He slowly nodded as if coming to terms with the stakes and the gravity of the situation. “You must have a plan, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. What have you been doing for the past fourteen months? Besides driving me completely insane?”
“You’re the one stalking me, Cole Hartman.” She bit a rope of licorice out of the package, smiling as she chewed it down. “I couldn’t infiltrate the Romanian mafia. I’m not a super-secret spy or government operative or whatever you were. I’m just a girl.”
“With a really great rack.”
She glanced down at her chest, which was exposed in the wide-open gap of her silk robe. She spread the material wider and cocked her head. “Is it great enough to seduce a high-ranking member of the mafia?”
“Not without getting your ass blistered.” His gaze turned to stone, his voice gravelly. “Remember that part about me being jealous and possessive? You don’t want to see what happens if you try to seduce anyone but me.”
She arched a brow. “Moving on. What does the mafia want with that hard drive?”
“Profit. They sat on it, waiting for its worth to reach its highest potential.”
“Which is now. It incriminates the President-elect. So they’ll sell it to the highest bidder?”
“Yes, and the highest bidder would be Vincent Barrington.”
“Yet they haven’t sold it to him.” She rubbed her nape, frustrated. She’d turned this round and round in her head so many times. “Vincent doesn’t even know they have it.”
“Good point.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “So they must intend to use it as blackmail. To control him once he’s in office.”
“They’ll have a huge goddamn bargaining chip if that’s the case. Do you know what the Romanian mafia is known for?”
“ATM-skimmings and cybercrime.”
“Yep.” She gnawed on her candy, her mind spinning. “That brings me to my plan. Do you want to hear it?”
“I’m on pins and needles,” he deadpanned.
“PaulVer.”
“What?”
“PaulVer Rize. You haven’t heard of him?”
“No, should I?”
“I’m disappointed, Cole. He’s only the most notorious hacker in the world. He stole more than 200 million payment card accounts from major retailers in the U.S. He created back doors in several corporate networks and pocketed an estimated 300 million dollars from one company alone.” Her pulse accelerated, and her hands fluttered through the air as she talked. She could feel herself getting excited. “He’s on fire.”
“You want him to hack into the mafia and steal the video file?”
“Yes. They would’ve made copies as a safeguard and stored them on a server somewhere. I just need PaulVer to hack in, snatch the file, and blast it all over the Internet.”
“Wow.” He leaned back and clasped his fingers behind his neck, his expression thoughtful. Then his lips curled into a smile. “That’s fucking brilliant.”
“Thank you.” She released a slow breath. “Only problem is no one knows who he is. PaulVer is his hacker name.”
“I’ll start digging around, see what I can find on him.”
“Already did that. For fourteen months, Mike and I have chased him and his hacker friends all over Europe. You know where he spends his time?”
“In strip clubs.”
“And nightclubs and anywhere there are dancing girls. No one knows what he looks like, and those who do would never say. There are a lot of rumors about him, but the one that is consistent in every club in every city he visits is that he’s drawn to talented female dancers. When he sees one that impresses him, he gives her a painted Easter egg.”
He stared at her, incredulous.
“What?” She widened her eyes. “I’m not making this up.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“I thought so, too. At first. Until I saw one of these Easter eggs with my own eyes. Then I saw more. Mike and I have literally been on an Easter egg hunt for the past year. After bouncing between strip clubs to dance clubs all over Europe, we know which clubs are his favorite and the type of girl he approaches. He targets the most beautiful, most talented dancer in the club, comes up behind her, and slips a painted egg in her hand. By the time she examines the strange object and turns around, he’s gone. No one has ever seen him.”
“Have you ever witnessed it happening?”
“No. I’m always watching for it. But I never spot an occurrence until after a girl makes a fuss over the egg in her hand and waves it around. Of course, these women have no idea the meaning or that it has anything to do with a notorious hacker. It’s not like they’re dancing in these clubs to win a painted egg. They just shrug it off. Most of them just leave the egg on a table.”
“So that’s your plan? Try to catch him handing off an egg and confront him? Then what? Make him an offer to hack the mafia for you?”