Page 7 of Hacker Revelation

I shook my head. “Sorry, CJ. I’m on my last nerve. We need to find this guy. I’m sick of looking over my shoulder.”

The door to the conference room swung open, and Zane stepped in. Zane had started to work at AA Security a week ago. For the previous couple of months, he had helped his brother, President Zack Tucker, clean up the CIA. But Zane wanted to be close to his fiancée, Sophie, and that meant leaving the CIA. He also wanted to find Juan as badly as Kat and I did.

“Looking over your shoulder for what?”

“If you would show up to work on time, you would know,” I snapped.

Zane lowered himself into the chair next to mine and picked up the operation file. “I’ll ignore your attitude. Sophie is nervous about driving by herself, and that woman takes forever to get ready in the morning.”

At Zane’s words, guilt hit me in the chest. Zane wouldn’t have been late for work if he didn’t have a reason. Zane had mentioned the other day that Sophie still hadn’t driven a car by herself since she’d been trapped in her car, sitting on top of a ticking bomb.

“You’re right. You need to take care of Sophie. As I was telling these guys, I’m sick of Sanchez, and we need to take him down. I want him dead, and I don’t care what your brother wants, even if he is the president of the United States. He needs to learn that some people are better dead than alive.”

“I agree. Zack won’t give the kill order even though he knows what happened with Sophie. There is no way I'm bringing the man in alive.” There was no hesitation in Zane’s voice. He and I were on the same page about Juan. We both planned to kill him and not turn him over.

“Okay, back to the case. What have we found?”

Asher said, “John sent over his preliminary report from the analysis he did on the bomb. He claims the detonator was constructed in a way he has only seen a couple times.” Asher displayed a list of names on the projector. “Here is a list of the people I was planning on talking to.”

I recognized none of the names on the list, and none of them were Russian. “Did John report anything else?”

Asher was tapping his pen on the table. “The bomb had dual trip switches. John has a call in to a couple people to see if they have any ideas.”

Zane stood up. “We’re chasing our tails, going after the bomb maker. Sanchez would’ve hired the job out. Knowing him, he’s already eliminated the man who built and placed the bomb. Why are we not trying to find the fucker?” Zane was pacing back and forth. His anger at the situation was taking over. I understood. When I thought Juan had kidnapped Ant, I had almost lost it.

“This is our only lead,” I replied. “We’ve had facial recognition software running on the NSA satellites and local traffic cameras. He’s not leaving his house, or he has changed his face. Sanchez has been around long enough to know how we would track him and what we would use. The last sighting we have is three days ago at Ant’s school. We tried to track that trail, and it went nowhere.” Juan had showed his face that day because he wanted Ant to come with him. Luckily, my little man was smart enough to hide and ignore Juan’s request.

CJ added, “I have every spare server White Hat has running to find Juan, and nothing has hit. I spent yesterday combing over the dark web message boards looking for anything leading to Sophie or Kat.”

CJ had been working on the case since the beginning. He was good at working with computers. When the case was over, I planned on asking him to come work for AA Security. I needed to run the idea by Asher first, but I didn’t think he would have a problem with it.

Zane took a sip of his coffee. “He won’t look for people on the dark web. He’ll look for people that owe him. I bet Sophie and Kat didn’t get all the money he has.”

“You going to tell Sophie and Kat they failed?”

“No. That stays in this room. I’m not saying they failed. Juan must have had cash hidden somewhere. Emergency funds. Everyone has a few million hid.”

Leave it to a billionaire to think people hid a few million here and there.I knew everyone in our family had a few million hidden in different locations for emergency funds. Juan had been extremely rich at one time, when he was stealing money from Kat and Sophie’s trust funds.

CJ looked around the table waiting for someone to correct Zane. “Umm,no. Most people don’t hide a few million dollars. Don’t know what world you live in.”

“You're telling me none of you have money hid?” Zane asked.

Asher shrugged his shoulders. “I keep a few million hidden around. Juan’s using hired guns from his past. We need to go back and look through Sophie and Kat’s files.”

“I have a copy of everything on my server,” CJ said. “I think it would be better if I work on the case from here. If Sophie walks in on me looking at the files, she’ll want to help.”

I needed to send my sister-in-law Bridget, the owner of White Hat Security, a gift for allowing us to borrow one of her top hackers. When I finally stole him from her company, I would need more than a fruit basket, though.

“Does Bridget know why you’re here?”

A blush crept across CJ’s face. I knew he didn’t like to lie to Bridget. She wasn’t only his boss but a longtime friend. “No. Bridget would want to help too. I said you guys had a new drug trafficking case, and Asher needed help tracking someone’s activity electronically.”

CJ was right. She would want to be involved in the research. This case was dangerous, and Alex, my older brother, would have my head if I somehow put Bridget in the path of Juan’s destruction. She was also six months pregnant with their second child.

“Were you able to go through the video feed from when the bomb was placed in Sophie’s car?”

“A transformer blew around eight a.m.,” CJ reported. “The power was out for two hours. I have a feeling that was when the bomb was planted. I combed through what video I had and saw no one near the car. White Hat Security has generators, so their power never went down, but Bridget only has cameras inside, not in the garage.”

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