Page 3 of Taylor’s Warrior

“That might not be enough. I have an air-gapped laptop you can use. Why don’t you let me prep it for you, before I go check on Tay?”

Nick grinned. “I knew there was a good reason why I married you.”

His loving wife stooped and administered a humdinger of a kiss. “I’m still trying to work out why I married you.”

“Very funny. We both know it was for my good looks, charm, wit, and outstanding intelligence. Not to mention my considerable prowess as a lover.” He could give as good as he got.

Charity snorted. “Drive of unknown origin. Networked laptop. Just sayin’, Casanova.”

She had him there. “Okay—you win.” With him, she always would.

“I know. I won the day you walked into my coffee shop. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll grab the laptop for you.”

While she was gone, Nick returned to his perusal of the documents. The more he read, the more concerned he grew. The picture being painted was disquieting, to say the least. Potential financial irregularities came flying at him left, right and center, but there was more. His military training might have made him an expert in the use of firearms, but his knowledge of the details of their manufacture was superficial at best. Even so, the more he read, the more uneasy he became.

“Okay, I’m back. Where would you like me to put this?”

His wife’s cheerful voice liberated him from the disturbing nature of what he was reading. “Just here will be fine,” he replied, gesturing toward the small table by his desk.

“Great. I’ll get it set up for you.” She held out her hand, wiggling her fingers. “Drive, please.”

With an indulgent smile, he dropped it into her palm. While she busied herself with the power supply, he pulled a spare chair around his desk for her, pushing it neatly under her perfect ass just as she looked around for something to sit on.

Always appreciative of her wizardry in the field of information technology, he perched on the corner of his desk so he could look over her shoulder. After several cycles of a flurry of keystrokes followed by frustrated muttering, she sat back, shoulders slumped, and gave the sigh of the century.

“Okay, tell me what’s happening,” he said. “And is there anything I can do to help?”

Charity waved a frustrated hand at the screen, where some sort of login box was taunting her with a message flashing in red. “The encryption on this thing is wild. Military-grade, in my opinion.”

Nick tried not to show his disappointment at the prospect of not being able to examine the contents of the drive as soon as he’d like. If the security on it was enough to challenge his wife’s impressive skills, then it had to be pretty formidable. “So, there’s no way into it?”

The slight smile gracing her lips hinted at a secret. “I didn’t say that. There is something I can try.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

She pressed her lips together, as if debating what to say next. “I’ve been using this laptop to work on a piece of software.”

Nick pursed his lips. “And the problem with that is…?”

“It’s the kind of thing that could get me a free pass into just about any black-hat hacker group.”

He folded his arms, wondering how best to respond. “Have you contacted any black-hat hacker groups? I mean, at some point, do I need to start practicing how to bake a file into a cake, and have a plan for breaking you out of prison and going on the lam with you?”

He hoped the stupidity of the question would convey how appalled he wasn’t by her confession. His hopes were fulfilled when she laughed with relief.

“You’re not shocked?”

“Why would I be? You never know when something like that might come in handy for the kind of work we could potentially get involved in. Have at it, sweetheart. I love the initiative.”

“Okay.”

With the kind of smile that made him wish they could take a break for a quickie, she made herself comfortable again, tapped some keys, and the screen changed. Intrigued, Nick continued to watch her.

More key presses, and the screen flashed red. Charity paused, hit another couple of keys, and screen cleared. Whatever she’d done, she tried another variation on it, with the same result. However, when she tried a third time, the gap between the last key press and the result was a fraction longer, and this time the result was a brief flash of green and the screen changed completely, to something that looked remarkably like a typical display of files on a drive.

“It worked,” Charity exclaimed. “You’re in, although looking at some of the file extensions, the files were created by some non-standard system—my guess would be it’s some specialist in-house system belonging to KDT. We might need to bring in the heavy artillery if you want to take a look at the contents of those files.”

The heavy artillery being John “Tex” Keegan, a man who had become a good friend and who was an incredible source for knowledge and connections when it came to finding out the impossible.