Street Game (GhostWalkers, #8)(48)

Tears shimmered in her furious eyes. “You think I don’t know that?” She pointed to the stairs. “Get out, Mack. Take everyone with you. I’m not doing this with you, not ever again. I mean it; get the hell out of my house.” She turned her back on him and walked toward the plug.

“Don’t even think about it, Jaimie.” His voice dropped low in warning.

She whirled back around and this time there were tears tracking down her face. “I can’t believe you said that to me. You think I don’t know? You think I’m so stupid I don’t get what’s going on? You want to hurl insults at each other? You think that’s the way to get me to listen? If you’d listened to me in the first place, none of this would be happening.”

“That isn’t true, Jaimie,” Kane intervened softly. “It would have happened to someone else. It did. To helpless children. To unsuspecting men and women. To women trapped in his breeding program. To Whitney’s own daughter. It would have happened no matter what. Just not to us. And we’re good. We’ve got each other. We know one another inside and out and that gives us the advantage. If he can’t separate us and break us apart, we’ve got power no other GhostWalker team has against him. And we have your brains.”

Jaimie didn’t look at him. She glared at Mack. “You don’t have the right to talk to me the way you do. I’m not one of your soldiers following orders. And I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Like hell you’re not. You want to prove me wrong so bad you’re willing to risk your life. I already believe you, Jaimie, I’ve seen the proof. You don’t need to put yourself in harm’s way in order to get me to believe Whitney’s a son of a bitch and he’s being protected.”

“For once in your life why don’t you acknowledge I have a brain? I was this close”—she held up her fingers an inch apart—“to getting the identity of the man or men protecting Whitney. We can’t take Whitney down without getting them. He’ll just run, even if we expose him with proof. He’ll be in the wind and we’ll never find him.”

“And if those protecting him are untouchable? What do you think is going to happen here, Jaimie? They’ve sent men trained in combat with enough experience to take on some of our best men. They put a sniper up on a roof to take you out.”

“I know when they’re close.” Jaimie tried to bring her voice back under control. The madder she got, the louder her voice, the quieter he became, making her feel like a child being reprimanded by an adult. “I can feel their energy, Mack.”

“You couldn’t feel Joe, Jaimie, and he’s a f*cking sniper. He could have been sent to kill you, not protect you. He infiltrated your base and made himself your right-hand man. Suppose his orders change and he’s told to kill you?”

Her chin lifted. “Suppose your orders change,” she hurled back at him.

Instant silence fell. The room charged with anger until they all seemed to choke on it. Abruptly Mack turned on his heel and stalked to the stairs.

Jaimie stood over her computers, tears running down her face, watching him go.

“Jaimie.” Javier slipped his arm around her. “You know I had to follow orders, but I should have realized you’d be in trouble. You got it, didn’t you? Right before Kane pulled the plug. You saw the location flash. I wasn’t looking at the screen at that point, I was trying to disconnect, but I heard you gasp. Give it up.”

“We didn’t get it,” Jaimie said. “Kane unplugged the system before it flashed on the screen. He didn’t make it in and I didn’t complete the trace.”

Javier and Jaimie stared into each other’s eyes.

Is she lying? Kane asked.

I can’t tell. It’s possible that she was upset because you shut down the system and some of her more sensitive programs might be messed up. That false computer was genius. They couldn’t know it was a trap. They had to believe they’d made it into her hard drive. My guess is they were trying to plant a Trojan to collect her data.

Kane sent him a flash of puzzlement.

A spy inside her system, Javier explained. They want a look at her files.

“Don’t lie about this, Jaimie,” Kane warned. “It’s too important. We have to know how far they’re willing to go to kill you.”

“I think they’ve made it plain, they’re serious, Kane,” she shot back. “Maybe if I knew who my enemy was, I would be able to fight back. As it is, you and Mack managed to prevent that from happening.”

Did you get a look at her files?

They’re encrypted and Jaimie’s one of the best at encryption. It would take a long time to get past her security and she probably has more than one fail-safe.

If you take her hard drive, can you get the files?

“Yeah, keep talking,” Jaimie said. “I’ll really trust you knowing you’re keeping secrets.”

“What the hell do you expect, Jaimie? You don’t trust us. You insulted Mack and now you’re insulting us with your lies. If you think you have to hide the truth from us, who the hell do you trust? Joe? Mack’s right, the man could get orders any minute to cut your throat. As for me, when I received an order that was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I risked my career and life to stop Whitney. And if you don’t know me or Mack by now, you deserve everything that’s coming.” Kane followed Mack up the stairs.