Free Hard and Fast by Raven Scott Page A

swept down his back every time that damn woman was anywhere near his vicinity. Sure, she was cute, and those golden eyes were captivating, but he usually preferred his women with dispositions more like his own: light-hearted and easygoing. Alexandria Cotts was proving to be as easygoing as a territorial panther.
    The Fortis men worked in silence to set up all the equipment they had brought with them for the assignment, then stacked the empty aluminum boxes along the back wall, out of their way. There were two powerful, dual-core computers connected to an ultra-high-speed router with an untraceable, ricocheting IP address. They also had a storage and backup server stack, configured with a new Fortis security encryption algorithm designed by Lucas. The last couple of boxes had the latest in digital laser technology surveillance equipment, and locked cases with extra handguns and ammunition, just in case.
    “Okay, we’ll work in two teams,” Lucas stated to Lance, Ned, and Michael as he stood in front of a large map of the Magnus building with schematics posted on the wall of the room. “Building security will be in twelve-hour shifts, six to six each day. Lance, you take days; Ned, you take nights with their regular security guard, Oliver.”
    Lance and Ned nodded.
    “You’ll follow the our standard security pattern, so each of you will rotate your surveillance position in thirty minute intervals, altered by seven minutes every four hours, reset on a five-day cycle. We’ll do a full sweep to make sure there are no bugs or listening devices planted. Then we’ll wire up the building with external and internal surveillance cameras, using sensors at night,” Lucas continued, circling the connection points on the building map. “Michael, you’ll be monitoring everyone who comes within a mile of the building, using my facial-mapping search engine. Anyone we can’t identify through social media will be tagged as a potential threat. I will focus on trying to find out who’s funding our friend Pratt, and monitoring the network for any new intrusion attempts. Questions?”
    There was a moment of silence as Lucas looked to confirm that everyone was clear on the instructions, though he knew it would be. It was a pretty basic plan.
    “Hopefully, this will be the easiest assignment we’ve had in a couple of years, and we’re just overdressed for the party,” he finally added.
    “But you don’t think so,” responded Ned. It was a statement, not a question.
    The two men had met during their time in the Financial Crimes division of the United States Secret Service. While Ned was a special agent assigned to investigative work, Lucas worked as a systems security consultant for protection against financial crimes. They had seen enough similar patterns during their careers to know when something noteworthy was in the works.
    “No, I don’t,” Lucas finally confirmed. “Someone wants this Cicada technology, and they are too invested already to just walk away. Now, the only way to get the information they want is right here is this building. I’d rather figure out who it is before they show up at our doorstep to try to take it.”
    Lucas walked over to one of the two computers on the table and pulled up pictures of two men.
    “We have two targets to start our investigation,” he stated, clicking on the image of a tall, slender, ruddy-skinned man wearing a gray cardigan and blue plaid shirt, carrying a messenger bag strapped across his chest. “Adam North, thirty-five-year-old associate professor of physics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He designed the battery for the Cicada engine. Since our visit to Chicago last week, we confirmed he was unaware of Pratt’s hack into his computer. We also know that Pratt pretended to be a student at the university to gain access.
    “What we don’t know is how Pratt and whoever is funding him knew what North was working on for Magnus. He’s married, no children, and lives a