With a Pull of a Trigger

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Wearing simple dark jeans and a white shirt with black trims, Reini walked to one of the desks, her black Converse shoes silent on the tiled floor.

“Good morning ma’am, how may I help you?”

Reini looked at the woman in uniform and smiled. “Are there any flights to Paris?”

The woman smiled and held up one finger. “Just one moment, please.”

Reini nodded as the woman typed on her keyboard. The woman looked up. “We have one in three hours, ma’am. Would you like to purchase a ticket?”

Reini smiled, opening her black and blue backpack. “I will.”

“Cash or credit?” asked the woman.

Reini reached into her bag, opening her white wallet. “Cash.”

“Any news?”

Charles looked up, nodding as he saw Greg. “There is. Here’s your laptop,” said Charles, handing the sleek laptop to Greg. “We’re done with it, scanned it and re-scanned it. We tapped into your network history, and I never knew you’re quite the stalker, agent Van Kamp.”

Greg felt his cheeks redden and glared half-heartedly at Charles, thinking about all those times when he Facebook-stalked Joshua, back when they weren’t together yet. “Shut up, Charles.”

Charles shook his head, grinning. “You do know you could ask me to do the dirty work for you, right?”

Greg rolled his eyes.

Charles pointed to his laptop. “Your network history showed the IP address of the laptop that hacked into your network, but when we managed to hack into it, everything was encrypted using custom made software. The technicians are still going over everything as we speak. As for your printer, we’ve found nothing on it, no tracker or equipment that would have allowed a third party into your network.”

Greg nodded, taking his laptop. “All right. Inform me when you’ve decoded the encryption.”

Greg and Charles started as loud footsteps made their way into Charles’ office. A tall, lanky man who Charles vaguely knew as Jim put his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

Charles raised an eyebrow, and Jim stood up, his breaths coming in pants and gasps. “The encryption key has been decoded, sir.”

Charles looked at Greg. “Well. It looks like you’re informed.”

Greg looked at Charles and shook his head. “Wise-ass.”

Charles exited his office in strides, Greg right beside him. Jim was still panting in the doorway of Charles’ office. Agents of all Cells hurried away from Charles’ and Greg’s way, somehow understanding that disrupting them would mean trouble. Across the granite floor, Charles and Greg walked, until they reached the small set of cubicles meant for Cell Four agents. Charles and Greg walked until the reached the end of the cubicles and turned right, down a hallway Greg wasn’t sure he knew about until then.

Charles opened the nondescript door and Greg looked inside in wonder.

It was a large rectangular room with steel vents in the ceiling and one long steel table that took up the entire length of the far wall, eleven sets of keyboards and mouses on it. The left side of the room had one steel rectangular table that also took up the nearly the entire length of the wall, although unlike the other table, every half-meter or so were three drawers attached to the bottom of the table, and the table had electrical sockets every meter or so. It wasn’t directly pushed to the wall like the other table. Instead, it had fairly large space between the wall and itself, with slightly comfortable steel chairs meant for desk agents in the space between.