Satisfaction Guaranteed

Chapter 19

They hit pay dirt with the bug in Prescott’s office two days later.

“He’s planning an auction at the end of the month for controlled technology classified as unexportable,” Ethan told Beth. “He’s bringing the potential buyers back for a video demonstration of a UGCV along with specs. The auction will happen two days later, but so far we don’t have a line on how he intends to pass the plans on.”

“You know, I think the man is arrogant enough to store the plans at his house. The security there is tight.” She kitty-combed Beethoven’s fur while the growing kitten lounged in her lap on the sofa.

“I agree, but I’ve been over the house plans until I can see them with my eyes shut and there are just too many places he could have a hidey-hole. Going in with a warrant wouldn’t necessarily net the goods.”

“My guess is that he’s got the plans stored on a media device, maybe even his computer. He thinks its foolproof.”

“His security is better than most. I’ve been trying to hack his system and there are so many layers of ICE that my fingers are getting frostbite from the keyboard.”

“Ouch.”

“You’re telling me. The intrusion countermeasure engineering Prescott’s invested in is the best. There are several signatures, as if he’s got graduating as well as same-level layers of security from different sources.”

“You’ll get through.”

“Maybe we should call Bennett in on this. This is really his thing.”

“But you’re no slouch at it, Ethan. Besides, he’s on assignment in the Middle East. He left three days ago.” The cat jumped off her lap and Beth dropped the special brush down on the coffee table.

“You been checking up on the other agents, Beth?”

“I can’t help myself. Maude and I talk daily.”

“She handling things okay?”

“Of course. The woman is a miracle worker.”

“We all feel that way about you.”

Beth smiled, clearly pleased. “I’ll remind you of that the next time you give me a hard time about turning in your expense reports.”

“I never forget it, baby, but I still don’t like doing expense reports. I think miracle workers should be able to generate them without any help.”

She launched herself toward him as the phone rang.

Ethan grabbed it and her at the same time. He pressed the button to talk while pulling Beth into his lap. “Ethan here.”

She gave him a friendly elbow to the ribs before settling against his chest.

“Ethan, it’s Hotwire.”

“Any word for me?”

“Officially? No. But ten months ago, a young woman in Oregon killed herself. She was attending a community college not far from Prescott’s home when they met. They started dating and she stopped attending classes. She’d lost her job for not showing up and had a miscarriage due to drug usage and possible sexual trauma the week before she killed herself.”

Ethan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I didn’t find anything about this during my investigation into him.”

“Your perp did a good job of hushing his connection to the girl up.”

“But you found it.” It irked Ethan that he hadn’t.

“Her parents died when she was fifteen. Her older sister finished raising her and was helping her through college. The sister is a DEA agent by the name of Rachel Gannon. She confided her fears for her sister and then about the suicide to a friend of mine.”

“And let me guess, the DEA agent has taken a leave of absence, her whereabouts unknown.”

“Yes. My friend’s worried about her, but he hasn’t said a thing to their superiors. She’s a hell of a sniper and she’s more lethal with a knife than Wolf.”

“This doesn’t feel good.”

“I concur.”

“Damn. You think Rachel Gannon is planning personal revenge.”

“If you can stop her, you’ll be saving a life worth preserving.” They both knew Hotwire didn’t mean Prescott.

“She could have killed him at the party the other night.”

“If she was the one who was there. Yes. I’ll send you a picture for verification of her identity. But personal revenge plans aside…she’s still her country’s servant.”

“You think she wants to stop the plans for the UGCV getting into enemy hands before she offs Prescott.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Whit is going to lose his mind if I pull her into our investigation.”

“You don’t have to pull her in to stop her, but if you don’t, you’ll be robbing her of the closure she needs.”

“I’ll talk to Beth about it.”

He got a kiss on his cheek for that and couldn’t help taking her lips.

Hotwire was laughing and calling his name when Ethan remembered he was still on the phone. “Save it for when I’m not on the other end of the line. You’re making me miss Claire.”

“Where is she?”

“She went shopping for the baby with Josie. She and Nitro are staying for a few days before she goes back to classes.”

“Where’s Nitro?”

“Outside scaring the wildlife.”

“I heard that,” came from the other side of the room. “I’m going to tell Claire that our Medicine Men believe a woman should stop having sex the last three months of her pregnancy for the safety of the baby.”

“The man is getting serious,” Hotwire said, sounding far from worried. “I think I need to go kill him.”

“I’ve got a man I wouldn’t mind skinning like a snake and staking out in the sun to dry.”

“Do tell.”

Hotwire swore when Ethan told him what Prescott had done with the video and Beth.

“You watch her, Ethan.”

“I plan to.”

“I mean it. This man is a sadistic son of a bitch. I have a feeling that young woman in Oregon was one in a long line.”

“Beth will be safe.”

“If you need us, you call.”

Ethan felt something strange in his chest. Beth was right. He didn’t have a lot of friends, but because of his need to know what had really happened when his great uncle died, he’d made some good ones. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

“You were there for me when I needed you to help me keep Claire safe from our own government.”

“All part of the job.”

“You just keep believing that.”

They hung up a minute later after Hotwire reminded Ethan to bring Beth to visit Montana when the case was over.

The next couple of weeks were an exercise in frustration on one side for Ethan and pure bliss on the other. He was having no luck cracking Prescott’s ICE, but living with Beth was pure pleasure. He liked being with her. Even when she was cranky waking up in the mornings and slapping at his hands when he touched her in front of the agents coming in on rotation to help him listen to the audibles from Prescott’s bugs.

She acted like she enjoyed the intimacy of living in the same house, too. She definitely more than liked the pleasure they shared in the privacy of their bed at night. Holding her in his arms was addictive and he didn’t relish the thought to returning to living and sleeping alone. The closer the end of the case got, the more he considered what to do about that.

Beth was preparing a report on investment opportunities for Prescott when his secretary told her he wanted to see her in his office again.

He had a complacent expectancy about him that made her leery, but she forced a smile. “You wanted to see me, Mr. Prescott.”

“Please close the door, Beth.”

She did so, but was glad that their conversation was being overheard by Ethan and the other agents back at the cabin. This was one man she had no desire to ever be completely alone with.

He stood up from behind his desk and came toward her. “Beth, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I care about you. When I met you for your interview I knew you were special.”

She backed up toward the door. “I’m involved, Arthur, you know that.”

“Yes, I know.” Prescott looked pained. “To a man who is not worthy of you.”

“You’re wrong. Ethan is really wonderful.”

“I’m sorry but, Beth, because of my growing feelings toward you…because of who you are, how very innocent you are…I could not leave well enough alone after the party.”

“What are you saying?”

“I had your boyfriend followed by a private investigator.”

Her lungs froze for a second in stark, utter horror before her brain started working again. “You’ve had him followed? But why?”

Now, more than ever, she appreciated Ethan’s attention to detail when establishing and maintaining cover for a case. Her heart was pounding wildly, but she was confident Prescott’s private eye would not have found anything to compromise that cover.

“I didn’t believe his encounter with Miss Fournier was as blameless as he tried to pretend.”

“But he explained about that.”

“And you believed him. That is to your credit, my dear Beth, but I have evidence that it was not so.”

This was getting really bizarre. “What evidence?”

“This will be difficult for you, but I have some photos to show you.”

He indicated a file on his desk. “Please. Come with me.”

He led her to stand with him behind the desk and then without further preliminaries, flipped the file open.

The picture on top was of Ethan naked, but covered by a sheet. A woman sat on his torso, touching her breasts for his keen gaze. Beth knew that look, he gave it to her when he wanted her. She knew the pictures had to be faked, but even knowing that, pain lanced through her. The very thought of Ethan with another woman was enough to make her physically ill, but Prescott’s machinations filled her with fury. The man was worse than a snake.

Ethan had been right about that. Not that she’d doubted him. But he’d been right about something else, too. Prescott had been spying on them. The picture of Ethan’s face had to have come from times when they’d been in the living room with the curtains open.

Imagining someone watching them, even though they never did anything really intimate until they shut themselves into privacy, made her skin crawl. And Prescott would be the kind of man who got a kick out of something like that.

Forcing herself to dwell on how it would feel if it really was Ethan with another woman rather than her intense anger, she gave Prescott the reaction he no doubt expected. Tears spurted into her eyes as she put her hand over her mouth.

He patted her back and it was all she could do not to belt him. “You must be strong, Beth.”

Then he flipped the photo to reveal the one beneath it. There were six pictures in all, each of them very cleverly done. None actually showed Ethan naked so if he had a birthmark and his body double didn’t, she wouldn’t see that. His face was superimposed on the pictures with the skill of a true artist. If it were any situation other than the one she was in and any man other than Ethan, Beth would have taken the pictures at face value. They looked absolutely authentic.

And the more she looked, the angrier Beth got. Prescott was pure evil and she’d like to drop him in a rattlesnake pit.

She went to grab the photos. “I have to show these to Ethan.”

Instead of looking disgusted, or even disappointed, Prescott looked strangely pleased by her reaction. “You want to give him a chance to explain it, but how can he?”

“He needs to see them.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t give you the photos. I stepped outside of my role as your employer to have him followed. It would be too risky to let him have a copy of these pictures. He might try to sue me…or pay someone to say they are forgeries.”

“But I have to show them to him.”

“No, Beth. You need to decide if you will stay with a man who has cheated on you.”

“But where would I go?” she asked with credible dismay. “I just moved here…started working for you.”

“You know I’m interested in you. But I would never force the issue in your current state. However, I would be pleased to allow you to stay with me.”

“You want me to move in to your home?”

“It isn’t an offer I would make to another woman.”

“I…I appreciate it.” The slimy toad. “But I’ve got to talk to Ethan.”

“Yes, I can see that you do, Beth. But consider this…if he’s cheating on you now, chances are he’s been screwing other women all along.”

She flinched at the crudity and Prescott’s lips curved in a twisted smile. “You are far too innocent for the likes of him, Beth.”

And just the type of woman he liked playing his ugly games with. Or so he thought. Beth wanted nothing more than to give him a taste of black belt and teach him not all women were helpless or that easily enthralled.

Innocence did not equate to stupidity and naïveté was something that should be protected, not exploited. But he was going to learn that soon enough.

Ethan was simmering with rage when he came to pick Beth up.

Neither of them spoke until they were inside the cabin.

“That sick son of a bitch had photos doctored to look like I was having an affair, didn’t he?”

“Yes. You heard the conversation.”

Ethan jerked his head in assent, his body vibrating with incandescent anger.

“He wants me to move in with him.” He had to have heard that, too, but she didn’t expect him to bring it up.

“No way in hell.”

She’d anticipated that reaction. “Ethan, we’ve got to get into his computer…find something more than what we’ve got right now for an airtight collar. Me being in the house is an in we can’t afford to ignore.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to let him hurt me.”

“Neither am I. You are not moving in with him. In fact, I think it’s time you quit your job.”

She gasped. “We don’t have enough intel. I need to be there.”

“We’ve got bugs.”

“What if they’re found? For all you know, Prescott has a sweep scheduled any day now.”

“He’s too arrogant to sweep for bugs. He thinks he’s too smart to be double-crossed. If he wasn’t, he would have swept for them right after the party.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just part of his routine security and he’s got one scheduled soon.”

“It doesn’t matter…we’ll make the collar. And we’ll make it stick, but we aren’t risking your safety to do it.”

“And if I were a trained agent?”

“Then it would be different, but I’d still be strongly against it. The man hurts women and he likes doing it.”

“You talked to the sister. When?”

“I called this morning, before that jumped-up scene in Prescott’s office.”

True to his word, Ethan had discussed the option of bringing the DEA agent in on their case with Beth. Beth had felt the woman deserved the chance to help bring down her sister’s abuser. Ethan had agreed, but only after doing a thorough investigation of the other woman’s background, her strengths and weaknesses as an agent.

He’d concluded Rachel Gannon was someone Beth’s dad would be lucky to have working for him at TGP.

“She told me that Prescott plays dominance games with women of the sadistic kind.”

“He’s into S amp;M?”

“Yes. She fully expects the auction to include a new sex slave for him as part of the package.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes, it is, and there’s no way you are ever going to move into the same house with a monster like that.”

“But we need an in.”

“I’m going to ask Hotwire to help me hack the system.”

Beth’s mind reeled at the statement. Ethan was not the type of man to ask for help, ever…but especially not outside the agency.

“Don’t look at me like I just said I wanted to get a job table dancing at Hooters.”

“But…”

“Bennett Vincent is not available and he’s the only hacker at the agency better than me.”

“You think Hotwire’s better than you?”

“He might be, but even if he’s not-if we’re working together, even Prescott’s ICE won’t stand against us.”

“What about my job with Prescott?”

“You’re quitting.”

“Do you think Whit would approve?”

“I’m the agent in charge. This is my call, Beth.”

“What if you can’t crack the ICE, what if what we have isn’t enough evidence to put him away?”

“You need to trust me, Sunshine. My gut is telling me to keep you the hell away from him.”

“Your gut, or your heart?”

“Does it matter?”

“It shouldn’t. It’s an assignment. I know that. But it does.”

“Both, all right?”

She nodded, her chest tight. “Is Rachel Gannon going to be a problem?”

“No. She was relieved when I called. She’d come to the realization that killing him wasn’t enough. She wants to see him suffer, see him in prison where his reputation as a woman abuser can precede him, see his assets seized by the government, see him broken.”

“Like her sister before she took her life.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she call her agency?”

“It’s not the DEA’s jurisdiction. She was getting ready to call the FBI when I contacted her.”

“Your timing was good then. They would have complicated things.”

“It always is, baby, or hadn’t you noticed?”

She laughed at his sheer confidence. “If I say yes, it will go to your head.”

“Whereas if you say no, my manly ego will be mortally wounded.”

“Your manly ego could take a mortar and not be mortally wounded.”

“It’s the way you respond to me. It makes me feel like Superman.”

“You mean Superstud?”

He laughed. “Yeah, maybe that.”

Ethan made the phone call to Prescott and it wasn’t pretty. Prescott kept insisting on speaking with Beth and Ethan told him no. Categorically. He also called him a couple of names and told him he knew he’d had the photos faked, but couldn’t figure out why he’d gone to the trouble. If he was that hard up for women, maybe he should buy himself some companionship.

“He’s going to send an assassin after you after that,” Beth said when Ethan hung up.

“Good. Then we’ll have another crime to charge him with.”

She shivered. “I’m glad the auction is in only a couple of days. Even you aren’t invincible, Superstud.”

“Is that my new name?”

“To me.”

He grinned. “I like it.”

“I know you do.”

“I like something else, too.”

“But it will have to wait. You just destroyed our in with the perp. Call your friend. You two need to get to work.”

“You can be very bossy when you want to be, has anyone ever told you that?”

“Why do you think I fantasized about handcuffing you to the bed?”

“You did that because you secretly longed for a lover who could take all you had to give and come back for more.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it. You’re a very passionate woman and you need a man who can match that passion. It’s not easy, but I’m up to the job.”

“You might be up, but you are also on duty. Now…get…to…work.” She enunciated each word with careful clarity.

He saluted and then called Hotwire.

Ethan was grinning when Hotwire picked up the phone. He loved Beth in her feisty, take-charge mode. She got that way at the office and it always made him smile and grow hard. He was up, just like he’d said, but he could control himself. For a while.

“Hey, buddy…you got some time?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

He moved to sit in front of his laptop set up at the dining room table. Another agent was in the spare room listening to Prescott’s audibles. “I’ve got prelim access on a computer, but I’m hitting wall after wall in ICE.”

“Give me the ID code and ISP if you’ve got it.”

Ethan relayed the information he had.

He heard clicking in the background and did his own initial sequence for connection.

“You’re right, this man has serious ICE, but he’s made the terminal mistake…the only one that it’s impossible to protect against.”

“He’s got ISP connection.”

“Yes. No matter how good the ICE, it can always be cracked, but you can’t hack a computer externally that isn’t hooked up for outside connectivity.”

He didn’t know how long he’d been working when Beth started rubbing his shoulders, massaging the kinks out. He turned and kissed one hand.

She kissed the top of his head. “I’m going to make a pot of coffee.”

“That’s great, thanks.” But his mind was on Hotwire’s de-encryption program.

It was one of the best he’d seen. They’d connected about thirty minutes into their session and were working on the hack in real time together.

“If we work from three different points, rather than all of us working on each wall of ICE at the same time, we have a better chance of breaking in.” Claire had picked up an extension and joined them sometime ago. “Bennett, you stick with encryption. Ethan, you work on circumventing the firewall, I’m going to work on the password for entry. It’s a scrolling one and I recognize the pattern…I studied its creator in one of my classes.”

“Good idea, honey,” Hotwire said. “The longer we take on the hack, the bigger chance we’re going to be detected.”

They’d been careful to cover themselves, but it was taking longer because they had to be so careful to hide their fingerprints in the system. If they were backtracked, the trail would end at three different computers with ISP addresses assigned in China. Any attempt to go beyond would encounter a virus that would keep the backtracker busy if it didn’t destroy the hard drive.