The Omega Team: Cyber Tracked: The Cobra Project (Kindle Worlds Novella) (IATO Series Book 4) (10 page)

Rowan watched in slow motion as the two hundred pound man came crashing down on her. Her head bounced off a chair but she didn’t let go of the gun. Black dots filled her vision after the breath was knocked from her lungs and everything threatened to go black. She fought to stay conscious, not knowing who or where the others were. At this point, she didn’t trust anyone.

She shifted her position struggling to squeeze out from under the lifeless body trapping her. When she opened her eyes, she didn’t believe the sight in front of her. Groot had tackled the other guard and was now face down on the floor, bleeding from a leg wound.

Cade dragged the guard’s body away from her just as Mosel rounded the corner and took the gun from her hands.

Rowan backed up in response to Mosel’s numerous questions, as he unlocked the cuffs and helped her stand. Still not quite steady, she ran to Cade crashing into him full force.

He took a deep breath, the first one he’d taken in hours, and smiled, grasping Rowan tightly against him, thankful she was safe. “Are you okay?”

“I shot him.” She winced glancing down at herself, and nodded her head several times. “But I’m okay.” She pulled her gaze from the dead man and dropped her head to Cade’s chest while he held her, both of them still trembling. Then she looked up and said, “I-I killed him.” Disbelief filled her eyes.

“I know. Thank you,” Cade said. “I was behind you…in his line of fire. You saved my life.”

With that, she squeezed him tighter.

The local police showed up, and she answered most of their questions, leaving out the part about COBRA. Then the medical team arrived, followed by the coroner with his team of investigators, and the guard was pronounced dead at the scene. Ahmet was merely unconscious. He’d knocked his head and had broken his arm in the fall down the stairs when Cade tackled him.

For some reason Ahmet just kept turning up like the proverbial bad penny. This time Cade hoped it would be the last. He and Jason had plenty of scores to settle with that one.

Groot had suffered a mild gunshot wound to the leg. The medics told him it was only a flesh wound and he’d be fine once they closed it with a few stitches. Groot looked pale but was grinning broadly as soon as the guy added, “Think of the action you can add to your video game programs and the stories you can impress all the women with.”

“Wait.” Rowan suddenly ripped away from Cade as the coroner’s team lifted the dead guard’s body on to the gurney outside. “I want to look into face of the man I shot and killed.” The coroner opened the body bag so she could see his face. “I never wanted to shoot you. I never wanted this,” Rowan said sadly.

Cade followed closely behind her, refusing to allow her to go through the trauma alone, but when she was done with the dead guard, she walked past one of the men who’d been holding her prisoner and glared. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to know what she was thinking. Now he was the one in handcuffs.

After she turned around and glanced at the carnage inside her home, her whole body began vibrating. Shock settled in and besides remorse, Cade suspected the anger was building.

Good.
Anger would help her get past the shock more quickly.

Her teeth chattered and before her knees buckled, he pulled her into his arms to offer her his support and body heat. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Killing is never easy, Rowan, but you saved yourself.”

After a few minutes, the trembling eased. “I need to confront Groot,” she said, pulling away, and Cade let her go. She needed to handle this herself.

Still shaking, she walked tentatively over to her assistant until she stood beside him. “Why? Was it the money?”

“No. I never betrayed you or willing put you in danger. I’d had a few drinks too many at the club a few nights ago, and there was this woman…She acted interested in me. Me. She asked me questions. I opened my big mouth, bragging a little about what I was working on. Rowan, I’m so very sorry—”

She held up her hand. “As long as it wasn’t intentional, the bullet you took for me evens the score. But Groot…you’re fired. I’ll find you another position with one of my other companies, but you understand the security surrounding my work won’t abide this, right?”

The young man wiped away a tear and nodded. “Thank you, Rowan. I understand.”

Rowan turned back to Cade for a moment then scanned the street. Her expression turned weary. “Tell the police if they have any questions I’ll be available tomorrow. Give them this” She handed Cade her card. “And, Cade?”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“Would you mind staying with me?”

Eindhoven, The Netherlands

“She’s gone.” Reinhardt said walking downstairs. “There’s no sign she was forced this time.”

“There was no sign last time. She walked into that situation of her own free will.” Cade felt panic set in again. No, she couldn’t be gone. “Is she playing us?”

“Is the tracker still pinging on her?”

“Yes. By the way, what are you tracking?”

“Her gun.” Cade stared at Mosel and laughed. “You crazy bastard, what if they disarm her?”

“No one ever looks for a gun on a woman where she keeps that little Berretta.”

“She put it in her waistband.”

Mosel smirked. “She has a thigh holster.”

The pinging stopped. “They found the gun. Mosel, I’m going to shoot you when this is all over.”

This time Cade didn’t waste time calling in back up. He gathered whoever was around the compound and ordered them to get help.

“I think she’s looking for the other link to the terrorist group,” Groot said keying messages into his computer.

“How the hell do you know that?” Cade was pissed at Groot, anyway because Rowan allowed him to recuperate at her place.

“The last time she was abducted, she said she was going to find the link to the terrorist organization so she could hack into their system.”

“She what?” Cade was shouting now. The woman was going to give him heart failure. “The last text she sent is all I have. It makes no sense.”

“Let me see it.” Groot took his phone and began messing with it. “It’s code.”

“For what? I’ve never seen this type of code before,” Cade said. For someone who was the division head for international cyber defense, he was beginning to feel out of his element. The kids were working on the cutting edge of developmental codes, computers were writing new code as he juggled damn terrorists. The waste of valuable time pissed him off. Now Rowan had put herself in danger again over this.

“Shit!” he shouted. “Can anyone tell me where to find her?”

Fortunately, Mosel was still there with the arms they’d need. Go figure. And a few tough looking friends dropped by to join the search. Probably “the good in a bar fight” group. Groot called in a some students from the university—the geek squad was devoted to Rowan and her technology. They volunteered to man down the computers, and began working on the code she left behind.

“All they talk about are her wild hacking skills. Can they track her location by triangulating her cell phone’s last position?”

“Sure, they can figure out her last position, but the phone could be dead by now,” Groot said casually.

“Then what was she thinking?” Cade slammed his fist on the desk.

“Well, she probably thought you’d track her sub-dermal implant. She had it injected a few days ago, so we can track her anywhere.”

Cade picked the geek up and spun him around. “Why didn’t you say so?”

A few minutes later, after contacting Jason, Cade figured out the terrorist location wasn’t more than the an hour away by helicopter. Groot volunteered to go in first, since they knew him through Ahmet. When Cade arrived, he planned to get captured and told Mosel’s muscle to stay behind until he signaled them. Then when Groot was ready to call for help, he could contact Mosel with his implant.

The plan was a sound one.

* * * * *

As soon as Rowan got the call from Abdul Jalbab, she left a cryptic message for Cade. Hopefully he’d share it with Groot, and then they’d know what to do. She had to snare the Middle Eastern leader who Ahmet shared the COBRA information with, along with her identity, or she’d never be free from discovery. This time she planned to go after the terrorists in order to find the system they were using and wipe it out. Cade would never agree to her plan, because she intended to take the entire IMTC out with COBRA, but in order to do that, she had find a way to get inside, convince them she was in it for the money, and that she’d been on their side all along.

As Cade entered the room at gunpoint, Rowan held her breath and acted surprised to see him.

“What’s going on,” Cade asked belligerently. “Are you working with terrorists now?”

“Abdul Jalbab, meet Cade James.” She snickered. “Funny you should mention that, Mr. James. You are aware of my family history, aren’t you?”

“Your family history has nothing to do with you.”

“No, it shouldn’t. But it’s been enough over the years to keep me in my place. Now I have the power, and I don’t even have to blow anything up.”

Rowan tapped the shoulder of the man at the console. The other guy sitting beside him with the bright white teeth grinned at her as if she were on their side.

She was acting altogether too friendly with the swarthy-looking bastards who supposedly had captured her. Or had they? Was this all part of her plan? He didn’t know anymore, not until she smiled and said, “Mr. James, I believe you had a death order out for me.”

His heart sank. Did she believe that?

Jalbab, the Arab who appeared to be the leader ordered the men on the computers to get back to work. Then he turned to Cade. “Yes, Mr. James I believe you planned to kill this poor woman. What sort of punishment should we consider for cold-blooded murder?”

Abdul wrapped his arm protectively around Rowan, and charade or not, Cade wanted to vomit. Then she sat down, seductively crossed her legs, and smiled lovingly up at the leader while she entered data on their system.

Was she being coerced into writing code for them? Cade still wasn’t sure if she was serious, bluffing, or if she had a plan.

Confused and disgusted, his mind was back under that whirlwind condition, the one where he couldn’t reason. His damn emotions kept bumping into his rational thoughts.

“Mr. James,” Rowan said, as she keyed code into their system, “I convinced them I’d earn my keep…and that you’d be worth something to them as well.”

“Me? You bitch!” he spit out. She’d been setting him up all along. He was going to kill Jason for putting him in this position, when or if he got out of this. How wrong could everyone have been about her? The whirlwind spun out of control.
Control.
He had to get it back. The
details.

She inserted the subdermal transmitter, left him code, sent Groot here to set things up…called him
Mr. James
.

He let the snide smile slide over his face and played along.

“I guess once a member of the IRA always a member of the IRA. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and no amount of education or money can change a kid from the streets of Belfast into a princess,” he taunted her. “Is that what this is all about?”

“This is about business. I’m a businesswoman. A successful businesswoman, and I sell to the highest bidder. The price is off my head the minute this deal is made.”

What was she talking about? She smiled at the Abdul as if he was the anointed. The asshole smiled back and pulled her against his body like she belonged to him. The intimacy of the act made Cade want to rip someone’s head off—precisely—Abdul’s head would do.

What the hell had she promised in return for her life and her code?

Her smile never faltered, but her eyes locked on his and then shifted to the screen. Groot nudged him from behind. Some of the code running on the screen looked familiar. Rowan was actually using her
destruct
cypher. It would destroy every bit of itself as soon as it finished running, after it sent the backup to IATO. He hoped what was on this guy’s system was important enough to risk their lives over.

The program began gaining speed and suddenly she glanced at him, warning him with a silent look. The system was about to start deleting itself. They had to get out of there before it took out all the computers and the security systems or they wouldn’t be able to get out.

Cade picked a fight with the goon holding a gun on him, and Groot broke away to send a message from his own implant to signal Mosel’s men outside.

Rowan did some cock-eyed version of a karate-jujitsu move that caught the guy off guard, and Cade got his opportunity to hit the smug bastard who’d been holding Rowan beside him with his arm possessively wrapped around her.

Mosel’s muscle popped in for a free-for-all and took control of the others. The bar fight was underway. Groot hit the escape key on the computer to prevent Rowan’s cypher from shutting down their escape route before they got trapped.

Once everyone had been rounded up and cuffed Mosel addressed the obvious. “What’s going to happen to your code?”

Cade had a more direct question. “Will they be able to reproduce it?”

“It’s safe. No way to reproduce the information. It protects itself by changing.” Rowen grinned. “I think that price on my system just went up.” She wrapped her arms around his waist.

“You know I didn’t mean what I said about—”

“Yes. You did mean it. It’s what I’d programmed into you, so if this ever happened we could let play this drama out. Sorry I didn’t tell you first, but I didn’t know how you’d react under pressure.”

“You what?”

She sort of smiled.

Cade held her away from him and stared. Every muscle in his body felt like a rubber-band ready to snap. He trembled, barely controlling his anger.

“You didn’t trust me…me with my background…to protect you?” He was feeling insulted. “I’ve been chasing around after you this whole time and what were you doing?
Testing
me?”

“Your company was willing to assassinate me.”

That was a valid argument. “Never. I would never have allowed it.”

“Fine, but how would I know? I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time, Cade.”

* * * * *

The coffee tasted good, excellent now that Rowan knew her program was safe. She wasn’t the type to talk to girlfriends. Actually, other than Jacqui she didn’t have any. So she chose the least likely confident to share her concern about Cade. Reinhardt.

“Cade’s mad at me. He  may never recover from the insult. IATO wants me to work for them, and I’m not sure what to do to make things right.”

“Don’t you have a father? Shouldn’t he be the one talking to you about this stuff?”

“My father?” She stared incredulously at him. “You know I can’t talk about this outside the system. Based on my instincts and Jacqui’s recommendation, I agreed to work this one case with Cade, but no matter how much I enjoy his touch—”

“Oh, stop right there. Too much information.”

“Okay…I vowed I’d never share my heart with any man until he managed to convince me he was one of the good guys.”

“Why me? Mosel winced at her mushy words. “That’s what worries you?”

“Yes. He is one of the good guys. One of the best.”

Reinhardt said nothing.

“Aren’t you going to argue with me?”

“No. You’re right. He is one of the good guys. It’s why the company has integrity. Jason and Emily and Cade at one time, they all answered to one man, Avery Holmes, the one who started the organization.”

“Look at my past…” She stammered her way through her thoughts. “I’ve never been good, upstanding, or completely honest…” and she didn’t know if she could start now. Not until she discovered Cade’s past.

“The guy has been a hero since he was a kid, not just the SEAL turned CIA now working in a secret international government agency. He operates independently of any particular country, but he’s always a hero.”

“And now they want you? Flaws and all? Interesting concept. But you must be asking why?”

“I am asking myself that very thing. What do they need with girl from the streets of Belfast?”

“Why did they need me?”

“You? I thought you were helping me out as a friend.”

“I was, but I work for them—always have. This time, Cade and Jason were there as IATO officials.” Mosel chuffed her under the chin. “Stop overthinking this. You aren’t all bad. You aren’t all good, either. Those are perfect qualifications to work for this organization. And Cade isn’t perfect. I’m sure you know that.”

Rowan didn’t comment. As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t found many flaws. “I guess we can work on locating Abdul’s partner and I can evaluate him.”

Mosel jerked his head up. “Evaluate, Cade? I don’t think he’s going to go for that.”

“I was joking.”

Cade’s voice filled the room. “I hope so. Because I’d hate to fall below standards with your expectations, Ms. O’Malley.”

Damn, his words had Rowan squirming in her chair. “Don’t call me—”

“I know,” he said with a sly grin. “Perhaps you should take me aside and show me exactly why I shouldn’t call you by your family name.”

“Aye. Perhaps I should.” Rowan turned away from Cade and gave him her haughtiest air before facing Mosel and saying, “If you would excuse me, I believe Mr. James needs a lesson.” She used her finger to beckon Cade to follow, and he did with a broad grin on his face. He walked past Mosel who frowned and did an eye roll.