Page 2 of Talk to Me

Cartwright was supposed to be on vacation.

He wanted me to log out of the servers where I’d been running a dozen shadow operations for U.S. intelligence.

He also wanted me to forward him the intelligence and the open cases.

He knew.

My heart triple-timed against my ribs, but five years of cold calls and hot operations kept my hands steady as I settled at my desk, put my headset on and logged into my machine.

A brief flash told me the camera had been activated remotely, but I pretended to not notice. More, the keystroke logger was activated. I had two keyboards, however, and I slid the secondary one out as I brought the other machines up.

Normally, all the units would be slaved to the center console. But I’d partitioned them gradually over the last two months. Right around the time I realized what Cartwright was up to.

Not that I’d known it was him before. No, today confirmed that. I opened another drawer, slid out a piece of gum, folded it in half and tucked it under my tongue before I started logging myself out of the various servers. I made a point of boxing the files, then forwarding them to him as requested.

They were encrypted. It would take him a while to realize I’d just sent him the logs from three weeks of battle gaming on God of War. The files were huge and contained enough data to work as a decoy.

Flipping the screens, I switched to the Poland tapes and started playing them. The language filled my headset and I looked for all the world like I was translating. The AI program wasn’t the best, but it worked to keep the keylogger entertained while I used my backdoor into the systems to clean out the treasure trove of information.

I hadn’t broken it all down yet, but it was hard to ignore the data once I’d lined it up. Someone was shadowing the shadow ops. They were profiting off operations. Twice, men had been deployed to eliminate targets that were not enemies of the state but actual competitors.

The last time, they’d used a drone strike. The data from the satellite had been corrupted, but I’d managed to piece enough together to see the family that had also been murdered.

Collateral. They didn’t care who was hurt. The fact money was being moved in considerable sums as well as exchanging arms and drugs—it was all there. You just had to know how to parse the data.

I was never supposed to find this. But now that I had—I wasn’t sure who to trust with it. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I emptied the bank accounts, swept the money through a dozen different dark web channels to clean it and deposited it in encrypted accounts. The program would keep the money on the move until it vanished. The rest I backed up onto two separate drives.

One I would take with me. The other would upload to the cloud when the data dump at the end of the day was done. It would use the normal dump to cover the amount of information.

I would also be long gone before that one initiated. Once that was complete, I monitored the AI translator until lunch time. I wasn’t the first one up nor the last. I waited for the tape to be done then filed it before I shut everything down and logged out.

Bag in hand, I stretched. I waved to Veronica as I passed her cubicle. She lifted her chin but her fingers never stopped moving. This had been my life for the past few years. A life where I’d been making a difference.

Or so I thought.

As I slid into the elevator and pressed the button for the garage below, I hummed a song. I didn’t even know which one. It let me fidget and not seem suspicious. Once I was in the garage, I bypassed my car as I headed for the ramp exit.

I turned my jacket inside out and pulled my hair up into a ponytail. There were cameras everywhere, but I’d long since mapped the blind spots and found a route to get out of the garage without being recorded. By the time I reached the top of the ramp, I had pulled my backpack out of the bag, then stuffed the bag and purse into it. Sliding it on changed my profile entirely.

Not slowing my pace, I went to the light and crossed the street. The bus was just pulling up to the stop. I climbed on board and swiped a bus fare card I’d picked up the week before.

After, I headed to the back of the bus.

I didn’t look behind me. There was nothing there for me anymore. I couldn’t afford to look back. I tugged up the hood on my hoodie and tucked my hair under it.

I wouldn’t be getting off until the last stop.

Then I would disappear.

This life was over.

Chapter

One

PATCH

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