“Hey, isn’t this your girlfriend?” Sawyer’s eyebrows raised, as he scrolled.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Bryce said. He slipped the printed pages into an envelope and set them on top of a tidy stack on Rusty’s desk.
Sawyer held up his phone. “Hayley Wild. The chick you like.”
“I like hermusic,” Bryce said. Though truth be told, he liked everything he knew about her. It didn’t hurt that in addition to being a talented singer and songwriter, she was also beautiful. Bryce squinted at Sawyer’s phone screen to read the headline of the article above Hayley’s picture.
“She was just in a car crash,” Sawyer said.
“What?” Bryce fished his own phone out of his bag and googled. “How bad?”
“She’s alive,” Sawyer answered. “No need to cry.”
Bryce rolled his eyes as he searched for Hayley’s name, then read news about the wreck on a celebrity gossip site. “Driver of the other vehicle rammed her car on some backwoods road in Mississippi, and fled when a traffic officer pulled up. Driver’s car was a rental.”
“Something tells me it’s intentional,” Sawyer said thoughtfully. “I think someone’s after your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my…never mind.” Bryce said, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “This isn’t news. If you want to blow some holes in paper, let’s go.” He slung his bag over his shoulder.
“Finally!” Sawyer tugged on his jacket. “Let’s put some money on it -” He said, before launching into different ways to bet on target practice.
Bryce nodded, not really listening as he followed Sawyer out of the headquarters building and onto the street. Sawyer might have the attention span of a small child, but he was far from the dumb jock-type he portrayed himself as, despite his penchant for showing off. He had good intuition on security cases.
If Sawyer’s guesswasright and someonewastargeting Hayley Wild, they would have hacked into her GPS system on her car or phone, to know exactly where she’d be and when. It was the same tactics the militia were planning to use to kidnap the diplomat – get him alone, disoriented, and out of his car. If that police officer hadn’t been patrolling for speeders - Bryce swallowed. Just because Hayley Wild was a stranger to him, didn’t mean he couldn’t care about what happened to her.
He shook his head.Focus. If Sawyer did better than him at target practice, Bryce wouldn’t hear the end of it for weeks. Plus, he wanted the hundred bucks Sawyer had now decided to put on the line; Bryce was itching for a new graphics card, and the extra cash would help with the purchase. He grinned as they raced to the subway.
2
Mission Accepted
Bryce strolledinto the Redmond headquarters with pride the next morning, flashing his new graphics card as he opened the door. Sawyer grunted acknowledgment over a file folder.
Sawyer was an excellent shot and Bryce hadn’t actually expected to beat him, but he’d gotten lucky. Truth was, Bryce had been feeling lucky a lot lately. He’d used cash he stashed from his hacker days to buy a luxury apartment overlooking the Hudson. The government thought they’d seized all of his assets when he was arrested and recruited, but he wouldn’t have been a very good hacker if he hadn’t managed to keep some assets hidden away, and being good was why they’d wanted him in the first place, right? His savings from his corporate salary had set him up with imported furniture, Egyptian cotton sheets, and season tickets to the Knicks. He hadn’t invited anyone from his new job over to his place yet; he didn’t want to show off his money or taste too much. The guys at Redmond were all laid-back, picnic-table types trying to make a name in private security, who probablylikedrolling around in the mud at basic training in their previous careers. Bryce had been glad to graduate and get behind a computer in an air-conditioned office, with a freshly pressed shirt and gold cufflinks.
He’d gotten lucky when he met Rusty, who came into Bryce’s division to help take down an enemy combatant during a tour overseas. Rusty quickly became a mentor to Bryce on everything from making the most of cafeteria food, to steering him toward who did the best dry-cleaning service off post. They’d kept in touch over Facebook, until Rusty reached out to Bryce a few months ago, saying the Redmond Group needed a tech guy as part of the team. Bryce liked a new challenge and was bored of men in suits who didn’t know how to have real fun with their lives or money. At least the guys here kept things interesting.
“What’s this?” Bryce asked, lifting a paper with a printed itinerary and airline barcode off his desk. He waved the paper at Rusty. “Am I traveling?”
Rusty beckoned him over, nodding. “New job. You’ll fly out this afternoon. Sit down.”
“Jackson, Mississippi?” Bryce flipped through the itinerary. “What’s going on there? Where’s the return ticket?”
“You’ll return when the job’s done,” Rusty answered.
“What’s the job?” Bryce flipped the lid on his Yeti mug and blew on his coffee before sipping.
“Stalker situation,” Rusty said. “Pop singer. Hayley Wild – heard of her?”
It took all of Bryce’s self-control to not spit out his coffee. “TheHayley Wild?”
“I don’t know,” Rusty answered sincerely. He didn’t know much about pop culture outside of Star Wars. “I just know she’s a singer, and she’s famous. Do we think there’s more than one Haley Wild out there?”
Bryce considered, calculating the statistical probability of the name ‘Hayley Wild’ in his head. “Not singers.”
“Well,” Rusty said. “ThisHayley Wild has her home base down in some ritzy Mississippi neighborhood, and someone’s stalking her. They think the man tried to accost her in her car yesterday. She’s pretty private, hasn’t had real protection outside of family, and she needs an expert in cyber security to come in and help track the guy. Jump in front of a bullet. The usual.”
“She’s in Mississippi,” Bryce said. “Why’d they get someone from New York?”
