The Cardinal Bird - Book 1: Reverse Harem Series (The Cardinal Series) Read online

  I fell over the passenger seat, landing awkwardly somewhere in the middle. Jace gripped and righted me, pushing me towards the back of the van. I looked around as I caught my breath. It was the tech van. Computers and screens were lit up all over like an office building. CJ was going crazy, jumping between different screens and typing on his keyboard.

  I could hear metal pinging off the sides of the van, but nothing was making it through.

  "Are we safe in here?" I panted.

  "Bulletproof walls," CJ said.

  Bulletproof vans? That they rented? Who were these people?

  Jace got back into the driver's seat. "I'll cover," he said rolling down the window a little bit.

  CJ spoke up, speaking rapidly as he typed away. "You get ready to drive. Karl's on his way."

  Jace started shooting up, seemingly randomly and without really aiming. Was he just trying to force the last sniper to take cover? Would he accidentally shoot someone that lived in that grey-blue building?

  I turned my head and could see that Aleks had gotten in and was aiming out the passenger window. I thought that I would still hear a constant barrage of shots being fired, but I guessed that was probably unrealistic. They had to have gone through a significant amount of ammunition already. Jace had changed his clip twice, and he’d only been shooting for a minute.

  What if they ran out of ammo, and Karl was stuck out there?

  I got to my feet, wanting to do something. Needing to do something.

  I looked at the computers.

  I could do computers.

  CJ was busy watching what looked like six different camera angles, talking with the guys in both vans while simultaneously trying to type some long code. I focused on that screen.

  "Is that the traffic grid?" I asked, stepping right up to it and leaning over his shoulder. Numbers flew across the screen as he typed, but he kept having to stop to look over at the surveillance screen. The traffic screen would time him off and kick him out of the command program.

  I watched him re-open it and start typing something. I studied the code, inherently knowing the number-patterns behind them.

  It was elementary, really. I hadn't hacked into a traffic grid before, but I highly doubted they were all as easy as this one appeared to be. The coding seemed simple and the security minimal.

  "Yes," CJ said shortly as the program timed him out again. There was another keyboard pushed up against the back wall. I pulled it out and plugged it into the computer with the traffic grid.

  CJ needed to focus on his security cameras since Karl was still out in the line of fire. I could help with that. I pushed up beside him. "You keep talking with them."

  I used hotkeys to make the computer communicate with my keyboard instead of CJ's, and then pulled up the program. My fingers flew. I could sense CJ watching what I was doing before he went back to his screens.

  "Okay," he said, "The people at the window are breaking off to head down and outside. This will be your best chance to run for it, Karl."

  I could hear Karl's response from some speaker mounted inside the van. "Piece of cake then, get ready to cover me."

  There were various affirmatives in response, one also filtering through the speaker.

  I couldn't do anything to help Karl, so my main focus was on the screen in front of me. The numbers and words flashed by as I typed them in. My vision blurred for a second, and I shook my head to clear it. The green font reflected off my eyes, making them glow.

  I was typing faster than I had ever typed before. It was exhilarating. Numbers made sense. They made a lot more sense than all of the chaos going on right on the other side of the metal walls.

  But...numbers? Codes? You typed, they listened. You commanded, they obeyed. You set the rules, they followed them. They were so much easier and logical than all of the death and destruction. You just had to know the key.

  I was so close to gaining access. A smile tilted my lips up just at the corners--but it disappeared in a flash.

  The program timed me out, logging out of the coding box on its own.

  I was left, blinking dazedly at the bright blue screen. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I had been so close. I'd typed faster than I'd ever typed before.

  Gunshots sounded up again from almost all directions. It was a deafening soundtrack, a testament to how lethally dangerous our world was right now. I gritted my teeth. I'd just have to be even faster.

  I tried again.

  I pulled up the black screen and started typing. I was in the zone. My fingers flew, pushing themselves to their limit, crescendoing along with the increased sound of rapid gunfire from outside. It was building up to some great finale, but the ending was uncertain.

  The van rocked back and forth on its axis, breaking my concentration just for a second, and the program kicked me out. A second later, the passenger door was slamming, and I nearly went flying as the van took off. If CJ hadn't braced me, I would've toppled over.

  "Are you good?" he asked. He had his legs spread in a wide stance, his knees braced on the table in front of us.

  "Yes." I looked up front. Karl had made it safely and was sprawled face down in between the two front seats, much like I had been earlier. Aleks was at the passenger seat with his forearm braced against the ceiling, leaning down to look out the window, and standing hunched over so as to not crush Karl's legs. Jace was driving for all he was worth, calm and precise as he moved us down the streets.

  Karl gave a slight groan and a cough. He worked on straightening himself out and taking his legs off of the passenger seat so that Aleks could sit down.

  "Brock, are you following?" CJ asked.

  "On your six," Brock replied, his deep voice coming in over the van's sound system.

  My eyes flew back to the screen. If everyone was good, they would be needing access to the traffic system for whatever it was that CJ had been hacking it for.

  I thought for a moment wondering what I would do if I had access to a traffic grid. Maybe use it for the traffic cams to keep a step ahead of the followers?

  "How much time do we have before we lose our slot for takeoff?" Aleks asked, slipping his gun away and leaning against the back of Jace's seat.

  Karl checked his watch. "About 20 minutes. I'll call ahead and let the Henleys know we're coming in hot."

  That gave me pause.

  Waking up, the shootout, running...all of...that had only taken ten minutes?

  My vision blurred once more, worrying me, but I just focused on the screen even more intently.

  There had to be something wrong. There was no way the program should be able to detect the hack so quickly. Apparently, the "elementary" security wasn't so elementary after all.

  I opened up the screen again to hack into the system, trying to figure out how it was recognizing us so quickly as malicious code.

  I studied it a bit more closely. Nothing popped out at me as abnormal, so the computer itself had to be giving us away somehow. It was booting me from the program entirely too fast. I came up empty for ideas though.

  I tapped my fingers for a second, glancing over to see what CJ was doing. He was pulling up the satellite of the area, probably checking if we were on a smart route to the airport.

  There was something odd about the images though.

  I leaned a little closer and studied his screen. That wasn't just any regular satellite imaging. The detail and clarity...not to mention the accuracy of it. That wasn't just Google Maps. It almost looked like...like NASA.

  I sat back in my seat in awe. There was no way. There was no way!

  Talent aside, it took time to hack that. He had pulled it up in a matter of toggling between screens.

  I looked back at the monitor in front of me, frowning.

  "How's the traffic grid coming?" CJ asked.

  I got an idea.

  I pulled up the ether name for CJ's computer. I had mine memorized since I used it so much, but each computer had its own unique code. I realized the problem as soon as the IP showed. The coding was weird, unlike any other ether name I had ever seen before. There was no way that it was from the manufacturers. Also, there was no way that it was legal.

  The NASA satellite hack seemed a lot less far-fetched now. CJ had probably rigged this super brain up before they left the states, ready to access the things that they might need with a simple command.

  Maybe the unusual ether was tipping off the traffic system as malicious from the bat.

  I pulled up another program, looking for Wi-Fi. There was a Starbucks, oddly enough, that popped up among others. I typed in a command, testing to see if I would be able to change or mask the ID of the system to something legal long enough to gain access. I was about to do so when I paused.

  "CJ."

  "Yep," he asked, giving directions to the airport directly after.

  "I think that your system's signature is tipping the grid off too fast to gain access. Would it mess up...whatever you're doing if I try masking it with another code?"

  Karl crouched on the other side of me, propped against the back of Aleks's seat and my own. "Oh, good," he said cheerily, "You speak geek too."

  "Hold on!" Jace said. I looked up through the front windshield.

  The light was red, but he was only speeding up.

  CJ braced again as if he did this kind of thing on a regular basis. I tried to mimic his stance, but my legs were too short to support me well, too short by far.

  Instead, I grasped for the table in front of me, and Karl held my seat in place.

  It was very disconcerting not having any windows on the back. The only things to let us know we were in danger were the blaring horns and screeching tires that sounded entirely too close for comfort. I was glad it was still fairly early out. I doubted that move would've been possible later in the day.

  "Brock," Karl asked, "You make it through?"

  "I’m good."

  "Okay, Callie," CJ said. I don't think he had even stopped as we raced through the intersection. "I went ahead and checked the route to the airport and noted any construction that might not be updated on Google. I'll log out of this, and you should be good to mask or piggyback or whatever it is you're planning."

  I waited on the nod from him before I found another Wi-Fi hotspot. We were way out of range for the Starbucks we had passed blocks ago. I found one for a small cafe in the city. The name was foreign, but I recognized the city, Tallinn, in the title. A simple command prompt pulled up a list of the current users logged in to the Wi-Fi. It was a short list for this early in the morning, so I just picked the first one I saw.

  I typed in the code to allow me to go incognito under that signature. A quick check showed the new, legal ether name. The hack had taken to the system. I pulled the box up once more and started typing in the codes to access the grid.

  The screens changed, showing a blue-tinted map of the city with blinking icons of reds, yellows, and greens, lit up like a Christmas tree on a winter's night.

  "Whoa." Karl let out a low whistle.

  I didn't startle at his proximity over my shoulders. I was too focused. "I'm in. Tell me what to do."

  Chapter 14

  "She's in," Karl said, excitement suffusing his voice.

  The traffic grid had a lot of different parts to it, but the street names were hard to access and even read. I had to zoom in really far to make the text legible. The interface was slow and choppy. It didn't seem very practical. There wasn't any sort of analog or search function to be able to pinpoint a specific location either. Though, if I thought about it, the antiquated features went along with the outdated security features that had originally made me think it was easy to break into the system...and it was pretty easy, once we hid the garishly obvious Superman suit the powerhouse computer was wearing.

  Karl was still leaning close just to the side of me and helping to keep my chair braced.

  "What? How?" CJ asked, then spoke to his twin. "Turn left ahead."

  "Masked our ether code," I said.

  I tried to find where we were from glancing at the GPS between CJ's screen and comparing it to the traffic grid in front of me. It was archaic and not very effective. If I had more time, I could create a code to superimpose our location on top of the grid, but I didn't have that.

  CJ turned to me. "Did you use the TOR net to bounce the signal and mask our host's computer? I would hate for the person to be targeted because they were unlucky enough for us to use their code."

  "Of course," I said, struggling to find our location on the map in front of me. We were moving too fast for me to get a good read by glancing between the two maps. Google Maps was my best friend, and reading maps was so not my forte. "Force of habit. It's routine and just common courtesy."

  CJ gave me a look that was hard to decipher--maybe impressed? Proud? "Not as common as you'd think."

  Karl leaned in close, stretching an arm over my shoulder to point out a spot on the grid. "We're here," he said, his eyes going back and forth between CJ's and my screens once more before giving a confident nod. He put his finger on one of the intersections slightly ahead of where he pointed out our location. "Does that show the traffic lights?"

  I looked at it. It was the intersection we were about to turn through. There was a couple of different icons listed. "Only one way to find out."

  Clicking on one of the icons pulled up more of the metadata to give me a detailed list of information. I went down to the section for the traffic light. At a quick glance, it had files of service and maintenance work listed along with dates, times, and employee numbers of the people that last worked on the light. I quickly scrolled past that along with the information about the manufacturer.

  Nothing.

  I backed out of that and tried a different icon. It pulled up something that was much more useful to us. It looked like what was the real-time status of the traffic lights for the intersection along with timers that were counting down seconds.

  "That's what we need, Callie. Keep that open and watch it." Karl turned upfront. "Jace, Aleks. Let us know what the light is when we go through."

  "No problem," Aleks said as he leaned forward.

  "Hey, guys?" Brock’s voice filtered through the van's speakers, startling me. "We've got company. Two black SUVs, coming in hot. I’m trying to lose them, but they're persistent. That and traffic's starting to pick up. We must be coming close to morning rush hour here."

  "Just make sure to keep them behind you for now if you can," Karl said. "We're working on something that might help."

  "Brace yourselves," Jace said, right before the world tilted.

  I kept my eyes on the screen in front of me, not even bothering to brace because Karl had already reached out a hand to help keep me in place. In theory, the light we were turning through was green and would remain that way for another seven seconds. The crossway traffic lights were red right now with green right-turn arrows.

  "Light is green," Aleks said from up front as we were still turning.

  "Are there green arrows on the lights we just turned through?"

  "Yes."

  I jumped into action now that we had our bearings. I opened up a command box and started trying to decipher how the programming worked. If I figured that out, I should, theoretically, be able to control when the lights changed. "CJ, let me know when we need to turn. I'm going to try to hack into the programming to see if I can find any holes."