Framed Read online

  Dedication

  To Scott. You are my greatest joy and proudest achievement. You’re what keeps me going when things fall apart. Yes, you’ll always be my baby, but I’m so excited to watch all the amazing things you’ll do in the future. I have and will always believe in you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Acknowledgments

  Announcement to Duty & Honor Series

  About the Author

  Also by Leslie Jones

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Sunday, January 29. 8:00 p.m.

  Lyubinsk, Russia.

  “An hour outside a metropolis of twelve million people, and we end up in the middle of nowhere.”

  Fatianova hated leaving Moscow for any reason. Moscow provided excitement. The metro and the Bolshoi. The Danilovsky Market and Café Pushkin. Gorky Park and the White Garden spa.

  Lyubinsk stank of fish and onions.

  They passed through the sprawling farms, empty of workers this time of the evening; then skirted the fisheries, with their long docks, floating cages interconnected with netting, and rank stench. She tried to cover her nose with her sleeve. It helped a bit.

  Pavel turned down an unpaved road. He slowed to thirty kilometers an hour.

  “It’s about eight kilometers to the facility,” Fyodor Petrov said. “We’ve passed the worst of it.”

  Until we go back, she thought.

  The sun had set an hour ago. Lyubinsk after dark became downright eerie. The snow flurries didn’t help. The slushy track seemed threatening in the jouncing headlights. The windshield wipers barely worked, forcing Pavel to lean forward to see. He slowed again.

  The facility came into sight. The ugly cement building rose three stories, smack in the center of an icy mess of mud and gravel. A second, much smaller building sat behind it, also unadorned cement. The trees had been cut back, preventing anyone from approaching unobserved, and a ten-foot-high barbed wire fence surrounded the complex. Pavel hopped out and propped open the deliberately unlocked gate, then drove the van straight up to the small building, parking in front of it like he had every right to be there.

  Fyodor opened his laptop and typed in a few commands. A grid showing nine views of the facility and its surroundings popped up, then went black as he pressed a few buttons. “The codes I got are good. The exterior cameras are disabled. Working on the interior ones now.”

  “Hurry up.” Fatianova tapped her long nails on her trousers, leaning away from Konstantin. He smelled almost as bad as the rotting fish.

  Fyodor closed the laptop. “Cameras inside this building are down. We have maybe fifteen minutes before they bother to come check.”

  They all exited the van. Fatianova turned up her fur collar against the cold as Pavel walked to the door and tried the handle.

  “It’s unlocked.” He pulled it open, peering in before gesturing to Konstantin, who drew a submachine gun from under his long coat.

  Fatianova shivered. She hated guns; had since the GRU stormed her family home and killed her parents right in front of her eyes. They hadn’t been dissidents, as the KGB claimed. Just poor factory floor workers committing the occasional petty theft to make ends meet.

  The door opened into some sort of tunnel. Age and calcium pitted the cement walls. The low ceiling seemed to be half wooden beams, half exposed cabling. Every ten feet, an oxidized steel door barred entry into whatever was hidden there. About halfway down the tunnel, one of these doors stood ajar.

  “The guard should be on a smoke break,” Fyodor said. The tunnel echoed his words.

  “Shut up,” Fatianova whispered. “We don’t know who else might be here.”

  “No one’s here,” the man insisted. “Just like the gate guard conveniently went to take a piss. None of the guards here have been paid in five months. It was easy to bribe them.”

  “No one better show up,” Konstantin said. “Or they’re dead.”

  Her group made its way down to the reddish steel security door and the men hauled it further open. When Fatianova stepped over the threshold, she nearly stumbled and fell before scrambling over rubble and pipes that had fallen onto the floor, or been abandoned there.

  “Here,” Konstantin said. He turned left, stepping over a black tarp and crowbar to a banded wooden shipping crate. Pavel picked up the crowbar. At a nod from Fatianova, he pried the top open and shoved the lid back.

  She looked down at the oversized red-and-silver suitcase nestled on a bed of industrial packing material. Excellent. Fingering the clasps before pulling them open, she eased the lid up, calculating and recalculating in her head how rich this simple suitcase would make her.

  “Hurry, Fatya,” Fyodor said.

  “I’ll take all the time I want; do you hear me? This isn’t a box of marbles. And don’t call me that.” She shot him a glare before inspecting the contents meticulously. “Everything looks good.”

  Fyodor gave a sharp nod and gestured to Pavel. “Go get the cart. Quick, now.”

  He was gone and back in less than five minutes with a heavy-duty padded cargo dolly. Fatianova snapped the suitcase closed. Konstantin closed the crate and the three men lifted it onto the dolly.

  “Slowly,” she hissed. “Be careful. Very, very careful.”

  They obeyed. She was, after all, the expert. The only one who knew how to handle the dangerous contents of the suitcase.

  “It’s got to be worth millions of rubles,” Konstantin said. “While you’re only paying us a couple thousand.”

  Closer to a billion rubles. Fatianova kept silent.

  Fyodor sneered. “I’m paying you six thousand rubles to steal something you couldn’t possibly understand or sell. Count yourself lucky.”

  “What are you going to do with it? Use it?”

  “None of your business. But if it’ll shut up your yapping, I intend to take it to America and sell it. They’re rolling in money there. They can afford to pay.”

  “How do you plan to get it across the border? You can’t exactly check it at the airport as though it were a regular suitcase.”

  Fyodor cast him an impatient look. “We’re taking it to Kamchatka. I have someone who can get us into Canada, and from there to Massachusetts. Are you done asking stupid questions?”

  Konstantin shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

  I’m the boss. She had no choice, for the moment, but to let Fyodor think he was the one in charge. She needed his contacts. Soon enough, though, he would cease to be useful to her. Fatianova locke
d down the safety straps on the dolly, double-and triple-checking to ensure the container wouldn’t shift even a little bit.

  “Lift it over the rubble,” she ordered. “Keep it smooth and slow. Steady, you clods!”

  She watched them like a hawk. She had no desire to die. The group inched its way back to the van, where she supervised loading the suitcase, dolly and all, and secured the whole thing inside.

  The snow had stopped while they were inside the building, leaving the landscape dark and bleak. Her heart began to thud and her breath came in excited spurts as Konstantin snapped the doors closed. She had it!

  “If you tell anyone about tonight, I’ll hunt you both down and carve your hearts out,” she said. “Tell me you understand.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Konstantin said. “Give us our six thousand, and we’re gone.”

  “Fyodor, give them what they’re owed,” she ordered.

  The muffled report of a silenced gun caused her to flinch. She turned in time to see Pavel collapse. Fyodor turned the weapon onto Konstantin, who froze in the process of unslinging his submachine gun.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled.

  Fatianova knew she should just let Fyodor shoot him, but why shouldn’t she have a little fun after the anxiety of transporting the suitcase?

  Slipping her knife from under her long coat, she moved well into his personal space, smiling into his eyes. A cat-with-a-canary, you’re-an-idiot kind of smile.

  “I’m killing you, you dimwit.”

  Uncertainty touched his eyes, which then widened as she slipped her knife between his ribs and twisted.

  Chapter 2

  Tuesday, February 14. 10:00 a.m.

  FBI Field Office. Boston, Massachusetts.

  Hadley Larkspur entered the bulletproof cage turnstile and finger-waved at the security guard on duty. After a wait that always seemed eternal to her, the mechanism disengaged and allowed her into the lobby of the FBI’s Boston field office.

  “Morning, Hoyt.”

  Hoyt flipped closed the magazine he was reading and shoved it out of sight. “Morning, Lark.”

  She glanced up at the bank of monitors bolted to a bar near the ceiling. Three faced toward her and three faced the security desk. All showed views from the sixteen cameras at the building’s entrance, in the lobby, and in the hallway outside of the field office itself.

  “You know they can see you reading Penthouse, right?” she said. She leaned against the reception desk, large enough that it covered a quarter of the lobby space.

  Hoyt flushed. “It’s Men’s Health. My wife wants me to join a gym.”

  She took in the gut overhanging his uniform pants and his growing double chin. “Probably she just wants you to live longer. Heart health, you know?”

  “I guess,” he said, voice sullen. “By the way, Melvin’s been on a tear this morning. He’s been out here half a dozen times looking for you.”

  “Ugh.” She loved her new job and everything about it. Everything, that is, except for her boss. “I guess I’ll go get my ass-chewing out of the way. Then I can enjoy my coffee in peace.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Does it matter? He’ll find something.”

  Hoyt managed a half smile. “True. I like the new hair, by the way. What happened to the blond?”

  Lark fingered the ends of her bright pink hair. “Got bored.”

  “You get bored easy?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” She walked to the second set of turnstiles and slapped her badge on the reader. The light turned green, and she pushed through. She had to badge in again to gain access to the cube farm. Before she even made it to her cubby, Melvin bore down on her like a freight train.

  “You’re late again, Larkspur. What the hell is it with you? Don’t you own an alarm clock?”

  She tried a sunny smile, which only made him glower more. “Crash on the highway. It took half an hour to go two miles.”

  Special Agent Melvin Dewey, Cyber Crime supervisor in Boston, was built like an NFL linebacker. His receding hairline offset the belligerent thrust of his chin, and his dark blue suit sat awkwardly on his beefy six-foot-four-inch frame. Today he wore a chartreuse tie with some sort of insipid pattern she thought was particularly ugly.

  “Leave earlier, then,” he snapped. “And what’s with the hair? This is a professional organization. If you can’t manage to look and behave like a professional, then maybe you don’t belong here.”

  Her eyes slitted as irritation flooded her. Before she blew her top, though, a cheery voice interrupted them.

  “Good morning, you two.”

  They both turned to face Doug Huckabee, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, and Melvin’s boss.

  “Good morning, sir,” Melvin said.

  “Morning, Doug,” Lark said. “How’s your wife? Gone into labor yet?”

  Doug’s face grew dreamy. “Not yet. The doc says any day now. I can’t wait to hold my daughter.”

  “I can’t wait to see the pics. I bet she’ll be cute as a button.” Lark punched him on the arm as Melvin stared at her in horror. Maybe she was breaching some sort of protocol, but she liked Doug. And he was certainly more laid back than her uptight boss. As she expected, he laughed.

  “God help her if she looks like me. Hey, I have something I’d like you to take a look at. Our computer scans detected some malware on one of the virtual desktop servers.”

  Melvin’s mouth turned down in displeasure as he stepped forward to partially conceal Lark from his boss. “Sir, I already assigned her a task. Maybe a more senior computer scientist?”

  “What are you working on, Lark?”

  “A complaint from a woman who claims her internet service provider called and said her router had a virus. The usual scam. He said he could remove it for a fee. She paid it using her debit card. He emptied her bank account. I’m pretty much done with it. I just need to write up the report.”

  “Good, good. I think this one will be right up your alley. We’ve isolated the server, but we need to know what the malware is designed to do. Interested?”

  “Sir, I’ll handle it personally. She’s not ready—”

  “Absolutely! Deconstructing malware is my specialty.” Sort of. She was more familiar with creating it, but if something could be created, it could also be dissected.

  “Sir, Ms. Larkspur’s very new to this office, and she’s only been with the FBI a few months. I don’t think she has the experience for that.”

  Doug slapped him on the back. “You’ll supervise, naturally. Give the kid a chance. Let’s see what she can do.”

  Melvin’s brows knit and he narrowed his eyes, but in the end forced a nod. “Of course, sir.”

  “Good man. Lark, the server’s in the SCIF. Jocelyn will show you which one.” He pronounced the acronym “skiff”—the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a secure data facility where the most sensitive systems, programs, and information could be discussed, cached, and handled.

  After Doug left, Melvin scowled down at Lark. “I’ll expect that report on my desk before you even look at that server. Got me?”

  Lark couldn’t help herself. “Of course, sir,” she mocked.

  He looked daggers at her, stepping closer. She guessed she was supposed to faint in terror. Instead, she gave him a saucy grin and walked away. She needed coffee to wash away the taste of Melvin’s bullying.

  Jocelyn Katsaros popped her head into the break room as Lark poured herself a cup. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “I know, I know. I’m late again.” She added six sugars and some half-and-half, stirred it, and slugged back a gulp. It wasn’t too godawful.

  Jocelyn came inside and went straight to the vending machine. Coins clinked and a Snickers bar dropped into the tray. She tore open the wrapper and took a bite before sitting at one of the laminate tables. “Who cares? You get more done in the time you’re here than the rest of us combined. You’re making us look
bad.”

  Lark sat opposite her, taking another drink before setting the Styrofoam cup on the table. “That’s because Melvin keeps assigning me rinky-dink little jobs.”

  Jocelyn rested her elbows on the table. “That’s because you’re the newbie.”

  “I know, I know. At least this server malware thing will let me spread my wings a little bit.”

  Her friend finished the last bite of the candy bar and rose, dropping the wrapper into the trash can. Her smooth chestnut hair rippled in waves halfway down her back; her exotic face and curvy body screamed sex appeal. Men were drawn to her like moths to wildfire. Lark couldn’t bring herself to feel any jealousy, though. Most men weren’t worth the time.

  “It’s not fair you can eat whatever you want and never gain a pound,” Lark said.

  “Sunshine, I’ve seen you eat.” Jocelyn tore off a paper towel and blotted her full red lips. “I ain’t got nothing on you.”

  “Huh. Whatevs.”

  “Anyway, I work it all off in karate. You should really come with me some time. You’d enjoy it.”

  “Sure, maybe. Someday.”

  Jocelyn chuckled. “Your sister’s wedding’s coming up soon, isn’t it? This Saturday?”

  Lark felt her face soften. “Yeah. You should come to the bachelorette party Friday night.”

  “I just might. Come on. I’ll show you which server has the infection.”

  Lark drained her cup and threw it away, then followed Jocelyn to the other end of the building to the SCIF. They signed in with the security guard, dropped their cell phones into the small lockboxes, and pocketed the keys. Jocelyn entered the access code into the keypad that let them into the data center.

  The windowless room had rows of tables sporting two, three, or four monitors, as well as individual workstations. An area set aside for group collaboration had a triple row of monitors on the wall, as well as individual screens for four or more analysts. Jocelyn led her to a workstation on the right wall, pushed her into the chair, and sat next to her. A tower server rested to the left of the double monitors.

  “It’s a Unix sever running Solaris. Standard user interface. The malware is quarantined on bay three.” Jocelyn clicked through to the right folder. “No one’s touched it since it came in here.”