Page 27 of Until the End

“That won’t be necessary, sir.” Willow looked up from the table. “I know who she is.”

Kit’s stomach turned over, cramping in panic. But there was no way this chick knew who she was. Kit’s circle was small and tight…had been small and tight. Now it was nonexistent. And she kept a low profile outside the hacker community.

The crypto-techie finally made eye contact with Kit, her expression impassive, like this wasn’t a life-or-death moment for one of them. “You’re Katherine Westcott.”

09

A thick knot stuck in Kit’s throat like a clump of sawdust. The harder she tried to swallow, the more she failed.

“You’re twenty-six years old. One of two children born to Lucy and Theodore Westcott. Your parents and twin brother are deceased. You graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University, where your mother taught,” Willow said easily, as if rattling off common-knowledge facts rather than Kit’s entire history. “You go by Kit. But not because it’s a diminutive of Katherine. You fell in love with Knight Rider reruns on TV Land and believed KITT, the car, was the real hero of the show—although you don’t use the second T from the acronym for Knight Industries Two Thousand.”

Each word flayed Kit, scraping back raw layers best left hidden. She was officially freaked, with a capital F for fucked. Kit did her best not to look as if she was about to jump out of her skin, but having an aneurysm from shock was a serious possibility.

“Do you know my shoe size too?” Kit snapped.

Willow’s brows scrunched together. “No. How would I know your shoe size?”

“How in the hell could you possibly know any of what you just said?”

“I met you four years ago at Code-A-Con.”

Kit shook her head. “We’ve never met. I’d remember you.” That face. The talent. The awkwardness.

“Actually, I met Lincoln. Tall, thin, African American. I was the runner-up in the Digital Mass competition. He figured out I threw it and lost on purpose.”

Digital Mass was the premier coding competition in the country. Only the best of the best competed, and the brightest won. The winner got five grand and a bevy of job offers.

“Lincoln thought I’d fit in with the group you founded. The Outliers,” Willow said.

Sanborn wiped the look of smug satisfaction from his face into a placid expression—a veritable brick wall. His sharp, shrewd gaze flickered to Kit and then straight to Castle. Some unspoken conversation passed between the two. Castle’s eyes hardened, and he lowered his head.

Not good. At. All.

“Lincoln told me lots about you,” Willow said, “and the Outliers. He wanted us to meet.”

Kit cringed internally. It was all she could do not to scream shut up, leap across the table, and strangle pretty Willow into silence. “Why didn’t we meet?”

“I already had a job here.”

“This is the leader of the Outliers?” Sanborn asked Willow while pointing at Kit. “Number three on our list of homegrown groups posing a grave cyber risk to national security?”

A bucket of ice water drenched Kit’s soul. Whenever someone in the government threw the term national security around, it was bad. Piling grave risk on top of that from the director of this supersecret Fort Knox made her heart pound as her situation went into a tailspin.

“Why would the Outliers pose a risk to the country?” Kit asked.

“Ever Shield.” Sanborn’s voice was cold steel. “That software of yours can subvert a government program critical to mitigating terrorist threats. That’s probably the reason you created it.”

Not exactly. Boundless Informant was the reason. The NSA’s data-mining tool monitored private citizens’ phone calls and emails without a warrant. Someone needed the power to put the kibosh on that kind of illegal invasion of privacy. But writing the program didn’t break any laws, and they hadn’t gotten around to selling it.

Which led to a terrifying question. “How do you know about Ever Shield?”

Willow opened her mouth to speak, but Sanborn lifted his hand, thrusting a palm out like a traffic cop, killing her voice.

“Miss Westcott, you’re here to answer our questions. Not the other way around,” he said. “I don’t think you understand the severity of your predicament. This is now beyond people trying to kill you in a park.”

Time for her to dump the leader-is-ultimately-responsible attitude and spin this toward self-preservation. Not as if the guys would care. Everyone who’d worked on Ever Shield was dead.

“I didn’t create Ever Shield,” Kit said. “I was more of a Steve Jobs, not a Steve Wozniak.”