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Her heart dropped like a rock into a deep lake because every choice meant risking something. Trapped with no good options, she resorted to primal instinct, which was to run. “I need to go to London, so I guess this is goodbye for now.” Looking up to meet his gaze, she winced and regretted her words.
Mark dropped his jaw open, then closed it before shaking his head. “Fine. I’m going home.” He backed away and headed downstairs.
His anger and disappointment sliced through her, and instantly, she realized no amount of oxycodone would soothe the pain of watching him leave.
Chapter Eleven
Kingsley Tech in Crisis
Tess landed at London’s Heathrow Airport in the late morning and stopped at the airline’s executive club to freshen up with a hot shower in a private bathroom. The shower gel’s scent, a fiery mix of ginger and pink peppercorn, washed away a few layers of her post-flight haze and awakened her for the tech review meeting. However, her leg ached fiercely, despite her following all of Mark’s in-flight medical precautions, which he dispensed via a terse text message. Given her pain outweighed her hunger, she skipped breakfast, popped two oxycodone tablets, and chased them with a double shot of espresso.
A metallic ping announced a new text from Declan.
—Tech Review @ Ivy House, Noon. Red Dining Room, second floor.—
Outside, she hailed a cab and paid the driver extra to hurry. The throngs of Londoners and tourists grew thicker as the taxi neared the city’s center and approached Dean Street in Soho. Packed with countless theatres, cafes, and edgy art galleries, the borough pulsed with activity. Crutches in hand, she slung her leather laptop bag over one shoulder and bristled at the irony of crashing an exec meeting she typically led. Finally, the cab pulled up outside Ivy House, one of Westminster’s oldest brick townhouses and now a thriving club for well-heeled executives with ample expense accounts. In the lobby, the club’s elevator sported an Out of Service sign. Cursing, she lumbered up the narrow wooden stairs. Sweat broke out on her torso from the effort while caffeine and oxycodone churned in her otherwise empty stomach. Agitated voices floated out into the hallway, and she burst through the door.
David and Kavita sat arguing at the oval mahogany table, littered with laptops, schematic diagrams, and empty coffee cups but stopped the second she entered.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.” Declan burst out and jumped to his feet, almost knocking her off her crutches before hugging her.
Dark shadows under his eyes revealed his weariness, and wisps of sweaty black hair stuck to his forehead. He’d grown a full beard in the past week, and today, his style tilted more toward timber logger than British tech executive. His welcoming smile faded as he registered her cheekbone’s stitches, still sealed with transparent surgical tape, along with the bruises and scratches which still crisscrossed her face, neck, and hands.
“Christ, lass. They beat you to a pulp.” He lifted a hand to cover his mouth.
“I’m fine. Couldn’t stay away, so let’s get going.” Today, denial was her superpower, and nothing would stop her. After leaning her crutches against the oak-paneled wainscoting, she settled into a mahogany chair by the window across from David.
“Dear God, Tess. You’re not well. You should be resting at home.” Arms hanging loose at his sides, David stared and shook his head.
The blood drained from his face and his trademark wavy red hair curled in an untamed mess. A once-crisp, French-cuffed dress shirt had wilted on his frame, marred with sweat stains, suggesting he’d worked straight through the past few days. Worry lined his forehead, and his expression shifted from stunned to apologetic.Visibly distraught, he studied her wounds and flinched as if they were his own.
“I understand Kingsley Tech might be attacked, and we don’t have time to waste. What’s the latest police update?”
“We can no longer return to the office. The Metropolitan Police are investigating which Belarusian or Russian criminal gangs have encryption expertise and which might have the financial backing to stage an attack. No leads yet.”David took a long sip of water before continuing. “The police ripped out the hidden cameras the criminals had planted in my house, but they’re worried I might be abducted, so they assigned bobbies to escort me everywhere. A couple of plainclothes officers are downstairs.”
“I’m afraid we’re all at risk.” No one wanted to hear the truth, but Tess spoke it anyhow. Tension filled the room, and she spied Kavita tapping her slender, stilettoed foot on the carpet and fiddling with the shirt cuff poking out of her designer blazer. Beside her, Declan clicked his ballpoint pen like a nervous tic and squinted at his laptop, as if he could coax better answers out of the machine by staring it down.
“Another bloody thing to worry about. Feckin’ hot in here.” Declan wrested off his black wool sweater and rolled up the sleeves of his red plaid flannel shirt. He wiped his palms on his ripped jeans.
Kavita sat straighter and looked around the table. “Gents, let’s get on with it and talk operations. David’s mystery caller claimed they’d breached us months ago and hadmostof our Firefly source code. Declan, we ran your diagnostic tests on our network three times, but they showed no entry point or suspicious activity, even going back two years. The live servers also passed, and our network perimeter is secure.”
Declan grunted and slammed his pen on the table before resting his head in his hands. “Shite. Zero evidence of a breach. What are we missing?”
Kavita cast him a scowl. “Declan, mate, I’m giving you positive news. We’re clean—”
Tess’s frustration bubbled up and overflowed. “Nothing? Do you think these guys were bluffing us? When they threatened to kill me, they demanded all the source code for Firefly and Rapadon. Firefly was our internal code name, not something public. How’d they find it?”
“Kyle held multiple patents, so the phrase might have been included in the patent documentation.” Rubbing his temples, David frowned.
“Or it slipped out in a media interview. Kyle did a lot of trade press after the patents were announced.” Kavita tapped her stilettos on the carpet.
“Please.” Tess shot her a sour look. “Kyle wouldn’t have spilled an internal code name in an interview.”
“My developers are code reviewing Kyle’s final build of Firefly before he, um, well, passed. After his death, we merged Firefly into a new code tree, Firestorm. Either way, if they’ve breached our source code, Kyle’s encryption algorithms are at risk.”Declan shifted in his chair.
“Another theory is we’ve got a mole, an engineer who downloaded a debug build of Firefly and gave it to someone outside.” Tess studied each of her colleagues for any signs of guilt or recognition.
Head bowed, David stood and paced back and forth in front of the room’s fireplace. Suddenly he stopped and looked up. “What if one of our engineers was blackmailed?”
