Mia clenched her fists and cursed under her breath. Getting arrested would destroy her credibility, even if Director Blunt was able to broker her release from prison, be it a Danish one or American. No matter the scenario, she sensed imminent danger.
She hustled across the room and took Lord Override by his arms, vigorously shaking him. He glanced at her, his eyes vacant.
“Come on, man,” she said. “This is not the time to short circuit on me. You’ve got to have a way out of here.”
“I do for one, but not for both of us,” he said as the color slowly returned to his face.
“We might be able to make it work. What is it?”
He took a deep breath before answering. “In the event of a raid just like this, I have a key to my neighbor’s flat at the end of the hall. He has a window that opens up along the side of the building. They won’t be looking for me there since there isn’t a street entrance below.”
“You’re just going to jump down?”
“No, I can repel down in my Police Intelligence Service jacket in case I do get noticed. But I’ve only got one.”
“Then let’s go down together. You hold onto me. We’ll make it work.”
“At this point, it can’t hurt to try. I certainly don’t want to leave you stranded here.”
“No one named Lord Override would ever do such a dastardly thing.”
He managed a quick smile. “Follow me.”
Lord Override flipped a switch, which he said would protect his computers from being tampered with, and ushered her down the hall to his friend’s flat. After unlocking the door, they went inside and prepared for their descent.
Mia could hear men shouting down the corridor outside, giving orders. After a few seconds, a loud thud followed by more shouting.
They breached his apartment.
“We’ve gotta move,” he said, returning with a grappling hook attached to one end of a rope. He flung open the window, secured the cable, and prepared to descend.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Mia waited until Lord Override was outside before joining him. The pair rode down together without incident. Once they hit the ground, he released the hook and gathered the cord before stuffing it all in a dumpster in the back alley of the apartment.
However, just as they rounded the corner, three SWAT members barreled toward the hackers. Mia took her cue from Lord Override and stayed cool.
“He may have escaped out of the window,” Lord Override said in Danish.
Mia remained behind him, avoiding eye contact with the agents, who all nodded as they rushed off in the direction Lord Override pointed to. As soon as the pair reached the next intersection, Lord Override darted left with Mia trailing after.
“Impressive,” she whispered.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Lord Override said.
He found a motorcycle parked along the side of the street. After glancing around, he located the wires coming out of the handlebars and started fiddling with them. Seconds later, he pushed the ignition button and the motorcycle engine roared to life.
Mia’s mouth fell agape. “How did you—”
“Stealing motorbikes is how I ended up in youth detention,” he said. “And while I was there, I learned to hack.”
She climbed behind him before they tore off down the street. A half-hour later, they arrived at a small farmhouse outside the city. They both dismounted, and Mia was hastily introduced to the property owner, an elderly gentleman who appeared to be in his seventies. Once they reached a study in the back of the house, Mia let out a low whistle as she scanned all the equipment.
“Who is this guy again?” she asked. “Because there is some serious computing power in this room.”
“Are you familiar with the River City Media hack?”
“The one with well over one billion records stolen?”
Lord Override nodded. “That’s the one. Well, it all happened in this room by that man. I introduced him as Poul Fredericksen. But you might know him as Shadow Lancer.”
“That was Shadow Lancer?” she asked. “You must be joking.”
“Nope. He also ran the youth detention center while I was there. He recruited six of us and called us the Shadow Gang. He is always willing to help out whenever I need it, no questions asked.”
“We need to get back to work,” she said. “I’ve got some data to analyze.”
She plugged in the flash drive to a computer and sat down. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she called up the information and started combing through it. Lord Override joined her, pulling files over to another terminal in the room and scanning them.
“What else exactly are you looking for?” he asked.
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
While Mia was grateful that he’d helped her escape, she’d learned long ago to never fully trust another hacker.
A few minutes passed as she combed through the documents. She hunted for anything that would give her a clue about when the photographs and intel accompanying the file on Tahir Nazari were replaced by those of Omar Ebadi. Eventually, she found what she was looking for.
Would you look at that.
Mia stared at the screen, partially in disbelief, partially in anger. Just three days before the assignment was given over to the Phoenix Foundation to handle, someone had made the change. Then less than an hour after the assassination attempt, the original pictures were restored. Instead of a name associated with the changes, she found a number. But it was a number she could cross-reference. Someone had hacked into the database and made the internal files appear as though they’d never been touched. If it had been done through proper channels, the paper trail would’ve been easy to find and follow. However, someone else had been very careful to cover their tracks.
“Yes,” Mia said, her exuberance muted by her desire to not draw the Shadow Lancer’s attention.
“Did you find something?” Lord Override asked.
She nodded. “But I can hardly believe it. I found the smoking gun, the evidence that’s going to put
