Silent Planet

Chapter 5: Room 9

By the time Neal and Jones arrived at Room 9, Travis and Ian were also on their way. Raven, the would-be corporate spy, was sitting handcuffed at the table. Neal suspected Peter had used the cuffs to reinforce how much trouble she was in.

Normally, she would have been dragged off to be interrogated at the Bureau, but Peter hoped to persuade her to cooperate, and for that, Ian's outrage was a fitting hook.

"Bloody hell, why'd you do it, Rave?" Ian glared at her, his shock of ice-blond hair standing straight up. "Stealing code? Who would you have targeted next? Silent Planet? The game we've all been pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into? You're a bloody kidnapper!"

Raven's face was bleached of color except for bright scarlet blotches on her cheeks as she physically cringed under the weight of his invective. "I never would have tampered with the code for Silent Planet. As soon as Mom was out of the hospital, I was going to turn myself in. But I couldn't take a chance before she was released." Her eyes welled up with tears. "He'd already made her worse. He claimed he'd kill her if I didn't do as he said."

"Who approached you?" Peter demanded. A recorder was on the table. Raven must have waived her right to have an attorney present.

"Last Saturday, I got a call at home. The man claimed to be a reporter and asked for insider tips on Silent Planet. I refused to give him anything. I thought that would be the end of it. My mother's been in the hospital for the past two weeks suffering from complications from lupus. The next day—that was Sunday—I got a call from the hospital that she'd taken a turn for the worse and was on life support. When I went to the hospital, no one could give me an explanation for why she'd become so ill, but by the end of the day she seemed to be better. That night, the same man called, and said that I had to follow his instructions or the next time Mom wouldn't recover."

"Why didn't you come to me with this?" Ian demanded.

She flushed. "He said he'd know if I went to the police or told anyone. He claimed that if I provided details of the innovations, he'd leave me alone and no one would ever find out." She bit her lower lip and added in a lower voice, "Mom's here illegally. I figured if I went to the authorities, she could be deported, and me along with her."

Ian raised a brow at Peter. "What happens now?"

"It's your call. We can arrest her or hold off for the time being." He turned to Raven. "Are you willing to cooperate and work with us?"

"You'll be able to protect Mom? Not tell immigration officials about her?"

Peter tightened his lips into a thin line and glanced around the room before replying. Neal gave him marks for making her sweat a little more. "I can arrange for a security detail at the hospital. Her legal status is not something I'm interested in, and I can vouch for my agents. Your status is what you should be concerned with."

Raven had made a spectacularly bad error of judgment. She was being given a chance to help her case, but there was no discussion about her future. The top priority was the extortionist.

It was still the middle of the night. No one else was awake. As far as the other employees were concerned, nothing had happened. Raven swore she hadn't told anyone, not even Blair.

Ian dialed back his anger as he heard about her motive. There was a familial aspect to his relationship with the employees. Now one of their own had messed up big time. Richard had told Neal that Raven was one of their best programmers, a genius at bringing their wild ideas to life. Would Ian give her a second chance? Should he?

Raven had been instructed to copy the hard drive of the laptop. She'd only spoken with the man they presumed was Pod2 by phone. The number was that of an untraceable burner phone. The miniature device she was using had Travis's nose twitching with curiosity. He intended to load it with data encrypted in an esoteric programming language he'd created. Rolf was a master of devising the arcane languages. During their work on deciphering his files, Travis and Aidan developed expertise in the subject as well. Now they were bitten by the bug. Travis was particularly proud of a programming language he'd invented which relied on the Vulcan language as constructed by a linguist fan. White Collar's goal was that even if Pod2 was able to download the contents of the drive, the authenticity couldn't be verified.