“No. They want me on a job. I’ve told them no. I’m never working for them again, which means I’m free to come in with you.”
“You know that’s what Manny and I always wanted.”
He doesn’t sound as enthusiastic about it as Manny did. “Yeah. You got any concerns?”
Logan shakes his head. “Sorry, I guess it just stung when you turned us down, but I’m glad you’re free of whatever was holding you back. I definitely want you to come in with us. Mac, too, if we can persuade him.”
“None of us everpersuadedMac to do a single thing. He’ll come in with us because he loves you like his own.”
Surprise ghosts across Logan’s face. “You think so?”
“I know so. Want me to start pulling together a proposal for him?”
Logan nods. “I’ll do a set of contracts for the company. We need shareholders’ agreements and that kind of thing.”
“Sounds good. Shoot me over a set of financials.”
Logan suddenly envelops me in a sweaty hug.
I thump his back and then push him off me. “What was that for, ya swamp creature?”
“Manny’s great. He’s been my partner for years and I’ve always known I could trust him with the body man side of things. But you’re smarter than him and me put together and I’ve always wanted you on side. I’m damn glad you will be.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it sooner. It really was to protect you guys.”
“Thank you for that. And if you have any trouble with those hackers, you have the firm’s full resources behind you. Anything you need.”
I sit down on the weight bench and consider how much I want Logan to know. If he’s going to be my business partner, he should know everything. What’s more, he needs to know to protect Emily and I finally get why he needs to so fucking fiercely.
Logan sits down facing me, propping his back against one of the stools to the bar. “Tell me,” he says. “It never leaves this room.”
“You can tell Manny and Mac whatever you think they need to know. This goes back to when we were in the Navy. When I was first assigned to our unit, I was mostly running comms. But after you left, I did more and more physical systems disruption.”
Logan nods, his eyes resting careful and without judgment on mine.
“DoD was using a physical security system called WEDGE back then, and that was the first system I was trained on. Both how to hack it and how to defend it. About a year on, the higher ups decided WEDGE had too many vulnerabilities and they brought in a new system. But they wanted to get their money out of WEDGE, so they sold it. Ex-military tech like that? It was hot. People all over the world bought it, including a bunch of warlords in a part of the world you and I know too fucking well.”
Logan sighs, probably remembering the same things about the hell of our time in the Gulf of Aden that I am.
“It was a win-win for them. They got back a lot of the money they’d invested in WEDGE and they had a bunch of trained monkeys who could break into WEDGE whenever they told us to.”
“Did you?” Logan asks.
I nod. “After I left the Navy, I was contacted by people who knew people. From the service.”
Logan nods. “Mercenaries.”
“Yeah. Do you know what isolated data is? Cold storage?”
Logan shakes his head.
“When you want to keep data really secure, you stick it on a computer and remove that computer from the web. You take out the wifi and Bluetooth and every way it can connect without a cord. That way you know someone like me can’t hack it. That kind of data, the only way to get at it is to physically grab it.”
“Okay,” Logan says.
“An IDR is an isolated data run. The team goes after the physical container of the data. Snatch and grab. It’s usually financial data. Account numbers. Pin numbers. Passwords. Terrorist financing shit. The mercs were hired to do IDRs. They needed me to get into the places the isolated data was stored. Turn off the CCTV. Disrupt drone coverage. Open electronic locks. So they could go in and grab the hard drive or whatever the data was stored on. I was good at it. Anything that had a chip in it and was running WEDGE, I could bring it down. Some of them had even integrated it into their vehicles. I compromised everything. People were hurt. Three kids died.”
Logan rubs his hand over his mouth. “We’ve both killed, Max. It’s not easy to live with.”
