Insider Threat Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  INSIDER THREAT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ENJOYED THE BOOK?

  To Camilla, Liz, Cam, Tiff, Em (Um), Christin, and Micah—for keeping me sane through university and beyond, and being the best friends I could ask for.

  INSIDER THREAT

  Book 4 in The Ungovernable series

  R.M. OLSON

  Copyright (c) 2020

  R.M. Olson

  All rights reserved

  INSIDER THREAT

  A person or group of persons who pose a security risk due to their ability to violate or compromise security policies and procedures

  CHAPTER ONE

  JEZ CROUCHED IN the entrance to the narrow alley. The bare cement of the streets was filthy from years of too many boots and indifferent street cleaners, and the faint scent of garbage wafted from the dark alley behind her, drafted in on the clammy Prasvishoni air.

  She was grinning like an idiot.

  Beside her, Tae was definitely not grinning, and Masha looked positively grim.

  “He’ll be here any minute now,” Masha said, her lips thin. “Are you ready, Jez?”

  “Born ready, you bastard,” she said.

  “You remember the name of the student we baited him with, right?” asked Tae wearily. His wavy hair was falling over his eyes, like usual, and between that and his ragged street-kid clothes, which he’d started wearing again now that they were back in the city, he looked even younger than his twenty years.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I told you, I’m crap at remembering names, OK?”

  “Yula,” Tae said through gritted teeth. “Her name is Yula. I swear I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

  “Well, maybe I wasn’t listening,” she countered.

  “Remind me why we’re letting Jez do this?” grumbled Lev through her earpiece. She grinned and hit her com.

  “Easy, genius. Because this idiot likes women, and I’m basically the hottest person on this crew.” She paused. “No offence, Ysbel. You’re pretty hot too. But not everyone gets off on people threatening to blow them up.”

  “I think you are the only person who gets off on people threatening to blow them up,” grunted Ysbel, from behind her.

  “Also,” said Tanya over the com, “Ysbel happens to be married to me, and I promise you, Jez, I would do a lot worse to you than just blow you up.”

  “OK, changed my mind,” Jez drawled. “Tanya’s also pretty hot.”

  “Piss off, Jez,” said Ysbel in a flat voice. Her heavy outer-rim accent made the words sound like “Pees oaf,” but her tone made the meaning very clear anyways.

  “He’s here,” Tae hissed. “Jez, go.”

  She grinned at him, straightened, and sauntered out of the alley and down the street, then slipped into the side street they’d chosen for a meeting place.

  A tall, thin man who looked to be in his early fifties came around the corner at a brisk pace. He had a sharp, predatory look to his face, and it sharpened further when he saw her.

  “Hey, Professor Gurin,” she drawled. He glanced over at her, looking her up and down.

  “Who are you?” he snapped impatiently.

  “Me? I’m Jez. Friend of Yula. She said she was going to meet you here, discuss grades and whatever.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t feeling too good, so I told her I’d come in her place.”

  The man cocked his head to one side, looking her up and down again in an appraising fashion. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose I could arrange for a substitution. I suppose she, ah, informed you of our arrangement?”

  Jez’s grin widened. “Yep. She told me that you were a dirty plaguer who sold grades for favours. And here’s the thing, I’m really damn good at favours.”

  He was still looking at her, but his eyes had gone cold. “Really. And what kind of favours are you willing to trade?”

  She sauntered over a little closer, letting her eyes drift over him dismissively.

  Not much to look at, if she were being perfectly honest. But then again, corrupt mud-sucking bastards generally weren’t, in her experience.

  “Well,” she whispered, “figure I could get you a couple favours with my boss.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And who’s your boss?”

  She lowered her voice theatrically. “Marina Kaschak.”

  His eyes widened, his expression going suddenly wary. “Marina Kaschak? The mafia avtoritet?”

  “Pretty sure that’s what I said.”

  The man glanced around him nervously. “I—Yula never told me—”

  “Never told you she was friends with someone who was connected to Marina Kaschak?” She tried to look menacing, but hell, it was hard to look menacing when you were trying not to laugh your plaguing head off. “And also that you were threatening to lower her grade until she could pony you up some favours?”

  His face was slightly panic-stricken now, and she felt a warm glow in her chest. This was always her favourite part.

  “Well, you scum-sucker, guess you should have asked,” she said, stepping closer to him.

  “What do you want?” he asked, his voice higher than it had been. She took another step, and he backed away from her.

  “Me?” She was grinning so wide it hardly fit on her face. “Well, mostly I’d just like to do this.” She grabbed him by the front of the suit and slapped her open palm on the back of his neck. The small patch Masha had given her stuck to his bare skin, and there was barely time for the shock to register on his face before his eyes rolled back in his head and his body went limp.

  “Got him,” she said in satisfaction, slapping her com. “Lev, hope this wasn’t anyone you know, because I’ll tell you, I’m going to have a lot less respect for your choice of friends if you say yes.”

  “Jez.” He sounded faintly irritated. “Having taken a class from someone is not necessarily the equivalent of having that person as a friend. For the record, yes, I did know him, and also, I agree with your assessment of his personality.”

  “And?” she prompted, leaning down over the professor’s prone form.

  “And,” he continued, slightly grudgingly, “I may have once messed with his class files such that he ended up teaching an entire classroom full of students an equation that was an easily-broken code for a seditious message that got him called up in front of the university president.”

  “See genius? That’s why I like you.” She rummaged inside the inside of the man’s jacket and carefully extracted a small, wrinkled card. “You just need the card, Masha?”

  “No Jez. As I told you at least half a dozen times in the last fifteen minutes, I also need the chip from his com, and there should be an ID token somewhere on him.” She couldn’t see Masha, but she could picture the ice in her expression. She rolled her eyes.

  “On it, you bastard.” r />
  The com chip was easy. She grabbed the credit chip as well, make it look a little more like a robbery. She went through his coat pockets a couple of times, then his trouser pockets, then patted down the front of his shirt.

  “Masha, you sure—”

  “Jez!” It was Tae, and his voice was strained. “What happened?”

  She frowned. “Nothing. I mean, other than the fact that I just knocked out a professor and am robbing him blind.”

  “Because there are a whole lot of police heading to your coordinates as we speak. You have about thirty-five seconds.”

  She glanced around.

  Damn.

  She patted him down again, rolled his limp body over, and yanked off his jacket.

  “Where the hell would a professor keep his damn ID, Masha?” she growled into the com.

  “Jez! Get out of there!” Tae hissed.

  From around the corner, she could hear the faint hum of skybikes.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  She jerked the professor’s shirt open.

  There, on a thin chain around his neck.

  “Got it!” she whispered, breaking the chain with a quick jerk of her wrist and shoving the ID in her pocket.

  Five police bikes shot around the corner. She straightened, and gave them a grin.

  The officers slid off their bikes, weapons drawn. A black, cylindrical drone hovered over their heads, red light blinking.

  Weapons drone.

  Hell, this job had been pretty boring up to this point anyways.

  “Raise your hands and step away from the body,” called an officer, com amplifying her voice.

  Jez stepped back, slinging the jacket over her shoulder, and tried to put a haughty look on her face.

  “Hey,” she drawled. “Took your time getting here. This plaguer attacked me. I barely managed to fight him off.”

  The police officer frowned at her. “What?” she said, at the same moment Tae hissed into her earpiece, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I said, you dirty plaguers, it took you long enough to get here. This man jumped me, tried to steal my credits.”

  “We got here as soon as we got the emergency alert,” the woman said, straightening slightly.

  “Yeah? Well, last time I trust your damn emergency alerts, then,” said Jez, trying to make her voice as arrogant as possible. “Could have been killed.”

  The woman was still frowning at her. “He jumped you, you say?”

  “Yep. But we’re all good now. You can go. Maybe call a medic for this idiot on your way out.”

  “Because the emergency call came from someone named Stanislav Gurin. A professor at the University of Prasvishoni. Fifty-five years old.”

  Damn.

  She put on her best smile. “Always did look young for my age.”

  The officer straightened and muttered something into her com. Behind Jez, the other officers tensed. The red light on the drone began to flash slowly.

  This was going sideways quickly.

  “Jez—” Tae sounded distinctly worried.

  She dived to one side as a laser-blast from the drone scarred a smoking hole in the concrete where she’d been only a moment before, rolled to her feet, and grabbed the prone form of the professor, hauling him up as a sort of shield.

  “Hands up!” the police officer shouted.

  “In your damn dreams,” Jez shot back. She chucked the professor’s limp form at the officer, and as the woman instinctively stepped back, Jez yanked out her own modded heat gun, pointed it at the drone, and fired.

  There was a crackle of sparks as the drone’s shields overheated in the face of whatever the hell Ysbel had modded Jez’s pistol with, and then it dropped to the ground in a heap of misshapen, melted metal. Jez took advantage of the police officers’ momentary distraction and ran for her life.

  Over her shoulder she caught the mad scramble of officers for skybikes, and then she was around the corner, pounding down the street.

  “They’re calling in reinforcements,” Tae said in a strangled voice. “What were you thinking?”

  She shrugged. “Almost worked.”

  “It did not almost work!”

  The bikes rounded the corner, and she barely dodged a heat blast. She swung around another corner and ducked behind an open door. As a police skybike rounded the corner after her, she lunged forward. The man was riding low, and she managed to grab him around the waist as he shot past, swinging her legs up behind him.

  “What the hell—” he began, half-turning in his seat. She reached around him and jerked up on the handles, and the bike shot towards the sky. She fumbled for the restraint release. He figured out what she was doing a split second later and grabbed her arms, trying to pry her off him. His free hand groped for his gun. She brought up one knee, jamming his hand hard against the frame of the bike. He howled and tried to shake her off. She clung on grimly.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jez?” Lev was speaking through his teeth.

  “Busy now,” she grunted.

  The officer’s fingers were prying her hands loose from his waist, his short fingernails cutting into the meaty part of her palms. She retaliated by smacking her forehead hard into the base of his skull. He grunted, and she blinked back stars.

  Bastard had a hard head.

  They were out of the buildings, and screaming towards the city force-field now. An impact at this speed would turn both of them into an impressive fireworks display.

  The officer seemed to have figured this out as well, and he let go his grip on her hands to yank the handles down. Now they were heading for the buildings, and neither of them were in a position to steer.

  There. Her fumbling fingers found the release, and she hit it. The restraints strapping the officer to the bike flipped back.

  He hit the restraints again, but she was close enough that the thin bands caught both of them, strapping them to the bike and shoving her up against his back.

  Jez grinned. “Just couldn’t get close enough, could you?” She jerked the handles from his nerveless fingers just before they hit the surface of the nearest apartment complex, leaned hard to the right, and skinned the bike along the surface of the roof, the rough prefab blocks almost scraping her boots. Then she dove back between the buildings.

  “What’s happening?” she muttered into the com as she threaded a narrow street, whipped around a corner, and shot down an alley.

  The officer finally seemed to come out of his shock, and he grabbed instinctively at the restraints. She couldn’t see his face, but from the way his hands were shaking, she assumed he liked this just about as much as Lev did. She grinned, flipped the bike upside down, and shot over a crowd of pedestrians, her short hair almost brushing their drab coats and colourful scarves. Someone looked up and swore, and she grinned back cheerily and made a rude gesture.

  The officer had completely given up on knocking her off the bike, and now seemed fully focused on staying on himself.

  “You’ve got about fourteen officers on you now.” Tae’s voice was a sort of resigned horror. “Pull up your com screen, I’ll shoot you the specs. Looks like they’ve shut off the bike’s com.”

  She pulled the bike upright and slapped her com against her knee, and a holoscreen popped up over her wrist.

  Red dots were converging on her from all sides.

  She yanked the handles and leaned hard, and the bike flipped a hairpin turn in an alley almost too narrow to permit it and shot off in the other direction.

  The officer glanced down at the screen hovering over her wrist and seemed to regain some of his equilibrium. He grabbed for the handles, and for a second the bike jerked as they fought for control. She leaned forward, forcing his body down, and the bike picked up speed, almost scraping the dirty walls of the alley. At the last second, she jerked the handles back again, pointing the bike at the sky and missing the dead-end by millimetres. The officer gave a sort of strangled scream and went limp.

  She grinned. “H
ey Lev, this guy actually fainted! Guess I can’t complain about you throwing up anymore.”

  Lev muttered something that sounded like, ‘I don’t blame him.’

  She leaned forward over the officer’s limp body, dropped down until they were skimming along the ground, and hit the restraints. He slumped to one side, and reluctantly she straightened slightly, slowing the bike just a touch as he rolled off.

  “Got him,” she whispered in satisfaction.

  “Yes, well that will be a relief when the rest of the police blow you out of the sky,” said Ysbel dryly.

  “That assumes they can catch me,” said Jez with a grin.

  “Jez.” Masha’s voice was cold, and for just a moment Jez’s muscles tightened instinctively at the tone. “Bring the bike back around, and come by the entrance to the alley. And please be ready to roll off.”

  Jez rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, cap’n.”

  A heat blast seared over her head, and she glanced quickly over her shoulder.

  Drone. Figured. They weren’t going to send an officer in after her between the buildings, considering they’d probably figured out by now that there wasn’t a damn officer on the force who could keep up. She yanked out her heat pistol and cracked off a couple shots over her shoulder.

  The drone exploded.

  The wind through her hair, the tingle in her hands, the air whipping her face, the cursing through her com—you couldn’t get a whole lot better than this, honestly.

  She glanced down at the map on her com.

  Not good.

  Four police bikes surrounded the entrance to the alley she was heading down, and on the other side, four more bikes. Three others hovered over top.

  She straightened abruptly, and the bike jerked and slowed to an idle.

  “Jez.” Tae sounded frantic. “Can you get back here?”

  She took a deep breath, loosened her hands on the handles, and half-closed her eyes. “On it,” she murmured.

  “What are you—”

  She leaned forward, and the bike shot towards the entrance to the street again.