Extreme Measures (A Brady Hawk Novel Book 20)

slapped a one hundred dollar bill on the table. “Start talking.”
“I don’t exactly know his name, but I’ll write down his number for you.”
Alex dug into her purse and eased a small pad and pen across the table to Matthias. He scribbled down a few notes and then pushed them back to Alex.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll see what we can do with this. But thank you so much for having the courage to come forward and share that with us.”
Matthias stood.
“You don’t have to leave so soon,” Alex said. “We haven’t even bought you a drink yet.”
“I don’t want to stay long in case they’re watching,” he said.
“In case who’s watching?” Hawk asked.
“Never mind,” Matthias said, leaning over the table and talking in a whisper. “Just check out that number, and do your best to uncover what’s going on because there’s something not right and it needs to stop.”
“We will,” Hawk said.
Matthias spun around and strode toward the exit. When he left, a bell clanked against the glass door.
“That was interesting,” Alex said.
“Think we can get anything out of that number?” Hawk asked.
Before Alex responded, Hawk heard two gunshots outside. Instinctively, he grabbed Alex’s arm and jumped to his feet.
“We need to move now,” he said.
Hawk led them through the kitchen, earning a few dirty looks from the cooks in the back. But the two agents didn’t stop, stealing into the back alley and in the opposite direction of the storefront. They raced to the parking garage a half a block away before finally reaching their vehicle.
Hawk fumbled for his keys before unlocking the door. He wasted no time in pressing the ignition button, and the car roared to life. As they drove toward street level, Hawk donned a hat and peeled off his mustache, while Alex removed her wig and let down her hair. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Hawk drove past the front of Apollo’s Tavern and glanced at the small crowd gathered near a man lying motionless in the street.
“Damn,” Hawk said. “I was hoping my premonition was wrong.”
Alex shook her head. “What have we just waded into?”
Hawk sighed. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s big.”

CHAPTER 6
New York City
BLUNT PULLED HIS baseball cap low and kept his head down as he entered the basement of the former textile plant. He needed to do everything he could to protect his gray hair from betraying his age amidst the young partygoers. Pulsating rhythms vibrated off the walls, a hypnotic beat Blunt could feel in his chest.
“All right, old man,” one young guy said as he danced near Blunt. “Grandpa’s come out to play.”
Blunt forced a smile before picking his way through the sea of revelers. When he reached the back wall, he found a man stationed outside a door.
“I’m looking for Helenos-9,” Blunt shouted in an attempt to be heard over the music.
The man leaned in to listen before nodding knowingly. "Passphrase?"
“I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road,” Blunt said, resisting the urge to add an eye roll.
The guard remained stoic. “You could at least try to sing it.”
“You don’t want to hear me sing. It’s a crime against humanity.”
With a faint smile, the man frisked Blunt before opening the door. “I love my job.”
Blunt entered the room, which was lit with black lights. His t-shirt glowed as did the ponytail holder in Helenos-9's hair.
“Quite the set up you have here,” Blunt said as he sat down at a small table across from Mia.
The dark web hacker sat with her feet propped up on a chair just to the side. She worked a quarter back and forth through her fingers with one hand while fiddling with an empty glass in the other.
“I thought you’d never call,” Mia said.
“I would’ve called sooner, but I didn’t really have a reason to take my horse to the old town road.”
Mia huffed a laugh through her nose as she shook her head. "We're still using that passphrase out there?"
Blunt nodded. “When I received the instructions from your assistant about how to gain access, I wrote it down and then entered it into Google. I hit play on a video, and I don’t know what I watched. It was—”
“Mystifying?” Mia asked.
“That’s one way to phrase it. But, look, I didn’t come here to discuss the merits of the strangest country rap song I’ve ever heard.”
“Then let’s get down to business,” she said, taking her feet off the chair and sitting upright. “What do you need?”
“I got a visit from a high-ranking official at the Pentagon who asked me to look into a strange phenomenon,” he said, handing her a folder. “Several high-level underworld hackers have vanished without a trace.”
“And this is troubling to you because . . .”
“I’ve been around a long time,” Blunt said, “and let me tell you that bad guys don’t just suddenly retire overnight. There’s always something behind their actions, one way or another.”
“That’s not entirely unusual,” Mia said. “I’ve been known to disappear off the internet for months at a time.”
“Perhaps, but you’re not one of those people who crave validation within the hacker community and must claim credit for every scalp you take. These people are.”
Mia flipped open the folder and read a few of the names aloud. “VooDoo? Chimera? AtomBomb? They’ve all gone missing?”
Blunt nodded. “The fact that you don’t know this proves my point that you aren’t just dying to get recognition from your peers.”
“Yeah, but these hackers are all leaders within the online community.”
“And they haven’t logged in under their usernames in months. Now, either they are colluding together on a project or someone is eliminating them one by one. And my money’s on the former.”
“You really think they’d all band together? Hackers aren’t exactly team players by nature.”
Blunt shrugged. “You know how hard it is to find these people. Do you actually think an assassin could’ve started picking them off one by one? That seems more far-fetched.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. “Nobody even knew