Jodie Bailey - Smokescreen

“What?” Of course Ethan would pick up on her realization almost as fast as she had.

Ashley kept her mouth shut. If he wanted what she knew, he’d have to ask for it specifically.

Ethan checked the rearview mirror then glanced her way. “I’m guessing you figured it out. Sean sent you intel on a set of thumb drives. He asked you to pick up his mail, but there’s one package he cautioned you to leave in the box.”

Ashley nodded, muscles weakening. Ethan was telling the truth. “Sean’s stationed in Colorado, but he forwards all of his mail to a post-office box to make it easier for me to take care of his affairs. There’s one package he told me not to worry about. It was there the last time I checked the mail—a little over a week ago.” The message. The package. The program they’d developed together during her recovery. Whatever was on those thumb drives, it would require their shared work to decode it.

She needed to get to her apartment. Sean’s life was in danger and their program might be the one thing that could save him. “You have to take me home. Without the software Sean and I developed, those drives are worthless.”

“You tell me where it’s stored and Mitch will retrieve it.”

“Absolutely not.” Her trust in Ethan was thin enough, but there was no way she was going to hand the height of her life’s work over to anyone other than him. The stakes were too high. That program, when fully realized, would fund her future and Sean’s, as well.

“I’m getting you to safety. I’ve got a place where—”

Ashley’s head shook so quickly, strands of hair clung to her eyelashes. She swept them to the side and focused on the moment. If she kept moving, kept planning, she’d forget the entire situation was spiraling. “You have to take me to my apartment.”

“It’s dangerous. Sean said they hacked his computer, read his emails. They knew you were on that flight, which clearly means they’ve studied you enough to know where you live.”

“ Clearly I have to go home. The program we developed... I didn’t store it on my hard drive.” The very same laptop the man at the airport had taken when he’d grabbed her bag. “It’s not stored in the cloud. Encryption software like we developed is valuable, an easy target if word gets out that it exists before we’re ready to shop it around. There are only two copies. The first one’s hidden in my apartment and the other is in a safe-deposit box, but the keys to that are at my place, too.

“Sean’s smart, and I’ll guarantee you he rewrote the encryption process on his computer overseas without creating a way to decrypt it on the same machine.” Not to mention, they needed to find the key for decrypting what he’d sent, but that was a discussion they could have after Ethan drove her to her apartment. “If somebody’s onto Sean and that package in his mailbox holds encrypted data, then you have nothing without what’s stored at my place.”

Ethan reached for his phone, stopped and banged his fist against the steering wheel. “This is where I wish I had more backup.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just me and Mitchum. I’ve got contact with my chain of command, but it’s limited to nonclassified communications and emergencies until we’re ready to move in. Believe it or not, this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, and me contacting them with where you are could land us in deeper danger.”

“Why just the two of you?” She’d assumed there was abundant help. If this was about to become a three-person team made up of Ethan, his pal Mitchum and her...

“Sean’s involved because we sent one man in already and he...was unsuccessful. Everything points to someone working on the inside. We don’t know how high this goes or who is helping who, so after what happened with our first guy overseas, my team has been whittled down to Mitchum and me with Sean assisting, keeping our information close until we can build this case.

“What we’re looking at is a well-funded group with some serious hacking ability. They’ve been able to manipulate secure computers. They’ve deleted files we were using to build evidence against them, accessed encrypted emails and planted some pretty nasty viruses on our secure servers, all while staying one step ahead of us. We’ve gone dark. Sean got involved because we knew we could trust him to be our boots on the ground as an established infantryman who already knew what was going on. He asked me if he could forward those drives to you for safekeeping if anything happened. I had reservations, but...” He flicked a glance her way and back to the road. “Neither of us ever thought something would happen to blow his cover and land you in danger on top of it.”

“What’s on those drives?”

“All of our evidence against them. They’ll want those drives to destroy them, Sean to find out what we know and what we’re planning, and you because they have no idea how deeply you’re involved.”

“So they’re after me not only to get to Sean, but because they think I have his intel.” Ashley’s fingernails dug into her palms. Danger. The last place she ever wanted to be again. That was why she loved her computers. They were safe. Nobody ever found a gun aimed at them because they built a tougher firewall. “We have to get the software.”

“You’re right. But you’re in danger as long as these guys are out there.” He eased over to the side of the road to turn around as his phone beeped. He pulled the device from his pocket, glanced at the screen, then gripped it tighter.

“What?” Ashley’s voice strained as she leaned closer, fingers trembling at the hardness in his eyes.

“It’s Sean.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but the expression on his face chilled the air in the cab. “Shortly after Sean contacted you, there was a breach on his FOB by insurgents posing as Afghan police.”

Ashley’s chest jolted with pain, the adrenaline aching in her veins. “And...?”

A muscle twitched in Ethan’s cheek. “They took Sean.”

THREE

Sean. Targeted. Taken by insurgents.

Ashley’s bravado wore thin. Winning the battle to go to her apartment had dampened the fear and given her a sense of control, but as they raced through Syracuse in the dark, the temporary sense of power didn’t last.

In just a few hours she’d gone from a network security consultant checking a friend’s mail to a hunted woman on the run with a man she’d hoped never to see again. This didn’t happen outside of Jason Bourne movies.

Ethan dropped one hand from the wheel and let it fall between them on the console. “You okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That was one mighty big sigh you just let out over there.” He sniffed. “Listen. It’s bound to not be easy right now, but we’ll figure out who’s behind all of this and find Sean. We have the benefit of knowing this wasn’t random. We have leads. It might take some time, but we’ll get it done.”

Something about the renewed confidence in his voice soothed Ashley. It washed over her in the soft darkness and made her believe he was right—it would all be okay. Eventually. She settled into the corner against the door, pulling the seat belt tighter in case anyone found them on the street and tried to take them out.

But nothing could keep the silence from pressing in. She wished there was something to talk about, but shock and weariness kept her mind focused on the monsters that could be lurking outside her home. Even that was better than letting her mind wonder if Sean was alive.

Her home. Her safe place. It would probably never be that again. Especially considering... “Have you been to my apartment before? Pulling surveillance on me?”

Ethan didn’t answer, but the fact he hadn’t asked for directions to her place spoke louder than words. The lights of his truck played across the front parking lot and he turned them off before they got to the side street of the building where her apartment was housed. He pulled into a space around a curve several buildings away from hers and cut the engine. “If you tell me where it is, I can go get it.”