Exploited
Page 8

“Well, if there aren’t any further comments from the peanut gallery…” Agent Sanders looked at me, as if waiting for me to chime in with my own complaints.
But I wouldn’t. I gave him a cheeky smile. One that I knew wouldn’t be returned.
Besides, I wouldn’t give the jerk the satisfaction of thinking he had one-upped me.
Although I was not happy about being assigned the case that no one in the department wanted, I also believed that if anyone could bring this guy to justice, it was me. So I’d rise to the challenge. I’d track this fucker down and make sure he paid.
If only to piss Agent Sanders off.
“Hey, Mason. Sorry for being an ass about the case back there.” Perry grimaced as we left the conference room.
I gave him a brisk smile. “You didn’t say anything that the rest of us weren’t thinking. Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. Perry looked relieved.
“Okay. Well, good. I guess we should get to it, then.” I didn’t know Perry that well. But I knew his nickname with the other agents.
Agent Dumb-ass.
It was whispered that he had been hired out of the academy as a favor to his well-connected daddy. No one really liked him and his obvious ineptitude didn’t help matters.
Given Derek Sanders’s obvious dislike for me, I wasn’t surprised that I had been given the shittiest agent as my partner on a dead-end case.
“I’ve got a few phone calls to make. Let’s sit down after lunch and have a look at the files that Quantico sent over,” I suggested.
“Files. Right. I should find those!” Perry exclaimed, already looking frazzled.
I gritted my teeth hard enough to break bone. “Yes, Perry, that’s probably a good place to start.”
I was the senior agent. That made Perry my bitch. So the skinny guy with a headful of bright red hair nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll do that. After lunch. I’ll come to you, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, hating Sanders more and more for this bullshit he had just thrown at me.
Freedom Fucking Overdrive.
What the hell?
“You don’t look happy,” Chaz piped up, flashing me a cheap smile that matched his crappy suit.
Who the hell names their kid Chaz? It wasn’t short for anything. Except maybe Assface.
“I’m fine,” I replied evenly.
“So you’ve got the Freedom Overdrive case. That sucks. No one has been able to sniff him out for years. Sounds like a nonstarter to me.” Chaz smirked, enjoying himself.
I clenched my fists, reminding myself that punching coworkers would be severely frowned upon.
“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing Sanders likes to stroke his favorites, isn’t it? Or were you the one doing the stroking, Chaz?” I gave him a shit-eating grin and walked off feeling just a little bit better.
—
I unlocked the door to my apartment a little after nine. The place was freezing, and as I fumbled to turn on the lights, I tripped over a furry lump just inside the entryway.
“Damn it, Tigger!” I groaned, rubbing the knee that had collided with the coffee table. The indifferent ginger tomcat barely glanced at me and sure as hell didn’t move from his spot in the middle of the floor.
Despite the throbbing in my leg, I leaned down to scratch the ornery cat behind the ear. On cue, he hissed, swiped at my hand, and took off down the hallway. Most likely to shit in my slippers.
“Fucking cat,” I mumbled to myself, kicking off my shoes and turning on the lamp beside the couch.
Tigger and I had a coexistence built on barely contained derision. Tigger had been my brother Dillon’s cat. Dillon had raised the fluffy asshole from the time he was a kitten. Tigger had loved my brother and no one else.
And the animal had made his preference very clear, resulting in multiple scars on my hands and arms.
But after Dillon’s death a year ago, there had been no one to take him. Our parents could barely take care of themselves and Dillon’s girlfriend, aka “the bitch,” refused the honor. And I hadn’t wanted to see the old guy go to the shelter, no matter how nasty he could be.
Tigger was in some ways my last link to Dillon. And I wasn’t going to lose that.
So now we were uneasy roommates.
Or more like the cat allowed me to inhabit his space.
I walked across the tiny apartment to the kitchen and dropped my keys and bulging briefcase on the small table I had shoved against the far wall.
It had been a crap afternoon. Perry and I had pored over the case file for Freedom Overdrive until my eyes began to burn.
From what I could gather, there had been an increase in chatter in all the usual hacker chat rooms. There were references to a possible attack but very few details. The cybercrime unit had been poring over pages and pages of communications looking for something. Anything. But I knew better than to expect my target to make things simple for me. My favorite hacktivist was smart. Too smart.
That was the problem.
I knew this case would make or break me. Solving it would earn me a promotion.
Failing would mean desk duty for the foreseeable future.
I pulled out the paperwork I had brought home. Maybe I should just look over the information again. See if there was something we’d missed earlier…
My phone rang, startling me. I dropped the file and moved to answer it before it could ring again.
The name on the caller ID gave me pause. My finger hovered over the screen, hesitating instead of taking the call.
I can’t deal with this. Not tonight. Not when I need my head to be on straight.
“Hi, Dad,” I said into the phone, hoping like hell this time the call would be different.
“Your mother is in the hospital,” my father said without preamble in his gruff manner.
My stomach twisted and I felt the familiar burn of bile in the back of my throat that accompanied any dealings with my family.
“Is she all right?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“Of course she’s not all right, Mason. She’s in the hospital!” my dad barked.
“What happened?”
“She got into the pills again.”
I tried not to sigh. The acid burned in my belly. “I thought you had locked up all the medications—”
“Well, she obviously got into them. When will you get here?” Dad demanded.
I ran my hand over my face, my jaw clenched. I readied myself for battle.