Seek and Destroy (36 page)

    "How'd he contact them?"

    He heard Weber grinding his teeth. "Cell phone. He sent them a text."

    "Cell phone? Now we have to worry about him hacking into our calls?" Shit. Like they didn't have enough to worry about. "Did he get anything off of it?"

    "No. One of the punks tried to turn it on and fried the system. They freaked and tossed it in the dumpster. Cell phone, too."

    Why the phone? He rubbed his eyes. By tossing out the phone, they'd lost their connection with Surreal. He stopped rubbing. Unless that was exactly what they wanted. "They didn't want him finding them, right?"

    "You got it. So at least that's one less thing to worry about."

    He didn't know if that made him feel any better. None of these mistakes should have ever been made. Where the hell was his head? He knew. In his goddamn pants.

    He darted his eyes to Charis, who went back to staring at the monitors, flipping the view to take in the full devastation.

    "He was early," David mentioned. "His MO is a bomb a week. This one was four days early."

    "Then we can't go by his MO. Surreal must know you're on his trail. He panicked."

    He turned from the monitors, having viewed enough of the scene to be forever burned into his memory. If Surreal felt any danger of being caught, he'd increase his hits. Psycho assholes always did.

    "You need to step it up," Weber ordered.

    "Jesus, Weber. We started monitoring his strokes as soon as we ID'd him." Damn him for digging in like this. He felt like a pile of shit already. He didn't need his boss, his
friend
, badgering him.

    "His
what
?"

    "
Key
strokes," Charis corrected.

    "Keystrokes," he repeated into the phone. "As soon as Charis analyzed the data, she spotted that he'd hacked into the Riverside Consulting Building's system and pulled a copy of their blueprints. We moved out as fast as we could."

    "Not fast enough," he growled.

    "Face it," David admitted, more to himself than Weber. "Surreal beat us on this one. He won't do it again."

    "Let's hope not. Now, if I leave you stationary, can I count on you to keep it in your pants long enough to get this guy? You can fuck her all you want after we get this son-of-a-bitch."

    He wanted to jump through the phone and cold cock the bastard for saying something so heartless. But, then again, he had to be in his position. Following his lead, David detached himself, closed down his heart, his emotions. "Yes, sir."

    "Good. Make it happen."

    He slammed the phone closed and tossed it onto the desk. The look she threw him over that comment irritated the shit out of him. She didn't believe his comment. Well, listen up boys and girls. Here's a little fact about life.

    It sucked. It wasn't fair. No one played by the rules. If they did, innocent people wouldn't die every day. Complete strangers who couldn't give less of a shit about the people they killed wouldn't shatter lives.

    She'd paled as soon as she hacked into the video feed of the building. She still hadn't regained any of her vibrant color.

    He was a different story. He knew he had to be red. Beet red. He could tell based on the heat engulfing his neck and face.

    "I can't believe it," she muttered. "I should have been able to find it sooner."

    "It isn't your fault," he stated and moved to the board. It was
his
fault. Weber had been right. If he'd been focused on the mission and not on her, he would have been able to see the pattern. Not that he even saw the pattern now.

    And he was as focused as hell.

    "If I... If we..." She let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes. "Oh God."

    "Charis, the guy doesn't follow a pattern. We can't predict what he's going to do."

    "
I
can, David. At least I should be able to."

    Staring at the board, he barely heard her. A pattern started to stand out with the names. He continued to study it, the pattern becoming more and more distinct. He erased the names and wrote them out vertically. He spotted the pattern and didn't know whether to laugh. Or cry.

    It stood out like a neon fucking sign. Holy Shit.

    Impulse Technologies.

    Crystal Architects.

    Emergent Technologies.

    I.C.E. ICE. But it was the next grouping that gave his heart arrhythmia. He did the same with the next grouping and felt his breath hitch.

    Cascade Technological Advances.

    History of Arts.

    All City Technology.

    Riverside Consulting.

    C.H.A.R. CHAR.
Charis
.

    

    

    Charis stood there, unable to move. Breathe. Think. Still shaking, she stared at the board. How could she have not seen the pattern? It was right there.

    Thomas Macy-no, he wasn't Thomas, at least not the Thomas she remembered him to be.
Surreal
loved his acronyms. He thought them so witty. She'd told him over and over they were too easy to decipher, for him to come up with some other way to scramble his communications. Obviously he didn't listen.

    And still she'd missed it.

    He'd tried to hack into ICE's system after she locked him out. She knew he would and had been ready for him. When he penetrated the first two layers, she immediately started a backwards trace on him. She had to admit, he'd been clever. He skipped his IP so many times in a minute her system couldn't keep up with him.

    She'd been so preoccupied with stopping him she didn't see the message he'd left. After trying to break into ICE for nearly two months, he'd given up and moved to a more accessible target. The Impulse Technologies Building in San Antonio took the brunt of his anger, or so she'd thought.

    When he took out the Crystal Architectural Firm in Oakland, she'd been baffled as to why. Impulse had been a technology firm. Not that that justified them to deserve a terrorist attack, but it at least followed a pattern.

    The architectural firm had thrown her for a loop. She had no idea he'd chosen it simply based on its name. When he'd gone after Emergent Technologies in St. Paul, she thought she'd picked his pattern back up.

    It had been a fluke she'd found him at all. It had nothing to do with locating the source of his IP. It had everything to do with her dumb luck. Surreal fell back to what he knew. He knew Montana, having grown up not too far from her. He'd told her about a cabin his parents owned. It was completely secluded. If he ever needed to get away, he'd told her, he'd go there.

    So she decided to see if he, indeed, did seek out seclusion in his parent's cabin. When she told her superiors at ICE about the cabin and its location, they immediately sent her in. She argued how she didn't do field work, but it didn't do any good. They'd told her she was the only one Surreal would talk to, and they were out of time.

    If she'd only been able to e-track him better. Faster. They would have sent in a field agent. It had been right up NASSD's alley. They would have known to look for booby traps. They wouldn't have tripped a wire and detonated the landmine that almost took her life, let alone her leg.

    Since that fateful day, she'd spent almost five years perfecting her system so that, if she ever got the chance again, she'd be able to find anyone. Anywhere. No way would another rogue agent, or anyone else for that matter, ever slip through her fingers. And all from the safety of her computer. No more fieldwork. No more bombs.

    She eyed the names of the buildings now destroyed, thanks to Surreal. Why her? Why would he blow buildings up at all? Was this payback for what she'd done to him? She'd gotten him arrested, banned from ICE or any other government agency for the rest of his life.

    Oh God. Shuddering, she closed her eyes. All those people. Their lives either lost or permanently altered. Destroyed. And for what? What did she ever do to him to warrant this kind of revenge?

    "Anything?" David came in and stood behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back against him. His breath felt warm against her chilly neck. It drew a wash of goose bumps across her flesh.

    She knew what she had to do, and it broke her heart. Loving him so deeply, so completely was supposed to make her happy. Instead, knowing she'd have to push him away, to break all contact with him, made her utterly miserable.

    Love sucked.

    The tears threatening to fall all day surfaced again, and it had nothing to do with the latest attack. Okay, it had
everything
to do with the latest attack. If he hadn't discovered the pattern. If Surreal hadn't resurfaced. If she hadn't gone to Hawaii.

    If she didn't have a heart.

    And right now it felt like it had shattered in a million pieces, each one full of so much anguish it hurt to breathe. The tightness in her chest threatened to rob her of her last thread of composure.

    She stiffened and wrapped her arms around her torso to stop herself from spinning and throwing her arms around him, hold him tight and never let him go.

    Knowing she'd only be pulling him deeper into danger, she resisted. Wanting,
needing
his comfort, and knowing she'd never have it again only added to the anchored weight in her heart.

    As if having Surreal resurfacing didn't cause enough chaos, the fact he blew up buildings as some sort of message to her specifically only solidified that sinking feeling she had in the depths of her soul all day.

    Her time with the one man she truly loved had come to an abrupt, cruel end. Not only had their relationship, at least what they had of one, cost them at a very crucial point in the mission, it would continue to wreak havoc every step of the way. When they were together, the rest of the world disappeared. Since their job was to protect the world, they had no choice.

    Besides, if Surreal had it out for her, she was a marked woman. He blew up buildings all in her name, so he'd have no problem going after her personally.

    She refused to put David in danger like that. If she really loved him-and she really
did
love him-she'd have to learn to live with the disappointment.

    If you love something, dig a hole. Wasn't that how it went? It never made much sense to her, but then again none of the clichés ever did.

    Damn Surreal for putting something like this on her conscience. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought back the tears.

    Oh, David.

    Turning from the board, she went back to her monitors. Work. Work would make all the pain go away. She'd worked endless hours while nursing her leg back to health. It helped pass the time, even made the pain a little more bearable.

    God, she couldn't wait for this pain to become bearable. Right now it almost blinded her. Sinking down in her chair, she drew in and let out a deep sigh.

    Surreal had been extraordinarily quiet over the past several hours. But, of course, why wouldn't he be? No doubt blowing up a server room and killing innocent people took a lot out of a person.

    "Why don't you take a break?"

    She started to analyze the last hour's data. If she added a few more algorithms to analyze his tracks, she just might discover his next move.

    "Charis."

    "I'm going to find him," she declared. "Maybe if I ran a search on possible targets, we'd find him before he hits again."

    "We can't post guards at every building with a name that fits the profile. We can't predict his next move."

    Oh yes she could. This might work. Her heart rate picked up. Her vision cleared, as did her mind. She'd make this work. "I can create an algorithm to weed out improbable targets. I can run a binary switch and use that same algorithm to identify those with a higher probability of being selected by Surreal as a target."

    Her fingers flew over the keyboard. The trick would be to add the correct arrays in order to retrieve the data without pulling any false positives. Sucking her lower lip in between her teeth, she went to work.

    "O-kaaay." He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. She wished he didn't have to sit so close to her. She smelled him again. Her fingers slowed. "I have no idea what you just said."

    She smiled. God how she loved the way-stop it! Focus, Charis. "Basically, I'm going to write a program to find Surreal before he strikes again."

    The grin he gave her melted her heart. She held her breath until the urge to cry passed.

    "Now that," his grin widened, "I understand."

    

    

    David pulled another drink off his beer before setting it back down in its ring of condensation. He rolled the bottom of the bottle along the ring to occupy his time and keep his focus on something other than the fact they hadn't been able to pick up a hint of Surreal for almost two days.

    He had cabin fever. Having never run surveillance via a computer and nothing else, he felt helpless. And antsy as hell. He needed something to do.

    He glanced around the kitchen as he leaned back, his elbows on the counter. The living room in front of him felt small, as did the rest of the house. With his calculations that, to date, still had not failed him, he'd say the house was a little over twelve hundred square feet. Twelve hundred and thirty four, to be exact.

    The Miles Anthony black and whites she'd told him about in Hawaii hung on the farthest wall, perfectly placed, the black frames offsetting the photos and adding just the right accent. He traced the room to see if he'd missed anything the first time he'd been in it.