Page 2 of Play the Game
I nodded, not needing to be told twice. In fact, I didn’t need to be told once, since curbside rescue followed a standard procedure, but Penn verbalizing handing over driving responsibilities to his subordinate was protocol.
“What are the odds Jensen will catch a live one?” TJ asked Alder. “Someone foolish enough to be carrying around an unencrypted device?”
“I can’t run the exact numbers right now,” Alder said. She was our resident statistics expert, but she was now holding down the entire IT fort by herself. “Probably low.”
That answer led me to believe she knew exactly how low the odds were but didn’t want to share with the class how little payoff there was bound to be for Jason taking such a huge risk.
“Would someone working for the Carbonados be that careless?” TJ asked of no one in particular.
“Maybe,” I answered. “We know they can get reckless when they’re in a hurry about something.”
Calling the group ‘they’ was probably a stretch in and of itself, since our best estimation of their organization’s structure was some powerful, key figures at the top, with a layer of lieutenants, more like warlords, under them, and loose collections of gangs and even solo criminals making up the vast majority of their ranks. They relied on mercenaries, too, ramping up for certain jobs, handing everyone a big paycheck at the end of it, then releasing them to blow away in the wind. The decentralized model was a favorite amongst terrorist organizations for a reason.
“They like to hire local talent through shell corporations for one-off jobs,” I continued. “It’s faster and keeps a lot of hands in the upper echelons clean if anyone on the ground gets caught. But it comes at the cost of losing some control over security, which might give us an in here.”
Jason, still staring at his phone, grinned. He was still listening to all of us, so he wasn’t being as reckless in cutting himself off as I’d first assumed. His smile added to the whole package of hotness that he was that day, and my heart did a little staccato beat. I tried to tell myself it was just objective appreciation of an attractive friend, but the truth was, no other BFF had ever affected my sinus rhythm. Fuck me.
My rescheduled vacation could not come soon enough. I needed a lot of alone time, several tropical drinks, and at least one quick and dirty fling to clear out the mess in my head. I needed a break so I could return to HEAT rested, focused, and no longer in lust with my best friend.
* * *
Jason
I knewwhat the mission was, and I was still listening, or at least half listening, to my team talking in my ear. But I was going to go off script anyway. The Midwest branch of the criminal Carbonados was up to something big, and it related to this building. All the data we’d intercepted pointed to it, but I needed to access their network from inside the structure itself to sort out the details. For days, I’d been trying to breach it remotely, but it had proven to be a black hole where I sent hours upon hours of my life into oblivion.
Yes, my ego was bruised from running into a system I couldn’t hack remotely. I’d planned to salvage my reputation by using my super-phone, which I’d designed and had built in a HEAT lab, to do it from this close proximity. Now that was failing, too. I was not used to failure. When it came to hacking, I wasn’t sure I’d ever had the experience, not when I’d really wanted something. By the time I was of legal age, I was regularly breaking into the US government’s secure systems, just because I could.
I’d eventually been caught, three years and hundreds of hacks later. And that had only happened because I’d intentionally left behind a digital calling card, which I’d meant—but subsequently forgotten—to remove once all my buddies had witnessed my awesomeness. Still, it took the FBI two weeks to find the evidence.
But the bullshit happening in this nondescript brick building in downtown Chicago was besting me, and that was pissing me off.
A message came in on a private channel, as my IT crew partner, Alder, typed a message that was then converted to an automated voice that read it in my ear.I know you can hear me. Drop your ego and get the hell out of there.
I narrowed my eyes as I monitored multiple windows open on my phone screen, which showed me the security cameras on the street that I’d disabled, the channel sending out white noise to simulate me being offline, and the signal converters that were proving fucking useless in picking up the local network signature. I pulled up another window and typed back to the private channel.That you, Alder? You sound like Sparks.
This is Sparks, asshole. Penn approaching you from seven o’clock. Probably going to tranq you and drag you back here.
I could picture her sitting in the Expedition, chewing her lower lip as she bent over her phone like she always did when she was deep in thought. It always drew my attention, those perfect, pearl-white teeth sinking into the soft, pink flesh of her mouth. Some days, I came closer than others to taking that lip between my own teeth, then moving in for a long, deep kiss.
Jesus, what was wrong with me? Having naughty fantasies about my best friend while I was safe behind a computer in our tech van or back at HQ was one thing. But doing it in the field, while my teammates were putting their asses on the line to protect me, was a new low, even for a hopeless degenerate like me.
I snapped back to attention as Penn made his way down the sidewalk. Shit. If he came close enough to speak to me, we’d lose the cover story that the rest of the team had been unable to contact me when I’d gone rogue. Protecting my teammates from my deviations from plans was the one agreement I had with X, the woman who’d founded HEAT more than a decade ago and who still managed the agency, although lately, she’d spent more time in DC, fighting for our budget than monitoring operations. I had a history of going offline and off-book, and as much as X and my direct supervisor, TJ, hated it, most of the time it worked to the serious advantage of HEAT. I didn’t worry about being fired or about really being arrested by the feds because my skillset was too valuable to them. But I was forbidden from taking my teammates down with me.
Help me out, Tam, I texted, switching away from the team convention of referring to each other by last names. She was my best friend, and I shouldn’t risk bringing her into this, but these texts were disappearing as fast as we were reading them, I knew for sure. Having digital back doors and secret passageways were some of the perks of building the agency’s entire communication network, unhackable by anyone but me. She didn’t respond affirmatively, but she also didn’t tell me to fuck off.I can clone target’s phone if I have enough time to get close to him. Distract Penn?
“Hostiles on Penn!” Tam shouted into the comms.
Too late, I realized I hadn’t needed her to distract Penn for me. Someone inside the building must have been relying on actual visuals, watching through windows, and not just the security cameras I’d looped to show an empty street. Penn was big, scary, and dressed in black. He was also damn near impossible to catch in a trap, but the Carbonados enlisted mercenary ex-agents from the biggest intelligence agencies in the world. It was entirely possible the two dudes he was currently fighting, who were also big, scary, and dressed in black, were former Mossad, FSB, or even CIA.
Meanwhile, my target was on the move. I stuck to my revised plan, which was to follow his signal to the corner of the building, then plow into him. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and threw my body weight into him as he emerged from the alley. We both went down in a heap. One of Penn’s attackers turned to run in our direction, then dropped to the pavement, followed a second later by his friend dropping a few feet away from him. That would be courtesy of our team sharpshooter tactical agent Li, shooting tranqs from a block away.
“Goddamnit, get off me,” the man under me muttered. He was nearly as big as the thugs who’d jumped Penn, although he was in a tan business suit, sans tie. And he was currently furious.
“Sorry, man, it was an accident,” I mumbled. I took my time staggering to my feet, giving my phone the most time I could to make a copy of his phone, encrypted codes and all.
He pushed me hard, and I stumbled backward. His brow furrowed as he took in the sight of the two thugs, whom I assumed were with him, sprawled unconscious on the ground, then he turned and took off.
“Couldn’t get a lock on guy three,” Li said into the comms.
