Mission: Impossible to Deny (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 7), Jacki Delecki [polar express read aloud .TXT] 📗

failed to fool these women. “How did Finn and Lars let you out of their sight dressed like you’re ready to ‘partay?’”

“Nice deflection, Reeves.” Sophie laughed. “As if Finn has anything to say about the way I dress.”

“We’re taking you out for a glass of bubbly to get the truth. And if you don’t share, we’ll sic our men on you.”

Reeves smiled for the first time in a long while. He’d take his chances with the ladies. Finn was an ex-Navy SEAL—and one of his bosses—while Lars, Finn’s younger brother, was still a Recon Marine. They didn’t process feelings. They expressed themselves physically. Very physically. Reeves had been witness to many brawls between the Jenkins brothers.

“I can’t wait.”

Danni and Sophie wouldn’t give up. And he was very tired of his own company. And besides, he hadn’t eaten dinner. And how would the women react if he told them he was fantasizing about a gamer he had never met? They’d probably call a shrink.

Still, he gave one last look at his Razer Death Adder Elite mouse next to his Corsair K70 RGB colorful keyboard. What would XChoco think if she ever saw his kingdom?

Chapter Two

Darby Wilson jerked the headset off and stood. “Did we get him?”

After three hours of non-stop gaming, she was relieved to move. The intensity of play frazzled her brain. Reeves Hewitt was a skilled gamer and an excellent partner—anticipating and reacting with situational awareness. She walked to the long bank of computers, where the CIA’s finest cybercrime analyst shook her head in disbelief. Molly, her blonde hair caught up in a ponytail and giving her the look of a twelve-year-old, shook her head so hard that her tail bobbed.

“Everything is encrypted, then encrypted some more. He wrote his own security program, and it’s fantastic.”

“I thought if I stayed on long enough, you’d be able to creep into his system.”

“Nope. His firewalls are nothing like anything I’ve ever seen. I tried every angle I could. The guy’s a genius.”

“We know Reeves Hewitt is a genius …” Molly’s admiration irked Darcy. “A genius criminal.”

“He has no record of anything illegal except for the hidden off-shore banking account. And technically, it’s not illegal.”

Darcy hated Molly’s voice of reason.

“He’s smart enough never to leave a trail if he hacked into a system, right?”

“Sure.” Molly bobbed her head.

“Add in the little fact that he designed the video game currently being used to extract money from the United States.”

Reeves Hewitt and his Stanford friend were on Darcy’s suspect list because the CIA had tracked the assault on the various US embassies to the video game Snakes Ahead that the duo had designed while graduate students at Stanford. The game, a takeoff on Indiana Jones, had been used to plant ransomware into the computer systems in the American embassies in Burundi and Malawi. That was the working theory, at least. One of the designers, Charles Poll, had died in a fatal car accident, but Hewitt and his other buddy, Theodore Thompson, were her number one and two suspects. Hewitt held the top slot because of his position in Richard Dean’s software company with DOD contracts to exploit easily.

Darcy was focusing on the game developers while the cybercrime unit was trying to find links between the gamers and any anti-American or anti-government posts. The suspects didn’t have any direct criminal ties. Hewitt had even passed multiple security checks with the government and with Dean. But it couldn’t be a coincidence that a backdoor program in their game was getting access to government secrets.

The hackers demanded millions of dollars not to release embassy files, which they held in “ransom.” The files contained the names of employees and confidential informants, along with the CIA’s most sensitive information on Russia’s plan to influence the weaker governments in East Africa. The embarrassment of the American government being hacked and held hostage was bad enough on the world stage, but gaining US intelligence and their strategic positioning in East Africa was a political nightmare.

Darcy’s team suspected that, despite rigorous warnings, junior members of the staff and guards couldn’t resist logging into the game on their downtime. And that allowed the hackers—code name TakeBack—to infiltrate the rest of the embassy. The need to keep the hacking a secret, and prevent any copycat hacking, meant this had to be resolved like yesterday.

“Hewitt can’t be held accountable for how his game is being used. And we have nothing on him except that questionable account.”

“Which is where he’s keeping his illegal gains. We don’t have anything on him since he’s better than any of our experts. Present company excluded since you did find the bank account.”

“The man’s a ghost. He had no digital footprint. Everything has been erased or redacted. If I didn’t know for sure, I’d think he worked for the Company.” Molly cranked her head to the right and left as she shook out her wrists.

 Darcy owed the plucky woman for putting in the hours to help her build a case against Hewitt. Intrigued by his skill, Molly saw him as a challenge. Darcy just wanted to nail his sorry ass.

“He’s the stuff of a Hollywood hero. He’s a lot of man candy and a lot of smarts. The picture of him clubbing with Sophie Dean and her friends is hot. And how about my little discovery that he used the money he made from selling apps to pay for his sister’s musical training?”

Darcy snorted. “He’s too good to be true. That’s why he’s perfect for it. And with his security clearance, he has access to DOD’s files. Maybe he manipulated them to hide his trail.”

 The only picture that they were able to pull up, besides his driver’s license and passport photos, was taken when Sophie Dean was living out her wilder party days. Darcy felt a kinship with Sophie Dean’s need to act out after her mother’s death. Darcy had left a spate of bad boys in her wake after her dad died. And Reeves Hewitt had “bad boy” written