DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(40)

I’d been very careful since coming to the Santa Monica area to join Gray Wolf to avoid people I knew from the past. But this was…not as bad as I’d thought it would be.

I guess it is true, what they say.

Time heals all wounds.





Chapter 19


At the Compound

“Mind your business,” David muttered under his breath as he watched Kate Thompson reach up and kiss Donovan. “Do they really think they’re fooling anyone?”

He’d seen a lot, sitting here watching the monitors day in and day out, but watching Donovan fall for his childhood sweetheart had to be the most interesting thing he’d seen in a while. Watching Kirkland charm his targets was one thing, but this…there was actually some plot to it. It was like the difference between a porn movie and a chic flick.

“Let’s not get distracted,” Ash’s voice announced.

David glanced at the monitor that showed his brother standing just inside the entrance of the ballroom. He didn’t get what was going on with him. Did he not want happiness for Donovan? The man survived an IED attack, for Christ’s sake! Why shouldn’t he find something beyond the drudgery of this job?

But again, Ash had been a different person since Alexi disappeared. It was as if something inside of him just evaporated. He left the Army and drifted for a long time, just moving from place to place with no real purpose. And then when Mom and Dad died a little over two years ago…David knew he came back for him. He hadn’t asked him to, but Ash never did anything anyone asked. Then he started this company and brought in all these buff military guys—it was almost a relief when he brought in petite little Joss until David saw what she could do…he would never mess with her!—and tried to build something like a family again. But David knew he hadn’t forgotten Alexi. He knew about the file in Ash’s desk.

David knew that if Alexi suddenly showed up on the front doorstep, something that was missing in Ash would come back. But David suspected that would never happen.

But why not allow Donovan a little happiness? Someone around here should have it.

David studied the screens arrayed around the back of his workstation, checking the camera feeds as well as the code he was constantly working on, constantly trying to improve the system that kept the operatives safe. He could clearly see all six subjects at the party. Ash was still near the door, Kirkland was flirting with a couple of women by the refreshment table, and Joss was playing dice with a couple of chauffeurs by the back door. Donovan and Kate were still in the middle of the dancefloor, but they were talking to a blond woman they both seemed to know.

David watched for a minute, wondering who the woman was. But then he was distracted by something else. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

There was something wrong with one of the pictures on his video feeds. He began pulling them up, one at a time. Something…something…and then he realized what it was.

He pulled up the camera feed from the safe house, then the one from Kate Thompson’s house. Looking at them side by side, it was so obvious. He should have caught it sooner.

Damn!

Someone hacked his cameras!

Those cameras were supposed to be hack proof, but he of all people knew that anything could be hacked given enough time and patience. Whoever had done this, they were smart. To hack them in such a small amount of time—they’d only been in Miss Thompson’s house for three days, only activated in the safe house for twenty-four hours. How the hell…it didn’t matter how.

“The safe house is compromised,” he said, pushing a button on his keyboard that allowed his voice to be heard by Ash only.

“What do you mean, compromised?”

“Someone hacked the cameras.” He continued to type on the keyboard as he spoke. “I’ve got a team headed over there to check it out.”

“How the hell did that happen?” Ash demanded of him.

David looked up at the monitor that showed Ash. He could tell, even from miles away and through slightly grainy video footage, that his brother was pissed. And he had right to be. This was David’s thing, and he’d clearly messed up.

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

“You’d better.”

David cleared the monitors, focusing on the code that ran the cameras. It was easy to reverse what the hacker had done, but he had to go a step further, to block the hacker from coming back. It took him a few minutes to search for the backdoor the hacker would have left to make reentry easier. That’s what he would have done. And he found it just as the team he’d dispatched radioed in.

“We’re approaching the house.”

“Proceed with caution,” he told them.

He pulled up the video feeds that covered the outside of the safe house. He identified the dark shapes of the remote team making their way carefully through the front yard. And then the screen went white.

“Oh, f*ck me!” David cried, shocked into inaction for a second.

“We’ve got a problem, Ash,” he said a moment later, his voice shaking as he watched one, then two, then three of the members of the remote team begin to reappear on the screen. “You’re not going to like it, but you’re going to have to send them to Austin.”





Chapter 20


Donovan