Page 9 of Broken Trust
Damn. Elin had learned long ago to censor herself when it came to revealing what she knew or how she knew it. But her head wasn’t in the game because she was distracted as hell by the fact that the lover she believed dead for the past two years was alive and in this house.
She met Dante’s flat stare.
“You got into my system.”
Sophie studied Elin, looking more thoughtful than accusing.
She nodded.
“She does have security clearance,” Sophie said.
“Not that level. That’s above her paygrade.” Dante pulled out a chair and dropped to the seat. “Just how deep did you go, Elin?”
“Deep enough.”
He shook his head. “Two days ago, I was stuck at a firewall I couldn’t break through. Then I took a break. When I came back, everything just fell into place and I got into the Midwest system.”
Elin felt heat streaking up her throat. Damn the fair genes that made her blush so easily. She started to turn back to her own station, but Dante stopped her.
He opened his mouth to fire off questions.
“I thought we were trying to prevent a nationwide catastrophe,” she reminded him.
“She’s right, Dante,” Sophie jumped in. “Does it matter how she knows these things? Fact is, Elin has CIA and FBI clearance to help us stop the upcoming outage.”
And she was trying to prevent her heart from getting caved in again.
Dante rocked back in his seat. “How did you find her, Sophie?”
“I needed a high-level hacker. She was recommended to me.”
“By who?”
Elin forced herself not to squirm or to walk away from the whole job. She didn’t need the money—she had enough of that. And she’d done what she set out to do, which was to prove that Liam was alive.
But there was still a psycho out there trying to burn down the world. The terrorist known as Cipher was responsible for a lot of deaths and destruction already, from bombings to assassinations, with many innocent people caught in the fallout. She couldn’t just let him get away with whatever he planned with this power outage—not if her skills could make a difference.
She had to tell Dante and Sophie everything if they were going to get anything done.
“I only hack for the good.”
They stopped at her announcement.
“I wouldn’t do anything to set you back or sabotage your efforts. But I did…” she met Sophie’s wide eyes, “place myself in your path. So you’d find out I could help you.”
Sophie shook her head slowly as if trying to make sense of what Elin was saying. “What made you interested in us?”
She swallowed hard. “I knew Liam Mason…before.”
“Before he became Blackout.” Sophie’s whisper was rough.
Dante’s expression blanked to a mask and he said nothing.
She barreled on. “I saw a news report. The lights blinked out on a subway train, and when they came back on, a man was dead.”
Two sets of eyes drilled into her.
The words bled out faster. “Something clicked in my memory.”
