Spy Games (Tarnished Heroes #1)(85)

He wasn’t the mole they’d pegged him for, but Irene was pretty sure someone was using Mitch, pinning the blame on him.

They took the elevator up a few floors and got out.

“Mitch? Mitch, stop talking for a minute and open your door.” Irene scanned the door numbers.

“What?” He breathed into the phone.

“Open your door.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve got to get to the bottom of this before anyone else dies.”

A door three down swung open on silent hinges and Mitch stepped out. He stared at her with bloodshot eyes and a bottle of what looked like spiced rum in his hand. His shirt was partially un-tucked with a few buttons gaping open.

Irene plodded forward, feeling weary in every fiber of her body.

“In.” She took the bottle from Mitch’s hand. “You’ve already met Carol.”

“Yes.” Mitch backed up, his gaze bouncing from Irene to Carol then the booze, over and over again.

“Your email, Mitch.”

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I want to prove you’re as innocent as I think you are.” Irene placed her hand on her service weapon. She’d always thought Mitch was up to something, and she dearly wanted him to prove her wrong. That she could trust him. They all needed a friend in this.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

Irene nodded at Carol.

“I’ve been analyzing the data, what goes wrong with who, why.” Carol stood a little straighter. It took a lot of nerve to accuse a career federal officer of being a party to a crime. “A large percent of the information linked to the instances I’ve identified passed through your hands.”

Mitch stared at them, his mouth open. His gaze flip-flopped between them, the booze forgotten. He dragged a hand through his hair, then scrubbed the side of his face.

Was he looking for a weapon? A way out? This could still go badly for them.

“Fuck,” he said at last and sank into an armchair. “I thought, I thought it was all in my head. That I was, I don’t know, cursed or something.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Irene asked.

“I didn’t know who to tell. Charlie and I… We realized something was going wrong, that no one should be that much ahead of us. But who do you trust? Who do you tell?” He spread his hands.

“Mr. McConnel, can I see your email, please?” Carol asked.

“What’s that going to tell you?”

“I…um…” Carol shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Carol used to be a hacker. I asked her to dig around, look for something wrong.” Irene crossed to the sofa and sat down.

It wasn’t Mitch. He might have secrets, but they weren’t this.

“Dig around on me?” He glanced from Carol to Irene.

“Yes, on you.” Irene eased back into the cushions.

Mitch got up and retrieved his phone from the small kitchen.

“Mr. McConnel—”

“Mitch, please.”

“I want you to change your password. Normally, you have to go through a security reset, but I’m going in remotely to trigger the system to prompt you.” Carol perched on the other end of the sofa, laptop on her knees.

“What’s this going to tell us?” Mitch sat in the chair, phone in hand.

“Carol discovered that every time the server sends your email a message, it’s immediately pinged again. Now, you might think that’s the work computer and your cell phone, but Carol thinks—”

“Charlie.” Mitch sat up a little straighter. “We used to share a top secret, joint inbox until too many things went wrong. Messages were routed from my email to this secondary inbox.”

“What went wrong with Charlie?”

“A lot. Little things mostly. It got us wondering, who could we trust? Was someone sabotaging us? Charlie was worried someone would access his personnel files and pass on the information. So we…changed them. A little.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I knew when they sent the body that it wouldn’t match. Not anymore. That was the point. Make him not the person we know. And then… Oh God, this is all screwed up.”

“Mitch, password, please?” Carol leaned forward, her face lit by the laptop screen.

“Right.” He tapped at his phone. “There.”

“Irene, will you send him an email?”

Irene tapped out a test message and hit send. They all waited in silence. The message left her outbox.

“Got it,” Mitch announced.

“There’s the secondary ping, which is…now being rejected.” Carol glanced up. “I think it’s safe to say that Mitch isn’t our mole.”

“Ping? What ping?” Mitch frowned.

“I mean…” Carol glanced at Irene.

“Explain.” Irene gestured at Mitch.

“The server is receiving two requests for new messages right now. One of them is your phone, and the other, I don’t know. Your work computer is powered off. Can you think of anything else?” Carol shrugged.

“No. I only get email on my desktop and phone. That’s it.”

“Except for this secret, joint account,” Irene said.