He frowned. “Wouldn’t it?” He reached across the table and took her hand in his and squeezed softly.
His cellphone vibrated and he removed it from his pocket, glancing at the message from Deion, then sighed. “No rest for the wicked, I guess.” He held up the phone so she could see the message. “Kara, I have to do bad things. Kill people. I know it saves lives and I know it’s necessary. That doesn’t make me a monster. As long as I feel empathy? As long as it hurts inside? That means I’m not a monster.”
Kara glanced around the room, then quickly leaned in and kissed him before anyone noticed. “You’re not a monster.”
He squeezed her hand tightly and smiled.
I only wish I believed you.
Karen stared at her monitor. It didn’t make any sense. She pored through the video footage again. There were videocams in Nashville mounted to streetlights on every corner, but the more she combed through the video footage from the area around Sadir’s apartment, the more gaping holes she found.
It was as if the cameras had been instructed to turn off.
That’s impossible!
She ran through it again. The cameras fed their data to servers in the Nashville Department of Transportation, then copies of the traffic were sent to the NSA. At the NSA datacenter, the packets were duplicated and sent on to the OTM’s data warehouse. The OTM servers were safe, but she began to wonder if the Nashville servers were compromised. Using a series of hacking tools, she scanned the servers in the Nashville DOT headquarters, finally giving up after several hours.
The servers were hardened and firewalled. Direct attacks were impossible. No, the servers were fine. The only logical conclusion was that it had to be in the cameras themselves.
The hot coffee burned the back of her throat as she took a deep gulp. For the thousandth time, she wondered if Eric would approve her requisition for a coffeemaker at her desk.
Just thinking of Eric warmed her to her core, and she longed to be with him. Her husband, Brad, was a good man, but was always on deployment. Her arrangement with Brad was simple… sex with others was acceptable, as long as there were no emotions or ties.
Unfortunately, she had taken a liking to Eric and part of her worried she might actually be cheating on her husband, emotionally, with Eric. She shook her head. She would continue with Eric and try harder not to become emotionally entangled.
Eric needed the release. The stress of the office was crushing him. The last thing he needed was emotional baggage.
No, sex with Eric was stupid good and she wouldn’t jeopardize that.
Eric needs me.
She glanced around, but the other analysts were busy working on the Syria mission. She grabbed her near-empty cup of coffee, nodded to Sergeant Clark, and navigated the man trap. It was a long walk down several hallways before she took the three flights of stairs to the deepest part of the underground base.
Dewey’s office door was dark blue steel, most of it obscured by a vintage Xena poster. She rolled her eyes and jiggled the handle, but the knob refused to open. She banged on the door. “Dewey,” she yelled, over the sound of a cranked up television, “I really need to talk to you.”
There was a shout from inside, the television volume dropped, and the door opened. Dewey greeted her with a big smile plastered across his face. Dewey was one of her oldest friends. They had worked together at the NSA before she was recruited by the OTM. In fact, she was the one who suggested Dewey for the OTM.
Dewey’s shock of brown hair stood in all directions, giving him the appearance of a scarecrow. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were working on that thing in Nashville?”
Frustrated, she punched him in the shoulder. “Damn it, Dewey, quit hacking my terminal. I thought you were working on that Iran centrifuge problem?”
His smile widened and he motioned for her to step into his office. “Already done. I shipped off the code last week.”
She followed him inside. Dewey’s office was a large concrete box, twenty meters on a side. Tables were filled with monitors, making the room one giant clutter of computer gear. A door in the far corner led to his personal quarters. Dewey was the only member of the OTM who had personal quarters attached to his office. Karen shuddered at the thought of him living with the rest of the base personnel.
As she navigated through tables of gear, she felt her nipples stiffen under her shirt. The room was freezing cold. For a moment she wondered if the little creep kept it that way just for that effect. “You solved the Iran thing? What have you been working on for the past week?”
He pointed to a giant monitor on his main desk. “I’ve been playing an MMORPG. I thought there was something funny going on with the in-game economy, so I’ve been working with a friend in London to try and see if players were manipulating the market.”
She shook her head. With all the work on the OTM’s plate, their smartest analyst was playing video games. “You better not let anyone find out what you’re doing.”
“Hey,” he protested. “I’ve also been watching all the episodes of Airwolf.” He pointed to a smaller screen at the edge of his desk. A black helicopter was flying through a desert, piloted by an actor who she couldn’t place. “I love that show.”
“Dewey, you love crap,” she muttered.
He turned back to her. “I heard that. It’s important to me, even if it’s not to anyone else.”
She sighed. Dewey was right. He focused on things no one cared about but were deeply meaningful to him. Messing with that messed with his process, which was partially why the OTM gave him such a large office, hidden away from everyone else. “I need your help.”
His eyes widened and his grin grew larger. “I’d do anything for you, Karen. You know that. Tell me what you need.”
“I’m trying to find someone from traffic cameras in Nashville, but it seems like data is missing. Can you take a look?”
Dewey leaned back in his chair. “A second set of eyes? Sure!” He started typing and the MMORPG disappeared, replaced by a copy of her desktop. He clicked through her folders until he came to the one with the video feeds. “Is this it?”
She bit her tongue, then said, “I told you to stop hacking my workstation.”
He turned, shocked. “You were serious about that?”
“Yes,” she said, tapping her foot against the floor. “I told you before, you need to respect boundaries.”
“Sorry. Won’t happen again.”
Sure it won’t. “Just take a look and see if you see anything… hinky.”
“Hinky. Got it.” He turned back to the monitor, his jaw dropping slightly as he practically flew through the folders, looking at time and date stamps. He pulled up multiple camera angles and fast-forwarded through the video footage. He would stop, rewind, then slowly move his mouse, paging through the video frame by frame. “Weird,” he mused. “You’re sure none of the video feeds were compromised in the DOT server farm?”
“I don’t think so.” She had a sinking feeling in her stomach. It couldn’t be what she suspected.
Could it?
“This is pretty weird,” Dewey said, rocking back and forth in his chair. “If you’re correct about the server farm’s integrity, the only logical explanation is the cameras have been compromised. You know how hard that is?”
“How can we be certain?”
He squinted at her. “Leave it to me. It’ll take a few days, but I’ll figure it out. Hey, stay and watch Airwolf with me?”