One-Knight Stand (White Knights #3) - Julie Moffett Page 0,27

of the hotel?” Jax suggested.

“Maybe, but it’s more than two hours from here. I have a feeling I need to be in this area.”

“We could pool our money together for a hotel room,” Jax said. “But I don’t know how long we could do that or how safe it would be.”

A red Corvette passed us on the street, and I froze, staring at the car as it disappeared down the street and out of sight. Mr. Toodles took two steps until his leash pulled him back. He yipped at my leg in frustration.

Jax stared at me, waving a hand in front of my face. “Red? You okay?”

I blinked and turned to Jax excitedly. “I think I know where we can set up our command center. Text the team we have an emergency, and we’ll be back at UTOP in a few hours to brief them in person. Then I’ll tell you—and them—everything.”

Chapter Fourteen

CANDACE KIM

It wasn’t how she’d intended to spend her Friday night, but here she was, sitting alone in her office at the NSA, papers scattered around her with pertinent information on Joseph Patrick Lando, better known as J. P. The building was quiet and dark except for the light over her desk and the soft glow of her computer. Janitorial staff had already come and gone, and since she had sensitive material out, she’d asked them not to come in. Her office would remain uncleaned until Monday.

She’d been carefully making notes about J. P. Lando, and now she read back through what she’d written so far.

J. P. Lando had, by all accounts, been a brilliant student. He’d gone to Princeton as an undergrad, graduating with a double degree in mathematics and engineering. His skills were in compiling and coding using early computer languages, many of them now defunct. A leading mind in field at the time, especially in the area of the mathematics of cryptography, he’d received his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and wrote his doctoral thesis on linear programming. She’d obtained a copy of it and glanced at it, but the topic was way over her head.

J. P. had joined the NSA as a communications specialist about three months after defending his thesis, and he had been assigned to work on communication algorithms and data security. He’d done excellent work, obtained several letters of recognition from supervisors, and had been presented with a couple of significant internal NSA awards. Several years later, he’d been assigned to a top-secret NSA project working under the auspices of a front company called King’s Security. That project was headed by the NSA’s Research and Development Department, led by Isaac Remington. The purpose was to create a covert back door into the software used to encrypt internet communications in order to better monitor potential terrorist activity.

That’s where J. P. had met Ethan Sinclair, and the two mathematicians and coders had forged a tight friendship. Ethan and his wife were guests at J. P.’s wedding, and the couples had frequently socialized. Because of their contributions, the back door had been completed in record time and was a huge operational success. Both men were highly lauded for their work.

However, scarcely a year later, J. P. drowned in a freak boating accident near his home. Two weeks after that, Ethan Sinclair vanished into thin air. A few months later, someone calling themselves the Hidden Avenger had emerged, mysteriously slapping a patch on NSA’s prize project, slamming shut the back door and shocking the agency to its core.

Coincidence?

Candace leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. She didn’t believe in coincidence—she believed Ethan Sinclair had vanished and become the Hidden Avenger. It was hard to believe she’d been the only one to come to that conclusion. So, why hadn’t anything been said or done about it?

She smelled a cover-up.

Had there been foul play in J. P.’s death? The police had supposedly investigated and found nothing suspicious. However, J. P. ‘s wife, Maria, had been bewildered to learn her husband had taken their boat out on the lake alone when he couldn’t swim. She had no idea what had possessed him to do such a thing. The police report dismissed the possibility of suicide because J. P. had no prior history of depression, wasn’t on any medication, and they could find no motive for him harming himself. Therefore, without evidence of foul play, the case had been closed and J. P. ‘s death attributed to a tragic accident.

An internal NSA investigation hadn’t found foul play or