Lightning Game (GhostWalkers #17) -Christine Feehan Page 0,54
me. If I was going to be saved, I had to do it myself. The only way to do that was through research. I did as much on my own as I could. I pursued two different avenues, but both dead-ended. That’s when I heard you give a talk. It was inspiring, and I was hopeful again. The only way I was going to learn anything was to find everything you wrote on the subject.”
She sounded defiant and not in the least remorseful, but Rubin couldn’t exactly blame her. He just didn’t understand how she’d managed to hack his research site. He had two of the best computer experts checking his computer and ensuring his password couldn’t be broken. He couldn’t be hacked.
“How?” It was absolutely vital he know.
Both men stood in the open field, the gray clouds overhead, the silence occasionally broken by the sound of birds. She sighed. “You always used the same assistant to do your research at the military research laboratory when you traveled to Maryland to speak there.”
“How do you know he went there? That’s not ever common knowledge,” Diego demanded.
“I’m a GhostWalker too, remember?” Jonquille pointed out. “I might be a flawed one, but I have excellent forged credentials to get onto military bases to work in laboratories. I research. That’s how I was trying to figure out how to undo the enhancements Whitney had done to me. I knew I would have to live with some of them, but thought if I could find a way to ease them, I could be around people enough to use my healing gift and maybe even get my nursing degree or become a doctor. I’d have a chance at having a family.”
Rubin heard the raw pain in her voice, but it still didn’t tell him how she’d hacked his private account. He forced himself to keep looking at her when he really wanted to gather her up and hold her close to him—tell her he was proud of her skills. She’d slipped in and out of the research center often.
“Tell us how you did it,” Diego snapped.
She shrugged. “I worked there at night.” She stuck her chin out, her silvery-blue eyes flashing. “I’m considered quite brilliant.”
Neither man said anything, although Rubin was beginning to think she rivaled even Trap’s IQ, and he was the most intelligent man Rubin knew.
Jonquille sighed. “You have to be aware your researcher was adequate at best. He was sloppy and sometimes just plain lazy. He waited until the last minute, until you absolutely demanded what you needed, and then did the minimum. I didn’t know why you put up with him as long as you did. I had a high security clearance and was working there as well.”
Rubin didn’t enlighten her that he was well aware of the man’s lack of work ethic. If he hadn’t been stretched so thin, he might have complained, but he couldn’t be bothered. The work was definitely something off the normal path and the assistant had asked to be replaced several times.
“I made certain to sit next to him, and when his boss was there, every time he didn’t know the answer to something you needed and he was complaining, I would just tell him without looking up from my work, which was totally unrelated. I made certain to sound as if I wasn’t even paying any real attention. Eventually, his supervisor asked me how I knew the answers and I told him I just had one of those brains that remembered facts I was interested in and I studied storms and everything to do with them. Again, I made certain to sound very offhand. I kept returning my attention to my own research. Eventually, they just made me your new assistant. I’m Corporal D. Wynn.”
Rubin exchanged a long look with Diego. He’d even remarked to his brother that the new woman was fast and efficient and provided him with facts. She’d cut his work in half. He’d actually begun corresponding with her over time. She’d made little notations in the margins a couple of times that put him thinking along a pathway he hadn’t even considered, a pathway having to do with moving the actual strike from one section of an area to another.
“If you were caught …” Diego said.
“It would be no worse than the way I’m living now,” Jonquille pointed out. “I don’t have a life. I was trying to find a way to survive. I wasn’t trying to steal national secrets.