Page 22 of Undercover Hacker

Is Zane losing his mind? Why is he stopping?

I heard Brock say, “Go!”

Zane protested. “We need a photo of these guys. If we can ID them, it will help us pull more information together.”

Brock’s voice came over the speakerphone.“Zane, we don’t have time. They must have radioed the other men. Head straight to the airstrip.In a thousand feet, take a right. Head straight for about two miles.”

We had broken through the trees. Corn was the only thing I could see for miles. “Brock, I think you are looking at the wrong satellite. I don’t see a road up ahead.”

I heard Zane chuckle. “He wants us to take a shortcut through the cornfield. Hold on to the dash. This might get a little bumpy.”

Zane turned straight into the cornfield. Visibility went to zero. The SUV tore through the corn like butter.

“Are you sure we are going in the correct direction? I can’t see a thing.” It felt like we were driving in circles.

Zane pointed to the compass on the dashboard. I guess when you couldn’t see the road, you followed a compass.

“In a hundred feet, you will come upon a road. Take a right, and in sixty miles, you will be at the airstrip.”

Satellite imagery would tell them where we were headed. “Are you sure the airstrip is safe? We might be going into a trap.”

“Already took care of that. We have three different planes leaving at the same time as you guys. They are all flying to different locations. We have people dressed as you on the other plane, and we have new identities waiting for you on the plane. Antonio and John are on a flight to New York as we speak. We played a little shuffle game with their plane, too. I will keep an eye on the airstrip to make sure no one is heading that way.”

Wow. Brock and Antonio were good at the spy game.

“I hope you loaded Antonio up with enough ammo for me also.”

“Already done. Talk to you on the other side.” Brock clicked the line off.

Zane continued down the highway for a sixty-mile stretch. We encountered no more agents. The wind whipping in the blown-out window of the SUV was not only a distraction, but it caused the cold to seep into the vehicle.

* * *

The airplane screamed money.Before this morning’s excursion, it had been years since I had been so frightened for my life or anyone else’s. I’d heard stories about Antonio and Brock and how their missions would go. Hearing the story from my friends and being at the forefront were two different things. Somehow, it had worked out. We arrived at the airstrip and boarded the plane. The plane door was shut to the outside world, and we were one step closer to my sister.

Zane sat next to me in the plush leather seats. He reached over and grabbed my hand. It was still shaking. The last set of men who had come after us hadn’t seemed to care if we lived or died. It was only thanks to Zane’s driving skills and Brock’s hacking skills, that we were safe for the moment.

A young blonde in a flight attendant’s uniform approached us. “Is there anything I can get you, Mr. and Mrs. White?”

Brock was playing games again. “Our—”

Zane squeezed my hand. “Mrs. White will have red wine, and I will have a Scotch. Thank you.” She turned on her heels and headed to the front galley kitchen.

“Why didn’t you correct her?”

The man's actions irritated me. The game-playing was getting old, and we had only been on the mission for three days. I should have been grateful he was still helping me after getting shot at today.

Zane leaned his head back against the seat. “Brock didn’t give our real names for a reason. Why change something he did to protect us?”

“You guys need to make a manual for these missions. It’s hard when you haven’t gone to spy school. The last mission I had for the director was setting up malware on the computer of the Prime Minister of Russia. It took me two days, and I had a clone of his communication funneling into a storage device. Oh, fuck, I forgot to give him the data I retrieved.”

Zane was silent. He reached up and ran his hand through his scruff.

“You want to tell me why you are just now bringing up that op? This could be the reason he wants you. He might think you overheard or saw something and is cutting you out. Sanchez might think you turned on him, and he wants to bring you in to make it easier to find out what you know.” Zane reached for his glass of Scotch and downed it in one gulp.

The director had contacted me before Jessica was kidnapped, and I had set up the malware to collect the data. But I hadn’t yet logged in to pull the data off. I’d been dodging the devil's calls because I thought they were about Jessica. Zane was pretty smart for figuring that out so fast. Working on so many different projects, I sometimes forgot which ones were still going.

“When we get to the hotel, I’ll find a computer and pull the data off. We can sift through the information and see what he was looking for.”

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