Page 22 of One Knight Stand

I couldn’t be sure if he believed it or whether it was a cockiness meant to reassure me. I sighed. “Jax, I’m serious.”

“So am I. Look, we’re fast learners and you know it. We’ve already foiled them once when they tried to kidnap you.”

He had a point there. Still, how dangerous would it be to involve everyone? More importantly, could I trust them with my mom’s life?

Jax homed in on my hesitation. “Look, I don’t know exactly who your dad is or what he did that made him disappear for so long and to cause people to want to kidnap you and your mom, but maybe it’s time to give us all the facts.”

“Maybe I should just keep it to Frankie and Wally,” I said. “They already know about my dad.”

Jax lifted an eyebrow. “Really? And cut out Bo, Kira, Hala, Mike, and me? What happens to our unit cohesiveness after they learn you don’t trust them?”

My face heated. “That’s not fair. I do trust them. I’m just trying to protect them.”

“So,thatwould be your story?” He crossed his arms against his chest, stared at me. “Okay, since you’re trusting your gut…what’s your gut telling you about that move?”

I blew out a heavy breath. “It’s telling me it sucks. You’re right. I can’t break up the unit. But everyone gets a chance to back out if they want.”

“Fair enough.” Jax bent down to pet Mr. Toodles. The fur ball wagged his tail, licking furiously at Jax’s hand. “If you trust your dad, then you’re going to have to trust your friends, too.”

The weird thing was, I did trust them, but the team dynamic was still too fresh for me. I’d spent most of my life solving my own problems, and suddenly I had to shift to a team mentality. It was a lot harder than it sounded.

“We have to find a base of operations,” I mused, my brain already working ahead of my emotions. “We’ve got to be out of the dorms tonight, and I can’t use my mom’s apartment because it’s bugged. We can’t use anyone else’s house because we won’t be able to do what we need to do if we’re being monitored by parents.”

“We could work out of the hotel?” Jax suggested.

“Maybe, but it’s more than two hours from here. I have a feeling I need to be in this area.”

“We could pool our money together for a hotel room,” Jax said. “But I don’t know how long we could do that or how safe it would be.”

A red Corvette passed us on the street, and I froze, staring at the car as it disappeared down the street and out of sight. Mr. Toodles took two steps until his leash pulled him back. He yipped at my leg in frustration.

Jax stared at me, waving a hand in front of my face. “Red? You okay?”

I blinked and turned to Jax excitedly. “I think I know where we can set up our command center. Text the team we have an emergency, and we’ll be back at UTOP in a few hours to brief them in person. Then I’ll tell you—and them—everything.”

Chapter Fourteen

CANDACE KIM

It wasn’t how she’d intended to spend her Friday night, but here she was, sitting alone in her office at the NSA, papers scattered around her with pertinent information on Joseph Patrick Lando, better known as J. P. The building was quiet and dark except for the light over her desk and the soft glow of her computer. Janitorial staff had already come and gone, and since she had sensitive material out, she’d asked them not to come in. Her office would remain uncleaned until Monday.

She’d been carefully making notes about J. P. Lando, and now she read back through what she’d written so far.

J. P. Lando had, by all accounts, been a brilliant student. He’d gone to Princeton as an undergrad, graduating with a double degree in mathematics and engineering. His skills were in compiling and coding using early computer languages, many of them now defunct. A leading mind in field at the time, especially in the area of the mathematics of cryptography, he’d received his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and wrote his doctoral thesis on linear programming. She’d obtained a copy of it and glanced at it, but the topic was way over her head.

J. P. had joined the NSA as a communications specialist about three months after defending his thesis, and he had been assigned to work on communication algorithms and data security. He’d done excellent work, obtained several letters of recognition from supervisors, and had been presented with a couple of significant internal NSA awards. Several years later, he’d been assigned to a top-secret NSA project working under the auspices of a front company called King’s Security. That project was headed by the NSA’s Research and Development Department, led by Isaac Remington. The purpose was to create a covert back door into the software used to encrypt internet communications in order to better monitor potential terrorist activity.

That’s where J. P. had met Ethan Sinclair, and the two mathematicians and coders had forged a tight friendship. Ethan and his wife were guests at J. P.’s wedding, and the couples had frequently socialized. Because of their contributions, the back door had been completed in record time and was a huge operational success. Both men were highly lauded for their work.

However, scarcely a year later, J. P. drowned in a freak boating accident near his home. Two weeks after that, Ethan Sinclair vanished into thin air. A few months later, someone calling themselves the Hidden Avenger had emerged, mysteriously slapping a patch on NSA’s prize project, slamming shut the back door and shocking the agency to its core.

Coincidence?

Candace leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. She didn’t believe in coincidence—she believed Ethan Sinclair had vanished and become the Hidden Avenger. It was hard to believe she’d been the only one to come to that conclusion. So, why hadn’t anything been said or done about it?

She smelled a cover-up.

Had there been foul play in J. P.’s death? The police had supposedly investigated and found nothing suspicious. However, J. P. ‘s wife, Maria, had been bewildered to learn her husband had taken their boat out on the lake alone when he couldn’t swim. She had no idea what had possessed him to do such a thing. The police report dismissed the possibility of suicide because J. P. had no prior history of depression, wasn’t on any medication, and they could find no motive for him harming himself. Therefore, without evidence of foul play, the case had been closed and J. P. ‘s death attributed to a tragic accident.

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