Ava McCarthy - Hide Me

‘We believe so.’

‘Why do they need a hacker? Are they really using computers to cheat?’

‘Maybe.’ Vasco tilted his head, as though assessing her. ‘Or maybe they need a hacker for something else.’

Harry squinted. What was he getting at? He leaned forward, his eyes probing hers.

‘We know a lot about you, Miss Martinez.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Such as?’

‘We’ve been in touch with your police force in Dublin. They were very helpful.’ Vasco peered at her like a raptor bird, and Harry tried not to squirm. ‘You started young. I understand you hacked into the Stock Exchange when you were just thirteen.’

Harry’s eyes widened. How the hell did he know about that? No charges were ever filed. A childish misdemeanour, nothing more. Vasco was still talking.

‘Then more recently, there was the question of several million euros that went missing in the Bahamas. And later, some diamonds in Cape Town. Also missing.’

Harry’s brain raced. She’d sailed close to the winds of larceny more than once, but she’d had her reasons, all of them good ones. Trouble was, she couldn’t prove it. Then again, neither could they. She clenched her fists.

‘I’ve never been arrested for anything.’

‘Your father has. He served six years in prison for insider trading, didn’t he?’

Harry gaped. What was he doing, trying to build some kind of case against her? And for what?

‘Geldi!’

Harry snapped her gaze to the stranger by the wall. He’d shot to his feet, his expression stony, and was firing out what sounded like orders in rapid Basque. Vasco made a chopping motion with his hand, cutting him off. Then he turned back to Harry.

‘Have you talked to Riva Mills since McArdle was killed?’

Harry glared at him. ‘No, I haven’t had the chance.’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘What?’

He advanced around the desk towards her. Her heartbeat tripped. Behind him, his colleague was shaking his head.

‘You have an unusual mixture of skills, Miss Martinez.’ Vasco’s eyes bored into hers. ‘Think about it. You’re a professional hacker who knows her way around a casino. You’re part-Irish, part-Spanish. You have a reputation for bluffing and telling lies, not to mention out-manoeuvring the police. You even have a jailbird for a father. This really is a rare opportunity.’

Harry threw him a cagey look and slowly shook her head. Not in denial of his allegations, since most of them were true, but in an effort to ward off what she knew was coming next.

‘I have a proposition for you.’ Vasco loomed over her like an elegant bird of prey. ‘I want you to go undercover, Miss Martinez. I want you to take McArdle’s place.’

Chapter 5

‘That’s crazy.’ Harry stared at Vasco. ‘I don’t know anything about going undercover.’

But even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. If she was honest, a part of her had always been drawn to the notion of becoming someone else. Her whole childhood, after all, had been a kind of double life.

Vasco’s phone rang. He held up a hand, as though halting a line of traffic, then moved behind the desk to take the call. Harry sat back to wait, flicking a glance at his colleague, who’d resumed his seat by the wall. He was scowling across at her, his tangled eyebrows jutting out like twin wire brushes. She shifted her gaze. Vasco was treating the guy as though he was invisible, but there was something about him that Harry found impossible to ignore.

She picked at a fingernail and thought about double lives, flashing on an image of her childhood self: wild hair, fists clenched as if braced for unexpected combat. Outwardly, she’d been the girl she called Harry the Drudge, whose mother made her sit alone in her room after school so they wouldn’t have to talk. The rest of the time, Harry had lived as Pirata, an insomniac who sat at her computer in the dark and prowled the electronic underground. For hours, she’d dialled out over slow modems, sharing ideas and downloading hacker tools. As Pirata, she’d been all-powerful, well respected by her crackerjack comrades. As Harry, she’d led a far more hemmed-in existence.

Vasco wrapped up the call, then looked at his watch, a calculated reminder that he was a busy man. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

‘This is an important case, Miss Martinez. We’ve been watching these people for months. I intend to find out what they’re up to, and you can help.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person.’

‘It’s a global investigation.’ He straightened his shoulders. If he’d been a bird, his chest would have swelled. ‘We’re talking about intergovernmental cooperation, very high profile. The United States is involved, Hong Kong, most of Europe, even your own Irish authorities.’

Harry squinted at him. ‘For a crew of casino cheaters?’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Cheating the casinos is just a sideline. These people are involved in something else, something bigger. And I want to know what it is.’

‘I’m not trained for this kind of thing. It won’t work.’

Vasco ignored her and sorted through the photographs on the desk. ‘We know they have links with other criminal organizations. That’s how they came to our attention in the first place.’ He found McArdle’s headshot and tapped it with a manicured forefinger. ‘What I want to know is, why did they hire a hacker?’

Harry’s gaze slid to the lifeless eyes in the photograph. Her insides flickered, an odd mixture of fear and curiosity. But she bit down on both. This had nothing to do with her.

Vasco was still talking.

‘It will be a short, sharp infiltration. Nothing protracted or drawn out. We set things up so that you’re taken on as McArdle’s replacement. You talk to them, find out who their target is, what they want you to do and why. Then you can disappear. An in-out job. And of course, you’ll be well paid.’

Harry lifted her chin. ‘I’m sorry, but this is not the kind of thing that I do.’

Vasco paused. ‘Perhaps you should reconsider. You seem to forget the awkwardness of your position.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You were following McArdle, right up to the moment he died. The casino cameras can place you tailing him out of the building. By your own admission, you pursued him through the streets, all the way to the Plaza. Where he was ambushed and murdered.’

For an instant, Harry’s brain shorted out, a synapse misfiring between hearing words and understanding what they meant. She shook her head.

‘You know why I was following him. You can’t believe I was involved in his death.’

‘Oh, I don’t. But naturally, my investigation must be seen to be thorough. My men will need to dig more into your background, check out your family, your father’s history, involve the relevant Irish authorities. A long, messy process. And from what I’ve heard, your relations with the Irish police are already quite fragile.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I could make life very difficult for you, Miss Martinez.’

Harry felt her jaw tighten. ‘If you think—’

‘On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘if you cooperate with my request, it might go a long way to redeeming your reputation.’

Harry gaped, her brain still playing catch-up.

Vasco fixed her with unblinking, lidless-looking eyes. ‘This case is important to me and, one way or another, I intend to get a result. How cleanly you come out of it is up to you.’

He shot a wrist from his cuff; another showy time-check.

‘I have a meeting.’ He got to his feet, gesturing at his colleague by the wall. ‘This is Detective Zubiri, from our Undercover unit. Talk to him, then give me your answer.’

He snatched a briefcase off the desk and marched out of the room. Harry glared after him, blood seething through her veins. The last thing she needed was to get caught up in a murder case, but Vasco had her in a chokehold. She felt her teeth grind. Suspect or undercover decoy: what kind of half-assed choice was that?