“I know,” I murmured, slipping past her, effectively ending the conversation.
I walked toward the front door, opened it, and stared at the small man dressed in navy from head to toe. He couldn’t have been more than five foot, but his stern face told me he meant business.
“Mr. Caputo, I presume?” he asked, raising a bushy eyebrow.
“That’s me.” I held my hand out to him and he shook it. “And you’re Mr.…” I trailed off, waiting to make sure this was definitely the guy I’d been waiting for. He’d told me during a secure conversation exactly how our first greeting would go. He said it was a way for people to know that it was him and not someone pretending to be him. By someone, I was presuming he meant law enforcement.
“Blue.” He let go of my hand, tilted his head in a small nod, then continued. “Mr. Blue.”
Now that the confirmation was out of the way, I let him into the mansion, shutting and locking the main door behind us.
Aida was still standing in the hallway, her gaze focused on us, but neither of us said anything. If Lorenzo wanted her to know something, then it would come from him, not me.
I led Mr. Blue into the command center, knowing that we didn’t want to talk business outside of this safe room.
“I’ve analyzed your security,” he started, placing a black leather bag on the table. Lorenzo had taken to having his meetings in here lately, preferring to be able to keep an eye on everything at the same time. I understood his need to know what was happening in every facet.
“And?” I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my stance. Mr. Blue was the best security guy in the country. If you needed something to be locked up tight, then he was your guy. A former CIA analyst who had worked with the FBI and Homeland Security, he was perfect for the job. He saw things that no one even knew were possible.
“It needs upgrading.” He raised a brow. “It took me fifteen minutes to hack into your feed and see what you were all doing.” He pursed his lips and shook his head, his disappointment clear. “Don’t worry though, I got exactly what you need.”
“And what is it that we need?” a new voice asked, and I immediately stood taller. I pushed my shoulders back and glanced to the side as Lorenzo walked into the room. The click of the door closing rang out in the sile
nce.
“You want to know what you need?” Mr. Blue asked, opening up his bag. He wasn’t fazed by Lorenzo, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad thing. People always wanted to impress him with what they could do, which usually meant they made out they could do things that they couldn’t. We didn’t need that right now though. We needed someone to make this place as secure as it possibly can be. “Everything.”
Lorenzo sauntered past me and leaned against the back wall. “That right?” His attention didn’t move off of Mr. Blue for even a second as he analyzed him.
“Yeah.” Mr. Blue placed several items on the table and finally gave Lorenzo his full attention. “Your firewalls are good, but not impenetrable. Your security around your property isn’t as good as it could be.” I winced. The soldiers we had on the mansion were new, they hadn’t been trained yet, but that was in the works too. “And it was too easy to find out where every single one of your stash houses and legal businesses are.” He paused, letting that sink it, but he wasn’t finished yet. “I’m sure you don’t want the public to know it’s you that owns—”
“Enough,” Lorenzo ground out as he pushed up off the wall. I frowned at him, wondering what Mr. Blue was about to say. What did Lorenzo own, and why was it so secret? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I was only a soldier. I knew my place, so I kept my lips glued together.
Mr. Blue blinked several times, his face paling. He may have had lots of experience, but Lorenzo’s reputation superseded that. “I…okay.” He glanced down at the table and picked something up, holding it in the air. “The security around your properties is easily fixed.” He waved at the wall of screens. “This helps with that.” He turned to face me and then Lorenzo. “I can make your firewall impenetrable by the end of the day.” He shook the device he held in the air, and I figured that was one of the tools he would use. “But what will be the biggest problem are the ears listening to everything you do.”
“I check for bugs daily,” I said, stepping forward. “We haven’t found any since our last FBI raid.”
“You think that’s the only way they can listen to you?” Mr. Blue laughed. “We’re not living in the eighties. They can listen to you without having to get inside your properties or cars.” Mr. Blue set his device back on the table, then crossed his arms over his chest. “All they need is to place themselves between you and your nearest cell tower. They intercede your call before it hits the tower, then forward it on. Which means they can hear every conversation you have over the phone.”
Lorenzo’s face turned red, his anger on display for us both to see. Since he’d been taken from Paolo, security was at the forefront of his mind. And this was the first time we’d heard about this. We’d relied on how we’d always done things, but times had changed, and we needed to change with them.
“How do we get around that?” I asked, feeling both frustrated and also out of my depth.
“Satellite phones.” He plucked another device off the table. It was as small as a regular cell phone, but it had several small antennas on the top and only a basic screen. “Only give them to the people who need them. The smaller the circle, the better.”
I stepped forward and took the device off him. It could easily be mistaken for a cell.
“Get me ten,” Lorenzo told him, taking two steps toward the door but not looking away. “I want them by the end of the day.”
“I don’t—”
“I said, end of the day,” Lorenzo gritted out, then yanked open the door and slammed it behind him.
CHAPTER 2
LUNA
It was refreshing being somewhere that no one knew me. When people stared in the hallways, their eyes didn’t narrow on me in judgement. Their lips didn’t whisper to each other followed by laughs at my expense. It was foreign, something that I’d never experienced before. And I liked it. I liked being the girl who was heading to the class instead of the girl whose parents walked around barefoot around the edge of the school as they were coming down from a high.