Chapter 16
sixteen
ALEX
When I arrived at my office, Dylan was sitting on a leather armchair, studying one of the folders I’d left on my desk. He looked up, and surprise, shock, and something far deeper left his skin pale and his eyes as dark as a winter storm. “When were you going to tell me?”
“What are you talking about?” I placed the two cups of coffee on the desk.
Dylan showed me the first page of the report he was reading.
I held my breath. That wasn’t one of the folders he was supposed to be looking at. No one would blame him for being upset. I’d felt sucker-punched, too, when I read the documents. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Dylan stared, open-mouthed. “Someone wants to kill you, and you didn’t tell me?”
“The Haqani Army is a radical terrorist group. They make death threats all the time.”
“And you didn’t think it was important enough to tell anyone?”
I winced. What I said next wouldn’t make any difference to Dylan’s reaction, but it might explain why I hadn’t said anything. “It’s not me the Haqani Army want, it’s my program. As soon as the Department of Defense has it, they’ll leave me alone.”
“You can’t honestly believe that.” Dylan dropped the folder onto the desk. “Is there anything else I should know?”
If what he’d already discovered wasn’t bad enough, the next part would be like walking across a minefield. “Another engineer who’s on the government think-tank has been receiving death threats, too.”
Dylan sat perfectly still, absorbing what I’d said. “When did they start?”
“Two weeks ago.” I kept my reply short. If Dylan knew the engineer and his family had been moved to a secret location it would only worry him.
“You need more protection than I can give you. If Ryan knew what was happening, he would’ve sent you to a safe house.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “In case you missed their message, the terrorist group wants you dead. My brief is to help you with your program, not act as your bodyguard.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard. So far, all they’ve done is threaten me. They don’t know where I am.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they only contact me by email. There’s no way they can trace where their messages are going.”
Dylan frowned. “I’m sure that comforted the engineer who’s received death threats.”
“The only people who know I’m living here are the chairperson of our project, you, Ryan, and a couple of friends. It’s not the first time this has happened, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”
“What are you talking about?”
I rubbed my hand around the back of my neck. “I’ve worked with the Department of Defense before. Two years ago, I was contracted to help build a program that identifies all terrorist activity across social media sites. Other programs were being used, but none of them were as fast, accurate, or as powerful as the one our team created. Thanks to the information we gathered, Homeland Security was able to arrest a cell of terrorists before they blew up three aircraft.”
“Did the terrorists belong to the same group who are threatening you now?”
I nodded. “Last week I called Richard Leigh, the chairperson of the EMP project. That’s when he told me another engineer has received death threats.”
“Do the terrorists know there’s a bug in the program?”
“I don’t think so.”
Dylan stood. “I need to call Ryan.”
That was the last thing I wanted. “He won’t be able to do anything.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m not leaving here, Dylan.”
He turned and looked at me, his eyes as cold as Arctic ice and just as unforgiving. “This is bigger than either of us. If your program gets into the wrong hands, anything could happen. I’m calling Ryan.”
I stared at the whiteboard. Regardless of what Dylan’s boss said, I wasn’t leaving my home. If the Haqani Army wanted me dead, they’d have to come and get me.