Page 65 of Critical Strike

Luke barely held back his surprise at this sudden announcement—and the absolute dead-eyed certainty with which she delivered it. “You do?”

She gave a single, firm nod. “I do. I’ve been tossing the idea around in my head like a computer program running in the background while we worked out the plan for tonight.” She managed a faint smile.

“Okay. What’s the idea?” There was an intensity in the way she moved, the hard glint in her eyes. As much as he wished he could take away any reason for her to look and act that way, there was no denying how proud she made him. Her ingenuity, her capability, her courage.

“Ballard loves nothing more than feeling secure, right?” She didn’t pause for an answer, rolling on through. “He finds people to do his dirty work for him. He has eyes everywhere, reporting back to him. He wraps himself in layers of firewalls and cameras and monitoring, like he’s protected against the entire world.”

“Only a man who poses a threat to the entire world needs to go to those lengths,” Luke mused.

Claire nodded. “Exactly. And it’s all an illusion. It takes nothing more than a person with awareness of how he does things and the skill to get around his defenses to take him down.”

“You’re the person with the awareness and the skill.”

“I am.” She raised her chin like she dared him to argue, but he wouldn’t have argued for anything in the world.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m going to use his security system against him. Against all of them.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Whatever special something Brax Patterson had, he could’ve made a mint from bottling and selling it.

“I told you he’d come through.” Luke grinned once his brother had confirmed success on the first step of this latest part of their plan. What would be the end of everything, if it all played out the way they needed it to.

No. The wayshe’dmake it play out. It was all in her hands now, and Claire could almost taste victory. So long as Ballard kept acting predictably, she’d be fine. And if there was one thing she’d finally started to understand about Ballard, it was his lack of imagination.

Anyone could’ve predicted what he’d done so far, if they were willing to sink to his level and think like a power-hungry, greedy sociopath.

Her one advantage over him so far was that total lack of imagination. He hadn’t imagined her to be strong, smart or capable. He’d looked at her—or through her the way so many people had all her life—and seen nothing. Nobody.

Talk about a blow to his ego. How much of his desperation to find her stemmed from his fear of what she could do to him and how much came from his crushed pride?

Luke switched on the burner phone’s speaker. “You got it?” Claire asked. Khan took this as an invitation to leap into her lap, wanting all her attention as always.

She kissed the top of his head anyway. He was her spoiled brat.

“I got it.” It was clear Brax was smiling, proud of himself. “It was easier than I thought. The ladies at that company need to get laid. She was too glad to stop and chat with me for a little while on her way to her car.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “Or maybe you’re the most charming devil who ever lived and whoever she was, she couldn’t help but fall under your spell.”

“Stop. You’re making me blush.”

Luke snickered. “Okay, okay. Back to business. You have the key card, which means we have access to the building tonight. Weston secured the new laptop and is on his way with it. Claire knows what to do when she gets her hands on it.”

She nodded her agreement while wondering how true that was. There she went again, doubting herself when she’d been so sure, so completely certain. She saw it all clearly, each step, everything she had to do.

All that was left was actually doing it.

Weston had followed her instructions to the letter, finding a machine with the capabilities she was looking for. The power she needed, the speed. Speed would be their weapon. When the ball started rolling, it would have to roll fast.

And she’d be the one pushing it along.

The hardest part might very well have been waiting to get started. At least there was one task to keep her occupied—hacking into the security feed.

“You’re sure you won’t be noticed?” Luke leaned in behind her, squinting at the screen.

“This is the least of our worries, believe me. Nobody considers a hack to their security cameras—and even if they do, they expect the hack to shut down the system. I’m not shutting it down. I’m looping the same twenty minutes on repeat, so it looks like nothing out of the ordinary is going down while we go to work.”