Against All Enemies: An Allison Quinn Thriller by Vannetta Chapman

Author:Vannetta Chapman [Chapman, Vannetta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Donovan’s morning had gone well. According to the Kids, who were monitoring the camera Allison had affixed to the balcony door, Eloise was still in cabin 784, sitting at the table, working on her laptop. They hadn’t been able to isolate and hack into the laptop yet. But they would. The Kids were that good.

Lilith was getting some much-needed sleep.

One of the assistant engineers had replaced Ferguson, who looked dead on his feet.

Donovan opened another window to the electronic infrastructure of the ship and began coding a program that would search for and report back on micro intrusions. Micro intrusions were so small that most programs never recognized them. They lasted approximately one-tenth of a second. Something impossible to conceive in human terms but well known in the cyber world. The cyber world moved fast—much faster than most people realized.

Donovan was deep into that place that only coding could take him, completely focused like a cellist playing Brahms’ Sonata No. 1. His fingers flew over the keys. His mind envisioned the code as he was writing it. His instinct anticipated and solved problems before they presented themselves.

And then Becca Price walked into the room.

“Sorry to bother you, Agent Steele.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. He was nearly there. He needed ten more minutes at the most.

He put the screen into sleep mode and turned to face her. She looked worried. No, more than that. She looked almost frightened.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing. Probably. Or something. I’m just not sure.”

“Show me.”

She led him down the corridor, but didn’t explain why until they were once again seated in her office. Pulling up two different video feeds on her two monitors, she sat back as if waiting for him to say something.

“What am I looking at?”

“Oh. Right.” She closed her hand over the computer mouse and set the first screen to play.

Donovan leaned forward. He recognized the pool deck, the music stage, and beyond that—the viewing area that peered down into the bridge. It was an odd set-up that reminded Donovan of a fish bowl. The bridge was set high on the ship, but the pool deck was even higher. That’s what made it possible to peer down into the bridge. Donovan had checked this out at the beginning of the cruise. He’d been assured that there was no access to the bridge from that deck and that the glass was bulletproof.

As the video moved forward, a passenger wearing only a pair of swim trunks peered into the windows surrounding the bridge, cupping his hands to block any reflection. He turned, spoke to someone, then took something out of his pocket and stuck it on the glass. Next, it looked like he took out. . .

“Is that a box of matches?”

“Looked that way to me too. Hard to be certain since his body blocks most of the view.”

The man approached the window, paused, then stepped back and covered his ears, his body still blocking the view of whatever he had stuck to the window.

Seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

Shaking

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