Engaging his Enemy (Shattered SEALs #4) - Amy Gamet Page 0,1
answer it?”
“I’m working.”
Trace frowned. “Is there a whole lot you can do until those packets arrive at the end of the line?”
“I’m monitoring the process. Making sure the tracing virus is doing its job. Tell her I’ll call her back.”
Mac picked up the phone on Moto’s desk. “He’ll have to call you back.” He listened for a moment, then put the handset on his chest. “She says it’s an emergency.”
Moto hesitated. That phone was a connection to his past and the people he’d left behind, and he wasn’t so keen on accepting it. But what if something was wrong? What if Ben had been hurt or needed a kidney?
That fucker’s not getting one of my kidneys.
His hand reached out for the phone as if in slow motion. What if Ben was dead, the rift between them cementing like some kind of cosmic stone, unable to be rewritten? A twinge of regret pierced his consciousness. “Hello?”
“Zach, I need your help.” Her voice cut a slice down deep into bone. No one had called him by his given name in years, the sound of it like an echo he hadn’t expected. But it was the concern in her voice that alarmed him. “What’s wrong?”
“Ben’s been arrested.”
Moto squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. Anger with his brother and this woman was instantaneous. He shouldn’t have gotten on the phone. “This is why you called?”
“Please. They think he killed a federal agent.”
“Murder?” That got his attention. Ben had always been looking for the easy way out, a shortcut designed to thwart hard work and provide the greatest reward with the least amount of effort, but murder? He squeezed the skin between his eyes. Who knew what time and desperation could do to a man?
“He needs your help,” she pleaded.
She sounded so concerned for her husband. Were the two of them still together after all this time? Had the young girl who’d stolen his heart and then gutted him with her betrayal been living this whole time with his brother, sharing Ben’s bed? The idea hurt like alcohol on a wound, bitterness like a storm over a raging sea. “What he needs is a lawyer. What are you calling me for?”
“He has a lawyer. He was set up, Zach. He’s being framed.”
Moto rolled his eyes. Someone else was always responsible for Ben’s problems, no matter how big or how small. “Of course he is.”
“He is! And he says you’re the only one good enough to help him, that somebody created all this fake evidence on his computer.”
“Look, there’s nothing I can do to help him. If there’s a trail of evidence, it’s probably because he did it.” His eyes went to the computer screen as the machine spit out a string of IP addresses and electronic routing numbers. The packets he’d been tracking had arrived at their final destination. “I have to go.”
“Please, he needs you,” she begged. “It’s all this computer stuff, and his lawyer says they have an open-and-shut case, but it’s all fake evidence. You have to help us.”
Us.
The pronoun scratched at his insides like he’d swallowed a beast. No way would he go back there. No way would he let them in. Ben didn’t need his help. Yes, Moto’s skills were some of the best in the world, but it was highly unlikely such a detailed knowledge of forensic computing was necessary. “Someone else will have to help him. I’m sorry.”
“He needs you. No matter how you feel about me, you have to know how hard it was for him to reach out like this. How can you just leave him in his hour of need?”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
“Damn it, Zach, come home.”
“I am home, Davina.” He hung up the phone, aware of the curious eyes of the other men as he worked. He homed in on the guilty account, printing out a name and account number before locating their tango in the national database of scumbags. His heart was racing, the kidnapper in his sights having nothing to do with the adrenaline overwhelming his system. “John Patrick Kilbourne, age thirty-nine. An Armenian national with a hell of a rap sheet and a very public bone to pick.”
He handed the printouts to Mac.
“Good work. You trace all the money?”
“Every last dime.”
The intercom on the phone buzzed. “Moto, you’ve got a call on line one.”
His head dropped to his chest and he forced himself to breathe. “Take a message.”
“She says it’s an emergency.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled under his