Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller Read online

  Praise for Encrypted….

  “Imagine a roller-coaster ride filled with historical twists and turns, fabulous action, and a great love story. You’ll soar to the skies, and then grip your seat on the way down. Encrypted will leave you breathless in the end.”

  Amber Scott

  Author - Fierce Dawn

  “If you like Lara Croft, you’ll love Encrypted’s heroine, Ronnie. From one explosion to the next, my heart raced with each turn of the page. And the plague making a comeback? Written with such realism, after reading Encrypted, you may never want to leave your house again.”

  Elena Gray

  Author - Full Body Contact

  “Dan Brown blinked, and Carolyn McCray took over. Encrypted is the best thing that I’ve read in the thriller genre, hands down. It’s got history, mysticism, and shadowy organizations manipulating world events. Oh, and did I mention the most incredible opposites-attract relationship EVER? This novel knocked my socks off.”

  Ben Hopkin

  Book Reviewer

  “Halting the spread of a weaponized redo of the Black Plague? Intending to plunge the world into a medieval hellish vision of the Hidden Hand? It’s never good when the dead could turn out to be the lucky ones. That’s a lot of responsibility resting on the shoulders of a brilliant cyber hacker and a sexy FBI agent. Makes you wonder who’s calling the shots—God, the angels, or a 13th-century cult that would make Lucifer blush?”

  Taylor Lee

  Author - The Grandmaster’s Legacy

  “Action packed from the first sentence, Encrypted kept me turning pages. From hackers and special agents to the plague, you won’t be able to put this one down until the end!”

  Kelli McCracken

  Author- What the Heart Wants

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  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Fortress of Kaffa

  Genoese Outpost

  AD 1347

  The sentry stood upon the watchtower, although he knew not what good it did. For eight long months, this outpost had been under siege. Just outside of arrow range, the Mongols’ leather tents stretched across the horizon as far as the eye could see—each with its flaming red flag, fluttering a salute to the great-grandson of Genghis Khan. Savages in fur-lined uniforms patrolled the front lines, making sure that the Italians did not escape their stony prison. As the last rays of daylight struck, the gilded domes topping each tent glowed as if they were bejeweled.

  Their captors…The Golden Horde.

  Without thought, the sentry reached his hand out to steady himself as a man-sized boulder slammed against the wall not ten feet below his position. The impact jarred his ankles and wrists, but his mind barely registered the attack. Over the past months, the catapult bombardments had become almost commonplace, like the dripping of rain from a thatched roof. Day and night without relief.

  Yet from the first day, when the Horde charged over the easterly hills, none thought the Mongols could stomach a long campaign. The Genoese settled in, feeling protected by the mighty stone walls built by Italian craftsmen. Each day, they expected the Khan to strike his tent city and move on to easier conquests, but this barbarian was no fool. He must have known, just as the sentry’s king did, that this port along the Black Sea was strategic to the flow of riches from the Far East to Europe.

  Cut off from their docks and their supply ships for months, the sentry and his once-proud countrymen were reduced to hunting rats to feed their families. But even the vermin grew thin and scarce. What would they do when even the mice were gone?

  On the other hand, the Horde was blessed with waves upon waves of reinforcements and fresh supplies from the east. The Khan must have smelled desperation in the air. The fortress must have reeked of it.

  Movement to the south caught the sentry’s eye. It was too early for a night raid. He squinted against the glare of the gilded tents. A group of four, and now six, men were striking out from the camp. But for what purpose? And why away from the fortress and their eastern route home?

  Seeing them, the sentry felt his first glimmer of hope. The men were dragging litters behind them. Litters filled with the Horde’s dead!

  There truly was a God in heaven above!

  * * *

  Travanti dug his heels into the horse. Shouts rose behind him as he galloped through the camp, but he cared not. A flame to the south lit up the night sky. The conflagration meant only one thing. Death. The Black Death. Which made the news he bore even more vital. His horse skidded to a halt outside the Khan’s tent. Two large guards tried to block him, but his hood fell back to reveal his shorn blond hair. They both backed away.

  Though not of Mongol descent, Travanti was the Khan’s honored messenger who traveled unscathed though the Golden Horde’s great realm. The guards backed away from his path, but they held their sword hilts tightly. How they wished to cut him in half. Yet, they did not. Fingering the deep scars on his arm, Travanti felt the source of his influence.

  If these dense guards ever doubted the power that he wielded, they just needed to look toward the southern sky. So many warriors brought low—and not by steel. Not by the ax blade of an enemy. No, they died from unseen demons. Demons that took hold of flesh and pulled it apart, as a fat woman would a shank of lamb.

  When the guards balked at opening the tent’s curtains, Travanti parted them himself. There was no time to stand on formality.

  It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom within. Once, debauchery of the lowest form happened here. Dancing whores adorned themselves with jewelry that equaled the weight of fattened piglets. But now, only a smoldering fire pit remained. A few of the Khan’s women clung to blankets at the edge of the tent, coughing and wheezing like sick chickens, plague stricken.

  Travanti ignored it all and strode to the Khan’s gilded throne. But the Mongol lord had lost so much weight that the gold chair seemed to swallow the ill man—as if he were a child trying to be a king.

  The boy knelt in a bow, but it was not for the barbarian’s honor. No, Travanti supplicated himself to the man who stood behind the throne. Even hooded and hunched, it was clear that the Khan’s advisor did not suffer the ills of the Horde.

  “Sire, I journeyed to Tana, but they were all…” Travanti paused until the Khan raised his eyes, “dead.”

  “My eldest? My wives?” the Khan asked, but from his tone, it seemed that he already knew the answer.

  “All.”

  Before Travanti could respond, the Mongol rose from his throne, pulling a gilded dagger from its sheath. The sharp blade found Travanti’s neck.

  “Then, how is it that you still live?” The Khan’s hot breath was upon Travanti’s face as the Mongol shoved the boy’s sleeve back to reveal the elaborately scarred pattern on his arm. “Is this what protects you? The words of your so-called angels?”

  Before the Khan could slit his throat, a coughing fit took away the Mongol’s will to punish. Collapsing onto the cold metal of his throne, the heir to the Horde spit up a handful of blood. Satisfied warmth spread through the boy. Dare to strike a child of God, and this was the ill anyone would suffer.

  The Mongol called over an equally plague-stricken guard. “Prepare to retreat.”

  It was only then that the hooded man stepped into the smoky light. “Is this how the great-grandson of Genghis shows his mettle?”

  The words stirred enough anger in the Mongol that he rose to his feet, gilded dagger drawn. “Enough! Or I will show you the steel of a Khan.”
>
  “Brave words for a man who wishes to slink off in the night.”

  The Khan stumbled back a step. The force bled from his voice. “What would you have me do?” He pointed to his blackened skin, punctuated by oozing pustules. “Or can you conjure a salve for this?”

  “I doubt not that you are defeated, but seek you no vengeance?”

  “With my last breath,” the Khan hissed.

  For the first time since his second master had taken him in, Travanti saw the hooded man smile. “The Heir to the Horde has spoken.”

  * * *

  The sentry felt ill at ease. It was the damned silence. The Horde had fallen quiet as more and more of their kind burned atop pyres. No more catapults. No more bone-rattling impacts. He should have been happy, jubilant—yet, he was not. Not until he and his countrymen were upon the high seas, sailing for Italia. Sailing for home.

  “They cannot last another day,” another guard said, breaking the strange, new quiet.

  The younger man seemed right. Activity buzzed around the Horde’s camp. Hopefully, it signaled panic and disarray. A messy Mongolian retreat would make their escape by sea all the easier. The sentry was so busy imagining sea breezes in his hair that he nearly missed the incoming projectile.

  “Down!”

  He shoved the other soldier to the stone as the catapult’s load sailed overhead and landed with a sickening thud in the courtyard.

  “Their last gasp,” the younger man said as he brushed off his tattered uniform.

  Leave it to the Mongols to continue the fight up to their dying breaths.

  “No!” A scream arose from the courtyard. “Run!”

  The sentry headed down the ladder as he remembered the early days of the siege, when the Horde had catapulted barrels of oil followed by few volleys of flaming arrows. The fortress was ablaze for days. Even though no more kindling was left, the sentry still feared what the Mongols might be capable of.

  Rumors of magic, sorcerers, and witches were rampant.

  Ever prepared for the worst, the sentry nearly lost what little was in his stomach when he saw what the barbarians had flung over their wall.

  “No!” a woman screamed next to him. “It cannot be!”

  The body’s foul odor bit his nose. Bloated and rotting, there was no doubt what had killed this Mongol. The plague.

  “Quickly!” the sentry said to the nearest guard. “Throw it into the sea!”

  “Beware!” a shout come from above, but the sentry was already charging the yard as the loud thunks of the catapults carried over the night air.

  “Flee!” a woman shouted from somewhere above.

  But to where? They were penned in by four stone walls. They had nowhere to go.

  He raced across the courtyard without concern, bowling over a mother with a babe in her arms and knocking a boy on his arse. Nothing mattered. Nothing but informing the captain. He took the steps two at a time, bounding up to the war room.

  The sentry shoved the door open, not bothering to stand on ceremony. “Sir, the Horde has…”

  Was he, too, out of breath, or could he not bring himself to say the words that would doom the outpost?

  “They fling bodies? Is it true?” the lieutenant asked, grabbing him by the collar.

  “Aye, it is true.”

  The lieutenant spun on his heel toward the captain. “We must flee by ship!”

  “And spread this darkness to our home?” the older man asked.

  “No one has fallen ill yet. We must make haste.”

  As much as the sentry loved his captain, the lieutenant’s words were music to his ears. Home. They could flee by sea. Home.

  But the captain slammed his fist onto the table. “Nay. We will dispose of the bodies downstream, and quarantine all who—”

  The captain’s words were cut off. At first, the sentry did not know the cause, but then blood trickled from the senior officer’s lapel. With a wet thud, the captain fell facedown onto the table, revealing a hooded man with a still-bloody knife in his hand.

  The room filled with the sound of steel being unsheathed. Yet, all were stunned. No one moved forward. No one even breathed.

  “Flee this city, or all your lives are forfeited,” the man said forcefully.

  The sentry stepped forward. Church envoy or no, this man could not butcher their captain before his very eyes, but the lieutenant held him back as he re-sheathed his blade.

  “To the docks,” the lieutenant ordered.

  It took not a single heartbeat before everyone in the room broke rank. Their captain wasn’t even cold, and his officers were scrambling all over themselves to disobey his orders. All made haste to the ships—vessels that could sail far, far from here.

  The sentry stood, frozen.

  His desire to flee was equal to the other men, but he owed his life thrice over to the captain. How could he betray him so callously? So he stood as the others coursed around him. Except for one. One person entered the room. A boy. A young, blond boy. One whom the sentry had never before seen. After such a long siege, how could that be?

  * * *

  Travanti didn’t even glance at the stunned soldier. Why should he? Within a single breath, his second master pulled the blade across the man’s throat and pushed his body on top of the captain’s. Such power in the thinnest of blades.

  “The Hidden Hand must know of our success here,” the hooded figure said, indicating for the boy to come closer.

  “Of course.” Travanti bowed his head as he rolled up his sleeve.

  “We must be certain that these ships reach Italy, and then north.” The hooded man’s dark brown eyes were alive with possibility. “All of Europe must fall.”

  The boy bit his lip as the blade sliced into his skin. What was a little pain when so much more good remained to be done?

  CHAPTER 1

  Undisclosed Location

  Present Day

  9:00 p.m., MST

  The archaic symbol glowed red, and then flared gold across Ronnie’s ultra-high-resolution LCD screen.

  “Damn it, people,” she muttered. “I’m a little busy here. Could you spam me later?”

  Each stroke of the brilliant script was crafted in a masterful flourish. Calligraphy. While the illuminated writing might possibly have been the most beautiful art Ronnie had ever seen, the symbols blocked her from making the third largest unauthorized-funds transfer in history.

  Others might call her task thievery. Ronnie liked to think of it as “wealth redistribution in action.”

  With minimal keystrokes, Ronnie wiped the symbols from the screen. The insurance records were back, front and center, and ripe for the picking. Four thousand dollars a year for car insurance? Please. The company might scam their money legally, but she had just found a way to take it more creatively.

  Crap. The IM window appeared again, flashing those gilded letters. Ronnie closed the pop-up. She blocked the pop-up. She deleted the pop-up. She deleted the program that created the pop-up. But still, the unintelligible lettering scrolled down her screen. Obviously, fatigue was setting in. She had already been at this hack for over three hours. Slowly, and ever so carefully, she had insinuated herself into the insurance company’s mainframe. But at this point, how could she truly be “one” with her computer if her joints were complaining?

  Ronnie straightened upright until her back rested against her wooden chair. Sometimes, pure genius could not be rushed. Raising her hands above her head, she purposefully relaxed her muscles and began a measured set of stretches to loosen the knot in her neck.

  Normally, when she hacked, she did it in style. A leather, heated, massage-controlled, ergonomic masterpiece of a chair. But when delivering the deathblow, Ronnie liked to go medieval on their asses. And maybe even a little ninja. Though there was absolutely no reason to, on a monumental night such as tonight, she always dressed in sleek black. Ronnie had pulled her dark blonde hair into a tight bun. The ribbed turtleneck clung to her every curve and rubbed most agreea
bly against her skin as she worked the kinks out. Two-inch heeled boots added more height to her already tall frame.

  Damn, but she looked good tonight. Too bad that nobody was around to see it. But given her vocation, how could there be?

  As she flexed her head to the far left, she found only bare wall. To the right, she noticed only torn wallpaper. There wasn’t even a light fixture on the ceiling. Absolutely nothing distracted her. What other luxuries did she need when she had a rickety chair and a table for her wireless, Web-enabled, two-TB, and 56G RAM laptop? She needed nothing else. Except maybe a massage.

  Outside the window, fireworks exploded, washing the stark room with yellows, greens, and reds. With each boom, the crowds in the streets cheered. Ronnie liked to think that the revelry was for her financial remodeling initiative, but she knew it was May Fifth.

  Cinco de Mayo. And boy, did these Latinos take their partying seriously.

  As seriously as her secret admirer was about IM’ing her. The symbols scrolled and flashed and scrolled some more, obscuring the company’s financial slush fund—a healthy two billion dollars. Two billion dollars that she wanted—but couldn’t get to— because some freaking overexuberant fan was trying to impress her. Ronnie stretched one last time, and then cracked each knuckle.

  “Exactly how much did this firewall cost me?” she asked into her subvocal microphone as her fingers flew over the keyboard again.

  “Four point seven million,” Quirk said. His voice sounded slightly effeminate as it relayed through her intra-molar receiver. Plus, the young hacker sounded distracted. Too distracted, given that his cut was a good 13 percent of their take-home fee of seven million.

  Flicking her thumb, she brought up a webcam view of their cold room. Four perfectly white walls, not eggshell white, not Navajo, not light vanilla, but pure-white walls. Not because they had to be that color for the computer hubs, but because Quirk insisted that the room contrast with his hair. If he went to the expense of dyeing his hair twice, once with pitch black, then dark-lighted with midnight blue, the young man wanted to stand out. Not that anyone else was ever going to set eyes on him either, but Quirk could really be a queen when he wanted to. So, white the walls were—no big deal.