Wade's War Read online

  Sophia frowned at that. “It’s hard to continue doing this job at that same level if you never get enough rest,” she murmured. “Especially right now, with everybody so shorthanded and under attack.”

  “I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing,” Tasha admitted. “It’s their protective instincts kicking into high gear. And, within the team itself, it’s amplified even more. The team is family to them. You can’t fight them from being themselves. Give them some leeway, a little bit of patience and tolerance.”

  “I get it.” Sophia sighed. “It’s the problem with being a geek. Once we do the computers, they do all the dangerous stuff, and, whether we like it or not, we’re stuck watching and waiting for them to leave and to maybe never come back.”

  Tasha sucked in her breath at that. “Yeah, and I don’t really want that reminder right now.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound quite so bad. It’s just frustrating to watch Terk walk away, knowing that he will only get a minor amount of sleep because, in his mind, he really can’t afford to do more than that, and here we have Wade trying to rest up so he can do more, and yet he’s barely capable of doing anything,” she muttered. “He should be in a hospital.”

  “There are no hospitals for people like our team,” Tasha noted. “Sophia, you don’t really understand all of this yet, so all I can do is ask you to have patience.”

  “I’ve got patience for Wade,” she stated, “because really nobody else is in my life but him, and, as long as he cares, I’m willing to work through it. This is pretty mind-altering stuff, but I’m hanging on to the belief that he cares—but does he care enough?”

  “Well, the fact that you’re even here and that he didn’t kick you out of his room”—Tasha smiled—“should let you know that he cares enough.”

  At that, Sophia glanced at her friend. “Would he have had enough power to veto my presence, given the circumstances?”

  “If Wade didn’t want you here, trust me. You wouldn’t be here,” she noted. “And I can’t really explain to you how that works. It’s about protecting everybody, yes. But it’s also about the team focusing on the bad guys—no distractions allowed, like petty fights among the team. Believe me. Terk would have read your intentions, as well as Wade’s. If Terk found anything wonky, I just know that, on an energy level, he would have told you to basically eff off, and you wouldn’t be here. Because, in your own mind, you would know without a doubt that this is the wrong place for you, and Terk would have read your mind to confirm that.”

  Sophia sat back and stared. “By that same token, then Wade not kicking me out of his bedroom …”

  Tasha laughed. “Maybe you should talk to Wade a little bit more about that. But I would take it as a very good sign.”

  Bolstered by that and yet still wondering how any and all of this worked, Sophia settled down.

  Tasha added, “We need a physical location to go after this idiot who just broke into the computers.”

  “I know,” Sophia agreed. “I was thinking that he had to be in another country because why would he be so foolish as to do anything close by, but still, for a good hacker, it’s pretty easy to hide your tracks and to make it look like you’re at a distance. If he’s local though—as in, out of Europe, whether France and England—I would think he could then also be connected to the gunman who took out your admins or at least to the attack on the original team.”

  “And that’s what I was thinking too. But the bad guys have cleaned up any of their gunmen—Peter, who was killed by Wade’s own brother, who was killed by Coop, the man who kidnapped me, who was then killed by Wade and Terk.”

  Sophia gasped. “You were kidnapped? Wade’s brother was killed? Oh my God. I am missing so much information here.”

  Tasha laughed, waving a hand across her body. “It obviously all worked out for me. The trouble is … we need somebody alive to question.”

  “I don’t know about alive,” Sophia replied, “but at least something digital that we can grab on to for an identity.” With that, the two of them went to work.

  Not ten minutes later Tasha leaned back with a big sigh. “I may have found something. But it’s not the Lui Pul name Wade gave us.”

  Sophia looked over at the picture on Tasha’s screen. “I recognize him.” Her tone was surprised, but she frowned. “Well, I think I do. I guess in a place like this, you must be careful what you say.”

  “No, not necessarily,” Tasha stated. “If you have anything to offer, then please do. Otherwise we’re all just spinning our wheels and wasting time.”

  “I met a guy named Randall Godwin, attending the same IT conference as me. And he looks like that.” Sophia pointed to Tasha’s screen.

  “And why would he have been at your conference?” Tasha asked.

  “For the same reason I was there. Looking at who was hiring and who wasn’t, what was new in technology. I was checking the scenery. As in the Wade scenery.” She sent a smirk in Tasha’s direction.

  “Right. Those were the days, weren’t they? I miss the good old simple times.” Tasha laughed. “I haven’t done any of that shit in a very long time.”

  “I didn’t plan on being there in the first place,” Sophia noted. “But I was at loose ends, having switched out employers at the time. It was before I hooked up with Levi and Ice. Man, I wish I had hooked up with them earlier.”

  “They’re good people,” Tasha added.

  “And apparently you found gold when you hooked up to this team,” Sophia stated.

  “I don’t know. Gold is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But, when your team gets wiped out, it is definitely not the word I would choose.”

  “Well, it just is such a typical shitty government move, and it makes you want to reach out and smack them.”

  “I’d like to reach out and kill them myself, but the one guy we suspected of being potentially either extremely gullible or directly involved—our contact, Bob, in the defense department—died in DC. I was using his log-in as a way to get into some government databases and had to change it when I realized he was no longer alive.”

  “Man, you guys are going through the bodies.”

  “Too many of them,” Tasha murmured. “So this guy”—she nodded at the photo still on her screen, while she worked furiously on her keyboard—“he’s got affiliations with Paris. His passport crossed into Belgium a couple days ago, but that doesn’t mean he’s still there. We need a location here for him,” she murmured.

  Sophia nodded. “Let me see what I can find. He was using Randall Godwin at the conference, but who knows if it’s a fake name or not.”

  With that, the women ran a deep background check on this character.

  Tasha was happy to have anything to do but was afraid to spend too much time focusing on this one guy and risk missing out on something else. “Hey, let’s split up. You continue your search on Godwin, and I’ll keep looking to see if I can come up with other possibilities for our primo hacker. I’m not getting anywhere on the guy Wade named. This Lui Pul.”

  “You do that,” Sophia muttered, but she was already buried in the hunt. It took her twenty minutes before she let out a soft crow of success.

  “What did you find?” Tasha asked.

  “Bank accounts under Randall Godwin,” she replied, with a note of satisfaction. “Everybody always does the first layer of encryption on bank accounts, but, once you start moving money, it leaves a trail, and I’ve found all kinds of those.”

  “What kind of money?”

  “Millions,” she stated succinctly.

  “Well, that’s even more enterprising then.”

  Between the two women, they hacked their way around, trying to uncover every single trail they could find.

  “Sweet … but this is just a tip of the iceberg,” Sophia muttered. “We’ll have to go deeper, as some of these accounts are bound to be fake.”

  And, with that, they kept digging, deeper and deeper.

  “I’m not
sure that we’re still on the right track here,” Tasha stated, “but at least now we have something to show the guys. We also have a Godwin address in the Liverpool area, although I found no sign that Randall has used it in a while. But it was under his father’s name, and chances are, it’s either a homestead family residence or it’s something he uses as a front.”

  Sophia tapped her screen. “But dear old dad died over eighteen years ago.”

  “Huh. So how the hell do you keep it under a dead guy’s name?”

  “Lots of them in the family,” Sophia explained. “Same last names, right? So, as far as the recordkeepers are concerned, nobody really gives a shit, as long as the bills are being paid.”

  “I think that’s always the case. Pay your bills and stay under the radar and nobody cares. Except for people like us. And, for people like us, these guys are gold.” Just behind Tasha, she heard a sound and turned to find Wade leaning against the doorjamb.

  Sophia stood to assist him.

  He lifted a hand. “I’m fine. Honestly, I’m fine.”

  She took a slow deep breath as she studied his face—still pale, huge circles under his eyes, obviously leaning against the doorframe for support. But a brightness in his gaze wasn’t there before. “I know you don’t want to be mothered,” she admitted, “and I know you don’t want that as part of any relationship, but it will take me a little time to not panic every time I see you looking like this.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “You have a lot to get used to. It’s one of the reasons I kept you out of this.”

  “Too late,” she replied cheerfully. “I’m in, and I’m staying in.”

  He nodded. “I got that message, but some things you’ll have to adjust to. Just like I’ve had to adjust to my skills too.”

  “And I will,” she murmured. “Even if it takes me a while, I will. Don’t write me off so quickly.”

  “Any chance of getting more food, or did Tasha eat it all?”

  Tasha turned from the computer and glared at him.

  He grinned back. “Nice to see some things haven’t changed.”

  “Ha,” she muttered. “At least you don’t look like death warmed over anymore.”

  “Oh, there may be a problem then”—he smiled—“because I sure feel like it.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Tasha got up and walked over to help Sophia with Wade. “Bring him on over here, Soph, and we’ll get some food into him.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, I’m not an invalid, so don’t treat me like one.”

  “So stop acting like one,” Tasha snapped back immediately.

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Between the two of you …”

  “You’re thankful to be alive. Got it.” Sophia gave him a big smile.

  He laughed. “Well, there is that part too.”

  “And we’re all grateful to have you alive,” Tasha replied. “But the thing is, we have to keep you that way, so let’s not have too many more arguments.”

  “Okay.” He let Sophia lead him over to a seat at the kitchen table. Once he sat down and relaxed a little bit, it took the pressure off his legs and his spine. Yet, man, it looked like he couldn’t stay upright for long. “I thought I was getting better, but this little bit of effort shows me that some weakness is definitely still here.”

  “Some,” Sophia agreed. “Did you actually sleep? Or were you trying to work the whole time?” He just looked at her with a flat expression. She nodded. “You were working through it.”

  Tasha groaned. “Not sure how you think that’ll help at all.”

  “It’ll help,” he stated, “because nobody else can do this.”

  “I get it. I do, but you also have to heal. Otherwise you can’t help anyone, at all soon.”

  “I can do plenty,” he stated in an insulted tone.

  “Oh, please, enough with the ego.” Tasha shook her head. “You know that you need to get a grip on that.”

  He glared at the two women. When he opened his mouth to snap back again, Sophia placed a bite of something in his mouth, stopping the onslaught of words. He continued to glare but chewed away furiously. By the time he was done with that, she popped another one in. “Fine.” He raised his hand to block any more food. “Message received.”

  “Good. I highly suggest we ignore all of what was about to come out of your mouth. I can see that keeping you filled up periodically will make you a little easier to deal with.” Sophia frowned. “Hungry people are no fun for anyone.” She looked over the foodstuffs that Tasha has amassed and asked, “Are we saving this food for anything?”

  “For us,” Tasha stated, immediately coming over. “You want something?”

  “I could use something,” Sophia murmured.

  “Help yourself. When this is gone, we’ll get more.”

  “Sure, but getting more will also open ourselves up to problems, won’t it?” Sophia asked.

  “Not necessarily. We’ve done okay with that so far.”

  Sophia could sense the reticence in her friend’s voice. “Maybe so, but every time we head out, it’ll risk trouble.”

  “We still have to eat. We still have to maintain our reserves to keep going,” Tasha stated. “So we can’t just go without.”

  “Got it.” At the moment there appeared to be lots of food, and no point in letting any of it go to waste either.

  Tasha prepared a few sandwiches, and one arrived in front of Sophia. Once Tasha put a big one in front of Wade, Tasha sat down with her own.

  As Sophia watched the two of them, something almost like an unspoken link was going on. “Can you guys talk in your heads?” Sophia asked suddenly.

  Tasha looked at her in surprise. “I can’t, not really, but he can.”

  “Really?” Sophia turned to Wade.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. However, since then, I’ve exhausted my reserve of energy, and my abilities got wiped out in the attack. So the answer now is maybe.”

  She smiled at the hint of sarcasm in his voice at the end. “Well, I’ll take a maybe any day. I’ve heard inquiries about it happening, but I didn’t know of any people directly who could do that.”

  “Inquiries from whom?” Tasha asked.

  Looking at her friend, Sophia frowned. “Well, it was mentioned back at the conference, the same one Wade and I attended about a year ago. Some AI systems were circulating this info, how their software was supposedly enabling people to share telepathic communication.”

  “An AI system?” Wade stopped and stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  She nodded and shrugged. “Yes, some implant.”

  He immediately sat back, crossed his arms. As Terk opened his bedroom door, Wade’s gaze turned to his friend.

  “Tell us more.” Terk joined them at the kitchen table.

  Sophia shrugged. “All I can tell you is the little bit I overheard from the conference, wandering around the vendors’ booths, maybe at one of the separate speaker events, or even over dinner afterward.” She turned to Wade. “You were there too.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “I was, but I didn’t really pay attention. I had other things on my mind.”

  She flushed at that. “Right. It was brought up during the conference somehow, but it seemed to be a futuristic suggestion, and I don’t know how far into beta testing it was yet.”

  “But it’s a possibility?” Tasha looked over at Wade. “In a way, it makes a whole lot more sense because we know of no sighting of any weapon like this before. Yet we’ve been monitoring weapons at this level for years.”

  Wade nodded slowly. “That’s very true. We had absolutely no understanding of any of this prior to this psychic attack on our team. After Iran we thought we were the only gifted team. However, after our own attack on an energy level, now we’re going on the assumption that somebody else had been building a team, whether of men like us or of maybe hardware or software to mimic what men like us can do.”

  “That is very possible.” Terk nodded. “We have Wad
e, who can interact with technology on the ethers, so let’s assume that others like him are out there. Now it seems that somebody else may be building a team using software, and that technology could be at the point where it is much easier to do so.” He walked around the room, shaking his head. “We’ve always known that this software was a possibility and that it would happen at some point in time, but we hadn’t figured it would happen this soon.”

  “Maybe that’s our fault,” Wade admitted. “When you think about it, an awful lot is out there that we are capable of doing that we haven’t really been allowing ourselves to get into. We dropped the ball on the software angle, once we got so busy developing our own skills.”

  “Sure, but that’s because we were developing natural skills, existing skills,” Terk explained. “I can’t imagine doing that from scratch. Not with humans or IT.”

  Just then another door opened, and Damon walked through, slowly and carefully but mobile. Immediately Tasha got up and ran over. He opened his arms, and she gently snuggled in close. “Can’t even do a stake-out without draining all my energy,” Damon complained.

  “Well, you did get shot recently,” Tasha reminded him.

  Sophia watched, her heart smiling, as she realized that her friend had, indeed, found a special relationship. “They look good together,” she noted quietly to Wade.

  At her side, Wade nodded. “They’ve been avoiding this relationship for a very long time. This chaos that we’re in brought it all to a crunch.”

  “Good.” Sophia nodded. “Sounds like us.”

  “Not quite,” Wade argued. “I specifically walked away.”

  She turned and glared at him. “Yeah, and we’ll have another discussion about that at some point.”

  He smiled. “Nope, not likely.”

  “We have to,” she stated, “because I need to know that you’ll be there for me, just like you need to know that I’ll be there for you.”

  “I thought we already did that part.” He frowned at her.

  She nodded. “And we probably did. Maybe it’s just my insecurity about you leaving again that is poking out its ugly head.”