Unauthorized

Chapter 2: Business

Weeks ago, Andrés Marin's right-hand woman had brought him a demand. Chi didn't push him often, but when she did, she didn't let up until he saw things her way.

"We need a tech expert, sooner rather than later. A proper hacker. Imogen has hired every bloody mercenary in London except you, along with paying off half the police force. If she's going brawn, we'll have to go brains to stay independent, let alone control the city. We have to play smarter. And now, Andrés."

Andrés had glared bloody murder at her for mentioning his mercenary past but she'd been right; she usually was, especially when she pushed. She was his number two for a reason. He'd ordered a search the next morning, having worked too hard to break away from Imogen Quinn's criminal organization to be pulled back into it through inaction.

Imogen had hit London's underworld hard after being dishonorably discharged from the British Armed Forces. He should know. She'd been his first boss when he arrived in the UK with nothing but a talent for organization and the skills he'd picked up during a stint in the Venezuelan Navy.

When they'd first gotten started, Imogen had been content with driving out rival gangs and buying off the police while pretending her security firm was only consulting for the rich and famous. She'd gone on to flood the streets with a new drug, Bliss, the use of which was swiftly becoming an epidemic.

Nobody had been able to finger her for it, but Andrés had been contacted about a transportation deal recently. He'd followed the chain of connections and knew who was behind the offer. It was Imogen's latest attempt to get under his skin and force him back.

It wasn't her only attempt. Her bribed political clout was blocking him from making the deals he needed to grow his company as she tried to drag him back into organized crime. Five years had passed and she was still enraged by his defection, taking it out on his assets since she didn't dare come after him in person.

Andrés's company, Surefire Industries, officially manufactured industrial electronics - a front for the unofficial business, custom weapons development. His smart weapons were nearly ready to go up for auction; his research and development team had catapulted that side of the business from a small custom shop to one with the potential to break into the big leagues.

Imogen couldn't have known about the weapons but her influence blocked him all the same, preventing him from making the preliminary steps in his new enterprise. She had to be shut down before she consolidated even more power. That meant following Chi's advice and taking Imogen out in a way that wouldn't involve bloodshed on the streets of London.

Finding a hacker good enough to be worth the risk and malleable enough to be managed was slow-going, though. They seemed to be an independent, anarchical group as a general rule and he needed to be assured of complete control. The search became damn near impossible when Andrés added his requirement that the candidate should be motivated by something other than money.

"Keep looking," he ordered his IT director after rejecting the latest batch and returning the tablet full of candidate profiles. "We can't afford to settle on this."

"Look, Marin, if we could -"

"I'm not adjusting the parameters," Andrés said. "This is too important. The wrong person will have access to our most sensitive data and I can't risk them going to the authorities or being bought off by Imogen. So stop. Asking."

Annoyance flared when Tchernov opened his mouth anyway. The man took the hint swimming behind Andrés's gaze and shut it. After a few swift taps on his tablet, he held out the device. "There's one more."

Andrés stared a moment longer, more to wrestle his temper into submission than to cow the IT manager further, then took the tablet.

He grunted in surprise at the profile. The picture at the top showed an attractive young woman, her complexion darker than his own bronzed tone, with dark hair cut in an angled bob, a blue streak in her bangs, and bright brown eyes. She grinned at something out of frame, cheeky and irreverent. A motorcycle helmet was tucked under one arm and a leather satchel hung from the other shoulder. Livia Hayes, 24, employed by the Delphi Commission.