Flirting with Danger (12 page)

Garth nodded as his contact appeared to give him a positive response.

“Come to the Four Seasons with your bag of tricks. Room five-nineteen. We’ll need a small attachment for a portable hard drive.” Garth made a hand motion to Skye.

She quickly unzipped her backpack, withdrew the box and walked to hand it over to Garth. He took the black item, turned it over in his hands a few times, studying it intently.

“Yeah, yeah keep your shirt on, I’m looking for that now. Okay, it’s a regular black device, USB connections and a two-point-oh series. There’s not enough time to make it external, so we will need to clip it to the connecting wires I’m thinking. Bring a couple of plugs that will be compatible with your baby. If we add an encryption device so that when they power the box up it merely scrambles the data instead of destroying it that will suffice for our needs. Make the encryption as difficult as you can in the time frame.”

Garth remained silent. Skye waited beside him, unwilling to lose her only connection to her father. After a moment he turned the box in his hands again and found a serial number.

He read the series of digits out and nodded.

“Yep, that sounds good. This is a delaying tactic. It’s imperative whatever you choose to do doesn’t destroy the box or the data stores within it. Am I clear?” Garth paused again and smiled. “Exactly, it will be your balls I fry for dinner if this blows up in my face. Oh. And if you can lay a passive tracking device in the wire I’ll double the amount I pay you. It has to be passive, for at least twenty-four hours. Even then, if it can be discreet, on a low frequency maybe, I’ll make it worth your while.”

Garth laughed as Dave said something he found humorous.

“Of course I’ll need a receiver or tracker of some sort, this isn’t my first day on the job you imbecile.”

Dave spoke again and Garth chuckled.

“Just be here with all of that inside the hour or you lose a per cent a minute. I warned you this was a rush job.”

Garth said his farewells and hung up the phone. For the first time since she’d seen the man enter the restaurant, Skye felt the tension in her stomach start to relent. This crazy plan might actually work. She never could have guessed.

Taking the hard drive from Garth, she returned to her seat next to Jack and zipped it back up in her backpack.

“Dave will be here soon with everything we need. He’s good, an old friend from my uni days. He’s not my most discreet contact, but he’s the quickest and one of the best. It’s a calculated risk but, since we should have Victor back in a few hours, discretion isn’t integral to the mission—speed and accuracy are.”

Skye nodded.

“I appreciate this, Garth.”

“Now do you mind explaining what’s been going on, Miss Adams?” Katherine interjected, her hands on her hips and one foot tapping against the carpeted floor. “I suggest you start back at the beginning and leave nothing out. It seems I should have detained you back at the restaurant and not Garth here.”

Skye smiled. Despite her clear aggravation, there was no menace or acid in the other woman’s tone. She appeared frustrated and on edge, but not angry. Skye shot a quick look at Jack, who merely nodded at her.

“Well,” Skye started, “last week was my birthday. When Daddy discovered he wouldn’t be around to take me out to dinner, he promised me lunch at this new Thai restaurant we’ve both been meaning to try out.”

She had no intention of revealing everything that had occurred, and she still didn’t think she’d share her doubts about Garth, but Skye saw no harm in updating Katherine—and thus the Agency—on the basics of the last twenty-four hours. With almost an hour on their hands, going over her story would help pass the time.

Skye settled comfortably next to Jack, the warmth of his body pressed against the length of her own, and recapped the last day’s excitement.

* * * *

“So you have no idea who Victor suspects is the mole?” Katherine spoke with clear scepticism.

Skye shrugged.

“I’ve explained how busy I’ve been lately. In great detail, I might add. When have I had time to interview people at the Agency?” Skye answered obliquely.

Skye studiously kept her gaze on the woman and didn’t glance at Garth. A knock sounded at the door and instantly the tension level in the room skyrocketed. Skye immediately shoved a hand inside her handbag, her grip closing around the handle of the small lady’s gun. Jack whipped his own gun out of his holster and turned his body to the side so he was shielding her from whoever was standing outside the door.

In other circumstances Skye would have been amused. A part of her brain sat back in awe at how a bit of tension and an unknown person outside the hotel room door instantly had her drawing a weapon that twenty-four hours ago she’d not even owned. A part of her wondered if her father would even recognise her when they had him back safely.

“Yes?” Garth called out, his body to the side of the door. Skye frowned and it took her a minute to work out why he wasn’t standing behind the door itself, ready to open it. If someone with a shotgun—or a rocket launcher—waited on the other end and blasted through the door, Garth would remain relatively unscathed, standing to the side as he was.

The things she was learning on this adventure boggled Skye’s mind.

“Garth, it’s me man, Dave. Open up. I only have five minutes left of that timeline you gave me. If I’m late and it’s your fault, I’m charging interest.”

Garth’s stance relaxed as he seemed to recognise either the tone or word choice of the other man. He opened the door and peered out cautiously, checking up and down the hallway to make sure his contact was alone.

A slender, scrawny young man with a mop of brown hair entered the room, a satchel-like bag slung across his chest. Skye watched as he took a quick measure of the room before heading over to the coffee table. A swift motion had the strap of his satchel lifting above his head and his bag landing on the wooden table with a thump. Dave opened his bag and began to remove electronic devices efficiently.

“You said you were in a rush?” he commented without looking at any of them. Garth had closed the door and had come closer to them. He nodded at Skye. She removed the hard drive from her backpack, stood up and deposited it in front of Dave.

“We need it to be functional enough to placate another group of people,” she reminded the tech. “They seem to know what’s on it and logic dictates they should be able to access the data on here to verify it’s legitimate. Having said that, the more complicated you make the encryption, the longer they have to spend to interpret the data, the better it will be for us. Will that be a problem?”

“Trust me, curls, this is child’s play for me. I can do this in my sleep.”

Satisfied, Skye returned to sit next to Jack on the couch and watched Dave with interest. The young man had pulled out a bunch of sleek, metallic devices she couldn’t begin to guess the uses of. Some looked like cylinders, others small adapters and box-like shiny probes, with pins to attach them to other things.

It was a cylindrical metal box Dave picked up from his pile. It was roughly the size of a ballpoint pen. Opening it, he carefully removed a tiny metal ring about the size of a fingertip. In one hand he lifted the hard drive and peered intently at the output plugs. Nodding, seeming happy, Dave replaced the hard drive on the table.

He dug once more into his satchel and withdrew two cords, one with a USB connection, the other a power cord. He carefully inserted both into the hard drive, satisfied when they connected perfectly.

“Okay,” he began to speak in a quick tone as his hands remained busy. A pair of pliers appeared from nowhere and he began to remove the plastic outer casing of the USB connection with a delicate efficiency Skye found mesmerising.

“This little beauty is next gen. I know you only ever want the best, Garth, and, trust me, when you see my bill for having lifted it, you’re going to weep. It’s a combination tracker-encryptor and will blow your Agency techs’ minds when you explain what I’m doing here.”

As Dave spoke he stripped a section of the plastic casing from the cord and attached the small ring around the outside of the wires. Squeezing the ring tightly closed he used his other hand to dig in his satchel again and remove a tiny tube of adhesive glue. With quick motions he fit the removed plastic casing back around the wires and started to repair the damage with the clear liquid paste.

“The fibre optics in that baby will network with the connecting wires in the USB cord. They should be untraceable. As your goons download from the hard drive the ring will encrypt the data so everything they download will take them days, if not weeks, to unlock.”

Skye watched, amazed, as the scene unfolded before her eyes. She could hardly believe something so small, so simple, would create such havoc.

“How does it act as a tracking device?” Katherine asked. She didn’t sound convinced to Skye. “Garth insisted it be passive. Any fool with a brain cell in their head would sweep the living hell out of the hard drive for explosives and tracking devices. That’s useless to us if they discover it before we get what we need from them.”

Dave lifted his head and glared at the agent, not amused in the least.

“I’m not a novice here. I understood Garth perfectly when we spoke earlier. The ring is passive when it isn’t plugged into a power outlet. As long as your goons check it by itself you’re fine. Even when it’s connected to a computer or power source—which I imagine they won’t risk doing in your presence—it simply sends out a small signal over a specific frequency. It would be almost impossible for them to detect it.”

Katherine nodded curtly but didn’t speak further.

Dave sighed and shook his head.

“As long as you monitor the frequency I’ll give you, it should be a simple matter for you to hone in on its output. But, since you specified it had to be passive, you’ll only be able to do so while the hard drive is connected and being powered. It’s a delicate balance between keeping something subtle enough so the bad guys can’t detect it and active enough for you to trace. It’s the best I can do and I believe it’s a damn sight better than anyone else on your tech team could come up with at such short notice.”

Skye stirred from her place on the couch as Dave finished reattaching the plastic casing and checked the integrity of the device he’d just implanted for them.

“I appreciate your help,” she remarked. “Especially considering we gave you no notice. I have to admit I’m impressed.”

Dave glanced at her then cast a wary glance at Jack. The young man grinned and shrugged his shoulder casually, accepting her thanks.

“You’re either new, or not Agency,” he commented wryly. “This is easy, nothing really. This time out in Tanzania, Garth and I were stranded in one of this group’s underground refugee camps. We had nothing but an old crystal radio set and an electric toothbrush I’d managed to salvage. We hooked it up to a—”

“I really don’t think Skye needs to hear our old war stories,” Garth insisted, as Katherine shot him an evil glare. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the lift. You’ve really come through for us, Dave. I owe you man.”

Dave raked a hand through his hair and collected his gear, shovelling it back into his satchel. He grinned and winked at Skye, who struggled not to laugh. The man was incorrigible. Skye had the random thought that he’d started to tell the story purely to push Garth’s buttons. She couldn’t help but like the vivacious man.

“Been a pleasure, as always,” Dave insisted with a wicked grin. He cheerily threw a mock salute to Katherine and Tarek, waved to Jack and Skye and left the room, Garth trailing him and pulling out his wallet as the door closed behind them. Skye took a deep breath and moved to the coffee table, lifting the small hard drive into her hand and examining the work Dave had so simply done. Under close observation she could see the tiny marks where the plastic casing had been cut away and re-glued, but it simply looked as if something had dinted the plastic, not as if it had been tampered with.

Besides, who looked at a USB cord in such detail? Skye felt certain it would pass any scrutiny her father’s kidnappers gave it. She could hardly believe the time was almost here to meet their enemy and continue with the exchange. Butterflies twisted nervously in her stomach. With a quick glance to Katherine and Tarek, Skye picked up her backpack and placed the hard drive into the bottom of her bag again.

“I think we should take that,” Katherine insisted. Skye shook her head.

“Not a chance. My father’s captors expect Jack and I at the scene. This is my responsibility. You, your partner and Garth are only along for the ride.”

The door beeped as Garth used his key card to let himself back into the room.

Katherine threw him an exasperated glance.

“Garth, please tell Miss Adams that we should be doing the exchange and not her. This is not a matter for a civilian to get messed up in. This should—”

“Civilian!” Skye repeated, outraged. “I’ll have you know, Miss…whatever the hell your name is, that we two civilians not only discovered where my father hid this damn hard drive, but we are his only hope at being exchanged. You and your bloody Agency so far as I can see have not even lifted a finger in attempting his return. No wonder Dad doesn’t trust any of you as far as he could toss you. You’ve got leaks all over the place, a mole selling you all out to the highest bidder and a threat to national security. Not to mention—”

“That’s enough!” Tarek shouted. His outburst was so far out of her experience of him thus far that his interjection succeeded in halting her tirade. He smiled at her, seeming pleased by her compliance.

“We’re agreed that there are a few, erm, minor issues back at headquarters just now, but that doesn’t mean we’re playing for different teams. Protecting Queen and country is what we are all still trying to do, albeit in our own ways. Let’s keep that in mind,” he reminded them all.

Skye deflated, her outrage washed away, and she nodded.

“I think Skye and I should lead the exchange.” Jack broke the silence lying thick in the air of the room. “It’s what they will be expecting and shouldn’t make anyone trigger happy. They will likely also assume we will have backup. The park is large so you should all be able to maintain at least a few hundred metres’ distance away from us to be backup, but not make anyone shoot us for double crossing them.”