Begging was about as much as she could do. But, in the silent room, she practiced it. Again and again.

  "Let me go." And then other words, more difficult to say and more terrifying, too. "Let me live."

  And then Katie heard a new noise. The sound of a door being opened, and she caught her breath in terror.

  Footsteps trod their way over the floor toward her.

  The next moment, her blindfold was yanked away and for a moment, a blinding white glare filled her vision so that she blinked, eyes watering, as they adjusted to the light.

  As soon as she could think again, she looked down. Looking down was important, looking down meant that there was less chance she'd see him. Blue carpet, that's what she was focused on. Just blue carpet.

  When he'd taken her, she'd tried to do what he asked. She'd tried to do all of it, here in this room, doing exactly what he told her to. He’d been outside, though, calling to her.

  But now, he was here, inside the room? In person? What did that mean?

  "Don't look at me," he said.

  "That's fine," Katie gabbled, "I don't want to look at you, don't want to see you at all. I just want to get out of here."

  "No," he said. His voice was grainy, and there was a desperate quality to it she didn't like. "You're doing this wrong. You're saying the wrong thing."

  "I don't understand," she gasped out.

  "You must understand! Surely!"

  He'd moved behind her. He was grasping her arms from behind. And then, a white light lit up in front of her.

  It was a screen. And she gasped as she saw her own face on it. Drawn and terrified, but it was her face. With the blindfold over it. He'd been filming her earlier?

  "I - I - I love you."

  That was what he'd made her say earlier. But she saw now that there was a glitch in it. You couldn't hear the word love properly. The recording was faulty.

  "You see? It's not right! It's not right. I need you to say it again. Say it! Say it again for me."

  "No!" The word burst out of her mouth. "I'm not going to do that! I am not going to sit here, tied to a chair, telling you those words. This is like a - a sick game. Why? Why are you doing this? Just let me go!"

  "I'm doing it because I need you to say this!" he threatened. "I need those words. Say them for me. Say them! Then I'll - I'll let you go. I promise."

  "I don't believe you."

  But what if there was some hope he would? Maybe he was telling the truth.

  "Okay," she said, her voice shaking. "Okay. I love you. There, I've said it. Is that enough now?"

  "No!" His voice was anguished. "You didn't sound like you meant it. You didn't sound like you did the last time. Say it again! Louder! And like you mean it!"

  "I love you," she said.

  "No! Louder!"

  And with this pressuring, with the ongoing terror that was boiling inside her, Katie felt something break. He was never going to let her go! She’d tried her best to do what he’d asked, she’d given it all she had, and still he wanted more. He’d never let her go, she knew it, and trying to comply was only prolonging the torture.

  "I love you!" She screamed out the words, her voice hoarse, cracking. As loud as she could. It resounded around the room. She screamed it at her own image on the big screen, now frozen at the end of the video. She screamed the words at him again and again, at this tormentor who'd grabbed her and was now terrifying her.

  "No! You're doing it wrong! You're doing it all wrong! This is not what I asked you to do. You had the chance, that's all I'm telling you. You had the chance."

  There was silence in the room apart from her frantic breathing and the hoarse breaths of the man behind her.

  Then abruptly, the blindfold came down again, its black folds pressing on her eyes, blocking out all sight.

  "Look, I'm sorry," she began hoarsely.

  There was no reply.

  A moment later, she heard something. A footstep.

  And then, something swooshed down toward her head. She heard it whistle through the air and felt an explosion that turned immediately to blackness.

  Then, nothing more.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Slowly but surely, Cami Lark was getting into the heart of FBI agent Bill Oertel's machine. And his life.

  Her dyed-black hair, shaved on one side, hung down over her face, and she scraped it absently back as she worked. The apartment where she was working was warm, so she wore a sleeveless black top that showed off her tattoos.

  She hoped that this might be the step she needed to crack open the mystery that had consumed her life. The mystery that had started a few years back, when her older sister Jenna had disappeared.

  This had been a twisted and dark trail to follow. It had resulted in the death of good people. But she felt, now, that she was close to the truth.

  If she could find the information she hoped was here, it would give her answers on the questions she had. Life or death questions that went back five years, all the way to that terrible day.

  Cami had been sixteen then. Jenna had been eighteen. What had happened had been disastrous and inexplicable. Although Cami’s domineering father had labeled Jenna a runaway, Cami had known her sister would never simply disappear. Something had happened to her.

  The missing person case had been assigned to an FBI agent, Liam Treverton, who Cami had believed at the time had botched it through a lack of expertise.

  Now she was realizing that Liam had been a good agent, hardworking and thorough, who had been forced to step away.

  And just a couple of weeks ago, Liam had been murdered in his home.

  The information she’d obtained from Liam’s computer had led her here to his ex-boss, Bill Oertel, who was still working at the FBI.

  It was two weeks since she'd managed to get the backdoor open into Bill Oertel’s computer. She'd been patient, though. All the best hackers were. If you made your move too suddenly, then you sometimes ended up warning your target.

  Very carefully, just a few minutes at a time, and working at times when she didn't think he'd notice, busy times of the day when he might put a slight slowness down to high server traffic, she was getting a picture of who he was and what he did.

  She sensed she was on the verge of uncovering something very big. It felt at once exciting and terrifying.

  While she worked, she was sitting cross-legged on the couch in the tiny living room in Kieran's apartment.

  She wouldn't say Kieran was her boyfriend, but recent events - especially the murder of his brother, Ethan, who Cami had worked with at the FBI, had brought them together and they'd become very close.

  A cup of coffee on the table, kindly made for her by Kieran, had grown almost cold because she'd been working furiously, taking advantage of the fact that Oertel’s machine was open but inactive.

  Quickly, she slurped down half the cup before getting back to her work.

  "How's it going?" Kieran asked.

  Cami glanced up, smiling as she saw him walk in with the coffee jug. He was wearing one of the blue plaid shirts he liked to wear for his new job as a mechanical engineer on a construction site. He looked good in it, with his broad shoulders, his dark hair, and his tall, rangy build. He wore the shirts because they were practical and didn't show dirt and dust. She liked that about him. Practicality, with a dose of humor.

  "You're a star," she said, as he topped up her cup. "It's going well today. I'm getting a lot of time in his inbox today. I'm going further back in his emails and starting to copy the older ones over."

  Copying took time, but it was important. If he knew she was in his machine, there were ways he could boot her out of it. She needed to get as much information as she could copied over. Or else he would delete the old evidence. That wouldn't make her job impossible, but it would make it much harder.

  "I'm still so impressed that he clicked on that email you sent," Kieran said.

  "I've had some experience in creating bait emails," Cami said. "Not in my MIT studies. We didn't learn it there. I learned from my group of hacking friends that I speak to online, people that I've never even met, but we share information. One of them taught me the secrets to creating a very plausible email."

  Even so, she knew that Bill Oertel might have realized that the link she'd sent him to had been a hacking attempt and so she'd lain very, very low for a week, buried deep in his machine and not making any moves.

  It was the law of the jungle, but in computer language. Lay low. Wait for the prey to relax. Making a move meant you could be spotted. Staying still gave you a better chance.

  “You know, it’s lucky that you ended up hacking their website,” Kieran said thoughtfully, as he watched her at work.

  “Well, I did it for reasons I believed in,” Cami admitted wryly. She’d never overcome her anger that Jenna’s case had gone cold. She'd believed the FBI was full of incompetent people, and that was why she'd hacked their homepage a few months ago.

  She'd gotten caught, and they'd offered her a deal. Jail - or work for us when we need you for a year. She'd chosen the work. And it had given her a much better picture of the FBI. Cami had a very different view of the organization now, and she had more skills and expertise, too.

  “If you’d never worked for them, I don’t think you’d have come this far,” Kieran said.

  “How so?”

  “I guess you’d still be stuck in your thinking that the FBI had messed up the case. You’d be focused on getting even, instead of understanding the picture better,” he said.

  "I guess I would." She was silent for a while. "But what if that meant Ethan would still be alive?”

  Ethan had been shot by an unknown gunman, while they’d been out at a dodgy bar, where Ethan was helping Cami with her research into Liam. She’d believed for weeks that it had been all her fault. She still did, even though Kieran’s arrival at her door had changed her mind somewhat.

  Now, he shook his head again, firmly.

  “Ethan was doing his own investigation into something that he’d realized was wrong at the FBI. And remember I told you, they attempted to shoot him before he had connected with you at all. We thought it was just random neighborhood crime at the time. I think he'd alerted the wrong person. That's why you need to be careful." Now, his voice was anxious.

  Cami knew Kieran was right. Someone was getting everyone who knew anything out of the way.

  “I’ll be very careful,” she said.

  “Cover your tracks,” he insisted, glancing at the open computer.

  “I’ll make sure they’re covered.”

  "I’ve got to get moving," Kieran said, checking the time. "It's five to eight. I'd better get going if I'm going to be on site on time, with the Monday traffic."

  "I’ll let you know if I find anything. Have a good day."

  Kieran stepped toward her. Cami turned her face to his, and felt the usual flip of her stomach as he kissed her gently on the lips.

  “I’ll organize something for dinner,” she promised.

  She knew they were so close to being in a proper relationship, girlfriend and boyfriend. They were taking it slow, which she was glad about. Although she’d started out sleeping on his couch, she was now sharing his bed. But she was wearing pajamas while in it, and no way was she going to take those pajamas off yet. It felt too soon. Even though she had to admit, she wanted to.

  Kieran stroked his hand over her hair, his fingers tousling the longer section of it, his eyes full of warmth. Then, reluctantly, he smoothed her hair down, said a quick goodbye, and walked out.

  And Cami turned back to the machine. What she was seeing here was interesting.

  She'd finally gone all the way back to the communications that Oertel had sent and received around the time that Liam was taken off the case.

  If she could read these mails - some deleted, some still on the system - then she might establish if Oertel was a good guy or a bad guy.

  Cami already knew what she suspected. Now, she leaned forward, eager to finally uncover the proof. But, as the last of the emails were downloading, her phone started ringing loudly.

  The sound startled her, making her jump. This entire situation was making her uneasy.

  Quickly, she grabbed her phone, seeing, with a surge of anxiety, that it was her FBI boss, Agent Connor, calling.

  His name on the screen brought his face to mind. A strong, tough jaw. A direct gaze that you couldn't hide from. Short hair, graying at the temples. She'd started off resenting him as a

  controlling father figure. It was only after working with him on a few cases that she'd come to know him better.

  Even so, a phone call from him was not what she wanted, while illegally downloading emails from the hacked computer of an FBI agent who was most probably in the same FBI building as Connor himself.

  Cami turned away from her computer before picking up.

  "Morning, Connor," she said.

  "Cami,” he replied, his voice sharp. “What are you doing?”

  Guilt flooding her, she feared that he’d found out already, and the game was up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Stay calm, Cami reminded herself. Don’t confess anything unless directly asked. Maybe he means something different, and you’re just interpreting it this way because you’re feeling guilty?

  “What do you mean?” she asked Connor hesitantly.

  “I mean, are you in town, and are you busy?” he responded impatiently, and relief rushed through her. Her movements were still undiscovered – for now, at any rate.

  "I'm in town and not busy right now," she replied.

  “I may need your help,” Connor continued. "We've had two murder victims discovered, within twenty-four hours, that look like they're part of a serial crime. The circumstances are pretty strange, but it seems that IT is involved, because both of their phones have had the same video downloaded and playing."

  "That sounds IT related," Cami agreed, swallowing hard. It was a case. Connor wasn't mad at her. But Cami was under no illusions that this case sounded tough. It was not necessarily going to be easier than Connor discovering what she'd been doing.

  It might be a whole lot worse.

  "Can you come in now?" he asked.

  Cami was already on her feet, grabbing her belongings. Phone charger, the silver laptop she'd bought for work, a spare shirt in case she needed it, a bottle of water.

  "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," she said.

  "Great. I've got a few calls to make on this side, and that should take the same time. See you then."

  Connor hung up, and Cami put everything she needed into her laptop bag. She took her FBI jacket from off the coat stand in the corner and put the baseball cap on her head. She zipped up her laptop bag.

  And then, she looked again at her powerful gaming machine, the one she was using to hack into Bill Oertel's emails.

  She couldn't leave it connected up to Oertel’s laptop. It would be too risky if he realized she was there. But maybe she could let it run for just five more minutes while she called a cab?

  Cami kept her eyes on the screen while she quickly called a cab. The emails were downloading as fast as they could, given that the server on the FBI side seemed busy with Monday morning activity.

  Her phone beeped. The cab would arrive in three minutes.

  Deciding she was going to take this down to the wire, Cami waited to see how much she could upload.

  She watched the cab approach on her phone, and watched the data stream into her machine, from her illegitimate hacking connection.

  More. One more minute?

  She waited as long as she could, until the cab was actually turning into her street. From experience, she knew it would take exactly two minutes to get downstairs, but if she was lucky with the elevator, she could cut that down to one minute.

  Okay. Enough. That was all she could do.

  Cami closed the connection, hiding herself away from Bill Oertel again. No time even to see how successful this had been. She'd just have to hope.

  Grasping her laptop bag she turned, taking her keys from the hook, slamming the door, and racing to the elevator.

  Her luck was in. It was on her floor. She jumped inside, punched the button for the lobby, and got out into the icy, fresh morning air and over to the cab in less than a minute.

  If only her luck could hold the same way for the case. Hoping so, Cami perched on the back seat, watching as the cab turned onto the main street and sped to the FBI Boston building in the suburb of Chelsea.

  ***

  Rushing into the FBI office, Cami headed quickly through security, greeting the guard with whom she was now on friendly terms. Upstairs, through the window in the corridor, she saw a meeting had just disbanded and a group of agents were leaving one of the conference rooms.

  Was one of them Bill Oertel? Had that meeting been where he was?

  Her stomach clenched at the thought. He was somewhere in this building, and he might be the enemy, and she was sure he held the key to what had happened with Liam. And with Jenna.

  And maybe, even, with Ethan.

  No more time to think about that now, though, because she was already outside Connor's office.

  Cami tapped on the door, just as a courtesy, and then walked in.

  Connor was on his feet and packing up his belongings. Notepad, laptop, iPad, and phone were all getting shoved into his battered but tough-looking bag.

  "Thanks for getting in so fast," he said. Then, in more serious tones, “You sounded stressed when I spoke to you. Is everything alright?”

  He was suspicious. She hadn’t completely dodged that bullet and would now need to be very careful.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said.

  He stared at her some more, as if thinking over that response. Then, he gave a tiny shrug. "Okay. That’s good. How was your weekend?"

  He was always polite. That was what Cami had noticed and taken on board. Even in the early days when they'd knocked sparks off each other, Connor had never been disrespectful. And he cared for his team, of which she was now a part-time member.

 

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