Ice Cold Read Online Free PDF

complex, was pretty unsophisticated. “This is more than a DoS. It’s total and mindless obliteration of a physical infrastructure. A mere nick in the cyber backbone of the bank. Still, I’ll check to see if the bank’s servers were compromised and linked together into a botnet.”
    Clearly pissed off and frustrated, and not understanding the technology, Lewis Slavin waved an expansive hand, encompassing the giant hole where the bank once stood. They walked toward the pit, their boots crunching on broken glass. “This came out of left field.”
    In Honey’s experience, nothing came out of left field. There were always clues along the way. They just had to be diligent enough to find them. All the answers were waiting discovery. Surveillance cameras, a computer trail, hell, maybe something as simple as a speeding ticket. Ferreting out the smallest clue was her superpower. The more nitpicky and detailed the better. She’d leave no stone unturned. No bit of information was too small or too obscure. One clue was all she needed. She practically rubbed her hands with glee at the prospect.
    Interpersonal issues left her cold, but give her a computer and a problem to solve? Pure heaven.
    Honey stepped over a headless doll half buried in gray snow. The image of a child without her doll made her think of the whereabouts of the child, which made her stomach cramp.
    Her normal base of operation was somewhere behind a keyboard and computer screen, not up close and personal to the aftereffects of a bomb. It was frightening how quickly people’s lives could change at the whim of some madman.
    Navarro surveyed the chaos for a moment. “Winston, my guess is you need a place to work. Slavin, I presume our safe house is rubble?”
    “Still standing but definitely not habitable.” The other man’s teeth gleamed white in the emergency lights, but he was far from laughing. “Fortunately, Whelehan was—ah—with a lady friend, and the house was empty at the time of the explosion.”
    “What’s your hypothesis?” Navarro asked.
    Slavin shrugged. “Don’t see a connection with the safe house. Yet, ” he tacked on when Navarro raised a brow. “Time will tell.”
    Honey’s comm vibrated and she took it out of her pocket, seeing her and Navarro’s names, EYES ONLY, and a string of numbers. The bank’s access codes. She was in business.
    Navarro crouched to run a hand lightly over what looked like a melted computer tower. He was hard to read, but Honey bet he already had theories of his own. People in the know claimed Navarro was a savant with bombs. It should prove interesting to observe how he processed information and what he came up with. She liked to learn, even if it was from someone whose methods weren’t by the book.
    Impatient, Honey wanted to leave and get to work, but Navarro had the look of a man digging in his heels. “We passed a coffeehouse a mile or so away, off Unter den Linden—”
    He raised a supercilious brow. “ Public Wi-Fi, Winston?”
    “Prototype air card with secure protocols,” she said in what she thought were even tones. None of them used public WiFi. Ever. He was just jerking her chain again.
    “By the time you finish here, I should have an idea of what we’re dealing with.” Her hair blew across her mask, and she brushed the strands aside with a gloved hand. Holy crap it was cold. She was used to Montana winters, but this wind flayed every bit of exposed skin.
    He gave her an impatient glance.
    Since he wasn’t shivering, she wouldn’t either, but it was stupid to stand outside when she could do her job just as well from a warm location that served hot beverages. “Unless you need me here, I see no reason to delay getting started on my end. Let’s see what we have here.”
    Blowing up a bank would only stop business at the branch. Banks always had secondary backup sites away from the branch itself. However, an attack of this magnitude would certainly create a problem for several hours, if