The other woman laughed almost wickedly on the phone. “You don’t want to know. Neither does Porter. He says it gives him plausible deniability if the cops ever show up at our door.” She snorted as if the thought was ridiculous.
Which it probably was. The woman was brilliant and should be working for a government think tank. Of course, they wouldn’t pay her as much as Red Stone Security did.
“I owe you so much. I don’t even know how to thank you,” he said as he started working his own magic. He might not be a skilled hacker like Lizzy, but he was good enough and had fast fingers. In the Navy, before he’d gone through the hell of BUD/s and become a SEAL, he’d been with a small intel unit and had learned his way around computers.
“You don’t owe me anything except maybe babysitting duty.”
“Deal… How long will I have access to these?” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he punched in commands for the first screen.
“As long as you want. They’re not live or directly linked to the sources. I hacked in, downloaded all of them for the past week just in case you wanted to go back a few days in your searches, added them to your computer, then I covered my tracks. There’s no trace I was in any of the systems—and most won’t have the capabilities to even realize someone was there anyway. We’re talking gas stations and single owner businesses. The banks might notice a tiny glitch—”
“Lizzy!” He wasn’t trying to be rude, but he knew if he didn’t cut her off now she’d never stop. He couldn’t concentrate with her talking and he didn’t need the details. He knew the basics—she’d hacked into any business that had a wireless—translation, hackable—CCTV monitoring the streets on or around where he and Jordan had been attacked and near the condo where her car had been bombed. Considering how many businesses there were around the vicinity, that was a lot of videos. Of course not every place had live feeds and some recordings recycled every forty-eight hours, deleting the older videos. So he was working with limited angles and feeds but it was a hell of a lot more than the cops could hope to get. They’d need search warrants or permission to see any privately owned businesses’ security videos.
Not this way. He and Lizzy were just cutting through all the bureaucratic bullshit as far as he was concerned. And the truth was, the police didn’t have the resources to do what was necessary. For the car bombing, they actually might make an exception and hit their investigation hard, but this wasn’t like television. Investigations took a lot of time and in some cases, lucky breaks. They couldn’t just take video feeds from any business they wanted.
Unlike him.
“Call me if you need anything else. Once you’ve got what you need, delete all those feeds. I’ve left our connection open though. Text me when you’re done and I’ll wipe your computer,” Lizzy said.
“You’re the best and I definitely owe you babysitting duty. As much as you want.”
“I hope she’s worth it.” There was a slight note of concern in her voice.
“She is.” Without a doubt. Jordan was worth risking everything for. “Talk to you later.”
Once they disconnected he set his phone on the coffee table and continued scanning a feed from a gas station around the corner from where they’d been firebombed. It was in the direction the moped driver would have gone. Vincent fast forwarded to right after they’d been attacked. Sure enough, a black clad, completely covered individual flew by the first screen a few minutes later.
From there, he cross-referenced the map he had of downtown Key West with the various businesses Lizzy had hijacked videos from. Since he didn’t have feeds from every place, there were missing spaces of time, but the moped kept appearing in clip after clip until finally it disappeared into a parking garage of a hotel. Unfortunately he didn’t have any access to the garage. Since Detective Hough had already informed him that the license plate number Vincent had given him belonged to a moped reported stolen, he doubted the driver was staying at the hotel. Still, he made a note of it and planned to tell the detective about its location as soon as he was finished. They might get prints off it, though he doubted it. The driver had been wearing gloves and was obviously careful.
Since he had two visuals at different angles from two different video streams across the street, he fast forwarded in the hopes that someone would exit. There were likely other exits and it was a shot in the dark that he might spot the driver leaving, but he had to try.
Scanning through the next hour of footage, only five people left through that entrance. Two sets of couples and a petite blonde wearing a skimpy summer dress. Vincent scrubbed a hand over his face and let out a growl of frustration. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
As he started to pull up a video from the day of the bombing, Jordan strode into the room carrying her cell phone, her face pale. Immediately, he stood. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure yet. Edith is on the phone and wants to talk to both of us.” She held it out and the agent’s crisp voice came over the line.
“Mr. Hansen, Jordan…” The woman let out a long sigh. “Jordan, I’m not making an excuse for our oversight and I won’t get into how the fucking Abilene PD dropped the ball because of typical non-sharing bullshit, but it turns out Curtis and Corey Woods had a half-sister. She wasn’t connected to Curtis in any way that we’ve discovered, but in the course of the investigation into Corey Woods’ death, the Abilene PD found out about the existence of a Celia Olson. Now, we have no idea if she was in any way involved with either brother, but she owned a house with Corey ten years ago in a small Texas town. Around that time…there were a string of unsolved fires. A few homeless people died. There might be a connection, but—”
Vincent cleared his throat. “Do you have a picture of her?”
“Yeah, sending it to both your phones now. Like I started to say, she might not be connected to Curtis’s crime spree, but I don’t like that this is the first we’ve heard of her.”
“What have you been able to find out about her?” Jordan asked, a sharp pop of annoyance clear in her tone.
He didn’t blame her for being angry. This is the kind of information she should have had before she chose to leave the WITSEC program. She should have been aware of all potential dangers.
There was a long pause. “We’re still gathering data on her, but as of now we haven’t been able to locate her. She’s officially off the grid.”
Vincent didn’t like the sound of that at all. Not to mention it was starting to sound like Edith wanted to cover her ass. Still gathering data. He called bullshit.
His phone dinged, signaling the message the agent had sent. When Celia Olson’s picture appeared on his screen, his heart rate kicked up a notch. He couldn’t believe it. He’d seen that face before. Turning the phone to Jordan so she could see, he asked the agent, “Do you have anything we can actually use?”
“We’d like to bring Jordan into our custody until—”
Vincent ended the call.
Jordan’s eyes widened as she turned to glare at him. “Vincent, why’d you do that?”
“Your handler doesn’t have any more information for you and no one can protect you the way I can, so going into custody is not an option. Besides, Celia Olson is in Key West and I’m going to hunt her down.”
Chapter 11
“Hunt her down? Are you out of your mind?” Jordan couldn’t stop herself from shouting. “First of all…wait, she’s in Key West? You know this for a fact?” If the woman was in the same city that was very, very bad. It wasn’t a coincidence and unless Jordan had another enemy, then Olson had to be the one behind the attacks.
Vincent nodded, his expression grim as he motioned toward his laptop.
She sat with him on the couch and waited as he typed in some commands. Some kind of video popped up. “What is this?”
He actually looked guilty as he cleared his throat. “It’s copies of security videos from local business around town.”
“Your hacker friend got these?” Jordan wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
He just shrugged and focused back on the computer screen. Moments later, he’d brought up a clip of the same moped driver who had attacked them the other night. “Watch this,” he murmured. Different screens popped up, showing various shots of the bike moving across town until it disappeared into a parking garage. His fingers flying, Vincent typed in more commands, then fast forwarded about half an hour into that video according the time stamp. Then he pressed play. “Tell me if you recognize anyone.”
A few minutes later a pretty blonde walked out of the garage. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a tight, skimpy dress. She looked left, then right before heading right at a fast pace. Even from a video taken across the street, it was easy to see it was the same woman from the picture Edith had sent them.
“She has to be the person who firebombed us, right?” Jordan wasn’t sure why she was asking when it was so obvious.
“And bombed your car.” His voice was tense, matching the taut lines of his body.
“So what are we going to do?”
“We are not going to do anything,” he muttered as he pulled out his cell phone. With those crazy fast fingers, he sent off a couple texts. After he received a few dings in reply, he made a grunt that sounded positive before he sent off another string of texts.
It was hard to tell though because he was shutting her out. She didn’t think it was intentional, he was just really focused on his phone. Placing her hand over his, she squeezed. “What are you planning or thinking? Who are you texting?”
He looked up, clear determination in his gaze. “I’ve got a friend coming in from Miami to watch you. I won’t leave you unprotected.”
“Watch me for what? You’re not leaving by yourself.” She would make sure of that.