Read Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) for Free Online

the results were extremely personal for Zeke.
    And he was determined to find out why those sleepers had been activated.
    There were layers to any decision that the government chose to make. And Zeke knew the overt reasons why those hits had been ordered. But with the sense that the pattern was incomplete, Zeke had begun to unravel all the threads that made up the decision. After he’d been given a DNA-enhancing drug that ramped up his OCD and highlighted those dangling reasons, he’d realized that he couldn’t just let those deaths lie.
    There was more to the sleepers being activated than just political expediency. Somehow, some way, this entire situation felt very, very personal. Not necessarily personal to Zeke’s family but as if there were some very personal motivation for someone to give the information about the potential threat to the U.S. foreign relations and ask the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to make the decision to activate those sleepers. After all, in theory, the U.S. government didn’t assassinate people.
    But after the last month, he also knew that wasn’t exactly true.
    His grandfather had been murdered. Why did someone feel it necessary to eliminate a group of people within twenty hours on roughly the same day? What connection did they all share that caused their deaths? And who was the bastard who had engineered the killings?
    He had pieces of information but Zeke was convinced he still didn’t have the person responsible for making it all happen.
    The actual assassin who murdered his Grandpop was long gone. But Zeke would stake his career, his life on the fact that the person who’d called for the deaths of those people was alive and well and...possibly still maneuvering situations to his or her own benefit.
    Rage bubbled inside him. He wanted five minutes alone with whoever had destroyed his childhood.
    That was the single most defining moment of his life. His grandfather had been everything. His father had always been cold, disconnected from Zeke. It was no wonder his mother had taken off. So when Grandpop died, Zeke had disappeared into the cyber world. Yeah, in the end it had all worked out, but Grandpop had always been suspicious of the government, and he’d passed that suspicion on to Zeke. So, as Zeke grew and learned, he’d felt the need to poke at the government, that was when he’d begun his hacking in earnest.
    Zeke loped down the uneven sidewalk taking note of what was happening in the little town. A French coffee shop, whose patrons spilled out onto the sidewalk, a gas station, and the local market were the only businesses open. Otherwise the streets were fairly deserted. It was too early for the retail stores to have customers.
    Outside a collectibles shop, a guy in his forties swept the sidewalk with a brush broom, another woman in her sixties watered flowers in a cut off wine barrel, and further down the quaint little street, two terriers were tethered to a wrought iron fence surrounding an outdoor sales space with paintings propped on easels.
    Everyone he passed had a smile and a wave.
    His tension wound tighter. His muscles stiffened up rather than loosened as he settled into a rhythm. This town seemed picture perfect. Almost old-fashioned in its demeanor.
    Why that set him on edge, he didn’t know.
    He slowed his pace to check out the stores and wondered what Sunshine Smith did for a living. That had not been in the 5491 file. In fact the file had been supremely light on details, the emphasis of the content had been on the other members who were involved in the espionage community.
    As he jogged by an older stucco building that looked like it belonged in Switzerland or some Alps town, he glanced inside.
    Crystals hung in the window, twisting and catching the light and refracting the light beam into a myriad of different colors and lengths until they were absorbed by a fall of long black hair. Sunshine.
    Zeke slowed his pace. His heart leapt in his chest. Something