Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
The same sense of danger ripples over my skin.
“Do we have a problem?” I ask, meeting Dmitri’s eyes.
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. Seems like it was exactly what it looked like. We’ll keep an eye on it, but we can file this one away as closed.”
“Good.”
I toss the folder into the trash, my attention returning to the one Anya left on my desk as I flip it open. I still don’t know what “Found Him” means, and it takes me a moment of reading to understand what is in front of me. Then I go still.
“Found him,” I repeat.
Dmitri arches an eyebrow at me, his gaze sweeping the neatly stapled sheaf of papers. “What?”
I’m out of my chair, triumph and a rush of anticipation for the hunt surging through my veins. “They found the hacker.”
From the corner of my eye as I pivot toward the door, I see Dmitri’s eyes widen before he scrambles after me.
“Seriously? The one we keep having to kick out of the systems?”
“That one.” My growl is feral, even I can hear it this time.
Dmitri is on my heels as we stalk through the Kucher Enterprises offices, and he makes the call to get a team together. My car is waiting by the curb, and the driver checks the surrounding area before opening the door to let us inside.
“I can’t believe we caught the bastard. He’s been slipping our net for weeks.” Dmitri shifts his big frame into the seat, looking like a bear in a too-small cage. “I have to hand it to him. He’s damn good. Takes a pair to try to take us down like that.”
His laughter shakes his shoulders, but I can see his eyes are bright with the thrill of the hunt, a flash of metal under his suit jacket proof he’s ready to take care of this annoyance.
I, too, am more than ready to dig this particular thorn out of my side. There’s no telling how much he’s discovered about the Bratva’s business or why he’s after us. But I plan to use any means necessary to pull the information from the guy. Hopefully, he’s smart enough to tell me what I want to know right away, and his death will be much faster and less painful if so.
When we pull up to the address, I’m surprised to find it’s an old postwar tract home, small, single-story, pitched roof. It’s falling apart. The faded sage-green siding is dirty and peeling from sun and salt damage, moss and mold stain the exposed brick, the shingles are curling and falling off, and the crisscrossing wood over the windows is broken or even gone in some cases.
“Looks like a place a hacker would live,” Dmitri says before squeezing out of the back of the SUV.
“This does not look like a place a successful hacker would live,” my driver mutters in heavily accented English, his baleful glare on the house.
“I suppose not,” I agree. Though he’s successful enough to hack into our security, which isn’t easy. Not with the system I have in place.
I only understand where the money is going when my men find a basement in the seemingly empty house. Multiple towers hum with power underneath a wide desk on one wall, their expensive monitors a bright glow in the windowless room.
Given the all-clear from my men, I move to the monitors, each with multiple windows up in a chaotic array of the hacker’s work.
“Evgeny.”
I join Dmitri where he stands and bend to peer closely at one of the screens, his mouth set in a grim line. I understand when I look closer. Bratva files. Damning files. Files that tie the Kucherov Bratva to Kucher Enterprises.
And me.
A noise catches us off guard, and everybody in the room swings toward the figure emerging from a doorway so deep in shadow we’d missed it.
For a moment, time freezes. The figure’s attention locks on us, on our guns, and ours locks on him.
With a sharp intake of breath, the bowl of food in the figure’s hands drops, spilling liquid contents over the floor, and the figure darts back the way it came.
I don’t have to issue an order before my team is after the hacker, spilling through the doorway. A crash is followed by a scream and a cry of pain that quickly cuts off.
Dmitri reappears and gives me the all-clear, and the men make way for me in the tight space.
One of my men has the figure up against the wall of what turns out to be a small kitchenette hollowed out from what I imagine was a storage space. I gesture with my chin, and he jerks the figure around by the scruff of his neck before slamming him back against the wall.
Except it’s not a him, it’s a her.