“Yep. Kurt is a smart man. He offered her a job when everyone else considered her a liability. Now people beg her to join them.”
“Everyone needs a good hacker on speed dial.” Emma sobered as she got her computer plugged in and checked her watch. “It’s only been 20 minutes, but I don’t want to miss a message. The WiFi’s not super fast here, so the upload will take a while, especially with files this big. I need to get started ASAP.”
Fixing her gaze on the laptop, she tapped a few keys and studied the screen with a frown.
They lapsed into silence as the crowd slowly thinned around them, Emma periodically clicking the trackpad, presumably to refresh the page.
Finally, she looked up and smiled. “Here we go.”
Ten minutes later, he got up to toss the empty fry basket and napkins, and that’s when he spotted the two men moving through the crowd.
CHAPTER TEN
AT ELEVEN-FORTY, Emma wasn’t even halfway through uploading the audio file. It was going to come down to the wire.
A message came through on the window she had open to the gardening forum.
Dahlia: Abort the upload and dump the computer! There’s a virus in the files that might reveal your location. Check back if you can.
Dammit. She canceled the upload and tapped out a thumbs up emoji just as Jason returned to the table. She looked up to tell him the news.
“Put away the computer,” he said.
She jerked slightly at the unexpected command, but snapped the lid closed and casually slid the laptop into her bag before forcing herself to smile at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Two white guys in their thirties, one short brown hair, one shaggier blond, moving through the crowd, focusing heavily on the couples.”
“Shit.” Her pulse sped up. They must’ve been close by when she accessed the internet. “If we get up now, we’ll attract too much attention.”
“I think if we sit here frozen we’ll attract more. Just stick close to me and act a little tipsy.” He rose and discarded their beer bottles, hunching in a way that made him appear slightly less intimidating, and a lot less graceful.
She stood, hooking her bag over one shoulder as Jason slid an arm around her back and tugged her close to his side. The combination of his touch and the threat in the crowd gave her a surge of adrenaline. She hardly had to fake her unsteady walk as they strolled across grass and then gravel to two wide stone steps that descended directly into the water. The dark lake glittered with city lights, mountain peaks hovering over it like anxious parents.
Jason sat on the top step, urging her to sit between his large body and a low stone wall. “I know this is super awkward given our history, but I think we’ll seem less like the targets they’re looking for if we play the infatuated couple. Is that okay?”
She nodded. It wasn’t like she’d have to pretend very hard. Despite her best intentions, she was in thrall to him as much as she’d been in college. Leaning close, she toyed with the soft wig hair at the base of his neck and asked softly, “Aren’t you worried about being trapped here if we’re recognized?”
“How well can you swim?”
“Pretty well. And I have open water experience.” For a few years after moving to LA, she’d joined a small group of ocean swimmers on the weekends, but a plunge into Lake Lucerne’s alpine waters—especially sans wetsuit—held absolutely no appeal.
“Then we’ll be fine. That’s like plan D anyway.” His big hand cupped her face, sending her stomach into a free fall, as he surreptitiously watched the search party. “I don’t think they’re aware of our new look or they wouldn’t be slowing down to examine faces. They also went straight for a guy with a MacBook, which makes me think something in those files alerted them to your location.”
“My tech guy warned me there was a virus right before you noticed the men.” Her heart sank. If the virus was on the SD card, it meant Viktor had been a plant, or he’d been compromised early on. Which meant the data—if any—might be fake or misleading.
The evidence they’d collected from other sources was a start, but Viktor had promised to get what they really needed to nail Blue Bear.
“I used a VPN and checked for malware, but they must have sophisticated enough to code work around that.” The virtual private network would’ve masked her location from anyone following her trail online, but maybe the virus determined her physical location by other means. “They’d have to use WiFi triangulation to get the general area we’re in.”
The laptop was now disconnected and in sleep mode. She’d have to be careful not to open it anywhere that it might connect to WiFi.
Was Dallas in danger now too? He would’ve taken every precaution to avoid her fate. He was the one who’d taught her that putting two computers too close to each other could allow one to pick up the others’ electronic signals through the air. He knew his shit, and there was nothing she could do for him now. She had to trust that he’d stay safe.
Jason’s thumb skimmed her cheek, pulling her back into the moment and their immediate need to escape notice. “Can I kiss your neck?” he asked softly, short-circuiting her thought process as his callused hand slid down to her jaw.
She shivered. Her neck? Why was that idea so freaking hot? “Yes,” she whispered, her voice mixing with the soft sound of the water swishing gently at the bottom of the steps.
The second his lips touched the sensitive spot beneath her ear, her nerves staged a riot. She felt every press and slide of his mouth as if he were kissing directly between her legs, and she clamped her knees together in a vain attempt to quell her surging arousal.
