“There has to be something,” she insisted.
He glanced up from the laptop. “The only tickets available would mean flying from Kansas City to Detroit to Atlanta to Baltimore. Over ten hours with layovers. That’s always assuming there’s no delays, which would be a miracle.” He glanced toward the window where the snow was beginning to flutter from the gray sky. Big, puffy flakes that looked pretty until they were coating the runway. “It will be faster to drive.”
“You’re kidding?”
He shrugged. “It’s the holiday season.”
She couldn’t argue. Finding plane tickets this close to Christmas was like mining for gold.
She blew out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. I’ll drive.”
His eyes narrowed. “We’ll drive.”
“Griff.” Her protest was cut short by a sharp ding, ding, ding. She blinked, her gaze lowering to the computer he had perched on his knees. “What was that?”
His slender fingers were already flying over the keyboard. Like a piano virtuoso. If it was her, she’d already have busted the keys. She tended to treat a computer like it was an old-fashioned typewriter, smashing her fingers against the letters as if she could somehow transfer her emotions to the words on the screen.
Maybe it had something to do with being a journalist.
“Someone just tried to hack into one of your accounts,” he said.
She felt a stab of surprise. “How do you know?”
“I’m using one of the programs I designed to alert us if anyone attempts to trace you in cyberspace,” he said. “I filtered out the random searches. You’re a celebrity, so your name gets a lot of traffic.”
She ignored his reference to being a celebrity, moving to settle on the bed next to him.
“So what triggered the alarm?”
“It looks like a search on your credit card,” he said, his gaze on the computer screen as files flashed by at a speed that made her dizzy.
“Identity theft?” she demanded, already searching her mind for what she had to do to cancel her card.
What a pain.
“No.” He lifted his head, his expression tense. “I think the stalker is using your credit card to follow your movements.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. She’d used her card to buy her plane tickets. And then again to rent the car that brought her to this hotel.
“That’s how he knew I was coming to Kansas City?”
Griff nodded. “It’s the easiest explanation.”
She grunted at his offhand words. Hacking into someone’s credit card account was easy? Clearly, he didn’t understand the real world. Most people could barely get online to check their own account, let alone break into someone else’s.
“Which means he has to have some expertise with computers,” she pointed out.
“Or hired someone who does,” he said, returning his attention to the computer. “Damn,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Whoever did it managed to block me from tracing them.”
A nasty fear battled with the doughnuts and coffee in the pit of her stomach.
“So we can’t figure out who tried to hack my account?”
“Not without some effort. And time we don’t have.” She could feel him stiffen, his breath hissing loudly through his clenched teeth, as if he’d been struck by a sudden thought. “Wait.”
She studied his grim profile. “Griff ?”
He scowled at the screen. “When the flowers were sent to you, the order should have alerted me.”
She leaned closer, pressed against his shoulder as he closed out the open files and started a fresh search for new ones.
“That’s quite a program,” she said, not entirely comfortable with the knowledge he could keep track of her with the press of a button.
“Creating software to siphon intel from cyberspace is like creating a net to catch a specific fish,” he said, his tone distracted. “Too tightly meshed and it scoops up everything, including the trash, and buries anything of interest. Too loose and the intel slips away.”
Her discomfort spread from a personal level to a more universal unease.
She wasn’t a crazy conspiracy theorist, but she wasn’t na?ve. She knew that the technology Griff created could be abused by people with too much authority and not enough integrity to accept a personal right to privacy.
“How big can you make the net?”
“As big as it needs to be.”
“That’s a lot of intel.”
As if hearing the edge in her voice, Griff turned his head to send her a faint smile.
“Yes. Which is why the program that I lease to law enforcement has a few tweaks.”
She studied him with a lift of her brows. “What sort of tweaks?”
“If you want to cast a large net, then it only works for a limited amount of time before the information is automatically dumped,” he explained. “Or you can do a targeted search for a lengthier amount of time.”
She gave a small nod. “Absolute power.”
“Corrupts absolutely,” he finished.
They shared a long glance, and Carmen felt that odd tug of fascination toward her companion. Not the awareness of a woman for a handsome, successful man. That was easy to explain. This was a sensation of catching a peep of that brilliant mind of his and wanting to climb into his lap and just talk for hours. Days. Years.
That was . . . weird.
And more than a little unnerving.
“So why didn’t your program get triggered?” she forced herself to ask.
He leaned toward the computer screen, his brow furrowed.
“I’m going to find out.” His fingers again flew over the keys and suddenly the image of an invoice from the flower shop filled the screen. “Here it is,” he murmured, quickly scanning the order. He grunted as he pointed toward the top of the invoice. “That’s the reason.”
From Carmen’s angle, it was impossible to read the tiny print.
“What happened?”
“They put your name in wrong,” he said. “It’s listed as Carrie Jacobs, not Carmen.”
Carrie?
Carmen surged off the bed, goose bumps spreading over her skin like frost across a window.
“What did you say?”
He lifted his head, his body going still as he caught sight of her expression.
“It was typed in as Carrie.” He set aside the laptop and rose to his feet. “What is it?”
Someone walking across her grave.
She shook her head, desperately trying to dislodge the thought.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice an octave too high. “I’m sure it was just a mistake.”
“You don’t look like you’ve seen a ghost just because of a mistake,” he said.
She sucked in a deep breath before slowly releasing it.
It didn’t help. Her stomach remained tied in a painful knot and her mouth dry.
“When I was young, I was called Carrie,” she admitted.
Griff stepped toward her, his tension filling the air with a tangible sizzle.
“By who?”
She shrugged. “Everyone. It wasn’t until I went to live with my grandparents that they insisted I go by Carmen.”
Chapter Nine
December 23, Baltimore, MD
Joy sensed she was being watched.
It’d started two days ago. She’d taken on extra hours at the small community college where she worked as a janitor. During the Christmas break there was always a frenzy of activity to polish floors, paint walls, and tidy up the campus before the students returned. It wasn’t a dream job, but it paid the rent on her cramped trailer, and more importantly, it gave her a steep discount on the night classes she was taking.
She wasn’t going to be a janitor forever.
Nope. She intended to be a medical lab technician.
Her future was upwardly mobile and far away from the sort of crappy life her mother was trapped in.
Which was what made the sensation that there was some pervert out there keeping tabs on her all the more annoying. She didn’t have the time or interest to deal with the creep.