White-Hot Hack (Kate and Ian #2)(78)

I was right about Charlie and you were wrong.

Charlie hadn’t been the one who’d doxed him. But the only way she could know that for sure is if the person who had was in the car with her, and that was the part he was having trouble wrapping his brain around.

The next thing he did was send a text to Chad and Steve.

Ian: Don’t call or text Kate. I’ll explain in a minute.

Chad: What’s going on? I tried to call her and she practically hung up on me. She said she’d call me back but hasn’t. We’re worried.

Ian: Give me ten minutes.

Whoever had hacked them hadn’t used the garage camera to find out the kind of cars they drove. He’d used it to hack the cars, none of which had been driven since.

Until today.

He didn’t have time to sit around and beat himself up for the mistake, because Kate needed his help. He took a deep breath and called her back.

“That was quick,” she said.

“Sorry about that. I can’t talk long. Pretty busy right now.”

“That’s okay. I understand.”

“How’s everything going?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer. Would she remember the signals from their social engineering assignment?

He wanted to hear the word “great,” but what she said was, “Couldn’t be better,” and with three little words, she confirmed she was in trouble. But she sounded so cheerful that for a split second, he questioned whether he’d mixed up what the responses meant. Is this really happening? But he knew he hadn’t.

“Okay, cupcake. I hear you.”

“I’ll let you go. I’m sure you have lots of work to do. I love you.” Her voice cracked a little, and it broke his heart.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I can get it all done. I love you too.” It killed him to disconnect the call.

Ian looked around for Charlie and spotted him a few rows over, typing and focusing on his screen, securely in the zone. He rushed to his side.

“I need your help.”

“Little busy trying to figure these lights out, Smith. Maybe you can ask someone you trust for help.”

Ian felt horrible. How could he think Charlie would ever betray him? “Yeah, I’m an *. I know that. I will apologize every day for the rest of my life, but Kate’s in trouble.”

Charlie took his eyes off the computer screen. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone’s in the car with her.”

“What? How?”

“They must have put a tracking device on the Porsche. No one’s driven it since I swapped out our vehicles after we got hacked. It probably triggered an alarm the minute I drove it up from the barn.”

“And you think they’re in the car with her now?”

“I’m positive. We worked out some signals on a social engineering assignment we did together a few months back. She just gave me the response for ‘things are not okay’ because they can hear our conversation.”

“What do you need me to do?”

Ian handed Charlie his cell phone. “He disabled her tracking device. I told myself I was being paranoid, but when I designed the app, I added a feature that would trigger a backup locator if something like this ever happened.”

“I’d be thoroughly disappointed if you hadn’t.”

“She’s still on the original route. Open the unnamed white app, get an update on her location, and drop a pin. Tell Phillip I need him. I’ll be in your office.”

The first thing Ian did once he reached Charlie’s office was try to access the Porsche’s network, only to discover he’d been locked out of it. He took a deep breath because even though he’d expected the roadblock, taking control of the car would require a few more steps.

Phillip burst into the room, Charlie hot on his heels. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s intercepted Kate in the Spyder.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Use my phone to call Steve. Tell him what’s going on, and then keep him on the line. His and Chad’s phones can both track Kate, and they should be coming up on her fairly soon. I want to know when they can see her. I’m sorry. I know you’ve got other things to worry about right now.” The blackouts were no longer only the task force’s problem. By now the affected cities would be following disaster-recovery protocols, and emergency management would have been dispatched to keep things under control until they could get the power back on.

Phillip squeezed Ian’s shoulder, and at that moment, he had never seemed more like a father figure. “It’s okay. We’ve got plenty of people out there working on it.”

“Charlie. Can you get law enforcement on the phone? Give them Kate’s location and tell them to send whoever’s closest to pull the car over. Tell them to hurry.”

“On it.”

Ian turned his attention back to his laptop. If someone thought they could keep him out of a network, especially one that belonged to him, he couldn’t wait to show them just how wrong they’d been.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The phone rang again, but this time it was Zach’s and the muffled ringing grew louder when he pulled it from his pocket. “Yeah.” He listened for a minute. “What do you mean you can’t take off? What the hell is this shit? I paid you. You were supposed to be waiting on the runway with your f*cking engines idling.” His voice had taken on an icy edge that absolutely terrified her, and she knew that at this point he wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of his goal. He simply had too much invested. He listened for another thirty seconds and then disconnected the call without responding.