Page 21 of Hacker Revelation

“Bullshit! I don’t have much time to talk. Zane is talking to Antonio. Have you found anything?”

“I just got here.” There was no point in lying. She would pester me until I told her the truth. I walked toward the abandoned building. The Florida sun beat down with no remorse. I had been out of the car for two minutes and already felt the sweat drip down my back.

“Damn, I’m good. I knew you wouldn’t be able to wait. Hell, I would’ve done the same.”

The thought of Sophie going rogue sent a shiver down my back. Sophie was excellent at the computer stuff that I didn’t understand or care to learn. But she wasn’t skilled in the field.

“Please tell me that if you find anything on Juan, you won’t go alone.” If I lost her again, it would crush me.

“I’m not stupid, Kat. Now, tell me what you see.”

There was a trail that led from the fishing cabin toward the back of the property. “I’m following a trail. I think it will lead either to the underground bunker or into a swamp of alligators.”

I almost missed the shine of the metal door on the ground. It had been covered with grass to obscure the location. I reached for my gun.

“Zane’s coming back, so I need to let you go. Text me what you find. Be safe, Kat. I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.

“Call me later, and I will tell you everything I find.”

I brushed the grass and weeds off the manhole cover. I set my gun beside me, reached for the two handles on each side of the door, and pulled with all my weight. It opened slowly. The door was heavy, and it took all my strength to pry it open. It thudded against the ground when it fell on the other side of the hinge. I wasn’t sure I would be able to close the door again.

I glanced around to make sure no one had followed me to the middle of nowhere, then readied my Glock. The hole I had opened was dark and daunting. I took a deep breath and worked my way down the ladder. When my foot hit the second step, light illuminated the area around me. The sudden change startled me and caused me to release my hold on the ladder. The ground came fast and hard.

The fall knocked the wind out of me. I scurried to my feet and waited for someone to appear. After a minute, I realized the lights were motion activated and relaxed a little. The room I had fallen into was cool and damp. The cool air felt good compared to Florida heat that waited for me up the ladder.

The round entryway of the bunker was six feet in diameter with nothing in it, and only one hallway leading deeper into the structure. I worked my way down the hall into the next room, which was huge. It had to be the size of a basketball court. Fluorescent lights lined the ceiling and let off a slight buzzing sound. The right side of the room was filled with shelves and weapon cases.

I reached down to open one four-foot-long green container, and when the lid slid open, I saw the weapon it should contain was no longer present. The container only held black foam with the outline of a grenade launcher. The second case I opened had “AK-47” on the side. Like the first, it was empty. I opened the other ten cases along the wall of the bunker. Each was empty. All the guns had been cleared out.

My heart rate increased as I calculated the price of the weapons on the dark web. An AK-47 on the dark web went for around three thousand dollars. The military containers held around a hundred guns. Whoever had them—likely Juan—could clear three hundred thousand dollars off one container. With this much money, it might take years to stop him.

Maps were plastered across the wall above where the cases of guns lay. These maps were the only confirmation I needed that Juan had used Nebula to come after my family and that when Nebula failed to kill Sophie, Juan eliminated him. Each map corresponded to a house owned by Antonio’s family or Zane’s family. Juan planned to come after not only Sophie and me but also the people closest to us. I took out my phone and captured photos of the maps on the wall.

The middle of the room was filled with racks of MREs, jugs of water, and other consumables and first aid kits. The supplies were intact.

The far end of the room had been set up as a computer station at one time. The monitors attached to the wall had been shattered. The computer’s case had been pried open. The hard drives were gone. Whoever destroyed the place left nothing functioning.

When I had listened to Antonio’s conversation, he mentioned the DVR drive might be readable. If CJ could pull the data off the drive, it might give us a lead on who destroyed the room and took the military weapons.

I glanced at my watch to calculate how long I had been down here. I had searched the bunker for the last hour.

Not finding anything that could lead to Juan sent a wave of defeat through my system. I had hoped Antonio’s team had missed a clue. My husband’s team was staffed with the best mercenaries, so I knew it was a long shot. But I needed to see this for myself. I grabbed a jug of water off the rack and whipped it across the room in frustration. It hit the map that showed our house with a thud. The map tore open and revealed a hidden safe. How fucking lucky could I be? I had given up hope that I would find anything useful.

The safe was a Winchester. I had cracked many safes in my time with the CIA, and a Winchester was a common one. I took a couple deep breaths and placed my ear against the safe. I slowly worked the dial of the safe until I felt the tumbler click. The first number hit at thirty-five. I turned the dial twice in the opposite direction, and the tumbler hit at five. Two numbers down, two to go. The third number missed, and I tried a couple more times before I felt the click. The last number came quick.

I grabbed the handle of the safe and turned it until the door popped open. Inside the safe lay a leather-bound book, which I took to the chair next to the computer station and flipped open. The first column had a coded name followed by a number and a date. The first entry was dated 2005. The last entry was the prior week.

I flipped through the book to see if I could decrypt the code. But I didn’t see a pattern or find a key, so I placed the book under my arm. I walked back to the safe, closed the door. I pulled out my camera and took a few more pictures of the bunker to study at a later time.

The journey up the ladder went much better than my way down. I placed my gun and the book next to the bunker entrance and managed to close the door with a lot of effort. I used the grass from earlier to recover the door as well. On the way back to the car, I worked to cover my footsteps from earlier.

When I reached the car, I placed the leather book below my seat. I heard the click of a gun a few seconds before I felt the barrel press against my back. Fuck. Antonio was going to be mad.

9

Antonio

I rolled my neck to relieve the tension of the last month. The longer this case dragged on, the more nervous I was becoming. With any other case, the tension would roll off my shoulders. But with Kat and Sophie still in danger, the tension increased. Since the incident with her car and the men who tried to attack her at our house, I made sure she was armed at all times. I couldn’t lose Kat again.

---