“I take it you made it difficult?”
“You bet. I want to see how skilled he really is. He’s moving through the walls fast.”
“He’s a pro with resources,” Javier added. “Only a few in the world are good enough to hack into your system, Jaimie.”
Mack marveled at the speed their fingers flew across the keyboard. Their eyes were glued to the screen. It all made sense to them, but to him it was a jumble of code and nothing more. That didn’t stop uneasiness from creeping into him. He felt hunted.
Watched. Something evil moving in the room.
Twice Jaimie’s breath hissed out and once Javier hunched lower over the keys as if that small movement would increase his speed and dexterity.
The tension in the room coiled tighter and tighter, stretching nerves taut. Mack could hear breathing, feel the blood pounding in his veins, the knots forming in the pit of his stomach. He looked around, into every corner, half expecting someone to come jumping out at them. His hand actually crept toward the knife at his belt.
“I’m almost on him,” Jaimie hissed. “I’ve got you, you toad.”
Mack’s gut reacted with more knots and somewhere in his brain a warning flash went off. He cleared his throat. “Jaimie, shut it down.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Do it, Jaimie,” Kane said. “Shut it down.”
“Javier, that’s an order,” Mack snapped and caught Jaimie, jerking her away from the computer. “Pull the plug. Do it now, do it fast.”
“Whose side are you on?” Jaimie demanded, twisting around, trying to get back to her chair. Mack kept his arm around her waist, lifting her off the ground to keep her from the keyboard.
Javier shook his head. “I don’t think I’m going to shut it down before he’s in.”
“Unplug the damn thing now.”
Kane was already in motion, sprinting for the power strip.
“No!” Jaimie wailed. “You can’t do it like that. You’ll mess up my programs. He won’t find anything. He’ll only think he’s in. I put all kinds of crap data for him to find. By the time he wades through it . . .” She broke off, horrified, as the screens went black.
“He’ll know you’re on to him and he’ll know you’re coming after him. They’ll blow this place out from under you to get you, Jaimie. Right now they only know you’re after Whitney. His cover was blown a long time ago. Half the world thinks he’s dead or a myth and the other half pretends he’s dead. He’s an embarrassment, but every GhostWalker team knows he’s alive. That was the only reason they didn’t kill you. What would be the point? But if they think you know who is supporting him, that’s an entirely different ball game.”
She jerked away from him, throwing a punch at his chest as she stumbled back. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I had him.”
“You mean he almost had you.”
“He already knows who I am, Mack, or I wouldn’t have had a dead body on my doorstep to warn me off or an assassin coming to my door. I’m so close to getting him.”
“Why the hell do you think he sent you the dead body, Jaimie? Someone looked you up and studied you, tried to find the perfect thing to scare you with. They killed some poor innocent woman and threw her body on your doorstep to tell you to back the hell off.”
Tears shimmered in her furious eyes. “You think I don’t know that?” She pointed to the stairs. “Get out, Mack. Take everyone with you. I’m not doing this with you, not ever again. I mean it; get the hell out of my house.” She turned her back on him and walked toward the plug.
“Don’t even think about it, Jaimie.” His voice dropped low in warning.
She whirled back around and this time there were tears tracking down her face. “I can’t believe you said that to me. You think I don’t know? You think I’m so stupid I don’t get what’s going on? You want to hurl insults at each other? You think that’s the way to get me to listen? If you’d listened to me in the first place, none of this would be happening.”
“That isn’t true, Jaimie,” Kane intervened softly. “It would have happened to someone else. It did. To helpless children. To unsuspecting men and women. To women trapped in his breeding program. To Whitney’s own daughter. It would have happened no matter what. Just not to us. And we’re good. We’ve got each other. We know one another inside and out and that gives us the advantage. If he can’t separate us and break us apart, we’ve got power no other GhostWalker team has against him.
And we have your brains.”
Jaimie didn’t look at him. She glared at Mack. “You don’t have the right to talk to me the way you do. I’m not one of your soldiers following orders. And I’m not your girlfriend.”
“Like hell you’re not. You want to prove me wrong so bad you’re willing to risk your life. I already believe you, Jaimie, I’ve seen the proof. You don’t need to put yourself in harm’s way in order to get me to believe Whitney’s a son of a bitch and he’s being protected.”
“For once in your life why don’t you acknowledge I have a brain? I was this close”—she held up her fingers an inch apart—“to getting the identity of the man or men protecting Whitney. We can’t take Whitney down without getting them. He’ll just run, even if we expose him with proof. He’ll be in the wind and we’ll never find him.”
“And if those protecting him are untouchable? What do you think is going to happen here, Jaimie? They’ve sent men trained in combat with enough experience to take on some of our best men. They put a sniper up on a roof to take you out.”
“I know when they’re close.” Jaimie tried to bring her voice back under control.
The madder she got, the louder her voice, the quieter he became, making her feel like a child being reprimanded by an adult. “I can feel their energy, Mack.”
“You couldn’t feel Joe, Jaimie, and he’s a f**king sniper. He could have been sent to kill you, not protect you. He infiltrated your base and made himself your right-hand man. Suppose his orders change and he’s told to kill you?”
Her chin lifted. “Suppose your orders change,” she hurled back at him.
Instant silence fell. The room charged with anger until they all seemed to choke on it.
Abruptly Mack turned on his heel and stalked to the stairs.