to hang with someone who’s trying to expose all the secrets of the federal government.” Amit slipped his bag’s strap across his body. “Dumping you is the least he could’ve done. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

      Jerrica pressed a hand over her heart and the dull ache centered there. “Don’t you have a party to go to?”

      “Outta here.” Amit saluted and then tapped the monitor of the desktop computer. “Leave this running, please. I’m looking for some files connected to the attack on the embassy outpost in Nigeria. I know we didn’t get the full story on that one, and I programmed a little worm that’s chewing through some data right now.”

      She eyed the flickering display on Amit’s computer. “See you later.”

      When the metal door downstairs slammed behind him, she shifted her gaze to the TV monitors to make sure nobody slipped into the building before the door closed.

      Could she help it if paranoia sat beside her and whispered in her ear day and night? She’d been raised on conspiracy theories—and so far nothing in her life had belied that upbringing, nothing had stilled those dark undercurrents that bubbled beneath the surface of every encounter she had—even the most personal ones.

      Amit disappeared from the security cam and Jerrica jumped from her chair and hunched over Amit’s, folding her arms across the back and studying the data marching across the display. The attack on the embassy outpost in Nigeria had been on her radar, too. And not only because it involved someone she knew, peripherally, anyway.

      Delta Force Major Rex Denver had played a significant role in the Nigeria debacle, as he’d visited the outpost days before the attack. He’d also, allegedly, played a role in the bombing at the Syrian refugee center, although the witnesses in Syria had been walking back that narrative for a few months now.

      She drummed her fingers against her chin. And Denver’s name had come up again as she scurried down the rabbit hole of her current hunch—or maybe she’d been scurrying down a mole hole, if moles even burrowed into holes. Because she’d bet all the settlement money sitting in her bank account that the intel she’d been tracking was going to lead to a mole—possibly in the CIA itself.

      Rubbing her hands together, she returned to her own chair and continued inputting data to dig deeper into the CIA system she’d already compromised.

      After a few hours of work, she rubbed her eyes and took a swig of water. As she watched her screen, a blurry message popped up in the lower-left corner of her display.

      She blinked and the words came into focus. She read them aloud to the room where all sounds of human intercourse had been replaced by the whirs and clicks of computer interaction. “Who are you?”

      She huffed out a breath and growled. “You show me yours first, buddy.”

      So, someone at the other end had detected an intruder. She entered her reply, whispering the words as she typed them.

      Who are you?

      Not terribly clever, but she had no intention of showing her hand. She fastened her gaze on the blinking cursor, waiting for the response.

      Her eyeballs dried up watching that cursor, so she set the program’s command to keep running in her absence, just as Amit had done on his computer. If Amit came back to the Dreadworm offices, he would know to leave the program running, but just in case, she plastered a sticky note to her screen before packing up for the night.

      Jerrica scanned the video feed showing the alley while she scooped up her backpack and hitched it over one shoulder. She swept up her black fedora, which she’d left here the other night, and clapped it on her head.

      Flipping up the collar of her black leather jacket, she jogged down the steps from the work area. She tipped her head back to check the video from outside and then, pausing at the door, she pressed her ear against the cold metal, not that she could hear anything through it.

      She took a final glance at the monitor above the door before easing the door open. She looked both ways up and down the alley. She shimmied through the space, the zipper and metal studs on her jacket scraping against the doorjamb, and pulled the heavy slab of metal shut behind her.

      This alley had just a few doorways and a couple of fire escapes, so it didn’t attract much traffic. Olaf, Dreadworm’s founder, had searched high and low in Manhattan to find just the right locations, and then had secured those locations—but he hadn’t been able to secure himself.

      Someone outed him and his residence and he’d had to go on the run or face federal prosecution. She didn’t want to be criminally charged, but she couldn’t give up this job…mission…especially now that she’d hacked into the CIA databases.

      She emerged from the alley onto the crowded sidewalk and joined the surge of people. Darkness hadn’t descended yet on this cool spring evening. Summer with its heat and humidity waited right around the corner, and Jerrica wanted to soak up the last bits of May with its hint of freshness still on the cusp of the air. She closed her eyes and inhaled, getting a lungful of exhaust fumes and some guy’s over-ambitious aftershave.

      She headed underground to catch the subway to her neighborhood. Just as she plopped down in her seat, an old man with a cane scraping beside him shuffled onto the train.

      Jerrica’s gaze swept the other passengers in the car, their heads buried in their phones, earbuds shoved in their ears, noses dipped into tablets, reading devices and portable game consoles. Nobody budged, nobody stirred from the online, electronic worlds sucking СКАЧАТЬ