Page 13 of Tango (Hunt Brothers Search & Rescue #4)

Alice

“ W hat are we looking at?” I question as I step up behind Tucker.

Neither of them has said a word since they read whatever message came through on their phones. Tucker just grabbed his laptop and took a seat at the dining room table while Dylan moved to his right side.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Tucker replies, then pulls up an email with a video attached. I lean in closer as he makes the video larger, only to find myself staring down at security footage from Web Safe.

“That’s the server room,” I reply. It’s grainy. But I’d know that room anywhere. Hope surges through my system. Are we about to find proof that someone is dirty? Is this somehow going to free me from running for my life?

Tucker hits play.

Seconds tick by with nothing, and then—Ramiro sprints into view of the camera. No. Grief hits me square in the chest, nearly knocking me back a step. This is from the day he died.

I come into view of the camera, dark hair braided tightly over my shoulder.

“That’s not right,” I say. “My hair wasn’t braided.” Even as I speak, I watch in absolute horror as the video version of me raises her weapon at Ramiro and fires. Bang. Bang.

He falls backward onto the ground, hitting it while I raise the gun in my hand toward the camera, and fire again.

The screen goes blank.

The whole thing takes all of five seconds, but those seconds contain the power to erase my entire life. Even though the only truth is that we were in the server room together the night he died.

“No. That’s not right.” I step back.

Dylan and Tucker both turn toward me, their expressions furious, as though I’m enemy number one.

“Looked pretty clear to me,” Dylan says. “You killed your friend. I wouldn’t want to tell the truth about it, either. You had to know that we’d figure it out though. So what was your plan?”

Tucker is quiet.

“No. None of that is right. My hair wasn’t braided.

I had a former foster mom who braided it so tight my brain felt like it was going to pop, so I never braid my hair.

I hate it. And I would never have hurt Ramiro.

Someone manipulated that video. You have to believe me.

” My voice cracks with barely contained emotion.

Tucker doesn’t answer, just shifts his attention back to the phone. “The email was forwarded to Ramiro’s uncle from someone at Web Safe. It’s being sent to the police right now, which means every agency in the country is coming for you.”

My stomach churns, nausea burning me up. This cannot be happening. They’re framing me so they can bury the potential data breach. “This cannot be happening,” I mutter aloud. “Give me that video, and I’ll prove it’s a fake.”

“Hand over evidence to you so you can manipulate it? Not a chance,” Dylan replies.

I glare at him. “If I’d killed Ramiro, do you really think I would have gone back to save my parents? Or that I would have let both of you walk in here?”

Dylan turns to Tucker. “Any sign that video was tampered with?”

“I need my desktop. It has better computing power.”

“Where is it? Let’s go get it,” I say, desperate to get to the bottom of this. I adore Ramiro’s family. And now they’re all going to think I murdered him.

“In Texas.”

“Oh.” Of course it is. Which means I’ll have to trust them enough to leave this place with them. “Is that where my parents are?”

“Yes.” Tucker looks at Dylan.

“I didn’t kill him.”

“You understand that this footage says otherwise, right? And unless I can prove you didn’t kill him?—”

“If you prove it’s legitimate, then feel free to turn me in. But I’m telling you that it’s not. And if you can’t prove it, I can. I’m betting my life on it.” Panic thrums through my veins. I need them to believe me. Because if they don’t, I’ll lose the only semi-allies I have in this fight.

If the leak that Ramiro found is as bad as he seemed to think it is, it will cost thousands of lives—at least—and bankrupt more businesses than I can count.

And that’s only the beginning.

“How about you tell us the rest of the story,” Tucker says. “Then we’ll decide where to go from there.”

“Fine. Okay.” They’ll believe me when they hear it…

right? They have to. My gaze shifts to Dylan, who’s eyeing me as though I’m going to jump at him and yell “boo!” any minute now.

I try to think back to where I was before the email, finally remembering we were just approaching what Ramiro came to tell me.

“As I said, Ramiro was visibly upset and distracted. I asked him to elaborate, but he told me we had to go inside to talk. That it wasn’t safe out on the street.

So we did. Once we got into my apartment, he went through and unplugged my computer, television, router, any electronic device that was plugged into the wall.

Then, he took my cell and his cell phone, as well as both of my laptops, and shoved them into Faraday bags he’d brought with him. ”

“So he was paranoid,” Tucker comments.

“Very. The only things left plugged in were my lamps and appliances. He even went through with an RF detector and checked for bugs. Interestingly enough, he found three of them hidden in two of my lights and an electrical outlet.”

“Your apartment had been bugged?”

“Yes. To be honest, had he not found anything, I probably wouldn’t have believed him. It seemed so outrageous at the time.” I rub the heel of my palm against my chest as the image of him lying dead assaults me again.

“Any idea who would have placed the bugs and why?”

“To be honest, I haven’t even had the time to give it any thought.

Everything spiraled from there, and a place I’m not staying at the moment wasn’t high on my priority list.” I take a deep breath and then continue.

“Uh, he told me that he’d been out with two of the guys we work with, and they’d told him that they’d found two security threats that popped up overnight. ”

“Doesn’t that happen all the time? Isn’t that the purpose of companies like Web Safe?” Dylan questions.

“Sure. But these two hits were identical and had been placed in two different companies with nothing in common. Low-level ones too. They were protecting nothing more than basic employee information.”

Dylan continues staring at me like I grew a third head.

“A hacker is going to typically target similar companies. Two separate hackers will have different coding techniques. It’s like a thumbprint,” Tucker says.

“Exactly,” I reply. “And why bypass higher-profile companies with more important information? Ramiro thought that maybe it was a test. They were trying to see if they would get caught. But the next day, he said he patched three more breaches, all with the same code, all formulated at the same time. He tried to trace the origin location of the attack but kept hitting a wall. Which is why he came to me. He believed that someone in Web Safe might have been selling access to hackers. They punch a hole in the security, the hacker gets in, and then they seal it back up. He wanted me to write code that would prevent the hole from ever being punched.”

“Did you help him?”

“Of course. He was frantic. There were bugs in my apartment. Things were looking incredibly suspicious. So I changed, and we drove over to Web Safe. I logged into my computer and opened up the companies he claimed had been patched. But there was no sign anything had gotten into the system. There was no patch work.”

“Patch work?” Dylan questions.

“Coding to repair the breach,” Tucker replies.

“Yeah. There was no sign that anyone had ever tried to access the information. Which, of course, made Ramiro even more paranoid. The only way that would happen is if someone who knew our coding language repaired it. But there was no log of it in the system.”

“You keep all the records?”

“Every breach. Every patch. Full transparency,” I reply.

“It’s possible that the repair was done by the night crew—they tend to not update records until right before they leave—but Ramiro was insistent.

So, with all of those pieces, I did what any good friend would do, and I tried to prove him right, hoping that I would, in turn, prove him wrong and put his mind at ease. ”

“Seems like a lot of panic over something that you deal with on a daily basis,” Tucker comments.

“Which is exactly what I thought too. Even considering the bugs in my apartment. I mean, that could have been anyone trying to get access to our clients. It’s happened before, and our security has handled it.”

“Employees have had their apartments bugged?” Dylan questions then shares a look with Tucker.

“Yes. A time or two. We deal with the type of accounts that would crumble the economy if they’re breached. And that’s not even including the military contracts or law enforcement information we protect. We’re a target. It’s just understood.”

Dylan shrugs.

“Anyway, as I was trying to find any trace of the hack, a door opened, and our head of security—a man by the name of Wilbur Huck—and one of our lower-level bug chasers, as we call them—Shawn Brackers—came into the room. Normally, that’s not a big deal.

We have a skeleton crew that monitors the systems at night.

But Ramiro panicked, turned off my monitor, and tugged me under the desk. ”

Dylan and Tucker exchange a look, but they don’t say anything, so I continue.

“While we were under there, Wilbur told Shawn that it was time to move forward. That their clients weren’t going to be happy if they didn’t deliver on time.

Shawn said that the accounts would be as promised at the agreed-upon time and they would just have to be patient.

He said that moving too quickly would set off too many red flags. ”

“So they were planning something,” Tucker says.

“Yes. Something big. We stayed under the desk until we were sure they were gone, but it was then that I realized what was happening. Or, at least, what the evidence was pointing to. Ramiro was right. They were purposely putting holes in the security surrounding certain companies so hackers could get in and steal the information. Then, they can claim innocence while clients lose everything. Bank numbers, routing information, employee social security numbers. The name of every single federal employee in the region. Names of people in witness protection. Anything that Web Safe protected was at risk.”

“Did you turn them in?” Dylan questions.

I shake my head. “I wanted to, but Ramiro said we needed more proof. Wilbur Huck is the brother-in-law of the man who founded Web Safe. We couldn’t be sure they weren’t in it together.”

“So you went at it alone.”

“I went home and wrote a wall of code that would shield every single Web Safe account. Then, the next day, we went to work like nothing was wrong. But at closing time, Ramiro and I stayed behind so I could install the code directly into the server room. Deploying it meant we didn’t have to worry that they would Swiss cheese the accounts before we could find proof. ”

“Web Safe is a high-level cybersecurity company. You truly believed you alone could put something in place to protect all of those accounts? Tucker asks.

I turn to him. “I’m very good at what I do, Mr. Hunt. And I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I’d hoped to have enough time to gather what we needed. Right as we were finishing the installation, Darren found us. He opened fire, and Ramiro shoved me behind a tower before pulling out a gun.”

“He was armed?”

I nod. “I didn’t even know he knew how to shoot, let alone that he owned a gun.

He tried to shoot back but got hit in the chest.” It all plays out in my mind with horrific detail.

“His gun fell, so I dove for it, and that’s when I got hit.

” A tear rolls down my cheek, and I wipe it away with the hand of my uninjured arm.

“He died, and I returned fire on them, using all but two rounds. Seeing no other way out, I shot out the glass of the second-story window and jumped.”

“You jumped out of a second-story window and got nothing but glass in your arm?”

“I landed on an awning and bounced off. So aside from the glass and some bruises, I was fine.”

Both of the brothers look skeptical. But the truth is on my side. They’ll see that, won’t they? God, please let them see the truth.

“What happened then?” Tucker asks.

“I ran. As hard and as fast as I could.” Reaching into my front pocket, I withdraw a thumb drive.

“This is the patch I wrote to secure the accounts. I had to rip it out without ejecting, so there’s no telling whether it’s still usable.

But you can look at it and see that I was trying to fix it. Not steal anything.”

Both men are silent, and I can tell from their expressions that they’re processing everything I’ve told them. The question now is: Will they believe me? Or turn me in for being a cold-blooded killer?

“Two days ago, you were wide-eyed and terrified. Now, I find out you not only shot out a second-story window to escape, but you also seem relatively calm for a person in your position.”

I turn to Tucker. “Two days ago, I accidentally killed a man. That would put any decent human being into a shocked state. As for the server room, it was a matter of survival. Something I’m relatively adept at, thanks to my past. As for my disposition right now—you’re right.

I’m not scared. I’m furious. They killed my friend, sent people after my parents, and now are trying to frame me for something I would never do. ”

“Don’t forget they supposedly bugged your apartment,” Dylan adds.

I glare at him. “I tend to take things in stages, and, as I said, since I’m not currently residing at my apartment, the surveillance has no direct effect on me at the present moment.”

Tucker crosses his arms. “I’m not one to refute evidence that’s placed right in front of me. However, given your story and the sensitive nature of what Web Safe protects, I do think it’s worth looking into.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re doing this my way, though,” he says. “And if you so much as present even the slightest risk to my family or me—I won’t hesitate to eliminate that risk.”

Read between the lines. I go after his family, he’ll put me down.

I hate that he doesn’t trust me, but I can be grateful he’s not turning me over…yet. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”