No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) Read online

  No One Lives Twice

  By Julie Moffett

  I’m Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I’ve never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella.

  Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared. So, I’ve enlisted the help of the Zimmerman twins—the reclusive architects of America’s most sensitive electronic networks—to help me navigate a bewildering maze of leads to find her.

  Along the way, my path collides with a sexy government agent and a rich, handsome lawyer, both of whom seem to have the hots for me. Hacking, espionage, sexy spy-men—it’s a geek girl’s dream come true. If it weren’t for those gun-toting thugs…

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing this Carina Press title. Now that we’ve moved past launch month, introduced you to some of the variety of genres we’ll be offering and showcased the talent of the authors we’re acquiring, we’re working to fulfill the mission “Where no great story goes untold” even further.

  Every day brings new deadlines and new challenges for us, but it also brings us the excitement of acquiring amazing author talent and manuscripts we can’t wait to share with you. Each month we’ll be looking to further expand our catalog and the genres we offer, in our journey to become your destination for ebooks.

  We’ll continue our commitment to bringing you great voices and great stories, and we hope you’ll continue to find stories you can love and authors you can support.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

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  Dedication

  To my dad, William F. Moffett, Lexi’s number one fan!

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Dr. S. Rosenberg for taking the time out of a very busy practice to answer my questions on in vitro fertilization and related medical questions. Thanks also to my sister, Sandy Moffett Parks, for her help with various math equations and lots of editing; my mom, Donna Moffett, for proofreading and story suggestions; my terrific Carina editor, Alissa Davis, for tightening up the book and keeping it consistent; and my husband, Robert, for assistance on all computer-related questions and brainstorming the plot with me from the beginning. You guys are incredible! However, any mistakes (technical, medical, scientific or otherwise) are mine alone.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  When I was little, everyone who knew me thought I was odd. I never wanted to play with dolls and I didn’t enroll in ballet or gymnastics. Instead my paramount interest was numbers. For years I carried around math flashcards and liked to entertain my parents’ friends by adding, subtracting and multiplying in my head. As I grew older, I quickly moved on to more mature themes, devouring linear algebra, differential equations, quadratic reciprocity and stochastic processes. Computers were my only friends and the internet, my playground.

  Today, some twenty years later, I’m still fascinated with numbers, computers and code. But this time around, I’m getting paid for it as an information security technologist with the U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA for short. Most of us call it the “No Such Agency” because we are so secret. I heard somewhere that less than five percent of Americans even know we exist.

  Basically, I do a lot of web surfing and looking for bad guys. Using methodical, mathematical and logical techniques—and when that fails, sheer imagination—I’m supposed to stop hackers from compromising America’s national security.

  Although I work for a top-secret agency, I’ve unfortunately never participated in even one exciting car chase, had a sip from a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. That kind of action belongs to the spooks at the CIA. Some of us at the NSA joke that we are the brains of the nation, while the CIA is the brawn. I don’t imagine CIA employees would be amused to hear that.

  In fact, at this very minute, I was sitting in my cramped, government-issued cubicle checking out a popular chat room. My boss, Jonathan Littleton, hovered behind me, doing what we computer types call shoulder surfing. Jonathan had joined the NSA in the seventies—before computers were commonplace. Although he now officially headed the Information Security Department, better known as InfoSec, he was more a manager than a techie.

  Jonathan whistled under his breath as he perused the data displayed on the twenty-five-inch color flat panel monitor on my desk.

  “Having fun in there?” he asked.

  The there Jonathan referred to was a creepy chat room called Dark Hack where I was currently imping a brash, male teenage hacker. I’m not the type of girl who typically hangs out in the dark and eerie underbelly of the internet in rooms with names like Dark Hack, Mute Slay or CrackHack, but sometimes we do what we have to in the name of national security, and today that meant impersonating a social misfit with a grudge.

  I was pretty sure I was currently chatting with the guy who had hacked into the NSA’s Public Affairs website a couple of weeks ago using some pretty robust and unusual code. Utilizing fairly colorful language he defaced the site, drew a mustache on the president and urged teen hackers to unite to breach the electronic barriers that separated people from the free flow of information.

  Since I’m a fairly junior member of the team, Jonathan thought this particular assignment was right up my alley. So last week he tossed the case file onto my desk with a sticky note on top that read “Lexi Carmichael—Urgent” in bold red pen.

  Lexi Carmichael. That’s me—a computer geek with a name better suited to a bubbly cheerleader. Lexi isn’t even short for something more dignified, like Alexandra or Alexis. And to make matters worse, I look nothing like a Lexi. Imagine a delicate-boned, pink-cheeked girl with long, curly blond hair, blue eyes and an adorable, pert nose…and that’s exactly what I don’t look like. To my mother’s great dismay, I inherited nothing of her remarkable looks except for a pair of exceedingly long legs. By the seventh grade I was five foot eleven—skinny and all legs with a short torso, no boobs and ordinary brown hair like my dad. I’d also been given his facial genes—a thin nose, wide mouth and hazel eyes. At age twenty-four, not much has changed, including the fact that I still have zip in the boob department.

  “Is PhearU the target?” Jonathan asked, leaning closer to the monitor to read what we had been chatting about.

  “Yep, he’s the guy,” I explained. “I’ve been casing him for a while. Today I made contact. We’re instant messaging. I’m Disease2, and I’m running a trace on him.”

  There was a pause and then the words p
opped up on my screen.

  PhearU: I’ve seen you here a couple of times before. Where ya at, dude?

  I glanced at my other monitor and saw that PhearU was using a major internet service provider in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  “Gotcha,” I murmured under my breath.

  Disease2: Iowa. Told the rents i was too sick to go to school. They bought it. ha, ha. Be right back.

  I quickly tracked down the number of the internet provider in Charlotte and punched it in on my phone. I requested a manager and after providing my security information was told that the number was a public dial-up—meaning Phear probably sat at an internet café somewhere. That meant if I wanted more information, I’d have to provide a court order to the phone company to further trace the exact location in Charlotte.

  “Crap,” I said to Jonathan. “He used a dial-up.”

  “Clever,” Jonathan offered. “A slower connection, but a more secure one.”

  PhearU suddenly started typing.

  PhearU: U still here, Disease?

  Disease2: Right here, man.

  PhearU: Good, cuz I just nailed your ass.

  Disease2: What?!?!?

  PhearU: U aren’t calling from Iowa.

  “Uh, oh,” I murmured under my breath. “What raised his hackles?”

  Disease2: Whatcha mean, dude?

  PhearU: U think I’m an idiot? I know you’re calling from southern Maryland. YFGI!

  “No way!” I uttered, the pencil I held between my fingers snapping in two. “He made me. How did he do that?”

  Phear abruptly logged out of the chat room. I banged my forehead against the monitor.

  “What did I do wrong?” I moaned in disbelief. “Even if he ran a trace back on me, he shouldn’t have been able to make me so easily. I was protected.”

  Instead of being angry, Jonathan seemed amused. “Apparently the protection was inadequate. What’s YFGI stand for?”

  “You fucking government imposter,” I said with a sigh and tried not to be offended when Jonathan stifled a laugh.

  “Better luck next time,” he said and left just as my phone rang. I yanked the receiver out of the cradle and jammed it against my ear.

  “Carmichael,” I said in an irritated voice.

  “Lexi, darling,” my mother said in her soft southern drawl. “I’ve been thinking of you all day. How would you like to come to dinner tonight?”

  My mother, Clarissa Carmichael, is a former first-runner-up in the Miss America contest, and the winner of a slew of other beauty pageants including Miss Teen USA, Miss Virginia and Miss Colonial Blossom. She is gorgeous at age fifty-four, a statuesque natural blonde with a body to die for and a face that stops strangers dead in the street. She’s the kind of woman who can bend men to her will with her looks alone and who makes other females downright catty with envy.

  Her main objective in life after marrying my father, who is now a wealthy corporate lawyer in Washington, D.C., was to have a sweet, adorable girl she could mold into a clone of herself. It took her three tries and two rambunctious boys, but I finally popped out one hot summer day. I think Mom liked Lexi because she thought it sounded cute, bubbly and perky—the perfect name for a future Miss Teen USA. Unfortunately I was a disappointment to my mother the moment I made my appearance in this world. But that didn’t stop her from trying to mold me into a miniature version of herself.

  “Your birthday is coming up and I thought we might discuss your party over dinner,” she continued, her drawl deepening with excitement. That always seemed to happen when she planned social events and the mere sound of it turned my blood to ice. I was turning twenty-five, but my mom still wanted to plan my birthday parties.

  “I’m not going to have a party this year,” I said in the most nonchalant voice I could manage. God forbid that she sensed I was appalled by the idea because then she’d latch on to it like a dog with a bone. “I want to turn twenty-five in a quiet, peaceful, alone sort of way.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, clucking her tongue in that disapproving way. “Turning twenty-five is an important milestone. Come to dinner, sweetie.”

  “I can’t, Mom. I’m busy,” I lied. “I’ve…uh…got a really hot date.”

  My mom fell silent and I knew she didn’t believe me. Okay, so I didn’t even believe it myself. First of all, it was a Tuesday. What kind of people had hot dates on Tuesday? Second of all, it had been eons since I’d had a hot date. Or a cold date, for that matter. But I didn’t need a man to make my life complete. My life was complete enough as it was, thank you.

  All I really wanted to do was stare at my computer screen for another two hours and then get into my spiffy red Miata convertible and sit in traffic for a half hour on the parkway before arriving home just six miles away. Then I remembered the pile of dirty laundry waiting for me on the floor of my bedroom, and the fact that I had nothing in the refrigerator for dinner. I’d eaten only a pathetic garden salad with fat-free dressing for lunch, so that meant I was ravenous, cranky and vulnerable. Thirty miles away in her upscale Georgetown home, my mother zoned in on my weakness with that annoying secret radar only women with children seem to have.

  “We’re having your favorite…beef stew,” Mom coaxed. “Sasha made fresh bread, too.”

  Sasha Kovalev is my parents’ personal cook. He came to America when Russia was still the Soviet Union. He was a former nuclear scientist or something like that and managed to defect with his wife and two kids. In America he seemed to have found his niche as a personal cook to the rich and didn’t seem to miss his high-profile scientific job. Which is lucky for me because he’s a whiz at physics and I’d often picked his brain for help with my homework while he whipped up Chicken Kiev.

  Just the thought of Chicken Kiev made my stomach gurgle loudly. I sighed, knowing I’d lost the battle. “What time?”

  “Six-fifteen sharp,” my mother said, practically purring. “And, Lexi, wear something nice.”

  “I’m wearing what I have on,” I protested. “I’m coming straight from work.”

  “Okay, darling,” she said, and then hung up before I could question her further. Why did it matter what I was wearing?

  I looked down at myself and then grimaced. I wore a pair of wrinkled black slacks and a purple blouse with flowing sleeves. I guess I’m not much of a fashionista, whatever that means. Any clothes purchased with something other than comfort in mind intimidate me. If I have to buy stuff for work, I buy whatever is on sale in my size. I was pretty sure my outfit wouldn’t be what my mother had in mind when she envisioned something nice, but we all do the best we can.

  On the other hand, image means everything to my parents. They live in a gorgeous redecorated townhouse in colonial Georgetown. Their neighbors are some of the most powerful and richest people in the world—senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices and former Enron executives. You can’t touch real estate in that area for under two million dollars. Since I work for the government, you can well imagine I don’t live anywhere in the vicinity. But I did go to Georgetown University, so I have a fondness for the area in an it’s-a-beautiful-place-to-visit-but-I-could-never-afford-to-live-there sort of way. My parents moved to Georgetown the year I entered the university. It was also the year my dad got a full partnership in his law firm. His new position required new living arrangements. God forbid that they be seen mingling with common folk anymore.

  Don’t get me wrong; I love my parents. My dad worked hard to get where he is today, and my mom was born to the role of rich, gorgeous, slightly bored housewife. But they embraced their new life a bit too enthusiastically for my taste. I could never see myself living out that kind of fantasy even if it’s what my mom obsessively envisions for me. After three years she still talks about my job at the NSA as if it is only temporary. I think she still hasn’t recovered from the fact that I double-majored in mathematics and computer science when I should have been enrolled in the finding-a-suitable-rich-husband program.

  But I had committed
to go to dinner at my parents’, so I was stuck whether I liked it or not. Before I knew it, my watch beeped five o’clock. I leapt from my chair, darted out to my car and drove south on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

  Forty-five minutes later, I arrived in Georgetown. I spent another half hour circling around looking for a parking space. I was walking about two blocks away from my parents’ house when a big white guy in a dark blazer suddenly materialized out of nowhere from behind a parked car and strode right up to me. He had a huge, beefy neck, a brown crew-cut and pockmarks on his face. He didn’t look friendly. I smiled brightly even though my heart was doing the tango in my chest.

  “Good evening,” I said politely and tried to walk past him.

  He blocked the way, crossing his thick arms against his chest and saying nothing. I glanced up the street and watched as a couple of cars whizzed by, but no one gave us a second glance. It was just my luck that the narrow sidewalk was empty of other pedestrians.

  Sighing, I held out my purse. “I’ve got thirty-two dollars, an over-maxed credit card and four tampons. If it’s not too much trouble, can I keep the car keys? That way I’m spared the double humiliation of being robbed and then driven home by my parents.”