Page 3 of Operation Heartbeat
He gave a brief nod. “That’s more than airport security could do. They could only get him to unlock it.”
He loomed over her shoulder, watching her run through all the places where he could have stored photos. When that came up short, she hacked the cloud.
“Oh, damn!” Her sudden soft outburst made Gunnison rocket right to her side.
“Are you all right, Kit?”
She lifted a hand and touched his jaw without shifting her attention away from the phone. “I’m fine. I found the folder with the pictures! And a bunch of different people accessed the folder.”
Con leaned in to see. “We can track the IP addresses from the logins.”
She bobbed her head in a nod, dark hair bouncing around her shoulders. “I’m shooting the addresses to myself so I can do a deep dive on everyone who logged into this cloud.”
“So thereisproof that the photos exist. I’ll report back to Commander Barrett.”
Kit stilled. “Then there’s this.”
Con braced a hand on the desk, leaning close to see what she was pointing out: a jumble of letters made no sense to him.
“Is that—”
“A cryptogram,” Kit cut him off.
He turned his head and locked stares with Gunnison.
This was bigger than any of them thought.
He whipped back to Kit. “Any chance you can go to Jersey with me? The team and Barrett need to see this.”
She gave him a skeptical glance. “You don’t have a good hacker in Jersey? They’re everywhere.”
“Yeah, but they don’t have security clearances like you.”
“Then Charlie needs to expand their team.”
“Brilliant tech people with the skills we need aren’t just going to submit resumes to work for a branch of the military no one knows exists,” he argued.
She shook her head. “Sorry, Con. I can’t go. But I’ll walk you out.”
She stood up, and he finally spotted the huge bump of her pregnancy jutting from the front of her body.
“Oh damn!” How could Con have missed that?
Gunnison reached out to steady his wife and curled a protective hand around their growing child. “She can’t travel.”
“No shit. She’s about to pop.”
Gunnison sent him a dark glower, but Kit giggled.
For being so heavily with child, she was quick on her feet and led the way out of the room with her husband at her side, Con trailing behind a step. At the base of the stairs that led to the roof, he stuck out a fist to his brother-in-arms.
“Congratulations, man.”
Finally, some words to wipe that pissed expression off Gunnison’s face. He flashed a grin and bumped knuckles with him. “Thanks, man.”
He started up the stairs but swung back. “Keep me in mind when you go to pick the godfather.”
Without another word, Con was up the stairs, rushing to the waiting chopper. As soon as he switched on the comms device, he demanded to be connected to their commander.