Edge of Control: An Edge Security Novel (Edge Security Series Book 1) (6 page)

Okay, maybe it freaked her out a little, but she’d be damned if she let it show.

She kept her face and tone professional as she asked him to type in a password and his information.

“Hand,” she said, holding hers out. As he placed his large calloused one in hers, a little zing of heat ripped from her palm to her chest. She swallowed and placed his index finger on the imprint pad.

“Where’d you get the knife scars?” Jake asked.

She jerked. The imprint didn’t take and she tapped a code into the machine to reset it. She used the time to steady her voice. “What do you mean?” She repositioned his finger and steeled herself against his next question.

“You lied to Rhys when you said you’d never fought.” He paused. “I need to be able to trust everyone on this team.”

She didn’t look at him as she set up to take his thumbprint. “I’m just an IT tech. It doesn’t matter if you trust me or not.”

“You want to be a field operator.”

She shot him a sharp glance. “How do you know that?”

“I looked up your file.” He wasn’t the slightest bit apologetic. “And it left me with a lot of questions. They want me to be a team leader here. If I take the job, then I want to be able to trust every member of my team…even the IT tech.”

His eyes softened and suddenly Dani couldn’t speak, couldn’t avoid his compassionate gaze. His next words twisted something inside her.

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

Dani stared at him, her teeth clenched tight. She couldn’t tell him the truth. The more people who knew her history, the more chances that someone would slip up and she’d have to run again.

She put on her best professional smile. “Please put your chin in the strap and look at the red light.”

His lips pressed tight before he blanked his face and set his chin in the strap.

After work that day, Dani went into Tassia’s apartment. It looked the same as it had in the morning, except for the note on the kitchen table.

Danielle,

I’ve gone to Europe. I’ll be in touch in a few weeks. Don’t worry about me.

Tassia

What the
hell
? Dani dropped the note and raced to her friend’s bedroom. Clothes spilled from her closet and drawers. A quick check revealed the suitcase under her bed was gone.

Dani slumped onto Tass’s bed. This didn’t make any sense. Tassia wouldn’t just up and leave her job. Her desk appeared cleared, as if she’d taken everything with her, but the bedside table still held her Kindle.

The hair stood up on the back of Dani’s neck. Tass would never leave on a vacation without her Kindle. She slowly swiveled her head, taking in the room again. Her friend’s jewelry box rested on her dresser.

Dani opened it. Tassia’s favorite charm bracelet, the silver one her parents had given her for graduation, sat on top.

Something was very wrong.

She called the Public Prosecution’s office only to be told that Tassia had called in and requested emergency leave.

Dani clenched her fists. There was no way her friend would leave for Europe without talking to her first. She went back to the note in the kitchen. It was in Tass’s handwriting, but upon closer examination the writing had a bit of a wobble to it, as if the hand that wrote it was trembling. And Tass never called her Danielle. Never.

Dani picked up the phone and called the police.

Dani had avoided the gym that morning and opted for a long run and getting in early to work instead. She needed to figure out her next step. She’d spent last evening at the police station filling out a missing persons report on Tassia.

Unfortunately, with a note in Tassia’s handwriting and phone calls to her place of work saying she was going on leave, the police didn’t have a whole lot of options. The overworked detective had told her to contact him if she remembered anything else or heard from Tassia again.

She’d known the police were a longshot, but she had to try things the legal way first. She owed that to Chuck. Now, though, it would be up to Dani to track Tassia down, and she needed to start with the mysterious Vadim Levkov.

The elevator dinged as the doors opened on her floor at E.D.G.E. Dani made a beeline to her desk and set to work. But no matter what she tried, she couldn’t find a Vadim Levkov that matched what she knew about him. She only found the four men she’d noted previously, and none of them made sense. One was a teenager on Twitter who lived in Ottawa and two were sixty plus. One was in his forties, but as attractive as a dancing bear.

A sudden thought stole her breath. She slowly typed Vladimir Levkov into her program. Within minutes she had a lead. A Vladimir Levkov worked for the Volga Group, a company that imported and exported high-end art according to its simple two-page website. She could glean nothing else useful from the site.

She tried not to worry. Vladimir was a common name. So common that it was also the name of the man with a starring role in her nightmares. She shook off her fear and dove back into the research.

If this was the right guy, then perhaps the Volga Group was the company the Public Prosecution was building a case against, the one Tass had mentioned. It would explain why Tassia didn’t want to talk about the mysterious Vadim.

And perhaps that’s why he’d given her a different name. Because if he worked at the company she was helping to investigate, and anyone found out they were dating, it would ruin the investigation. Tass would be demoted or fired.

Dani chewed on her lip. Her instincts told her Tassia was in trouble. She didn’t know how to prove it, but her stomach churned at the thought of giving up.

She glanced around. No one was in yet, and she needed more information. She drummed her fingers on her desk, debating the pros and cons of delving past Volga’s firewall while at E.D.G.E.

Screw it.

The consequences didn’t matter if Tass was in trouble. Her friend needed her.

Dani dug into the company’s site and found the firewalls protecting their server. She sat up straight, her fingers stilling over the keyboard. These were high-grade firewalls. Much stronger than a typical commercial company should have. These were something she’d only seen when hacking government or banking sites.

“Everett.” The rough but familiar voice came from the doorway to the field operators’ lair.

She jumped and swiveled to face Jake. He stood by the heavy steel door, the stairway behind him filled with shadows. Her heart thumped hard in her chest and she wasn’t sure if it was because he’d almost caught her or because Jake’s piercing gray eyes seemed to uncover all of her secrets.

She wet her dry lips. “Did you need something?”

Something flickered in his gaze and her breath caught in her throat at the predatory gleam. Then his eyes cleared and he nodded at her laptop. “I’m being denied access to our server. Have you hooked me in yet?”

She mentally groaned, but pasted a professional smile on her face. In truth, she’d forgotten to give him access after their encounter yesterday. She hated how he affected her, making her brain short circuit. “I’ll have it sorted in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” He stood studying her for a moment, almost as if he knew she’d been contemplating something illegal. She finally arched a brow at him, silently asking him if he was done. His lips compressed before he left the room. The heavy door swooshed shut and locked with a click.

Her lips twisted. It was too dangerous to hack into Volga Group from an E.D.G.E. computer. She’d have to get her information the old-fashioned way. She needed to access the Volga server from inside its own firewalls, which meant she needed to break into their offices tonight.

Dani was up to something. It wasn’t just the way she’d jumped when Jake had called her name, but the way her eyes kept sliding from him to her screen, almost as if she were afraid he would see what was there.

Should he go back and confront her? He shook his head and took the steps two at a time up the spiral staircase leading to a workroom on the field operators’ floor. His leg only protested a little, which he ignored. He pushed through the steel door and went to the desk he’d claimed.

Beyond this room lay the lounge, and beyond that a small room with a couple of cots. He’d explored this floor yesterday and had been surprised to see a well-stocked weapons room, besides the conference room and the workroom where Dani had connected him to the network.

Or she was supposed to have connected him to the network. Apparently, she’d forgotten. He must have gotten under her skin. He smiled. Good. Because she sure as hell was under his. He’d had to take a cold shower before bed last night. The image of Dani in her shorts and sports bra had made his skin heat. All that silky skin, those smooth muscles exposed. He wanted to unbraid her dark hair and feel it trail over his chest as she rode him.

He clenched his fists and broke the spell. He needed a long run. Or maybe another cold shower. Because he refused to get involved with this woman, even just a fling. She had warning labels written all over her.

And really, flings were all he did anyway. The life of a spec ops soldier didn’t allow for much else. He didn’t have time to worry about a woman. Of course, he knew guys who were married, but he figured either they’d found a one-in-a-million woman or the divorce was coming soon.

Either way, it was time to put Dani out of his head and focus on the upcoming op. He tapped a few keys on the computer and his password worked this time. He pulled up the details on the surveillance he and Rhys would conduct today.

He memorized the faces of the targets, as well as maps of the city. He calculated possible escape routes for him and Rhys to drive if anything went down. The company they would watch today was rumored to be part of the Bratva, the Russian mafia, a cover for human and drug trafficking.

From the reports, they were brutal and vicious but smart, at least until recently. Apparently, Quebec’s Public Prosecution was looking into them, but was having trouble keeping witnesses.

The Canadian government had asked for help with the case. It was actually a small job, an easy training mission according to Knight, but he figured it would be a good one for Jake and Rhys to get to know the other members of E.D.G.E.

An easy training mission. Jake snorted and quickly changed his line of thinking before he jinxed them. He’d never before considered the Russians an “easy training mission,” and he wouldn’t start now.

A couple of hours later, he came across a term that his imperfect knowledge of Russian didn’t cover, and decided to seek Dani out. He should just Google it, but her personnel file had indicated a fluency in Russian. He wanted to find out why she knew that language so well. He guessed she probably wouldn’t answer, but he could watch the play of emotions cross her face and see if he could solve more of the puzzle of her.

He probably wouldn’t like the answers he found, but he couldn’t stop probing at her armored exterior. He went back downstairs to find her, but another IT tech said she’d gone home sick.

He went back upstairs to his desk, ignoring the twinge in his leg and the disappointment in his gut.

Dani sat on a bench across the street from a brownstone building on Boulevard Rene-Levesque. According to its website, the Volga Group took up the fourth floor of the eight-story building. The company had warehouses down by the docks as well, but Dani figured any information that might interest her would be found on the computers in the main office.

She sat with her tablet and a latte, her sunglasses hiding the fact that she watched the front doors. There were two side doors, both leading to the back alley filled with dumpsters, not somewhere anyone would go for lunch.

She crossed her legs, her only pair of black heels gleaming in the noon sunshine. She’d told Mike she wasn’t feeling well and had gone home early. Then she’d gone to Tassia’s place and raided her closet. A trim black jacket and matching skirt hugged her figure and restricted her movements. She looked like every other businesswoman on the street, brainy and defenseless.

People started to stream from the front doors of the building. She pretended to consult her tablet as she sipped her latte and scanned the lunch crowd. She hadn’t recognized anyone so far. It was almost twelve-thirty. Most people would have left for lunch by now.

She was about to stand when she froze like a deer scenting danger.

Two men stomped through the glass doors. They were boulders on legs. People gave them plenty of space as they strode down the street. The way they moved with utter confidence and an inherent cruelty made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Boris Gromov and his brother Ivan didn’t look like stereotypical businessmen. They looked exactly like what they were: the Rusakov family enforcers.

It had been years since she’d last seen them. They stuck near Dmitri and Vladimir, doing whatever was asked of them, like well-trained jackels. She remembered the strength of their bruising grip on her arms, holding her while Vladimir ranted about her speaking too long with a fellow computer geek. He’d only slapped her that time. The brothers had held her still the whole time.

No, no, no
, she chanted to herself. This couldn’t be happening. She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat.
 

Please, don’t let the Rusakovs be doing business with the Volga Group
.
 

Though now Dani was pretty sure the Volga Group was the company the Public Prosecution office, and therefore Tassia, was investigating.

She shook herself mentally. Now was not the time to get freaked. Tassia needed her. Dani just had to follow her plan.

After the Gromov brothers were out of sight, she stood up and smoothed her skirt before clicking her way across the street and into the building. She had to walk slower than normal, thanks to the stilettos Tassia had convinced her she needed. Her ankles only wobbled once.

Inside the elevator, she pressed the buttons for the third and fourth floors. When the doors opened on the third floor, she popped her head out to scan the area, seeing a hallway with office doors at either end and a communal washroom across from the elevators. No security cameras in the hall, just the one in the elevator. Then, she rode the elevator to four.