Page 7 of Assassin's Game
“He didn’t write that himself, bro,” Monty pointed out. “Some PR expert trying to make the bank sound fancy did.”
“Maybe.”
“Besides,” I added, “being an arrogant prick doesn’t usually warrant a contract for murder.”
“It does sometimes,” Monty said absently. “Ah-ha. We’re in.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Home network.” Monty leaned forward, eyes glued to his screen. “Give up all your secrets, you arrogant prick.”
We all held our breath, but unfortunately for us, Sullivan was smart about security. Guess he had to be in his line of work, although as with the profile page on the bank website, likely he hadn’t set it all up himself. A couple of hours later we were no closer to breaking into the guy’s private financial information.
“Keep working,” I told Monty and Maris. “We’re going to meet Rhys to check out the location he’s found. We’ll be back.”
And hopefully they’d have more for us than the somewhat embarrassing images Maris had found saved to a cloud server connected to Sullivan’s computer. There had to be more. Someone seriously wanted this guy dead if they’d gone to the trouble to sniff us out to do it. There were easier, less dangerous ways to off someone than blackmailing your killer for hire into doing it.
Something they’d regret as soon as we could find the trail back to them. No one threatened my family, and this team was my family. Had been for longer than the five years we’d been on the run. Just the thought of someone targeting them made my blood boil.
The four people sharing this hotel room with me were my responsibility. Yes, Monty, Titus, and Rhys had the military experience, but they’d watched for years as my father put me through the same paces they’d had to endure. Watched him groom me to be a soldier when I was with him, leaving me to be a mother when he was away. Joining the military had been my dream, a dream I’d inherited from my father, but when Maris’s mother—my stepmother—died in childbirth, that dream took a back seat to caring for the tiny, vulnerable creature Kerry had left behind. Leaving on assignment had no longer been an option. So I’d worked with a company outside Atlanta, Georgia, Global First Security, doing backup and logistics until Maris had turned eighteen. Only then had I begun to take missions with GFS teams.
That had changed five years ago, when my father’s closest soldiers became targets of the same people who’d taken my father from me. From us. I’d vowed to keep them safe just as I’d kept Maris safe. As the oldest, I’d become the de facto head of our team.
We’d been together ever since. And no Anonymous1234_5 asshole was going to tear us apart.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Four
Eli —
“Bram, dude, no! Just no.” I forced myself to take screenshots of the images Sullivan had stored on his cloud, images no self-respecting man should have associated with himself. “What would your board members and shareholders think about that onesie, man?”
The cutouts were enough to make my stomach turn over.
Finished cataloging the evidence, I returned to Sullivan’s private computer, accessing file after file, Internet exchanges, online servers, everything. It was close to two a.m., and I’d been at this for almost five hours. Levi hadn’t returned home yet. Before he did, I had an errand to run; then I’d be back to begin the delicate process of worming my way into the financial records Sullivan had such tight security on.
Accessing the computer’s event log, I scanned the remote log-ins to ensure my IP didn’t appear—which was when I saw it. As I watched, the access logs changed, one line disappearing, then another. It took a moment for my brain to comprehend what I was seeing.
Someone else was accessing Sullivan’s computer.
Maybe Sullivan was online? But no—I’d turned on his webcam earlier to be certain he wasn’t at his desk. The image was grainy, dark, but I could see there was no one in front of the monitor.
That meant someone was remotely logged in. Or had been. They were gone without a trace now.
“Who are you, unlucky fucker?”
I spent a few minutes trying to hack the log, see if I could come up with the IP the intruder had used. When that proved futile, I embedded a tracker in the remote access log, erased the evidence of my own rooting around, then backed out of the system. I’d receive an alert if anyone got in again. It was the best I could do for now. If Sullivan had done something worthy of a hit—something more than the things that involved the diapers-and-crib party I’d happened upon—then it was possible I wasn’t the only one watching him.
The new arrival might also be X tracking my progress. Whoever it was, finding out if they were a danger to us was the next order of business.
With a quick glance at my watch, I shut down the computer and grabbed my backpack from its spot beside the desk. August was a bitch whether we got rain in Georgia or not, though most years it was more not. I could never get through the summer months without remembering the days we spent sweltering in barely there shade, a hundred degrees heating the asphalt and brick walls until I thought for sure my fingers and feet and everything else would burn completely off my bones. All those nights on the streets when taking off enough clothes to cool down was impossible, and finding water was barely a godsend when it was hot the second you got it on your desperate tongue. Even now, cool beneath the flow of chilly air-conditioning, I could feel phantom heat creeping in, threatening to steal my strength. My body. My breath.
I shook the feeling off as I climbed into the SUV and cranked it up. My brothers and I had managed as best we could all those years, knowing a shelter would identify us and put us right back into our uncle’s greedy—and murderous—hands. There’d been no risking it, but it hadn’t been easy to keep all three of us alive.
Which made tonight’s errand all the more important to me.
Abe’s Place was closer to Atlanta city lines than the mansion was, but the bar nestled into a solidly middle-class, active neighborhood that guaranteed business would never be slow. With closing time only a half hour away, I pulled straight into a front-row parking space and made my way inside.
