Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5) (23 page)

“I have no idea what that means,” John said in exasperation. “Is that a lot?”

Karl held up the black box. “A lot. As in the Library of Congress kind of a lot.”

John grinned. “How long will it take to download the data?”

Lisa studied the back end of the black box and grimaced. “I suppose I could come up with a transfer cable that would work. It might take a few days, though, not to mention a lot of trial and error because we don’t have a clue what kind of data transfer protocols this thing uses. The real problem is that we don’t have the key.”

“Key?” John repeated, the smile disappearing from his face.

Karl pointed at the irregular slot in the front of the box. “That’s a security key slot, like we use to switch on our classified phones. Without having that, it could take months to hack into this thing.”

“Even longer if the data is encrypted, which it almost certainly is,” Lisa added.

“Encrypted?” John said.

Karl nodded. “Like the encryption code on the wireless router in your home. Except we have no idea how long of a code it might be. These days, it could easily be sixteen digits. Unless whoever designed this thing was working for a paranoid type. Then it could be anything—twenty-four or thirty-two characters even. Regardless, the chances of stumbling over that code by accident is almost nil.”

John cursed. “You’re telling me that we likely have every piece of data that we need right here in this box, but we can’t get it out?”

Lisa shook her head. “We can get the data out. It will just take time. Maybe a few days to come up with an interface cable, then a few weeks to bypass the key interrupt. After that, it’s just a matter of working out the encryption code.”

“How long will it take to break the code?” John asked.

Lisa exchanged looks with Karl again. “We know a lot about Thorn, so that helps. Maybe if we get lucky, we could do it in a few months.”

John’s eyes widened. “Months?”

“That’s if it’s on the lower end of the security scale,” Karl said. “If the code really is thirty-two digits long, it will take longer.”

Ivy frowned. “John, we can’t wait that long. I told the shifter who stole this to get out of town for a while, but if we haven’t done something soon, it won’t matter what we do. Thorn will figure out her identity sooner or later and once he does, she’s dead. I promised her I wouldn’t let Thorn get to her. We’re going to have to give the box and the diamond back to him.”

John was silent for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “You’re right.”

Ivy blinked. She’d expected him to fight her a little more. While he had no desire to see Thorn get his hands on Dreya any more than Ivy did, he’d been after Thorn for a long time.

John looked at the two techs. “If you test this thing with mass spec or X-ray or whatever you people use, could you make a realistic model of it?”

Lisa looked confused. “Well, yeah, the material technology is well-known. It’s just a silicon crystal structure. Like a regular computer chip, but a lot bigger, with a few thousand layers of boron and phosphorus to form the semiconductor paths. Throw in a circuit card or two to handle the security key and the encryption code, and you’re done. But it won’t work and the data certainly won’t be there.”

John shook his head. “I don’t need it to work or for the data to be there because when you get done with it, you’re going to smash it.”

The two techs looked baffled beyond belief. “What?” they said in unison.

“Smash it, make it look like a building fell on it or a steamroller drove over it, whatever,” John said. “I want it recognizable as what it used to be, but that’s all. You have two hours to make that happen. No one outside this room knows what you’re doing and why. No details of what you’ve done will ever be written down or disclosed to anyone. Is that clear?”

Lisa and Karl nodded, still clearly confused but ready to do whatever their boss asked of them. They moved over to another table and started pulling out tools, calipers, and notepads from the drawers underneath.

John turned to Kendra and Evan. “This is going to sound crazy, but we need a building we can set on fire and a fresh dead body to put inside it. It has to be someone we can create a detailed criminal record for, so if the guy already has a criminal past, that would be good. Burglary, safe cracking, explosives, the works—the record you create needs to be a perfect match for a criminal who would pull off the theft at Thorn’s place, and it needs to be bulletproof. Can you do that?”

Ivy didn’t have to ask what John was planning because she already knew. He was going to make it look like the thief who’d stolen the hard drive had died in the fire and that the little black box had been destroyed. It was brilliant.

Kendra looked at Evan, then nodded. “We can do that.”

While Evan pulled out his cell phone and started dialing, Ivy turned to Kendra, saying, “I’m going to go find Landon and let him know what’s happening. We’ll be ready to go as soon as you get the body in place. In the meantime, let me know the moment you hear anything from Layla. I need to know she’s okay.”

John frowned. “What do you mean ‘hear from Layla’? Where is she?”

Kendra looked extremely uncomfortable as her boss moved his gaze back and forth between the two of them.

“Kendra, I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me that Layla isn’t over in Ukraine trying to find Jayson and Powell,” John said.

Kendra looked over quickly at Ivy, then turned back to their boss. “Layla isn’t over in Ukraine looking for Powell.”

John’s scowl deepened. “Kendra.”

Ivy gave Kendra a quick wave, then hurried to the door, never so happy to have silent feline shifter footsteps as she was right then.

Layla led Jayson down the tight spiral staircase, her 9mm pistol clenched firmly in a hand that had suddenly become very moist with sweat. Shooting the man in the RSA building was completely different than what she was about to do in the next few minutes. He’d had a weapon pointed in their direction and been about to shoot them. This time it wouldn’t be in self-defense.

She knew she was being stupid and that there was no reason to be squeamish about it. It wasn’t like they could walk in and politely ask Zolnerov’s men to simply release the girls. Something told her the men would certainly have no problem putting a bullet in both her and Jayson without another thought.

Layla didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she reached the bottom of the steps. She glanced at Jayson over her shoulder, pointed down the hallway, then followed her nose to an arched doorway. She stopped just outside the door, but instead of peeking inside, she used her shifter senses to tell her what was happening in the room.

The sour, acrid scent of fear wafted out, making her nose wrinkle up and tingle, like she wanted to sneeze. But she could also sense hope in the room as well. The girls had heard all the shooting and probably assumed it was a rescue party. They were murmuring excitedly to each other in Russian.

“Quiet!” a man ordered harshly in Russian. “No talking.”

The girls immediately fell silent.

Layla forced herself to ignore the girls and what they were feeling and focused on the men. Once she had them, she turned to Jayson and traced a square outline of the room with her fingers on the wall in front of her. Then she stabbed her forefinger at three locations in that square—one in each of the far back corners and the third in the center of the room.

Jayson nodded and pointed at himself, then the two farthest targets. He touched the center spot and motioned to her, lifting a brow in question. He’d take the two harder targets and leave the easier shot for her. That meant he was leaving himself wide-open to the shooter closest to them while he took out the other men in the room. If she didn’t make the shot—or she hesitated—Jayson would be the one paying the price.

Layla took a deep breath and nodded.

Jayson moved to her right shoulder and held up three fingers, then started counting them down before she had a chance to wonder how many different ways she could screw this up.

When he got to zero, they both entered the room. It was a small home theater, complete with comfortable lounge chairs, a ceiling-mounted projector, and a wide, white screen mounted on the far wall. All twelve girls were sitting in the front of the room. They looked exhausted, scared, and more than one of them bore visible cuts and bruises. The signs of abuse sharpened Layla’s focus and she snapped her attention to the man in the center of the room, the one who was already spinning around in their direction, an assault rifle coming off his shoulder.

She distantly heard Jayson’s pistol going off to her right, but she ignored it as she aimed for the center of her target’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The weapon bucked once in her hand, then again as she fired again to make sure he went down.

The man forgot about the rifle in his hand, letting it hang loose as he looked down in shock at the blood seeping through the front of his shirt. A moment later, he dropped to the floor.

Layla spun to the left and right, looking to see if she needed to help Jayson with his targets. She didn’t. Both men were already dead.

She turned her attention to the girls on the floor to find them staring up at her and Jayson, concern and worry warring with hope on their faces.

“Anya Zelenko?” Jayson called out.

At her name, all other eleven prisoners in the room looked at a tall, dark-haired girl in the back of the theater. She had a bruise on her right cheek and fire in her eyes.

“That’s me,” she said in English as she got to her feet.

Layla smiled, hoping to reassure the girl that they were the good guys; however, as she got closer, she realized Anya was anything but terrified. Instead, she was brimming with bold defiance. No doubt she’d gotten that bruise on her cheek for getting in one of her captor’s faces and telling him exactly what she thought of him. Layla decided she liked the girl before ever exchanging a word to her.

“It’s time to go,” Layla said in English. “Dylan and your other friends are waiting outside for you.”

Anya’s eyes lit up with a different kind of fire at the mention of her boyfriend’s name. “Dylan is here?”

Layla nodded. “Yes. Neither of us speak Russian as well as you do, so if you can help us get the other girls moving, we can get out of here.”

Anya looked like she had a thousand questions to ask, not the least of which was who the hell she and Jayson were and how Dylan had gotten them involved, but the Ukrainian girl focused on what they’d asked her to do. Scooping up the rifle from the man Layla had shot, she turned and urged all the other girls up. Layla led the way out of the room, taking them toward the main section of the house—and the exit.

The gunfire out front had slowed a little, but the shooting coming from the east side, where Clayne and Danica had gone, was as intense as before. There were occasional explosives going off, too. It sounded like Clayne and Danica were in trouble, but there was no way she or Jayson could go to their aid until they got all the girls out and over the wall.

They were hurrying through the living room, Layla starting to think their plan might actually work, when she picked up the scent of a lot of men coming their way—fast.

“Incoming!” she yelled, automatically slowing down and motioning behind her for Anya and the other girls to back up.

The girls slipped and slid on the marble floors but quickly moved backward into the cover provided by the arches that lined the eastern corridor.

Ten feet ahead, Jayson came to a stop in the middle of the living room and lifted his rifle just as four men came running down the central corridor from the west wing. She expected Jayson to start mowing the bad guys down the moment they came into view, but instead he hesitated.

Brian Powell’s scent hit her like a ton of bricks and her mind fought to correlate what she was smelling with what she was seeing. Powell, his head still wrapped in a bloody bandage, wasn’t a captive of the three armed militia soldiers. He was leading them.

She didn’t understand how he’d done it, but the DCO agent had somehow escaped capture and put together a small team of men to rescue the girls. Maybe he wasn’t so worthless after all.

Suddenly, the skin along the back of her neck burned as if it were on fire. Layla had never felt anything like it before, but she’d heard Ivy describe it often enough to know it was her feline intuition warning her that something was wrong.

“Watch out!” she shouted just as Powell lifted a small submachine gun and started shooting.

* * *

Jayson didn’t know why Layla was warning him, but he trusted her instincts and dived for cover behind the big-ass sectional couch that dominated the middle of the room. He hadn’t even hit the floor before bullets smashed into the sofa, sending shards of stone, chunks of wood, and cushion fluff everywhere. He gave a silent prayer of thanks that the base of the couch was so rugged. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have been dead. He’d always known Powell was a complete piece of shit, but fighting alongside Zolnerov’s men against his fellow DCO agent was sinking to a whole new level of crap.

Jayson looked over his shoulder to make sure Layla and the girls had taken cover only to find her and Anya crouching behind the arches in the corridor trying to take out Powell and the men with him. Shit, they were only going to get themselves killed.

“Take the girls and go!” he shouted at Layla. “Get them outside and over the wall.”

Layla shook her head, clearly hating the idea even as she had to jerk back when the stone edging near her face shattered into pieces from a bullet.

“Go!” he shouted again. “You two can’t hold that position and you’re just going to get yourselves and everyone else killed. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

Layla shouted at Anya to go, then gave him a hard look. “Don’t you dare do anything stupid!”

Getting to her feet, she spun to follow the girls, herding them down the curving hallway.

Boots echoed hard and fast on the marble floor in front of the couch. Jayson jerked into a crouch and peeked over the top. One of the militia soldiers charged straight at him. The asshole must have thought Jayson would be so focused on Layla and the girls that he wouldn’t notice anyone coming his way. But he had noticed, and he didn’t hesitate to lay his AK across the back of the sofa and fire off a quick three-round burst. The man crumpled to the floor, his momentum taking him across the marble and slamming him into the base of the couch.

Jayson had barely ducked again when the sofa around him exploded in fluff and pieces of stone. Shards of marble peppered his left shoulder, making it feel like he’d been hit with a shotgun blast.

Shit
. The man charging at him had been nothing more than bait to get him to poke his head out like a frigging turtle sticking its head out of its shell. No doubt Powell had ordered the charge. Jayson wondered if the militia soldier had known Powell was casually throwing his life away.

“Hey, Jayson.” Powell’s amused voice carried across the room as soon as the shooting stopped. “Pop your head up again. I promise I’ll make it fast.”

Jayson dropped the half-empty magazine out of his AK and loaded a fresh one. Then he yanked a handful of loose rounds from his pocket, dropped them on the floor, and shoved them in the magazine he’d just extracted. He wasn’t stupid. Powell wasn’t talking to him because he missed him. He was babbling to cover up the movement of the other two soldiers who were almost certainly moving around the room right then to get a bead on Jayson. He needed to be ready when they made their move.

“Is that how it’s going to be then?” Powell asked with a chuckle that made Jayson want to kick him in the balls. “What, are you mad at me just because I tried to shoot you on that rooftop? It was nothing personal. I was just following orders. I’d expect a former soldier like yourself to understand that.”

Jayson heard careful footsteps off to his right. One of the soldiers was moving toward the fireplace, trying to outflank him.

“You are so full of shit, Powell,” he called. “You didn’t try to kill me because of any DCO directive. You did it because you’re a piece of shit who gets off on killing. You figured you were about to die and you wanted to make sure I went first.”

Powell laughed again, the sound closer and slightly off to the left. The jackass was getting ready to make his move. Good. Jayson wanted to finish him and get out of there. He didn’t like the idea of Layla being out there by herself. Anya had shown herself capable of firing a weapon, but that wasn’t the same thing as having actual backup. That was Jayson’s job.

“You might be right,” Powell agreed. “I have to admit, I never did like working with you shifter freaks. I doubt you ever heard of him, but Jeff Peters was a good friend of mine, and that psycho bitch Ivy Halliwell got him fired from the DCO, then killed him. I’ve been looking for a chance to off a shifter ever since. Even if you’re not much of one, you were the only shifter I had available at the time, so I figured you were better than nothing.”

Jayson heard the guy by the fireplace edging a little closer while Powell moved into position on the left. The third militia soldier was still holding firm in the western corridor, probably with his weapon sighted on the couch in case Jayson popped his head up suddenly. Within seconds, Powell was going to have everyone in position and this little show was going to get started.

“I figured it was something like that,” Jayson said. He didn’t really care about the conversation, but he wanted to keep Powell talking. “I’m just shocked you made it off that roof in one piece. I thought the militia would have killed you for sure.”

Jayson wiggled across the floor to the right. When everybody started shooting, he didn’t want to be in the same place he’d been the last time they’d seen him.

“I almost didn’t,” Powell answered. “The militia could have killed me, but one of them recognized me as American and figured their colonel would want to see me. Zolnerov was about to execute me when I mentioned there was another American here with a diplomat’s son from the U.S. embassy in Kiev. That got his attention damn quick. Then I told him about shifters and that really floated his boat. The idea of getting a feline shifter of his very own had him salivating. Telling him I could deliver the two of you on a silver platter made me his favorite person in the world.”

Jayson’s head was spinning. Powell had told Zolnerov about shifters—about Layla. And unless Powell was full of shit, this entire rescue mission was a setup for Zolnerov to grab a shifter of his very own—a very special female shifter.

Anger welled up in his chest. It was bad enough that Powell had tried to kill him, but now he’d betrayed Layla, too, setting her up so a sadistic piece of shit like Zolnerov could grab her. Jayson decided that shooting Powell was too good for the man. He would snap his frigging neck with his bare hands.

Jayson slipped his finger in the trigger guard of his AK, twisting around to head for Powell to kill him first. Then he heard the crunch of boots on marble fragments from behind him.
Shit
. Powell had been fucking with him all along, using his feelings for Layla to get him to do something stupid. And it had worked. Jayson had turned his back on the closest threat and was about to pay the ultimate price for it.

* * *

Layla herded the girls down the central corridor in the same direction they had just come from. “Find the first exit out of the building. It should be up on the right somewhere.”

Leaving Jayson behind to face Powell on his own had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but he’d been right. If she and Anya had stayed where they were, it would have only been a matter of time before one or both of them had been hit, and she had to get Anya and the other girls out of here. Once they were over the wall and safe, she would text Mikhail and let him know what was going on. Then she’d be able to get back in there and help Jayson.