She turned to him. “What? No way. You’re not going. That guy tried to kill us!”
Cole frowned. “I’m going. That’s my company. I’m sick and tired of this guy running circles around me and my security team. I’m going so I can have the satisfaction of seeing him walked out in handcuffs.”
Joey turned to Flint. “You can’t possibly be okay with this.”
Flint shrugged. “It’s his property. What would you have me do? Besides, our guys will need him to get access.”
Joey looked back and forth between her two favorite people in the world. Cole’s expression was determined, but his eyes zeroed in on her. “I need to do this, Joey.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek as she considered. “Fine, but I’m coming too. We better get moving.”
Cole’s eyes widened. “What?”
“There’s no way I’m sitting here and watching from a distance. Especially with your Fort Knox security and signal blocking. Unless I’m inside Zia, I’ll be blind. So, let’s go.”
On the ride, Joey pulled out her laptop and went back through the tracks the hacker had left behind while trying to infiltrate BTS. She knew this signature; she just needed to remember from where. It almost reminded her of….
“Hey, Flint. Do you know whatever happened… to StormHunter?” Even saying the name of one of her former allies was difficult. Storm had been the mastermind of the hack that landed her in federal custody and onto Flint’s radar. Flint wasn’t a hacker himself, but his network was far deeper than anyone typically realized.
“I never heard anything else about him after the team fell apart. Rumor had it that a big portion of The Alliance were ticked at him for selling you out.”
Joey let that sink in. She’d resisted digging for more information for years. It hurt so badly to have been betrayed by Storm. His last comments before her arrest still stuck in her mind.
StormHunter: We’re all just cogs in a giant machine. And sometimes, we get sacrificed for the greater good.
“Do you think it’s him?” Flint asked.
Joey stared at the code. If this was StormHunter, after all these years… It would explain the talent level, though not how he’d hacked the Raven Tech system. Unless he’d worked there too, and she’d never made the connection. He could have paid someone else. Another cog in his stupid machine.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Could be. But I don’t know who he is or what he looks like. I would have never thought he was a killer. But it was a long time ago.”
If this was StormHunter, did he know he was up against her? He’d never known her real name. Just her online handle. Alantara. After her arrest, Alantara had disappeared from the black hat hacker world. And Phoenix had appeared. Rescued from the ashes of betrayal and hurt… and brought back to a new life in Christ, with a new purpose.
When they reached Zia, Joey tucked her bag under her arm. She held Cole’s hand as they strode across the sidewalk in the dark. The BTS team was already waiting in the security office.
She set up her computer, plugging directly into the Zia network and remotely accessing the BTS server. She zeroed in on the hacker’s location. There was no employee identified on the access logs, but at least she knew where he was, if not who.
“He’s still here.” She looked up at Cole. “He’s desperate. And we don’t have much time. He’s grabbing the data from every file he can get his hands on. The lab. Basement level two.”
Cole’s face went pale. “We’ve got to stop him.”
Flint pointed to Jackson and Ryder. “Take the east steps.” Then to Marshall and Connor, “You two take the west. Joey, make sure they have access.”
She nodded. “Unlocking everything now.”
“You can’t do that, ma’am,” came the timid voice of the security guard whose office they were intruding on.
The four men in tactical gear straightened and stepped forward. Cole held up a hand. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she can.”
Flint rolled his eyes and pointed to Ryder, Jackson, Marshall, and Connor. “Go on, get moving. Stay on comms.”
Joey smiled and returned to her keyboard, quickly disengaging the locks on the staircases. She slipped an earbud out of the case and stuck it in her ear, passing another to Cole, so he could listen to the operation as well.
Within the Raven Tech security system RT800X she watched for any movement. StormHunter, or whoever it was, was still in the basement, as far as she could tell.
“We’re in the basement,” came the call over the comms. “What are we looking for?”
“Anyone,” she replied snarkily. “It’s eleven at night. Pretty much anyone here is up to no good.”