“Payton, are you even listening?” her father scolded her. Everyone was staring at her expectantly.
“Completely. Every word.” She didn’t have a clue.
“Then what’d I say?” He gave her a challenging look. One she’d seen most of her life because her mind tended to drift.
“What was on the drive?” she guessed.
Her father shook his head disappointedly. “I’ll say this quick, then give you two some time to talk.” He didn’t say which two for her to know. She and Alex? She wasn’t ready for that. She, a cop ready for anything, was afraid to talk about her feelings with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. It should be laughable, only she wasn’t. Her palms were sweaty. Could she fake not feeling well to postpone the conversation? Doubtful, they’d see through the ruse in a second.
“There’s no need to rush, Daddy. I’m focused.” Now she was. Payton made it a point to look her father in the eye and pretend Alex wasn’t there.
“Actually, I do. Simon is in a holding cell awaiting interrogation. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so we could have a small chat before I went in.”
Oh. Well, that was sweet he’d waited. Normally, work always came first. She wasn’t upset about that fact. “I’m sorry,” she said, chastened. His frown turned to a smirk. Her father could never stay mad at her for long, even when she deserved his ire. She had perfected her demure look well over the years.
“Anyway, I’d been gathering Intel even before Alex brought the security breach to my attention. There had been other bases that were attacked, but we were keeping it quiet so as not to raise undo panic. Once people started going missing or turning up dead, I figured out who and what they were after.”
“You,” Payton said.
Nick nodded. “And the knowledge I possess.”
Payton wanted to know what that was, but she knew he wouldn’t say. He’d gone out of his way to fake his death and go undercover to keep it hidden. Even the flash drive hadn’t gone over any Intel except Simon and the breaches. Daddy wouldn’t just say what it was now. “But that Intel isn’t on the drive,” she said, already knowing the answer. She’d seen what was on the drive to begin with, though they hadn’t spent much time going through it.
Her father pulled the drive out of his pocket and stared down at it. It looked so small and insignificant. Not worth killing for, but in her line of work, she’d seen people kill over a parking spot.
“It’s not what Simon thought it was, but it’s the information I’ve gathered over the years to put him and some of his associates away for life.”
“So we had the answers all along? Who the bad guys were and what they were doing?” All the days of research she’d wasted and she’d had the answers the whole time.
“I gave you the clues to unlock the drive,” he said unapologetically.
“You did, it just took me a while to figure it out.” Payton prided herself on puzzle solving; it was crucial to being a good detective. Sometimes it just took her longer to get to the answers. Especially when they were staring her in the face.
“Well, I couldn’t make it too easy. I do work with a bunch of code breakers.” It was a sound argument.
“You could have made it a little easier,” she murmured under her breath as she flopped back on the bed. “So if that’s not what Simon was after, can you tell us what he was after?”
Her father looked hesitant. He guarded his secrets closer than a dragon and its treasures. “It’s a program. A virus really. You don’t have to be near the electronic to work. You just tell it where to infiltrate and it does. It’ll take any data you tell it to. Bank accounts, classified files. Emails, you name it, and it can hack it, steal it, track it, and erase it. I don’t know how Simon learned of it. Once two of the people involved turned up dead or missing, I knew what they were after. I safeguarded the research and had the location moved just in case things went badly. I couldn’t risk the technology falling into the wrong hands.”
No shit. Payton was dumbstruck by this revelation. No wonder Simon had been willing to kill to get it. Then again, that kind of technology shouldn’t even exist. “Seriously, Dad. Do you not watch any of the movies we’ve seen? How many times did people come up with stuff like that and the technology took over the world?” She loved her father dearly, but this was a ludicrous idea. There was so much that could wrong with it, not to mention it was creepy. Someone could know where she was with the press of a button.
“That’s highly unlikely.” Leave it to egotistical men of the world that thought nothing could go wrong with having that kind of power.
“That’s pretty scary, Dad.”
“That’s why I went to such lengths to protect it. Why I was willing to be captured to find out how much Simon actually knew.”
“You couldn’t just use your little virus thing to suck it out of his phone?” She had this image of an octopus and its tentacles sucking the knowledge out of a phone. That was an image she didn’t want in her brain.
“It’s not so cut and dry, baby girl.” Nick looked down at his watch then back at her. “I have to go. The threat to the technology is far from over. I need to know how much Simon knows. He’s hardly the head of this thing. This goes way up.” Her dad leaned over to give her a kiss on the head. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’d like to come too, sir,” Alex spoke up. “After I have a quick word with Payton.”
“Alright, be quick.” With that he left.
“See you soon, Payton,” Colin said, waving from the front of the room before retreating as well. And then she was left alone with Alex.
Chapter 35