Wade's War, page 7
“Well, if Sophia is working on it, presumably they are in charge, and the decision is theirs. Tell them to shut it down if there are no other options. I was really hoping the tracking would work unobstructed from now on. Otherwise we’re more than blind. I just don’t want anybody coming to our headquarters. The women are pretty well on their own.”
“Not quite,” Wade replied. “Damon is there.”
“Sure. But we also know what can happen when we’re shorthanded. Let me check in on them.” With that, Terk shifted slightly and closed his eyes.
A weird buzz of energy followed. Wade really was hopeful that Terk would get ahold of Damon, so he could be on extra alert and keep Tasha and Sophia safe, if anything should happen at their new headquarters. Besides, they needed to keep a low profile, since the last thing they wanted was to tip off the wrong people that Terk’s team had a new base. Were there enough safeguards in place in case someone showed up? “What if they’re using that new software? What if they are using it against us?” Wade asked Terk.
“How so?”
“Well, what if they were using it on our trackers?”
“I don’t think they could have inserted any hardware into our computer system without us knowing.” And then he stopped and sent a questioning look to Wade.
At that, Wade shook his head. “Not any software either. I would know from my latest computer fix.”
“I know that you think you would know,” Terk replied, gauging Wade’s response carefully.
“But I’m sure. I don’t think they ever got a hold of me.”
“I’ll go ahead and say this. I really do get it, and I’m sorry because I’m not trying to piss you off. But we have to consider all the alternatives, and, right now, that one is starting to look like a possibility.”
“Well, who’s to say that?” Wade asked. “Any software would have to be compatible with my mind, and is there even a system as advanced as the human mind yet?”
“Just because we don’t know about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Terk argued. “More likely,” he added, “they’ve probably connected via software, hacking right into our trackers. Maybe the attack is originating from our trackers.”
Wade shook his head. “I like the sound of the second option over hacking our brains. Right about now, I’m feeling a little sensitive about anybody hacking into anything that’s ours.”
Terk laughed bitterly. “Especially our brains.”
“I don’t want to imagine it, but that is my job,” Wade replied. “We’ve got enough chaos and nightmares going on in our scenarios without having to worry about someone hacking into the most private part of us. When chaos happens, you know that it’ll happen in a bad way.”
“There’s always something new or different happening in our field,” Terk stated.
Wade shook his head as he approached a corner, before driving around it. “Always some new shit show and we must be one step ahead of the game.”
“So, in this instance,” Terk muttered, “by the time we’re done with whoever’s been attacking us and now tracking us, we have to make sure that whatever software they have is completely gone. We need to destroy it entirely, or else nobody in the world will be safe.”
Chapter 5
“Okay, I’ve got our interloper isolated,” Sophia muttered to herself. “Now let’s wrap this guy up and tag him and see if we can track him backward,” she muttered. At her side, she felt Tasha watching her every move.
“That’s good that you got him,” she noted in admiration. “That will make a huge difference.”
“Will it? It’ll only make a difference if he doesn’t know what I’m doing and if we can keep him separated from getting where he wants to go.”
“And I get that.” Tasha watched as her friend worked for a bit, then headed back over to her own tasks.
The fact that Tasha was leaving Sophia to do this was a huge vote of confidence. But then it was rare for her to actually require any oversight when it came to this stuff. She took pride in her work, and it was the work that she loved to do. It’s just that it didn’t always work out the way that she wanted it to. But then what else was new? Sometimes life just sucked.
Like when Wade had walked away from her. Sophia had thought for sure she’d found something absolutely amazing; then, just like that, it was gone. It had been a hard lesson, and even now was something that she wasn’t sure she was completely ready to forgive him for. Understanding was one thing, but allowing it to happen again was another. And while that was a completely different issue, she also knew that she would take any chance she could to keep him in her life because he was worth it.
Which also made her vulnerable.
She stared at the screen in front of her. “No fucking way, asshole.” The interloper’s code was sliding sideways, looking for another door. She immediately placed more blocks.
“Are you playing with him?” Tasha asked.
“I’d like to blast him to smithereens,” she snapped, “but I don’t really understand what he’s after, so I thought it was more valuable to figure that out, instead of just wiping him out. I’m also trying to color-code every step that he makes so, when he retreats, we can follow him. Plus, follow what he did later.”
“I like the sound of that,” Tasha admitted. “Just make sure that you don’t play with him to the extent that everything else gets lost.”
“No, I won’t,” she stated. “Too much at stake here.”
“That is very true,” Tasha agreed, with a smile. “It’s really nice to have you on board.”
“Why? Because you’re not alone?” Sophia asked, with a gentle laugh.
“To a certain extent, yes,” Tasha admitted. “Losing Mera has been really tough. We were friends and had worked together the last couple of years. We hadn’t made any plans after the team was disbanded, as both of us were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. But, damn, when you lose someone and when you realize that you didn’t even have a chance to reconnect, it just pisses you off.”
“I can see that,” Sophia muttered, as she worked away on her screen. She didn’t dare give this guy an inch without making sure that she knew exactly where he was traveling, but he was also being way too cagey, and that worried her. “This guy is really good,” she muttered.
“Have you considered that it could be a bot?”
She stopped and looked over at her friend. “Jesus, no, I didn’t.”
“Well, I think that may be what you’ve got going on here,” Tasha stated. “From the looks of it, it seems way too quick.”
“Not necessarily,” Sophia argued. “You know that you and I would be just as fast.”
At that, Tasha laughed. “You’ve got a point there.” She looked at the screen. “Look. He’s starting to do a run again.”
And, with that, Sophia headed back over and blocked every corner he tried. She added a bit more code to trace the steps, and then she finally said, “Okay, I think he’s good to go.”
“And what does that mean?” Damon asked from behind her.
“Just that I think he’s good to leave, and we can track him back as he goes.” With that, her screen started to do a weird spin.
Damon gasped. “What the hell is that?”
“Exactly what I want,” Sophia replied reassuringly. “He’ll have to retreat now.” Even as they watched, a weird red light went through the screen. “That’s my work right there”—she pointed—“tracking him back.” As she leaned back in her chair, she added, “I put in checkpoints.” She continued to stare at her screen.
“Well, he bounced out of Lisbon.” She waited. “And then back out of Iran.” She shook her head. “He’s not done. And now we’ve got a signal bouncing out of New York.”
Tasha smiled. “He’s trying to hide his tracks, but he’s got a tail, and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it.”
“So the problem with that now,” Sophia noted in a conversational tone, “is that he doesn’t dare go home, at least not immediately. Because, when he goes home, I’ll know where home is for him.”
“But still, you’ll only get a country, won’t you?” Damon asked.
“Nope,” she stated. “I’ll get his goddamn computer.” They all sat waiting tensely, as the retreat went on. “He went back through Lisbon again,” she noted. She glanced over to see that even Tasha had stopped and was watching. “We just have to make sure we don’t lose him at this point.”
“I know, right?” Tasha stated. “But I can’t even begin to get on to him while you’re there.”
“I know. Let me just keep handling this,” Sophia muttered. “He’ll have to go home eventually.”
“But it might take him a while,” Tasha replied. “Only when he believes he’s shaken you off.”
“And yet this isn’t about time now,” Sophia noted. “No matter where he goes or when, my tracer on him will follow and will keep up over the hours.” She got up, stretched. “Are you guys okay if I go lie down for a bit?”
Tasha nodded right away. Damon opened his mouth and then closed it, looking over at Sophia.
Sophia just nodded. “Okay, I’ll go grab ten then.” And she walked over to her bed, then laid down and crashed.
In the distance, Sophia heard Damon ask Tasha, “Was that wise to just leave all this open?”
“It’s not open. Like she said, her tracer is running, so I can handle it from here. She needs sleep, and she didn’t get any,” she reminded him.
“I know. It just seems odd that now that we’ve got somebody on the run that she gets up and walks.”
“She’s not walking. She’s planning ahead. There’ll be a lot of work to do as soon as we find out where the hacker is, so right now is her only chance to grab a break.” Tasha smiled. “It’s actually really smart because, after this, we’ll be working our asses off, running down whoever these assholes are.”
“Do you think we’ll catch something out of this?” Damon asked, sounding skeptical.
“I do think so,” Tasha agreed. “Yes,” she added a bit more firmly.
Sophia curled up on the side of the bed, pulled a blanket lightly over her and closed her eyes. She could still hear the murmured whispers, but it didn’t matter what the whispers were. Tasha was correct. Whatever the hell was happening would happen as soon as the intruder landed at home. So Sophia needed to be awake and alert for that. For now, she needed to sleep.
*
Wade studied the outside of the Godwin family residence. “It looks like a huge old aristocratic estate, big money here. Well, there was big money anyway,” he stated, “but you can see things haven’t been maintained. The gates are looking ever-so-slightly tilted to the side, so whoever had the money doesn’t necessarily have it anymore or just doesn’t care enough. Or maybe they let it look this way on purpose, just to throw everybody off, to make it look abandoned.”
“That’s a possibility too,” Terk agreed. They were waiting in their vehicle for Merk to show. When Terk suddenly opened the truck’s passenger door, Wade looked over at him. “What?” Terk asked, coming around to Wade’s side of the truck.
“Have you always been able to talk to your brother like that?”
“Most of the time. It made growing up a lot easier.”
“You think?” Wade shook his head.
“Now, if everyone around us knew, I’m sure it would have driven them nuts.”
“Probably, but, like most kids, we didn’t really care about anyone else. It was cool to us.”
“And Merk can talk to you that way?”
“Sometimes. Much less so now. It’s like he grew out of it, and I grew into it.”
“Interesting phrase.”
“I don’t think he cared about it as much, whereas for me it was everything.”
“So maybe he didn’t want it, and you just accepted it openly.”
“That’s possible. I never really looked at it that way. Not the easiest growing up like this,” Terk muttered. “Wasn’t any room for people like me out there.”
“Well, there is now,” Wade noted. “Only because you made room for it. You made room for all of us, and, for that, we’re damn grateful.”
“I don’t know,” Terk stated. “You probably would have been just fine doing what you were doing before I found you.”
They slipped across the road toward the front gate. Even as he thought about those words, Wade knew Terk was wrong. “You’re wrong, you know?” he stated, when they reached the other side. “I wasn’t doing anywhere near as well as I am now.”
“And that’s because every time we ignore our abilities, it’s fine for a little while, but eventually it catches up to you. You think you’re doing great, and you do your best to be happy, but how can you really be happy when only half of you is functioning on the inside?”
“Well, you convinced us of the right way obviously, since we became a team, doing the job,” he stated. “But you know that it hasn’t been the easiest journey.”
“No, it’s never been easy,” Terk replied. “All we can do now is hope that, when this is over, we can get back to living our lives.”
“And then what? Have you thought about that?”
“I have actually, but I can’t really say anything about it until I figure out where I’m at. Only having two of my team here, we better focus on the here and now.”
“Jesus,” he said, “don’t say that.”
“And yet it’s hard for me to think of anything else,” he replied. “We have a lot of really good men who are down right now.”
“Anybody else starting to surface?”
“Yeah, Gage is doing better,” Terk noted.
“Well, that would be a hell of a thing because he could be looking into this location right now to see if anybody was here.”
“And I’ve talked to him,” Terk added.
“Jesus … have you?” Wade stopped and looked over at Terk, with joy on his face. “Is he well enough to talk? When this is over, I’ll go see him.”
“Yeah … well, I’ve been talking to him the other way,” he replied a bit evasively.
“Ah, now that makes more sense, but, if he can even communicate that well,” Wade added, “then we’ve got improvement happening.”
“Definitely improvement, just not enough,” Terk noted, with a gentle smile. “I’m trying to feed him energy to heal because he’s not strong enough to reach out and take it.”
“That’s dangerous, Terk. For you.” Wade looked at him. “You know that.”
“It’s not dangerous because the world around us is full of energy.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You know it’s dangerous because you’re likely to wear yourself down, and Gage won’t have control yet. He’ll be pulling and taking what he needs, without worrying about your needs.”
“Of course,” Terk agreed. “Right now he’s still unconscious, but he’s pulling, and he’s asking for the energy, and I’m sending it.”
“Of course you are. Shit.” Wade groaned. “I would have offered, but I’m not healthy enough to be of any use.”
“Nope, you’re not, which is why I’m doing it,” Terk murmured. “So don’t get pissy about it. Gage will be a little bit longer but don’t be surprised if he reaches out soon to talk.”
“I’d be more than happy to talk to him,” Wade offered. “Jesus, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time,” he muttered. “Thanks for that.” And they headed toward the house. “You think we should just approach from the front?”
“Merk is doing reconnaissance, so we’ll wait for him to reach out.” So far they didn’t see any sign of life.
“Well, it’d be nice if nobody is home,” Wade noted.
“On the other hand, it’d be nicer still if somebody is here.”
“That’s just because you’re eager to question somebody, anybody, to get some answers,” Wade replied. “I don’t think the answers will be quite so quick to come by.”
“They never are,” Terk agreed. “But we can always hope that maybe, one of these days, somebody will give us something helpful.”
Wade laughed. With that, they approached the front gate only to find that it wasn’t even closed. And it opened soundlessly. “That’s the first sign,” he stated, “that maybe we’re in the right place.”
Terk nodded, understanding that, when gates were soundless, it often meant that people liked to slip in and out without letting everybody in the neighborhood know where they were. It also meant that others could slip in and out as well.
“Cameras?” Wade asked.
“Merk says he’s not seeing anything, though he finds that very suspicious.”
“You think?” Wade replied. “Either it’s completely innocent or it’s 100 percent suspicious. There’s no in-between when it comes to this shit.” And, without further discussion, they headed around the side of the house, keeping low, hiding behind the bushes as they could.
When they got up to the side of the house, Wade heard an odd sound. Stepping back out of sight, he saw Terk and Merk approach each other, not a word spoken between them, but sharing a half smile as they kept on going. Wade followed Terk and Merk as they headed to the rear of the house.
“Talk about being threats in the night that nobody saw,” he murmured to himself. But these two were something else again. And they were damn good at it. Wade could only hope to ever be half as good. He knew that Merk didn’t have a whole lot to do with these special skills. But shit, for a guy who didn’t have those extra skills, he was pretty damn capable in the middle of nowhere. As they approached the back of the house, Wade looked around. “I’m not seeing any sign of life.”
“No, neither are we. Let’s go in.”
The door was locked but had it been anything other than that, it would have made Wade feel like they had an open invitation to a trap. He quickly picked the lock, then stepped inside and looked around. A high-end kitchen was the first surprise. The old estate had been modernized somewhere along the line in the last decade. So why was nobody here?
As they moved through the kitchen to the living room, they searched the complete main floor, then the three of them moved through the rest of the house. As Wade reached the master bedroom, he pushed open the door, then slipped inside and froze. Making a mental call out to Terk, he sent, You need to come here.
