Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,52
she arrived at his cabin. “Kyle said it was his way out if he needed it. He said we should give my bracelet to someone named Fox and he’d know what to do with it.”
The name gave Duarte more than a moment’s pause. Alec, too. “You sure he said Fox, babe?”
She nodded. “Does it mean something to you?”
Alec ran a hand over his close-cropped, dark blond hair. “It’s a Phoenix operative codename. I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard he’s some kind of computer genius.”
“Got any idea where to look for someone like that?” Duarte asked.
Alec raised a brow. “I can think of a few places to start.”
Duarte still wasn’t sure they could trust Talon, but at the moment, they didn’t have many better alternatives. “Assuming we can locate Fox, that still doesn’t tell us what he would want with the bracelet. Did he say anything else about it, Lisa?”
“No. Maybe he would have, but then the alarms started going off and then... then he was gone.”
“Can I see it?” Alec asked.
“Sure.”
She took it off and handed it to him. He inspected it for a long moment, turning it this way and that, his shrewd gaze scouring the silver chain and lizard emblem. “That’s odd,” he murmured. Then he chuckled low under his breath. “God damn Talon. That crafty son of a bitch.”
“What is it?” Duarte and Lisa asked in unison.
“I think I’ve found what will be of interest to Fox.” Alec looked up at them. “What we still need to know is, why?”
The trio exchanged glances. Then Lisa raised a slender, but determined brow. “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s go find out.”
~ ~ ~
SEEK
TINA FOLSOM
Copyright 2015 Tina Folsom
Book Description
Nicholas “Fox” Young, brilliant computer programmer and ex-Phoenix Program operative in hiding, is close to his goal of accessing information, which could bring him one step closer to finding his fellow Phoenix and shedding light on the recurring nightmarish premonition that haunts his dreams. But the online cat-and-mouse game he’s been playing with ex-hacker and now CIA-contractor, Michelle Andrews, gets elevated to a new level when circumstances thrust them together.
Suddenly, passion ignites the blood of the cool computer genius, and he has to balance the risk of letting the fiery woman close enough to catch him with the need of feeling her shudder in his arms. But no matter his decision, they might already be doomed, because Nick’s real enemies are lurking in the shadows.
1
“Gotcha!”
Nick Young pumped his fist in the air and let out a triumphant growl while continuing to stare into the computer screen. A red dot was blinking on a map of Washington, D.C. Next to it, an IP address flashed.
“You bastard! Did you really think you could outwit me? Looks like I’m smarter than you after all.”
Because the guy had made a tiny mistake, whether out of stupidity or laziness, Nick didn’t know, nor did he care. What counted was that now Nick knew where to find him.
He felt a genuine smile curve his lips, the first in a long time. For over a month now, he’d been playing cat-and-mouse with an online adversary who was trying to keep him out of the servers that held crucial data Nick had been looking for ever since the secret CIA program he’d been part of had been compromised three years earlier.
Nick memorized the address the dot was pointing to and logged off. He flipped the lid of his laptop shut and stashed it in his backpack. Then he pulled an old keyboard out of the drawer, hooked it up to the dinosaur PC that he kept as a decoy and connected a mouse to it.
Should anybody find him and try to trace what he’d been doing, the files he’d planted on the hard drive of the old desktop he’d bought second-hand would lead any pursuer on a wild goose chase. With a little luck, nobody would be looking for a second computer, and he’d be long gone before they were on his tail and could kill him like they’d killed Henry Sheppard, his mentor and the leader of the Phoenix program.
The same fate was waiting for him and his fellow operatives—CIA agents selected not for their physical abilities but their unique mental skills. Each of the Phoenix, including Henry Sheppard, possessed the gift of premonition. Three years ago, somebody had decided that the Phoenix presented a danger and killed the leader of the program.
When Nick had received Sheppard’s mental call, his world had collapsed.
“Phoenix down.”
He could still