"Us? Are Tommy and Sean with you?"
"No. Emily is. This may be outside the realm of your expertise, but we thought we'd give it a try and ask since you and Alex are usually pretty handy when it comes to cyber stuff."
"Oh, sounds interesting."
"You could say that. We're investigating a few offshore bank accounts and were hoping the two of you could figure out a way to tell us where the deposits came from."
Adriana waited as the phone fell silent. She pulled it away from her ear and checked the screen to make sure the call hadn't been dropped.
"That is an interesting request," Tara said. "We don't usually do hacking-type stuff."
Adriana sighed. She was disappointed, but it was also the answer she'd expected.
"I figured you didn't. Had to try, though."
"Well, Alex and I don't really do anything like that, however, we do know someone who does."
Adriana perked up. "You do?"
"Yeah. His name is Clyde. He's an older guy. Might even be retired by now, not that he ever worked a real job that I know of. He's busted into more systems than anyone I know. Doesn't really steal anything like money or identities. He just likes to know the truth, see what's truly going on."
"What's going on?"
"Like in the government or with politicians."
"Oh." Adriana looked puzzled. "Do you think he can help us?"
"Definitely. I'll reach out to him immediately and see what he can do."
"Thanks, Tara. That would be awesome. Let me know what you find out."
"Will do. I'll be in touch soon." She started to end the call and then stopped herself. "Oh, Adriana?"
"Yes?"
"Send me the account information on this person you're investigating. If Clyde agrees to do the gig, he'll need whatever it is you're wanting him to look into."
Adriana reached into her bag and took out her notepad. She'd written down the account information beforehand for this exact purpose. "I'll text it to you right away."
"Sounds good."
After they said their goodbyes, she texted Tara and looked to Emily, who was just getting off the phone with her people at Axis HQ in Atlanta.
"What's the word?" Adriana asked.
Emily bit her lower lip for a second before answering. "They said no call ever came in from Sean."
"You mean they didn't remember getting a call from him?"
"No." Emily shook her head. "The call never came through. They ran a check of all the calls we received for the last several days, particularly the day Sean supposedly called. We never received one."
"That's odd," Adriana said, scratching the side of her head. The hat wasn't the best fit and irritated her scalp.
"What's really odd is that for a brief period of time one day last week, we received far fewer calls.”
“Fewer calls?"
Emily shrugged. "A dozen or so. We work with a number of different entities, so the phones are usually busy."
"Maybe it was just a slow day?"
"Possibly. I have another theory. If someone had the resources and capability to burn Sean and Tommy, effectively wiping out their entire source of funding and all that, then those same people would more than likely be able to orchestrate a phone line redirect."
"You mean they took calls from that specific period of time and rerouted them to another phone?"
"Exactly," Emily said with a nod.
Adriana thought for a moment. Even though she'd spent much of her life in the United States, she still didn't have a handle on many of the whos and hows involved with American politics, government, and power.
That first one lingered in her mind: the who. It would have to be someone with a great deal of power to pull off what happened to Sean and Tommy, as well as what Emily was suggesting with their phones.
"Who has the capability?" Adriana asked.
"That's just it," Emily said. "There are any number of agencies capable of pulling off a move like that for a residence or a business. But we have fail-safes in place, security measures."
"You think it was someone on the inside of Axis?"
Emily shook her head. "No. None of my agents would do something like that."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. The list of people working for me is only known to me and the president. Some of my agents don't even know each other. They often work alone, save for certain, more extreme cases."
Adriana didn't press that issue any further. "So, if it wasn't someone on the inside, who?"
Emily didn't answer right away. Her eyelids blinked rapidly as her brain worked in overdrive to find the solution. She looked up at the ceiling on the other side of the terminal. Two cameras were mounted against the wall, pointing in opposite directions. The little red lights on the sides of the devices indicated the area was being monitored.
Emily cocked her head to the side. "Cameras," she said.
"What?"
"The cameras," Emily pointed at the two security devices. "Downtown Atlanta has cameras everywhere. If we can track down the source of the phone line redirection, we might be able to figure out who was behind it."
Adriana still didn't follow. "I don't understand. How will cameras be able to help you figure that out?"
Emily licked her lips. Her heartbeat quickened. "Phone lines coming into a building have junctions. You see linemen working on them sometimes in those white buckets that go up and down."
Adriana nodded that she was keeping up.
"So, to pull off a redirect, the most common way would be to climb the last telephone pole going into the building, patch into it, and redirect it. Someone could have put a person up on one of the poles outside our building and sent incoming calls to their own line."
Things were starting to make sense now. "So, if there's a camera anywhere close to where the patch was created—"
"We'll be able to identify who did it."
"The people who tried to kill Sean must have ordered the redirect when he managed to escape." Adriana rubbed her head. The intrigue was getting deep.
"Yes. Hopefully we can get a visual on who might have been involved. If we can track that person down, we may be able to figure out who they're working for. Speaking of tracking, what did the kids say?"
"Just as I thought. They don't know anything about computer hacking."
"I was afraid of that."
"But they said they know someone who does. An older guy who does some ethical hacking. He does it to get information and keep tabs on the government."
Emily raised an eyebrow at the term. She'd heard of it. She'd even used some people to test their own security at Axis, but she'd never heard of someone doing it just for the sake of learning about what's going on behind the scenes of world events.
"Is he some kind of conspiracy nut or something? Because I gotta be honest, the last thing we need is some crackpot trying to dig up bank account information for us."
"If Tara and Alex trust him, we can, too. I just sent them the information with the accounts. It's a long shot, I know, but let's see what this guy can do. Maybe we'll get lucky."
"I don't believe in luck," Emily said. "I like to make my own."
"Isn't that what we're doing?" Adriana said with a grin.
Emily's head rocked back and forth. "So it would seem."
Chapter 24
Sean and Tommy pulled their coats tight as they stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. The bitter winter wind rolled through the district, cutting through their clothes and stinging their skin.
Sean pushed his sunglasses closer to his eyes. Tommy did the same.
They were bundled from head to toe, partly due to the cold and partly due to the fact that they'd rather not be caught on one of the thousands of cameras watching over Washington's city streets.
They stared down the sparsely populated sidewalk at a blue awning two blocks away. The flashy lettering on the fabric read Wok and Roll Restaurant.