Command Performance

Feeling like a snake even though he’d completed similar missions in the past, he opened her laptop. Then he withdrew his phone and dialed.

“Connor.” His teammate, the computer specialist, answered after the first ring.

“Hey, man, you busy?” Hunter pressed the power button and waited for the computer to come to life.

“Hunter. Good to hear from you. You recovered yet? I haven’t seen you around the base.”

“I’m back, but working on something for the colonel, and I need your skills.” The screen lit up, and as he’d suspected, it asked for a password. “How do I hack into a password-protected computer?”

“Start with guessing.”

Hunter came up blank. Maggie didn’t have a living pet as far as he could tell and he didn’t know enough about her to come up with anything else. He doubted she’d use linguine Alfredo or the color green for her password.

“I’ve got nothing,” he said.

“Okay, your phone has a SIM card in it. You still have that USB drive I gave you on your keychain?”

“Yeah.” He reached for a piece of paper and a pen. Connor walked him through the steps and he wrote everything down.

“Now hang up and download the program I just sent to your SIM, pop it into the USB drive and then plug that into the computer.”

Hunter followed his teammate’s instructions, keeping one ear out for any sounds in the hall. Five minutes later, he was in. He called Connor back. “Got it. Thanks, man. I owe you a beer when I get back.”

“Planning on coming back soon? We’re gonna miss your sorry ass on this week’s training op.”

“I’ll be back this weekend. I need you and some of the other guys to sit down for an interview with a professor who’s writing a book about us.”

“No shit,” Connor said. “She wants to talk to all of us?”

“Yeah. Get different sides of the story.”

“She’s not some journalist trying to make us look like a bunch of fools, is she? Logan would hate to have the whole world know about that little clusterfuck.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hunter said. “I’ve got her under control. You just have to spread the word to keep your mouth shut if she asks about how I got shot.”

“Not a problem. I’ll tell Jed and Mike,” Connor replied. “Shoot me a text or give a shout if you need more help.”

Hunter hung up the phone and focused on the program open in front of him. From the looks of it, Miss Maggie had started work on her blog. The header across the top featured the picture of his team on horseback, their faces mostly covered with handkerchiefs. Below the picture ran the headline: Meet America’s Cowboy Heroes.

He scrolled down. The rest of the page was blank. No entries yet. He minimized the window and scanned her desktop until a document labeled Promotion Deadlines caught his attention. Opening the file, he found a list of dates, including this coming Sunday. It read: Launch blog. Publisher eager to get it up and running.

Hunter closed the computer, careful to shut it down first. Glancing at his watch, he saw the digital numbers change to midnight. It was officially Tuesday. He had five days to convince her to change the title of her blog. He knew the colonel would prefer he shut the entire thing down, but knowing Maggie, she’d dig in her heels. Controlling the content—and the author—was his best option.

10

BUZZ. BUZZ.

What was that noise? Maggie opened her eyes, then quickly closed them to block out the sunlight pouring in through the uncovered windows. She’d been so exhausted last night she’d forgotten to pull the curtains when she’d fallen into bed. Turning away from the light, she opened one eye to look at her alarm clock. Six in the morning.

Buzz. Buzz.

The doorbell. Someone was at her front door. Groggily, she pushed back the covers and stood, sliding her feet into her waiting slippers. Shuffling to the door, she removed her gray robe from the hook and wrapped it around her white tank and gray yoga pants. Her hair was probably sticking out in a million directions, but right now she didn’t care. She wanted to figure out who was at her door and get a cup of coffee, not necessarily in that order. She stumbled out of her room and made her way down the front stairs.

Maggie froze on the bottom step. Hunter, her self-invited houseguest, was already at the door, fully dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt as if he’d been up for hours. For all she knew about his morning habits, maybe he woke with the sun. She watched him peer through the peephole.

“Are you expecting a delivery?” he asked.

“UPS is here?” Her brow furrowed. Why would the UPS man be on her doorstep now? She needed coffee. She’d never been able to think straight first thing in the morning without caffeine.