Countdown

Ethan didn’t respond, but his serious focus on the trains in front of him betrayed his concern.

“So we’re playing this game to make sure everyone leaves us alone.” Rachel leaned forward and used a higher pitched voice. “Just in case. It’s like hide-and-go-seek, and your dad’s office is a fort.” She flashed a radiant smile and winked at Ethan.

That seemed to calm the boys, and they both maneuvered their trains toward the bridge. James worried his lip. Even at their quietest they still made choo-choo noises without realizing it.

“So, back to what’s going on...” Rachel said, her voice hushed. But it came across more like a question.

He straightened and looked around his office with a fresh set of eyes. He’d never had a nonrelative female in his house, let alone his workspace. The framed portrait showed him in front of the South Korean flag as he accepted a black belt. It served as the only wall decoration. His wife had hated that he hadn’t smiled for that photograph, but his instructor had told him anything other than a serious face would break tradition. At least his walls weren’t white anymore, thanks to his sister-in-law’s insistence.

How did he even begin to explain the work predicament to a hairdresser? Nikki had worked in the IT field so James had never had to talk about work to a normal person. In fact, his company discouraged it. He took a deep breath. “You know I work for Launch Operations, right?”

She nodded. “The space company.”

“Yes. We launch satellites, usually for telecom services but sometimes for the government, as well.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You work on computers there.”

“I handle system operations.” He searched for the right words. “I watch the processes...the scripts that go through the system. Maybe I should back up—”

Rachel put two hands on her hips and closed her eyes while she inhaled deeply. Her eyes flashed open. “You’re trying to dumb it down for me, which I can appreciate, but for the sake of time, why don’t you speak candidly? I can ask questions if I need to.”

“That works for me.” James’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m a systems administrator, so I monitor system processes. A glitch happened a few days ago and I fixed it but discovered another process set up for constant monitoring. It sent alerts to someone—I don’t know who—on the status of radioactive material.”

Her mauve-tinted mouth dropped open. “Radioactive? Is that normal?”

James studied the thin carpet underneath his sneakers. How much detail should he go into? “For this launch, the radioactive part isn’t normal. I had a hunch about what it could mean, though. Do you know what an EMP, an electronic magnetic pulse weapon, is?”

She cocked her head. “Something that could knock out our power?”

“At a rudimentary level.”

Rachel darted a glance at the boys. Her frown was so intense her eyebrows almost touched her thick lashes. “You think you found that?”

“The process indicates something radioactive hiding within the satellite, something not on any of the schematics.” He blew out a breath. “The launch had been approved. All the necessary permits gathered. The air force even had to certify it beforehand, and it passed with flying colors. There are government officials on site to oversee things, which made me wonder who I could trust.”

“That’s why you contacted the NSA?”

“A friend of mine, yes. He got back to me a couple days ago and asked me to stall the launch. He said there was reason for concern, but he needed more time to investigate to get to the bottom of it.” James sighed. “I agreed to help and wrote a process that writes more processes and sends error messages about the rocket’s engine being faulty.”

She squinted. “Are you trying to say you wrote a virus?”

James looked at the ceiling. Technically, what he did was different, but he didn’t have time to discuss semantics. “Uh, basically. A very complicated virus, if you want to call it that. Bottom line is they won’t be able to launch until it’s fixed.”

“Oh.” She blinked rapidly and turned toward his desk. “That’s...a lot to take in.”

James raked a hand through his hair, the curls off his forehead a moment before they bounced back into position. “I thought the NSA would take over by now. I did my part. But I believe whoever is hiding something on that satellite figured out what I did and shut me out of the system. I got locked out at the same time someone tried to kidnap my kids.”

She put a hand on her cheek as she paled.

He hadn’t meant to say “kidnap,” but the kids didn’t react to his slip-up. “That’s why,” he said, “I think they’ve been looking for someone to use as leverage against me.”

She dropped her hands. “So you’ll fix the virus.”

James sighed. It was a relief she understood the gravity of the situation and seemed to believe him. He didn’t want to explain why the NSA knew it would take other men with the same qualifications days to be able to stop a process James had written. His own parents didn’t know the extent of what he had done for the NSA in his younger years.

Crash!

Every muscle stiffened at the sound from above. It sounded like the men broke his back door window to get inside.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Ethan whimpered.

Rachel turned to the boys at the same time as he reached out to hug them. “Your daddy is here, and you’re safe.” She leveled a cold glare at him. “Now that we know they’re not here for a chat, what’s the plan?”

He stood and turned the volume on the intercom speaker to low. “They can’t hear us, but we can hear them.” The basement wasn’t soundproof, but he knew from experience that he would have to be yelling before anyone would hear him upstairs, through the closed door.

He pulled out his smartphone. Telling the police his theories about Launch Operations would be foolish but alerting them to a break-in seemed pretty cut-and-dried. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”

Footsteps and doors slamming could be heard even without the aid of the intercom. “I thought they were supposed to be here,” a gruff voice said through the speaker.

Rachel’s breath hitched.

James turned to make sure she was okay. She seemed to understand his unasked question because she nodded, her lips in a tight line. She crossed her legs, sat on the ground and the boys jumped onto either side of her lap. She whispered into their ears, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He trusted she was attempting to soothe them as she’d done earlier.

“Maybe they’re onto us,” the other man said. “I found a car in the garage, but it’s empty.”

“Or they got picked up by that neighbor girlfriend of his.”

James turned in time to see Rachel roll her eyes.

“So we’re going to check there, too?” the other man’s voice responded. “I heard she’s a spitfire.”

“I’ll go. She won’t give me problems.”

The other man laughed, a sickening chuckle. “Just because you hide behind your NSA badge.”

“Hey,” the man yelled. The sound of shuffling feet rattled the bookshelf door upstairs. James flinched. If they were thorough, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out there was no wall behind it.

“I wouldn’t be here if your team hadn’t messed up,” the second man said, his voice seething. “So get to work finding the guy’s computer. Grab any electronics you see like a hard drive or something.”

James glanced at the backpack at his feet where he’d stuffed his laptop. Even if they got their hands on it, he felt sure they wouldn’t find anything of use. He’d wiped all evidence of his work from it.

“Trash the place?”

“Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

James’s heart dropped. He shoved the phone back in his pocket. NSA? This wasn’t how the NSA acted, so either the agent was a fake or crooked, but either way, the police wouldn’t do him much good if one of the men had an NSA badge to flash.

But now he knew what they were after. They’d confirmed his suspicions. This was about Launch Operations, and Derrick was the only one he could trust. He clicked the intercom volume off before the boys could understand their toys were in danger of being smashed. “I think it’s time to go.”