Page 83 of Guarding Truth
Theo must have hit a checkpoint. If he were smart, he’d stop and not try to outrun a police barricade. Another car approached the back. Someone hung out the window.
It was Alana, in Juliette’s grandmother’s Lincoln Town Car, with Noelle in the driver’s seat. Several more police cars raced by, and a few seconds later, the truck came to a grinding halt, complete with metal scraping sounds and a dust plume. Noelle got close enough for Alana to grab Abby around the waist and pull her onto the hood of the car. An officer pulled in behind the car and cuffed Abby.
Caleb slumped against the wall and let go of his lifeline. Juliette crawled to him. He wrapped his good arm around her, and she collapsed in his lap.
“It’s over,” he whispered. “And this time, I’m never letting you go.”
TWENTY-ONE
SATURDAY, 5:30 A.M.
Please, God, let Caleb come through surgery.
Juliette paced the hospital waiting room. No way would she rest until she saw Caleb. He had to pull through. He’d torn several tendons in his shoulder while keeping her from being flung out of the back of a semi. She was here, alive, because of him.
And this time, she wasn’t leaving. She’d be right here when he woke up.
Ivy sat in the vinyl chair like a statue, staring out the window, with Alana and Noelle flanking her on either side. Matt Williams walked over to Juliette and handed her a cup of coffee. She’d already had three. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t sleep until Caleb came out of surgery.
Her heart pounded in time to the ticking second hand of the analog clock on the wall. Waiting was not one of Juliette’s strong suits.
“He’s going to pull through, Juliette,” Matt said, as if reading her thoughts. Not that her emotions weren’t written all over her face.
“I don’t want to lose him.” Her breath caught in her throat.
All she wanted was more time. She and Caleb had years of lost time to recover.
Agent McGregor arrived at the already crowded waiting room and walked over to them. “I thought you might like an update, since you, Caleb, and Ivy were instrumental in stopping this hacker group from attempting to take down the bank.”
Juliette wanted to celebrate that the hacker group had been dismantled, but not until she saw Caleb.
“Did you capture all of the Savannah members of Rushmore?” She looked between Matt and Agent McGregor. “We still don’t know who CyberLane is. Ivy would have recognized her neighbor in a heartbeat.”
The FBI agent shook his head. “Not yet. Based on the coded communications we’ve uncovered between the members of the group, Theo was Rough Rider, Jeff was the Architect, and Abby was the Liberator. We still don’t know the whereabouts of the General, the one that seemed to be calling the shots.”
“It’s the presidents.” Juliette hadn’t heard Ivy walk up next to her. “Their hacker names are all the faces of Mount Rushmore.”
Agent McGregor let out a low chuckle. “Ivy, you need to apply for the FBI. I can’t wait for you to work with us. With all our analysts, no one picked up on that fact.”
She shrugged and wrapped her arms around Juliette’s waist. Ivy had claimed such a special place in her heart.
But now that they’d started talking about the case, she wanted to know more. “Has the FBI cleared Blake Abernathy?” She scanned the waiting room and spotted Blake, sitting with his wife, waiting for news of Caleb’s recovery.
McGregor shrugged. “So far, nothing indicates Caleb’s partner was involved. I have a feeling someone else is still out there, though.”
A chill raced through Juliette. “Exactly. What do we know about CyberLane?”
“Theo said they’d hired a young girl to pose as CyberLane. She apparently wasn’t part of their group, just an actor from the local community college that they paid a couple of bucks to pretend. We’re still searching for her, but assume she probably skipped town.”
“And you believe him? He faked his own kidnapping. I think he’d do anything at this point to save himself.”
Agent McGregor raised his palms face up and shrugged. “We have nothing to go on to find CyberLane. We did successfully stop their ransomware from taking over the bank accounts. Theo said that if the bank had paid, they would have released all accounts but the ones that the top executives owned. They intended to bleed them dry and take every penny these men and women possessed and deposit the money into other people’s accounts, of course keeping a chunk of change for themselves.”
“Hardly noble.” Juliette shook her head. At least they wouldn’t get away with it and justice would be served. “And again, I’m not sure I believe anything he says.”
McGregor folded his arms. “These hackers went out of their way to deceive people. They thought they were justified in what they were doing. Jeff Kline had his house repossessed by the bank. Theo claims he lost his business when the bank stopped loaning him money. And Abby’s case is sad, but it doesn’t justify her actions as part of this group. Theyredistributedthousands of dollars in cash that we might never recover.”
A doctor in scrubs entered the room and took off his mask. “Are you Caleb Styles’s family?”