Page 25 of Undercover Hacker

I squatted down next to the chair. “Sophie, you need to pull yourself together. Yes, you are angry. You have every right to be. But, sitting here stewing over what ifs, won’t fix anything. Let’s go and talk with the team and see if Brock was able to trace the call.”

“Okay, I’m ready, let's get my sister back.”

Brock pushed his glasses up. “I couldn’t trace the call. He was bouncing his signal all over the place. Steve just arrived with the files I had him steal from Sanchez’s office. We have information on Kat.”

“What information do you have?” Antonio growled. He had been on edge ever since he’d seen the picture of Kat.

“Since the director has been out all day, Steve could sneak into his office and retrieve the files from his safe. We might need POTUS to help clear his name when this is over.

I was nodding my head already. Zack owed me tons of favors for the things I’d done for him. He would take care of anything I needed. But it might not be necessary. I planned on bringing down the director and any other dirty officials.

Brock uploaded the file of scanned information to our computer. There was one on Kat and one on Sophie. “We could tap into Kat’s phone line. The director called her right before he called you. Sanchez doesn’t know we have this information. He told her he found out you were alive and was trying to get you back. Kat istaking the first flight out in the morning. Sanchez must think you will do as you're told.”

Sophie shifted in her chair to get a better look at the documents on the screen. “We have to get hertonight and worry about Yermushin tomorrow. I want Kat back, and we can’t have her fall into the director’s hands.”

“That was my next thing to pitch. I think we need to get hertonight. She lives in a house outside of Manhattan. There is one more thing.” Brock paused as if he didn’t know how to say what else he had found.

We didn’t have time for games. “Spit it out,” I demanded.

“She has a kid.” A picture a beautiful four-year-old boy showed on the screen. He was the spitting image of his dad.

Antonio leaped from his seat. “You're telling me that low-life piece of shit kept me from my wife andson? I will rip his heart out and watch him die a slow painful death.”

“That was graphic. Before you go hulk and turn green, let’s talk our plan through. I agree we go in late tonight. We’ll have the dark as our cover. If someone is watching her, we’ll need to be quick.”

The mission to take Kat at the charity event would have been more straightforward. We planned to lure her into a hall or bathroom, explain the situation, and get the fuck out. Now, the mission was to go into a residentialneighborhood. Her house was more than likely being monitored by Sanchez or her current employer, Yermushin.

Mia’s voice came across the computer. "From glancing over the file, Kat is a trained killer. She thinks she is doing jobs for the United States. Instead, she’s working the director’s hit list. Last month, she tried to get out. She told him she was done. He threated to take Antonio Jr. away and ruin her. If she wanted out, she had to do one last job. I sent you the schematics of the house and neighborhood.”

The address and map appeared on the monitor. Sophie worked on bringing up any cameras we could find to see if we could figure out our blind spots.

“Holy shit.” Brock sounded like he saw an alien.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Sophie, you never told us who your family was.”

Sophie looked confused. “My parents were professors at a college. We were nobody famous.”

Two images appeared on the screen. I recognized Joe and Lexi Johnston. They had been the wealthiest oil family around. They had died in a car accident years ago.

“Your grandparents were Joe and Lexi Johnston. When they died, their fortune went to your parents. Nothing went to Sanchez. From the look of it, your grandfather had an affair, and Sanchez was the outcome. He paid Sanchez's mom to go away. When your parents died, everything went into an ironclad trust in your sister’s and your name. It looks like Sanchez has been taking the money from your trust. If you or your sister die, it goes to a charity, and then he wouldn’t get anything.”

“Mom said our grandparents were dead. I never thought to look into them. Sanchez has a different last name, and I never looked into my mom’s last name.

Now it made sense why he needed her alive, and keeping the sisters apart made it easier for him as well. They would’ve talked and maybe looked into their background. Instead, Sophie tried to track down her sister’s location, being fed intel from a man that didn’t want her to be found. Who knows what information he was feeding Kat?

Coming up with a game plan filled our afternoon. I didn’t want Sophie to come on the mission. It would be dangerous. But she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. I didn’t want her going off on her own and causing more problems.

We still had a few hours before the sun went down. I had an idea about how to keep Sophie’s and my mind off what was going on. There was something about Sophie that was irresistible.

11

Sophie

The room cleared after the briefing. John and Antonio left to grab food. The tension was thick between Zane and me. I couldn’t think about anything except getting my sister back. Twenty-five years we’d been apart, and in five hours, I would see her again. Not only was I getting my sister back, but I would also meet my nephew for the first time.

Needing to create space between Zane and me, I reached for the door connecting our rooms. The hotel room was like nothing I had seen before. These rooms were meant for royalty, and they weren’t going cheap on the decor. The walls had gold-plated artwork. I ran my hand across the bedspread. It was soft and inviting. The thread count had to be higher than anything I could imagine.

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