Page 8 of Broken Trust
Not yet, anyway.
Elin forced herself to focus on the screens. Code scrolled past, some of the most elegant and complex she’d ever seen, layers of security that would have stumped most hackers. Elin wasn’t most hackers.
She loosely knew what this team was. Black ops. Ghost operators. Men who’d signed away their identities to do work no government could officially sanction. They were ghosts in every sense—dead on paper and executed missions like they didn’t exist.
And Liam was one of them.
A set of boots passed in the hallway outside. The steps heavy and slow. Her pulse kicked up before she could stop it, her body reacting to the possibility that it might be him even as her mind screamed at her to get hold of herself.
She needed to get this job done fast. She had six days until the big event that would shut down a power grid, but she was giving herself three. Three days to perform the job Sophie brought her here to do.
But every second in this place felt like she was standing on a cliff’s edge. One wrong move and she’d fall, and this time she wasn’t sure she’d survive the landing.
Boots again, this time moving past the open door. She automatically turned her head, dread and hope that it was Liam warring inside her.
“Elin.” Dante drew her attention this time, his voice patient but insistent. “We need you here. Present. Can you do that?”
She met his gaze, saw the concern there mixed with frustration. He needed her skills, but he also needed her attention, and right now her attention was scattered across every hallway in this damn mansion, following boots and heartbeats and the ghost of a man who should have stayed dead to her.
“I’m here,” she said, and this time she meant it.
Focus. Work. Then leave.
That was the plan.
She just had to survive long enough to execute it.
She looked to Dante, a handsome guy with an easygoing manner who probably wouldn’t mind her request. “Is it possible to get two more monitors for my workstation? I’m used to sprawling out.”
While she did prefer more workspace, she really wanted to hide behind the monitors.
“Sure thing.” Dante got up to respond to her request.
Sophie settled at a station and opened several strings of code she was trying to decipher. She ran a finger under one line and looked to Elin. “I think this portion has something to do with what you and I worked on before you came here.”
“Oh?” She studied the text.
“The power plant I had you look into…”
“You mean hack into.” Elin shot her a wry glance.
Sophie chuckled. “It’s all for good.”
“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” Early in her career, she’d vowed that her skills would never be used for evil and that anything she did would be for the right side.
While they dug deeper into the puzzle, Dante set up two more monitors for her. When he finished, he hovered behind her and Sophie, listening to their discussion.
Sophie’s voice was steady as she outlined the situation. “Two nights ago, the Midwest grid flickered offline. No one can trace what happened. For a thirty-second window backup protocols failed, and when they came back up, half the diagnostics were scrubbed.”
“Same as a breach in California,” Dante added. “No traceable entry point in the system.”
Elin’s pulse ticked faster. She could see the map in her head of how the terrorist known as Cipher had entered in the firmware.
Before she could stop herself, the words slipped out. “He didn’t breach the power plants. He went through the load governors, piggybacking on maintenance traffic.”
Both heads turned.
Dante’s brows knit. “That wasn’t in any of our reports. How do you know that? It’s all classified.”
