Murder Has a Price: A Jason Hunter Thriller (The Jason Hunter Series) by Natasha Orme

Author:Natasha Orme [Orme, Natasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 38

The Gunman

Somewhere in London

Tuesday 12 th October

The room was dark. The gunman lay on a sofa on one side of the room, his arms behind his head, eyes closed. He’d been dozing on and off for the last couple of hours whilst he waited. The room was warm, almost too warm, and he was starting to feel uncomfortable in his t-shirt. He frowned, and then opened his eyes, looking up at the blank ceiling above him.

“Have you got anything yet?” He pulled himself into a sitting position and looked across the room at the figure hunched in front of a bank of computer screens.

Three screens sat on the desk, gently curving around the figure in the middle, while another dozen screens were mounted on the wall above. Some showed live CCTV, one was what looked to be a military-based computer game paused mid campaign, and a few more showed black screens covered in programming code.

“The de-crypter will take a few more minutes.”

The gunman got to his feet, stretched and approached the desk. His large frame leaned over the figure to peer at the computer screen.

“Do you mind?” she snapped.

“Sorry.” He held up his hands in a placating gesture and gave the hacker a little more space.

She was the third hacker he’d given the memory stick to in the last week. The previous two had tried to break through the layers of protection but had simply ended up getting locked out.

Sh4rkByt3, as she was known online, had come highly recommended but she wasn’t cheap, and he was loath to part with so much cash up front. But he needed to know what was on that damn memory stick. If Gromov had been desperate enough to hire him, it was obviously valuable. And if two hackers had failed already, someone had gone to extreme lengths to keep this shit secure.

“Here we go, let’s see if it’s managed to get through the last of the defences.”

She dragged something over onto the screen to her right and he watched the loading bar as it slowly, painfully, extracted whatever information was being so well protected. He watched the percentage number tick upwards. It reached 60%. Then 70%. The seconds crawled past. Then it hit 80%.

“Come on,” he muttered under his breath.

The girl next to him, who couldn’t be any older than 16, drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited, her head propped on the fist of her other hand.

“How long does this usually take?” he asked, gesturing to the screen.

She shrugged. “Depends.”

He rolled his eyes. Helpful.

They both watched the screen, waiting. 95%. He leaned closer. This was it. He was about to find out what all the rich boys were fighting over. He was about to be in possession of something that would make him a lot of money. He was confident he could sell whatever it was to the highest bidder. Maybe it would be enough to retire on. Buy a nice place somewhere in the Caribbean and finally give up being a gun for hire.

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