Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(40)
Here.
To her closet…
“An optical bug is a high-tech listening device undetectable not only to the naked eye but also to standard bug detectors,” Ozzie explained. And it was amazing how quickly he could go from class clown to engineering professor. If he’d been wearing a pair of glasses, this is the part where he’d shove them up the length of his nose. “What it does is shoot a high-powered beam of light at a window where it picks up on vibrations in the glass. It then turns those vibrations into audible speech. But as James Bond as that sounds, an optical bug has a fatal flaw.”
She lifted a brow, feeling the need to pinch herself. Who would ever believe the Chicago debutante whose sixteenth birthday party ran on the front page of the society paper was in a closet with a group of clandestine government defense warriors, trying to help a supposed rogue operator, all while being bugged by…who was bugging them exactly?
That was going to be her next question.
“If you turn off the infrared filter on a digital camera,” Ozzie continued, “and snap a photo, the light beam shows up as a red dot.”
He handed her his digital camera, and there on the display screen was her living room. And there in the middle of her living room window, was a big, glowing dot.
“I knew,” he went on, “given Boss’s general tendency toward paranoia—”
“It’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you,” Boss interrupted, his expression surly, which caused Ozzie to grin like a little kid.
“Like I was saying,” he continued, “given Boss’s general tendency toward paranoia, I knew you guys had swept the premises for bugs, so I couldn’t figure out how they picked up Vanessa’s trail. I knew they couldn’t have tagged her leaving the house. We’re all too good for that. And I’ve seen her Ricardo Ramirez disguise. That thing’s a beaut. So, no way, just by seeing her, they’d realize who she was. Which meant they had to know what to look for and where to look for it. And the only way they’d know that was if they’d somehow been listening in on the goings-on around here. That’s when I realized…optical bug.”
Eve couldn’t stand it anymore. “Who are they?” she asked.
“The CIA,” Becky, Boss, Ozzie, and Billy all answered at once, while Steady simply muttered, “The Company.”
Uh-huh. She raised a hand to her spinning head.
Geez freakin’ Louise! She’d known the U.S. government was after Rock. That’d been made very clear to her when Becky first approached her about appropriating her vacation home as a base. But she hadn’t realized that by agreeing to help the Knights try to clear Rock’s name, she’d also be making herself a target of “The Company.” Which probably showed exactly how naive and gullible she really was.
“It’s okay, Eve,” Becky assured her, reaching forward to squeeze her fingers.
“Um,” she blinked, this time not worrying about the fact that her squiddy backbone—or lack thereof—was showing, “how is it okay? The freakin’ CIA is after us.”
“Not us,” Becky said. “Just the information they think we have.”
“And that’s different because…?” She was hoping someone would assure her she wasn’t hours away from finding herself locked in a federal prison cell. Not that she didn’t think she could survive it, mind you. Because with her tragic lack of street skills, not to mention her somewhat dubious local celebrity status, she was pretty sure she’d be quickly taken under the wing of—and forced to become the bitch of—someone named Big Bertha or Crazy Carla or Hot Knife Hattie. But, see, the thing was, Eve would desperately like to avoid that scenario if at all possible…
“Because,” Boss said, and she turned to look at his scarred face, taking comfort in the certainty she saw in his eyes, “so far, we haven’t done anything wrong.”
So far…
Yeah, she hadn’t missed that little caveat.
“I’m surprised an optical bug would work on those windows,” Steady said, scratching his head.
“What?” Eve glanced around. “Why? What’s wrong with my windows?”
“He’s talking about the fact that they’re those fancy double-paned contraptions, with the blinds between the glass,” Ozzie said.
“I didn’t want big heavy window treatments to obscure my view,” she said, defensively, not that she’d been able to enjoy it on this trip since all the shades in the entire house had been drawn upon their arrival. Still, what exactly was the problem with her windows?
“Good thinkin’,” Ozzie winked reassuringly. “And it also makes using an optical bug more difficult since the beam of light has to cut through a pane of glass and the plastic blinds before reaching the window where it can pick up the noise vibrations of our speech. Difficult,” he nodded toward Steady, “but not impossible.”
“Mierda!” Steady cursed in Spanish.
“You said it.” Ozzie agreed, before adding, “What we need are vibrators.” The sudden change in subject had Eve blinking rapidly and glancing around like maybe she’d misheard.
When no one seemed to bat a lash at this statement, she asked the time-honored and oh-so-eloquent question of, “Huh?”
“Vibrators,” Ozzie repeated and, yep, she hadn’t misheard. “We can tape them to all the windows and turn them on. Their resonance will screw with any optical bugs The Company tries to employ.”