Kill Code (4 page)

“So … what can I do for you, Patrick?”

Patrick seemed to gather himself before saying, “The
company is out of money.”

She blinked. Then blinked again.
Settling back in her chair, she said, “What? How can that be? We’ve
got half a d
ozen products on the market producing regular
streams of income both from royalties and actual software
sales.

“White Hat is as close to a money printing machine
as anyone could get,” she went on, near panic now when Patrick’s
expression turned even more grave. 

“Oh, come on, Pat. We’ve only got a three full-time
employees and you’re one of them. We’ve got the best rates possible
for our off-site contractors.”

“It’s not an issue of overhead costs bleeding you
dry. The money has simply disappeared.”

She sank back in her chair. “Disappeared? How could
it just disappear?”

Patrick shook his head. “I'm not sure. There were
only three people authorized to sign on the checking account:
Nathan, me and you. There were no checks written that I haven't
accounted for, but money has disappeared from our operating
accounts.”

“Some sort of unauthorized transfer then?” God.
Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony: a master hacker getting
hacked.

“
Maybe.
I've accessed the accounts via the Internet, and nothing shows. One
day the money was there, the next it wasn't. No transactions or
anything. But it was software that we wrote for the
banks
. So
meone who worked on the software
at this company who knew what they were doing could tap into the
funding without a trace.”

Someone who worked on the software
at this company who knew what they were doing could tap into the
funding without a trace.
Patrick’s words
buzzed through her head.

Oh, God. Was that someone Nathan? Did this have
something to do with what the mysterious software he’d had her
run?

She considered the implications of
Patrick'
s statement—banks thrived on being able to show
their accounting three different ways and a fourth as a backup.
That money could simply float out of an account without any
transaction data and put at least one, if not three or four, of
their product lines in jeopardy.

It was she and
Nathan who
had
built the banking software and, while it was reasonably
clean code, there was probably a big hole in it somewhere that they
both missed—or
that Nathan had intentionally
corrupted.

She tried to hold back the waves
of nausea; tried to deny the horrible things she was thinking. But
the only other person capable o
f pulling off such a feat was
Nathan. It was too horrifying to contemplate—yet she knew that
Nathan was more than able to screw with their finances and probably
did.

But why? What was his motive? And
what other
secrets had Nathan White taken to his grave?

###

Using his Steiner binoculars, the N
ighthunter XP model, a brand that he always trusted, Leo
looked around the area where his truck was parked.

Where, as a sniper, would he set up to take a shot?
He needed to figure it out because there was a real good chance
that whoever had wanted to hire him to kill Jackie Winn would send
a back-up assassin when they finally figured out their first choice
wasn’t about to deliver on the hit.

There were several good
possibilities, including a couple of buildings across the street
with windows
. The range was a bit on the long side, maybe
seven hundred yards, but it was doable. Watching a flag blowing, he
calculated the wind. Without a spotter to ID the target and call
corrections, it would be a bitch of a shot. With a decent spotter,
it still would be difficult, but Leo had shot hundreds of rounds at
much longer distances under worse conditions.

Climbing out of his truck, he walked around the
parking lot. It seemed to service a number of businesses in the
same complex, so he wasn't worried about wandering around.

He spotted a jet black Mercedes SLK and recognized
it from the photo he’d found in the manila envelope. It was Jackie
Winn’s car.

It was parked off on an edge of the lot, sheltered
from car dings by taking up two spaces. It gleamed in the early
afternoon sun. The question that Leo wanted answered was how a
computer programmer and recently former student would even know
about such a car much less buy one? The college student who helped
Leo with the computer network at the coin store drove a Honda Civic
that could best be described as a pile of rust generally moving in
the same direction.

Without using his binoculars, Leo looked around
trying to appear as casual as he could.

Another possible sniper site presented itself—a
building under construction several blocks away. It most likely
offered the best view of the parking lot, but the range was on the
extreme side—probably close to eight hundred yards. It would also
be at an extreme downward angle—not anything difficult to deal with
if you knew what you were doing, but it would be a factor.

Taking a long look at the building, he knew that
would be where he would set up.

From the outside, he knew what to look for, but
there were always things that one could see only from the sniper's
hide that could result in a change of plans. One time he had shown
up to take a shot at a foreign minister who had the hobby of
torturing political dissidents and realized there was no way to get
the proper angle to the target. He could have chanced a shot at the
head, but it would have been moving. Instead, Leo moved to another
room and completed the job without a problem.  

There were no other places that would be good sniper
hides, though there were several not very good possibilities. Leo
recalled the time when his sniper hide was in the back of a van.
That sucked. He had to take into account the bullet going through
the window of the van and then making it to the target after
traveling six hundred fifty yards. Leo hit the window square on and
let the gods of ballistics take it from there. They were smiling
down on him as the 190 grain Sierra boat tailed hollow point hit
the target between the second and third shirt buttons.

He had been forced out of college due to the lack of
money to pay for tuition, boarding and books after the suspicious
death of his father and the scandal that surrounded it. Not that
the bastard hadn't deserved it. Despite hours of interrogations by
the police, Leo was determined to have no connection with the
fucker burning to death in his Cadillac.

How and why someone had killed his
father had never been determined and it still bothered Leo just a
bit considering what he knew about the assassination business. His
father's death had been a professional hit. Leo had read about
similar assassinations over the years but the killer was as elusive
as a puff of smoke.

He had been looking for work when he had been
approached by a corporate headhunter looking to fill a slot in a
company that built sniper rifles for the police and military. They
needed someone to test fire their new creations under real world
situations and write a report on the accuracy and functioning of
the rifles. As a now ex-star of a college rifle team, Leo was the
perfect candidate.

Leo had never fired a gun in his entire life before
being goaded into trying out for the rifle team by some
acquaintances after they had all gone out shooting one Saturday.
From the first time Leo picked up a rifle, he couldn't miss. A
walk-on to the team, he found that he the knack and mindset
required for precision shooting.

It wasn’t until he was immersed in training that he
realized he had been raised into this life by his father—forced
into being a loner by constant moves, held to an exacting
perfection in all tasks, no matter how small, able to adapt and
blend into almost any social circumstance, able to think on his
feet and an eye for detail. The punishments for even minor
deviations of the expected norm were extreme, but probably not as
bad as getting tortured or killed while on a mission.

That his dad was an assassin was so obvious after he
had been in the business a while—the absences, lack of a visible
job, able to buy whatever he wanted with pocket cash, the drinking
and so much more—but for Leo growing up, it added to his hellish
childhood. His mother was no help and merely another tool for
manipulation by his father. That she died of a massive stroke
shortly after his father's death wasn't unexpected.

Leo had been specially recruited by an unknown
organization into becoming a sniper assassin. Everyone should be
good at something and Leo was the best in the world at killing
people at long distances.

The turning point was an assassination that, while
it wasn't technically difficult at seven hundred twenty-six yards,
it was world changing in his mind. As he brought the rifle scope
back down onto the target, he saw the target's children, who had
been standing next to him, coated with sprayed blood from the head
shot, their faces etched in horror, their screams silent in the
magnification of his rifle scope.

Then it struck him: he hadn't been putting holes in
targets for the technical challenge but had been killing
people.

That had been his second to his last job. He knew
that the end was coming soon when he started asking about how to
get out of the business. It was almost a relief when the car bomb
had nearly killed him, but he knew that there was nothing he could
do to atone for his sins.

He regretted the killing and had worked fucking hard
to put that behind him, building his life as far away from his past
as he could get. Now, he would do whatever he needed to get his
life back. Including saving the life of complete stranger.

And now he was back in the game, from the other
end—as a target. He hoped that he would survive.

Unlocking Nathan's office door, Jackie's heart
formed a lump in her throat. She stared at the government surplus
desk expecting to see him perched behind it. She hadn't opened this
door since they'd buried him. Nathan had two offices, one for
meeting clients that was all oak and spotless. Then there was this
working office which was piled high with computer printouts, notes
and a high-end computer system with three monitors. Metal shelves,
some bent and twisted with the weight of software manuals and
obsolete computer hardware, ran along one side of the wall. Behind
Nathan's desk was a work bench with his oscilloscope, meters and
his well-used soldering station. This was the office where she and
Nathan had spent countless hours fighting for their company's
survival, coming up with wild-ass ideas—some of which worked, some
that didn't.  

They'd had some serious shouting sessions in this
office—the result of two creative people hashing out ideas and
plans. But it had all worked out.

She walked around the end of the desk, but couldn't
find it in herself to sit in Nathan's battered rolling chair.
Instead, moving his chair out from behind it, Jackie pushed her old
chair behind it.

Settling in behind his desk, she realized she didn't
know where to start. Nathan obviously didn't believe in a neat and
tidy work area, yet the man could have laid his hand on any
particular item without searching. But move a computer printout one
inch to the left and he would have to spend days searching for
it.

“It's my system and I know where everything is.
Besides, a neat and tidy workplace is the sure sign of a
disorganized mind,” Nathan would say. God she missed him so.

Just for a point to start, she began opening desk
drawers. The center one was full of pens and electronic junk. The
rightmost drawers contained files on past projects and
proposals.

The left bottom drawer was locked. This was
strange—Nathan never locked anything. She had locked Nathan's
office after his death and the key had barely worked, probably from
disuse. 

She'd save the locked drawer for later. She spent
the next three hours searching the office and found nothing of
interest. Piles of stuff that should be thrown out, but nothing
much that could answer any of her questions.

It would all have to be dealt with, but Jackie
couldn't find it in herself to deal with it right now.

The computer revealed nothing. All of Nathan's
working files were stored on the central server and the computer
hard drive had been wiped just like the DVD had been.

“Nathan, what are you hiding?” she asked the empty
air.

She returned her attention to the locked drawer,
which she knew she could open, but the challenge was what she
liked—the hacker ethos—if it was locked, unlock it, be it software,
an electronic device or even a locked drawer.

She went back to her office and got her lock pick
set. She made her first set at the tender age of fourteen, but this
one was top of the line with the particular tools she favored, each
in several sizes. Most women bought themselves jewelry, a
fashionable purse, shoes or a new outfit when they came into money.
Jackie had bought herself a customized set of lock picks with pink
mother of pearl handles.

Moving Nathan's work table lamp around so she could
see, she got down on her knees and started working. It was a lock
type that she hadn't seen before and she couldn't crack the damn
thing—the pick kept slipping off the pins. Several attempts only
lead to more frustration.

Settling back, she said, “What was so important for
you to lock up, Nathan?”

Taking a deep breath, letting part of it out, she
tried again and finally the last tumbler clicked into place. She
pushed on the tension bar and the lock popped open. Pulling the
drawer open, she couldn't believe what she saw.