Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (20 page)

Ted hadn’t heard
another word from Catrina all day. He didn’t know if he still had a job or not.
It was probably best if he kept up the investigation. Suddenly, it was
immensely important to him not to let his boss down.

He parked the
white delivery van in front of a well landscaped two-story house in the
fashionable Redmond neighborhood. He had carefully selected this house.

This time he had
selected Eastside Plumber signs for the van.

Sliding out of the
driver’s seat, he crouched over and made his way to the back of the van. His
lap top was on a shelf along the sidewall. He pulled up a chair, took the lid
off of his Starbucks cup and made himself comfortable. This might be a long
night.

He booted the laptop
and searched for wireless networks. As on several previous evenings, he saw
“The Dragon’s Lair” on the list of available home networks. Somehow, the name
seemed appropriate for Richard Freeman’s wireless network.

It suited Ted’s
sense of irony to hack into Freeman’s network. The real question was, what in
the hell was Freeman thinking? He, of all, people should know the
vulnerabilities of a wireless network. Ted had to admit that the password had
been tough to crack, he wondered why his attempts didn’t set off alarms, but
eventually he got it.

By now, Ted had
the drill down. He opened a VPN into the Millennium Systems network and logged
in as “sysadmin.” He poked around. Something was different. The IP addresses he
had used before didn’t respond.

He ran a quick
survey and found that the network had been totally re-addressed. It didn’t take
long to find the Finance sub-net. He quickly broke through the firewall and
started scanning the file systems.

It dawned slowly
on Ted. Something wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t like the last time. It was
too easy. Why were MS’s defenses so weak? They were a world-class technology
company. And the server count, there had to be less than two hundred. That was
more like a mid-size company than one of the largest computer companies in the
world. He would have expected to see thousands of servers.

Caramba!
Maybe this
baboso
Freeman wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Ted tried
pushing past the servers he could see. Where were all of the other corporate
servers? He had been in HR before, but it didn’t look anything like this. He
couldn’t find the files he had copied from the Finance servers before.

“Shit. It’s a
trap.”

Ted hit the power
button on his laptop and shut it down.

“They’re on to
me.” How long had he been logged in? Could they have traced him? And what would
they have learned?

Only that Richard
Freeman was hacking into their network. That would give the SOB something to
think about in the morning.

But the important
question was, why were they waiting for him? Had they discovered his previous
intrusions or was this just a new security effort.

He needed to talk
to someone about honey pots. Bear. He’d give Bear a call in the morning. Bear
would know how to deal with this.

Ted slid back into
the driver’s seat and started the van. He put it in gear and pulled away from
the curb. As he turned the corner, the lights on a dark Dodge Charger came on.
The Dodge turned the corner and followed Ted at a distance.

****

“Saddle up,
Higurea. I need backup.” Catrina stormed across the office, hardly slowing down
to shout at Ted. Did this mean he was forgiven?

She was in her
Wonder Woman outfit. Black jeans, black boots. Ted loved the black turtleneck
sweater that showed off her rack. What he didn’t love was the Glock nine mil
strapped to her waist.

“Hold on, Cat.
Where’s the fire?”

“We’re working
tonight. Jessie Madison.” Catrina grabbed the emergency kit with first aid
supplies, food, water and teddy bears as she headed towards the door. “Her
husband beat her again. We’re doing an extraction tonight when he goes to
work.”

She was gone. Ted
stood and stared at the door a minute.

“You better get a
move on, Mr. Higuera.” Abeba put her hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Mrs. Flaherty
doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Maybe he still had
a job.

****

“Where’s Jeff?
Doesn’t he normally do this kind of stuff with you?” Ted slid into the
passenger side of the burgundy Ford Explorer.

“Jeff’s on another
case tonight. We can’t leave Jessie in that house another day. If we don’t get
her out of there, that bastard’ll kill her.” Catrina turned the key in the
ignition and shoved the gear shift lever into reverse.

“Bring me up to
speed.” At least she was talking to him again, even if it was only because she
needed backup on this job. “Who is Jessie Madison and what’re we doing?”

“Jessie’s the
mother of two kids, a five-year old boy and a two-year old girl. Her husband,
Jim, is SPD. He’s working a night watch out of Wallingford tonight. He beat
Jessie up before he left for his shift. We’ve got to get her out of there and
into a safe house before he gets off duty.”

Catrina didn’t pay
much attention to traffic laws as she sped out of the industrial district of
South Seattle and onto I-5 northbound. Weaving in and out of rush hour traffic
on the freeway, she constantly swore and banged her hand on the steering wheel as
other drivers cut her off or went too slow.

She took the Forty-Fifth
Street exit and headed west. After making a right turn on Bagley Avenue she
flew up the quiet residential street much faster than was safe. Ted hung on. He
was used to wild rides, but there was a determined anger in Catrina’s driving.

Just before the
street dead ended at Meridian Park, Catrina pulled into the driveway of a
one-story clapboard house surrounded by boxwood hedges.

“C’mon, let’s go.
This has to be fast.” She leapt out of the door.

Ted ran to keep
up.

Catrina knocked
twice, then opened the door.

“Jessie, are you
OK?”

Jessie Madison, a
petite brunette sat hunched over on the sofa, crying. A young child sat on each
side of her.

Catrina kneeled in
front of Jessie. “Jess, hon, it’s going to be all right.” She gently lifted
Jessie’s chin.

Ted caught his
breath. Jessie’s face was a mess. Her left eye was swollen shut. Blood dripped
from her cracked lips.

“C’mon. Let’s get
you cleaned up.” Catrina gently lifted Jessie to her feet. “Ted, keep an eye on
the road. If that filthy SOB comes back, I want to know about it.”

For the first
time, Ted had second thoughts about “that filthy SOB.” Jessie’s husband was a
cop. They could get into real trouble crossing the SPD. The guy carried a gun
and had a temper.
What in the hell is Señora Higuera’s little boy doing
here?

A painful cry came
from the bathroom. Ted looked over his shoulder. Should he go help or stick to
his post? Cat knew what she was doing. This wasn’t the first time she had done
an extraction. He better do as he was told.

“The bastard.”
Catrina led Jessie back into the living room and seated her on the sofa. “Her
arm’s broken.”

“Jesus, Cat. What
do we do?”

“We get them out
of here. Now!”

The children were
crying at full volume. Catrina picked up the little girl. “Hi, honey. My name’s
Cat. What’s yours?”

The girl wailed.
The little boy clung to his mother like a baby orangutan.

“We need to get a
few things for them. Ted, find a bag, one change of clothes for each of the
kids. Don’t bother with toothbrushes or toiletries. We don’t need any clothes
for Jessie. They’ll have those where we’re going. Find a couple of toys for the
kids, bears, dolls, something like that, something that they’re familiar with.
But hurry.”

Ted jumped into
action. He found a duffle bag in the immaculately clean master bed room. Not a
thing was out of place, not a wrinkle in the bed or pillows. The clothes in the
closet neatly arranged, freshly pressed shirts hung next to blue uniforms.

In the kids’
rooms, he grabbed a few clothes, a teddy bear, a stuffed tiger and a wooden
Tommy the Tank engine. Back in the living room, Catrina had already fashioned a
make shift sling for Jessie’s arm.

“Okay, Cat. Got
it. Let’s get out of here.”

“You go first.
Make sure there’s no one watching on the street. When you’ve put the bag in the
car, come back for Jimmy.”

Ted ran to the SUV
and tossed the duffle in the cargo area. He quickly checked to make sure the
two child seats were secure, then glanced around the neighborhood.

Nothing seemed out
of place. Kids were playing in a yard down the street. A woman watered her
flower beds. A man worked on a ladder against his house.

What he didn’t
notice was the dark-colored Dodge Charger with two men in the front seat parked
in the next block. He was still new to this game.

“We’re clear.
Let’s go.” He ran back into the house. “Jimmy, you want to come with me?” He
pried the crying boy free from his mother and headed for the door.

Catrina carried
the girl and helped the mother up.

Jessie climbed
painfully into the middle back seat, while Ted and Catrina strapped her
children in the car seats next to her.

Ted slid into the
passenger seat as Catrina fired up the Explorer.

This time, Catrina
drove with extreme caution, slowly backing out into the street, driving the residential
neighborhood at a sedate pace.

They turned left
onto Forty-fifth and headed for the freeway. Catrina constantly scanned the
rearview mirrors.

“I was worried
there for a minute.” Her voice was tense. “I thought we were being followed.
That Dodge Charger followed us down Forty-Fifth, but it went straight when we
turned onto the freeway.”

****

Catrina exited at Stewart Street and turned left onto Denny Way. Taking the Denny Overpass, she climbed Capitol
Hill.

“Where’re we
headed, Cat?” Ted was confused. “I thought that the safe house was in the
Central District.”

“Just being
careful. I don’t want to take a direct route. Just in case I missed a tail.”

Turning right onto
Broadway, they slowed in traffic.

Suddenly Catrina
floored the throttle. The Burgundy Explorer roared and jumped forward.

“Shit. They’re
back.”

Ted looked over
his shoulder. Accelerating behind them was a dark-colored Dodge Charger. “Who
are those guys?”

“Don’t know, don’t
care. We need to get out of here.” Catrina drove like a wild woman. She wove in
and out of traffic, ignored traffic signals, swerved into the oncoming traffic
lane to get around slow cars and shot forward in any opening.

“Shit, Cat.” Ted
couldn’t believe the pickup the Explorer had. “What do you have in here?”

“The biggest,
baddest V-8 you’ve ever seen.” She hit the brake and turned hard. The Dodge
shot past the turn.

“Gotcha.” She
floored the accelerator and shot down the street, making a hard right at the
next corner. “We’re going to lose them.”

“
Mierda
.
There’s two of them, Cat.” Ted watched as a Chevy Malibu’s tires screeched as
it made the turn after them and followed.

“Tag team. Police
tactics. Those have got to be her husband’s friends. Let’s get out of here.”
Catrina shot through intersections at dizzying speed. The Explorer went
airborne as they hit bumps in the road.

The Malibu kept the pace. Something exploded the side-view mirror next to Ted.

“Shit. Cat,
they’re shooting at us.”

Catrina smiled.
“They’re going to have to do better than that.”

A bullet slammed
into the rear window. Ted covered his head, but the glass didn’t shatter.

Suddenly, Ted was
back with Chris and Meagan on the sail boat. The terrorists were shooting at
them. He saw the bullet hit Chris’ chest in slow motion. Chris was jerked from
his feet and crumpled in the corner of the cockpit. Meagan shoved Ted aside,
only to be met by a hail of bullets.

He froze. Sweat
cascaded down his brow. His heart ran wild.

“Higuera. Higuera!
Are you in there?”

Somewhere from far,
far away he heard her voice. Like a life line, Catrina pulled him back to
reality.

“Higuera? You okay?”

“Yeah.” Ted
struggled to catch his breath. “I’ll make it.”

“Well, heads up,
I’m going to need you.”

This time, a burst
of bullets hit the back of the Explorer.

“They have a MAC
10 or something.” Cat looked up into the rearview mirror. “They’ve given up on
their pistols.”

Everything was a
blur. Horns honked, cars pulled onto the sidewalk to get out of the way. People
screamed. “Shit!” Ted’s breathing came fast and short. “This happens on TV, not
it real life.”

Bullets splattered
against the back of the SUV, stitched a line across the rear window.

“I don’t get it.”
Ted could hardly breathe. “Why doesn’t the glass break? Why don’t those bullets
get through the back door? What the hell kind of a truck is this?”

Catrina grinned.
“It would take an anti-tank missile to stop this thing. I had it custom built.
By the same people who build the presidential limousines.”

The Explorer
jumped, then the ride became bumpy. “They’ve shot out a tire,” Catrina yelled,
but kept going. “There are steel disks inside the tires. That won’t slow us
down.”

She hit the brake
and the Malibu sped along side of them. The passenger grinned and pointed his
MAC 10 directly at Catrina.

Catrina swung the
wheel to the left, crashing into the Chevy. The driver swerved left and crashed
into a car at the curb. Catrina accelerated and turned a hard right at the next
intersection.

“I don’t see the
other car.” Ted looked all around them. “I think you’ve lost them.”

Catrina didn’t
slow down.