Неизвестный - 6. Justice For All

“Ah, I won’t argue.” Michael smiled. “Although I don’t think it’s completely a guy thing.”

Sandy snorted. “Okay. I suppose when Dell starts in on me I’m not thinking about much of anything either.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Sloan too?”

“She can be persuasive.” Michael gave Sandy’s hand a shake.

“I’ve got a really good idea.”

“What?”

“Let’s open a bottle of wine, eat Chinese, and watch a movie.”

“Can I still bitch about Irina?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Sandy glanced around. “Sloan still at work?”

“She’s in a meeting with Rebecca. I think she’ll be there for a while.”

Sandy smiled. “In that case…what about sharing the inside scoop on her when she’s being persuasive.”

“I don’t like to brag.”

Laughing, Sandy bumped Michael’s hip with hers. “Yeah yeah.

I’ll just stick to my fantasies.”

v

“So what’ve we got?” Rebecca asked when she found Sloan working at a computer in HPCU headquarters.

“Pull up a chair,” Sloan said, hitting a few more keystrokes before swiveling to face her. “Someone’s trying to get into our network.”

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“And that’s unusual?”

Sloan shook her head. “Not really. Random intrusions are very common. Usually they’re probes launched en masse looking for susceptible computers to access.”

“I take it this isn’t random?”

“No. This is a very subtle and very smart assault. They hit the computers at Police Plaza too. Had more success there because the network’s not fully shielded yet.”

“All right,” Rebecca said. “Run this down for me. What are we looking at here?”

“Since I don’t believe in coincidences,” Sloan said, “I have to believe this is the same person who infiltrated Police Plaza before.”

“I thought we tracked that back to Beecher, and he’s dead.”

Sloan shook her head. “No. Beecher was the entry point. But he didn’t set it up himself. He was a middleman. A cyberbagman.”

Rebecca smiled grimly. “I get it. And now that the bagman is out of the equation, we’re moving up the ladder.”

“Oh yeah. Way up the ladder.” Sloan glanced at the monitor, then back at Rebecca. “There’s probably only a handful of people in the country that could do this. If you take out Jason and me, maybe three or four.”

“Do you know who they are?”

Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “Ten years ago I would have. When I was still with Justice.”

“Son of a bitch. Clark knows, doesn’t he?”

“I’d bet money on it. I bet he’s known all along.” Sloan leaned back in her chair and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

“He’s playing us.”

“What do you he think he wants?”

“What every fed wants. A high-level informant inside the organized crime family.”

“And this thing with Irina and Mitch?”

“He’s hedging his bets. Irina might pay off for them, but she’s a long shot.” Sloan thought about Clark and Kratos Zamora and Michael.

There were no coincidences. Avery Clark would use anyone, risk anyone, to get what he wanted. “There are no good guys anymore.”

“Wrong,” Rebecca said softly. “There’s us.”

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Sloan swung back to her monitor, not wanting Rebecca to read the truth in her eyes. She hadn’t been one of the good guys for a long time, and with every day that passed, and every time she faced the evidence of another betrayal, she knew she moved further away from the light.

Rebecca might believe that their leaders weren’t corrupted, but she didn’t any longer. “I don’t want Clark to know we suspect. I want to let this guy try to get in, and every time he does, I’ll chase him back to his hole. I’ll find him.”

“I want to know when you do.” Rebecca waited in the silence, letting Sloan make her choices.

“Right,” Sloan said quietly.

Rebecca rested her hand on Sloan’s back. The muscles beneath her fingers were tight as steel. “You’re wrong, you know.”

“How’s that,” Sloan said hoarsely.

“There are still people you can trust.”

When Sloan turned around, Rebecca was gone. She wanted to believe her, needed to believe her. She needed not to feel so alone.

v

Mitch was a lot better at dressing than he used to be, but he really missed having Sandy around to approve the details. He smoothed his hand over his chest to be sure the Ace wrap lay smooth beneath his black T-shirt. Lucky for him, he didn’t have a lot to hide up top and his naturally rangy build meant he didn’t have much in the hip department either. He opened a drawer on his side of the dresser and selected a new item he’d never used before, a semi-rigid cock that let him pack comfortably, show a little more in his jeans than a softy would, and have a pretty functional dick if he needed it. Not that he planned on using it with Irina, but if he was taking her out and about, he wanted to come off to anyone checking them out like a guy who planned on treating his girl right.

As he checked his hair and the little bit of makeup he used to darken the angle of his jaw, he thought back to the first time Jasmine had shown up in his apartment with an array of dicks. He’d been embarrassed and excited. Jasmine had helped him get ready, but it had been Sandy, who had looked at him and immediately seen Mitch, that had made everything work. That still made everything work. He didn’t

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think he could do this job without her. He checked his watch. He had two minutes. He called her.

“Hi, babe,” he said when Sandy answered.

“Mitch?”

“Uh-huh.”

After a moment, Sandy said, “Ready to head out?”

Mitch knew she was trying to sound casual. “Soon. Whatcha doing?”

“Watching an old movie with Michael and getting buzzed. I think I like red wine.”

“What movie,” Mitch asked, smiling at the thought of Sandy getting into wine.

“St. Elmo’s Fire. There’s this guy who kinda reminds me of you.

Except he’s an asshole.”

“Who?” Mitch heard Sandy say something to Michael, but couldn’t quite make it out.

“Rob Lowe.”

“We’ll have to watch it together.”

“So I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “It’ll be late.”

“I don’t care about that.” More silence. “So be careful, rookie.

See you.”

“See you, babe.”

Mitch disconnected, patted his pockets to be sure his wallet was in place, double-checked that his jeans didn’t bunch up around his ankle holster, and grabbed his jacket on the way out the door. When he got to Irina’s—his—apartment, he knocked. When she didn’t answer after a few minutes, he knocked again. Swearing, he used his key and let himself in. The efficiency was empty. The blanket was folded neatly on one corner of the mattress. He checked the refrigerator. A container of milk, a carton of eggs, butter, an apple. A pot rested upside down on the drain board next to the sink. So she’d shopped. She probably wouldn’t have done that if she were skipping out on him.

He walked to the closet and pulled it open. A stack of clothes sat on the top shelf. A few blouses hung from hangers. He sniffed them.

They were clean. She’d done laundry. But where had she gone? Maybe she had a contact in the city they didn’t know about. Maybe she’d been free to move about between safe houses the whole time, and she was

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already back with the Russians. Maybe she had a secret boyfriend, or girlfriend.

He’d been up most of the night before, so he stretched out on the mattress to wait and closed his eyes. The Army had taught him to sleep lightly, and he was instantly alert at the first scratch of metal on metal.