Collision Course (2 page)

A chill
seeped into his bones and he turned up the heater in the car. There weren’t
many things he feared. Not businessmen out to suck Bennett Global’s blood. Not
the danger from native unrest in some of the countries he visited on business.
But what the unknown caller inferred was something else entirely. A
gut-chewing, nauseating sense of fear swept through him and made him realize
the real peril of his situation. What made it so bad was the mantle of
international respectability covering Bennett and BGE—a mantle obviously
disguising less than savory activities.

This
is what you get for answering the damn phone, asshole. Dummy.

He was
impelled by a sense of urgency, a feeling just falling off the grid wouldn’t be
the answer to his problem. Neither Bennett nor the unknown voice on the phone
would brush him aside and stop looking for him.

Okay,
think. That’s your strength.

What was
his best defense? What would save him? First thing was getting away from here
before Bennett could nail him. Once he found out what happened, Trey’s life
would change drastically. If he even had one to worry about. The next step
would be gathering information, digging into the coded files to get at the
truth. Following up on the inconsistencies he’d already begun to suspect and
taking the information to the right person. The name that popped into his head
was his friend Max Rider at Homeland Security but not until he had verifiable
proof. Who’d believe him? Charles Bennett involved with drugs and illegal arms?
They’d think him crazy. No, he needed to back up his suspicions were correct.

Okay. A
firewall had been erected to hide the Funda file as well as others on the no-no
list. He knew because he’d hit it when he first started having suspicions about
some of Bennett’s dealings and decided to try accessing it. He’d worried at
first he might trip some kind of hidden signal and they—whoever
they
were—would be onto him. He’d backed out immediately, but to his great surprise,
there’d been no repercussions. No questions. No red flags. Which meant he could
try to open it again.

He’d
acquired a couple of skills in college along with two business degrees, the
most important being skilled hacking. His roommate, a major in computer
science, was a freaking genius at creating and breaking codes. Trey had been
nervous every time Ned found his way into another so-called protected system
and “played around with it.”

Fascinated
despite himself, Trey had let his roommate tutor him in the fine art of
hacking, becoming as obsessed with the game as Ned. Until two agents from the
FBI showed up at their off-campus apartment and threatened them with life in
prison if they didn’t cut it out. He’d needed all the pressure his father and
Ned’s obscenely wealthy family could bring to bear to slither out of that one
and have it expunged from his record. Their adventure ended, but Trey still
remembered how to do it. Maybe he wasn’t as sophisticated as today’s hackers,
but he could get through a firewall with no problem. He might subsequently have
trouble but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

First,
however, he needed to get away from here, away from the city even, and fast,
before Bennett discovered what happened.

Calm
down. Think.

Yeah,
right. Think about the dead bodies he’d seen on television, people who’d stuck
their noses in where they didn’t belong. And the videos of well-respected
entrepreneurs who turned out to be the biggest crooks of all.

Shit,
shit, shit.

Headlights
loomed in his rear view mirror and his heart rate sped up. He made a quick left
at the next corner and the car behind him turned also. Jesus! Had they found
out already he’d answered the forbidden phone? Trey forced himself to take a
deep breath and quit letting his imagination run away with itself.

Easier
said than done. Bennett didn’t know about the call yet but how soon before he
heard from the man who had initiated it? And what if he had some way of
recording anything incoming? How fast would they begin to search for him?

Jesus,
you idiot. Don’t panic.

Oh,
yeah. Easier said than done.

It was
hard not to freak out when the message kept replaying in his mind. What he’d
heard meant nothing good. Nothing legal.

Shipments
to pay for. The cartel.

Would
Bennett come to Trey’s house even before daybreak? Call him? Wait until he came
to work the next morning? He had a hard time reconciling a man who appeared
affable and friendly to the world, a confidante of presidents and kings who
treated Trey like a son, with one who would be mixed up in something as nasty
as drugs and illegal arms. And who knew what else?

A shiver
snaked down his spine at the scenarios running through his head.

Yes,
making himself scarce while he tried to dig up information appeared to be his
only solution. Oh, right. He was a businessman, for god’s sake. What did he
know about running and hiding? He felt as if he’d fallen into a bad movie.
Still, his instincts warned him get the hell out of town until he had some
ammunition to protect himself. How long he had to be gone depended on what he
found out and how fast he could get the information to the right people. That
meant having cash to exist on, and he couldn’t access what he’d need until
morning. Would he be safe until then?

At the
next corner, he made a quick left and breathed a small sigh of relief when the
car in his rear view stayed on the other street.

Rain had
started falling harder and as Trey listened to the
swish swish swish
of
the windshield wipers, the circumstances of his predecessor’s death smacked him
in the brain. Gary Holland had been shot during a home invasion. His security
system compromised, many of his paintings and other valuables were gone. Now
Trey had to wonder if what employees were told was even the real story, or just
a cover up. Had
he
gotten too close to some of Bennett’s activities?

He
checked the dashboard clock. Two forty-five. If Bennett landed at four-thirty,
he’d be at the office by five-thirty. Say he checked the phone no later than
six. A small window of time to work with. Trey had to move fast and keep his
head down. And get the hell out of the city.

Swish
swish swish.

The
wipers seemed to keep time with the accelerated rhythm of his heartbeat.

He was
off the interstate and out of the city, driving through one of the more rural
residential areas on the outskirts of Des Moines. When he’d bought his home,
he’d liked the fact his neighbors weren’t so close, with a lot of trees
separating the houses. Now he realized how he’d isolated himself. Driving down
the darkened roads, he checked the rear view mirror again. No one behind him.
No one had left the highway and followed him. Good.

Breathing
a small sigh of relief, he turned into his driveway and pulled into the garage.
He waited a good fifteen minutes, his body so tense his muscles ached,
listening for any noise on the street, although at three in the morning he
didn’t expect much traffic. Satisfied nothing suspicious jumped out at him, he
got out of the car.

Inside
the house, he stopped for a moment, let out a slow breath and tried to decide
what to do. Nothing in Trey’s life had quite prepared him for the situation in
which he found himself. Adrenaline and fear coursed through him, his brain
rapidly sorting options.

He
needed to get to someplace safe, although he had no idea where such a place
would be. Credit cards left a paper trail, so he had to pull money out of his
account. A lot of it. More than he could get from an ATM, and the bank didn’t
open until nine. He hoped he’d still be ahead of whoever they sent after him by
then.

He took
a moment to check out the listings for branches of his bank online and found
one at the eastern edge of Des Moines. Way off his usual path. He doubted
Bennett would be checking there for him, unless the man had enough of an army
to cover every location. Of course, anything was possible. He’d be there the
minute the bank opened, run in, get his money and get the hell out.

Okay,
take a deep breath.

With a
small amount of cash in his wallet, his next priority was finding a place to
stash himself and get a few hours sleep. Get over to the east side, find a
cheap motel not far from the bank and hole up until morning. Once he’d taken
care of business he’d dump his car and buy another one for cash. Then he’d get
the hell out of Dodge, disappear until he found what he needed and figured out
what to do with it.

He dug
into the back of the closet for his Glock .9mm. Bought a few years ago, because
he lived outside the city limits in a rural residential area, he’d spent a lot
of hours on the range developing his proficiency with the weapon. He’d never
been more grateful for it. Shoving it into a duffel with as many clothes and
personal items as he could fit, he tossed the bag into his car with his laptop.
Deliberately he left his cell phone on his nightstand, knowing if he turned it
on he could be easily tracked. He’d get a prepaid one first chance he had. He
also didn’t want to take too much with him. If Bennett came after him, which
Trey was positive would happen, he didn’t want the house to give the appearance
he’d run. Even though that’s what he was doing. Let them chase their tails
trying to locate him in the city.

He took
one last look around before heading back to the garage.

Backing
out and heading down the street, he gripped the steering wheel, tense as a high
wire. Logic told him Bennett hadn’t had time yet to find out what happened but
it didn’t soothe his nerves any. He made one stop as he drove through the city,
at an all-night Wal-Mart to buy a “burner” phone. For emergencies. He for sure
couldn’t call anyone he knew.

He
didn’t draw a full breath until he found a motel way out on the east side of
the city and checked in. Apparently luck perched on his shoulder because they
had a room on the side away from the road where his car wouldn’t be seen. They
also had Internet, an unexpected bonus, which meant he could get to work right
away. Locking the door and putting the chain in place, he then closed the
drapes and opened his laptop. The light from the screen was the only
illumination in the room.

He
opened the portal to the BGE system in no time, but when he tried to access the
Funda file, it locked him out again. He wondered for a moment why Bennett
hadn’t had the
Eyes Only
files set up on a separate server. Then it
occurred to him the man might be infusing the account with whatever money came
from illegal activities to increase the net worth of the conglomerate. Giving
himself sole access to the file, made it much easier for him to manipulate the
account.

Okay,
time to see what he remembered after all these years.

After
the better part of an hour, he was grinding his teeth in frustration when he
made it in. And then he got more than he bargained for. Funda appeared to be
just one of the files stored there. Whatever firewall he’d broken through,
behind it were ten folders, each with a separate name. When he tried to open
Funda, it kicked back at him. Encrypted.

Shit!

The same
thing came up when he tried each of the other folders.

Okay, he
and Ned had worked on encrypted files, too. Some of the programs they’d used
had been available on the Internet, and Ned had shown him how to massage them.
How to do things even sophisticated hackers might not achieve. Trey did a
search for any programs he could download for free. Not the best solution but
it gave him a place to start. Besides, if he used his credit card to purchase
anything, it would show up. He had no doubt Bennett would put a tracking system
on everything in his name.

He
narrowed his results down to the ones with the broadest capabilities and
installed them. One of the first things Ned had taught him when they were
hacking was every protected file had a basic key from which the internal codes
were constructed. Trey could crack them but that would take a long time. Each
code had a slight difference from the others, so first he needed to discover
the key. Couldn’t get into a file without it.

He began
with the Funda folder, dreading what he’d find if he got it open. Loading it,
he set the program to run, pushed away from the table and made himself a pot of
coffee provided by the motel. This could take minutes or it could take hours,
and he needed the caffeine.

He
turned on the television, volume low, to keep himself awake while he watched
strings of number scroll across the screen, one by one. He had poured his third
cup of coffee when the scrolling stopped and the file opened. Hot damn! He
hadn’t expected results so quickly.

But his
jubilation was short-lived. He’d managed to open the master file, but within it
were at least a hundred documents and subfiles. Okay. The real meat of the
situation lay in those, hidden by additional codes. It stood to reason each
named file would be the same—a blanket for dozens of internal documents. They’d
require hours to crack and get what he needed.

He went
to work on them but growled in frustration when each appeared to have its own
polyalphabetic encryption code. Who the fuck had Bennett used to set this up?
Someone he both trusted without qualification and paid well.

He took
the first document and began to run it through the program. This one opened
much sooner. But halfway through it he realized his life could be in danger
just by knowing these things. Oh, transactions were well disguised unless you
knew what to look for and how to find it. Which Trey did.

Holy
shit!

In the
first document alone, he found records of massive amounts of money being moved
into the account under the guise of philanthropic contributions to help Third
World countries. He traced the destinations of so-called grants through banks
in Nigeria and Kenya and even the Middle East. And Mexico! Since when did people
call Mexico a Third World country?