White-Hot Hack

  Kate’s hand was on the door and she was about to push it open when Jade stopped suddenly. “I need to visit the ladies’ room before I head back to work. I’m so happy you could meet me for lunch. I really appreciate your driving all this way.”

  Relief washed over Kate. “It was no problem at all.” She and Jade hugged and Kate said, “Let’s do it again soon.”

  “I have a fantastic idea,” Kate said over dinner that night.

  “All of your ideas are fantastic,” Ian said.

  “I think we should set Jade and Charlie up on a date.”

  His expression seemed to convey that Kate’s idea was not, in fact, all that fantastic. “Really? Jade and Charlie?”

  “Why not? I thought you’d be all over this. They’re fairly close in age. They’re both single. I bet Charlie’s not nearly the player he wants everyone to think he is. We could invite them over for dinner and to watch a movie afterward or play some pool.”

  “What if they don’t hit it off?”

  “Then we don’t do it again.”

  “Maybe we should give it some more thought,” he said. “And trust me, Charlie is definitely a player.”

  “What are you not telling me? And when did we start keeping things from each other?”

  Ian took a drink and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I don’t know if I want Charlie to come here.”

  “You don’t know if you want to invite your friend and fellow task force member to our home?”

  “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with it.”

  Kate laid down her fork. “Oh my God,” she said, sounding stunned. “You think it’s Charlie.”

  “You told him where you were meeting Jade for dinner, and that very night someone follows you home. At the charity event, you said Charlie looked at you as if he knew you. The only agents who knew what you looked like were the ones from the field office in Minneapolis who were watching over you. I suppose any member of the task force could have googled you out of curiosity before I erased your images, but I doubt they would have taken the time.”

  “But Charlie knew the FBI staged the crash. He knew everything about the situation, including the fact that you were still very much alive.”

  “Yes, but Charlie could have been the one to give my name and location to the carders in exchange for money. Maybe he knew what they were planning to do after they doxed me, maybe he didn’t. Either way, he got paid. When the carders found out I was dead, they were probably furious with him, but technically he’d held up his end of the bargain, so he stuck to the story. It’s not his fault I died before they could act. That’s why they sent Zach Nielsen into the food pantry to see if you were acting like someone who’d just lost her boyfriend.”

  “Okay. Say you’re right about everything. Why would Charlie follow me home? Why would he hack our security system?”

  “To verify the address and make sure it was really us. He’s seen my car. One look inside our garage would confirm it. Maybe he grabbed a still photo or two off the garage camera as proof. Think about it. He now has information that might once again fetch a pretty good price if he were to offer it to the right people.”

  “Does he know about your money?”

  “It came up once a long time ago. He made an offhand comment about my lifestyle not matching that of someone who was still trying to get a struggling business off the ground. He doesn’t know all the details, but he knows I did some programming work and was compensated for it. He’s smart. He would have read between the lines and figured it out.”

  “I’m running out of objections.”

  “I did too when I was going through it in my head.”

  Kate pushed her plate away because her stomach was now in knots. “I think you’re wrong about Charlie.”

  “It’s just a gut feeling I can’t shake, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “I don’t want it to be him.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I like him.”

  “I know you do. I like him too.”

  “It isn’t him.”

  “I hope you’re right. But until I know for sure who it is, I can’t have him here.”

  Ian was right, and there was no way she would ever argue for something that might jeopardize their safety, no matter how crazy she thought the theory seemed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kate and Rob made small talk as he drove her to her latest social engineering assignment. At first she’d felt a little silly bringing a bodyguard to work, but it wasn’t long before she discovered that having someone idling in the parking lot sure came in handy when she needed to make a quick getaway.

  When he wasn’t with her, Rob hung out in the guard shack by the garage, which Ian had decided to expand into an outbuilding with enough room to install additional surveillance equipment and give the guards someplace to take a break. He’d equipped it with a fridge and microwave and put a couch and TV in the corner. There was still some interior work to be done, but it was coming along nicely.

  “Can you please park over there?” Kate asked when they reached their destination, pointing toward a visitor spot near the front of the building. She would have preferred that Rob park in the back of the lot, but she’d learned he considered it one of the most unsafe things a person could do and insisted on parking as close to the door as he could. She leafed through her notes after he brought the car to a stop. Because the task force had been taking up increasingly large amounts of his time, Ian had agreed to let Kate complete all the pretexting for their current assignment. He would be responsible for hacking into the network, but he’d put her in charge of all nontechnical penetration as well as physical entry.

  “I won’t be long, probably less than five minutes,” she told Rob.

  She’d tucked her hair up under a baseball cap, and she wore a polo shirt that bore the logo of the waste-removal company that was scheduled to empty the dumpsters the next day the way they did every Thursday. Pen in hand and carrying her clipboard, she approached a guard shack similar to the one at their front gate.

  The man stationed inside looked up. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi. My manager received a call that you’ve got a problem with one of the dumpsters you use for your paper recycling. He sent me to take a look at it so we can get it fixed before tomorrow’s pickup.”

  “I don’t know about any problem.”

  “So you’re not Mr.”—she looked down at her clipboard, thankful he wasn’t wearing a name tag—“Brady?”

  Upon hearing the name of his boss, the guard seemed to relax. “No. He must have forgotten to mention that he called.”

  “No problem. It’ll only take a minute. It sounds like the hinge might be broken. I can have a replacement sent right away if necessary.”

  He shoved a badge through the narrow opening at the bottom of the shack’s window. “You’ll need this to access the dumpster area.” He pointed to another shack fifty yards away, situated next to a tall chain-link fence with a closed gate. “Bring it back to me when you’re done.”

  “Thank you.” She had to force herself to answer him cheerfully because there was something about him she didn’t like. Probably because he looked at her as if he didn’t quite believe her.

  Kate got back into the Range Rover. “Can you pull around back?”

  “Sure.” Rob started the car, and when they reached the guard shack, Kate gave him her temporary badge so he could hand it over. The guard took a cursory look at it, came out of the shack, and unlocked the gate, waving them through and closing it behind them.

  “What are you doing here?” Rob asked, scanning the area. He was used to dropping her off at the front door and watching her walk safely inside. This was the first time one of Kate’s assignments would be conducted outdoors, and it clearly made him uncomfortable.

  “See those dumpsters? I’m checking them to make sure the company is disposing of their sensitive documents correctly.” Rob knew Ian’s company provided security auditing, but n
either she nor Ian had provided many details regarding the methods they used for collecting the data. “It’s okay, really. I shouldn’t need more than fifteen minutes or so.”

  Kate headed for the dumpsters toward the back of the lot where she was less likely to be observed. She’d transferred the contents of her purse into a cross-body bag and was glad she’d worn jeans and tennis shoes because she had to climb up the side of the dumpster and lower herself into it.

  Everything in it should have been cross-shredded, yet it all appeared completely intact. She found a pile of company directories, their covers dusty and torn. They’d likely been cleaned out of wherever they’d been kept since the company transitioned to storing the information online. Interspersed with the directories were org charts dated eighteen months ago. The information wasn’t particularly earth-shattering, but a hacker would now have enough ammunition to impersonate lots of different employees in order to plan and carry out other, more damaging social engineering exploits. She tucked the org chart and one of the directories into her bag so she’d have proof to show the client.

  “What are you doing?” a voice asked.

  Kate looked up and her heart skipped a beat when she realized it was the guard who’d issued her the badge. She pulled the org chart and the rolled-up directory from her bag. “I noticed someone had put these in the dumpster when I was examining the hinge. I thought I’d grab them so I could show Mr. Brady. He probably wouldn’t want them to be recycled without shredding them first.”

  Kate started to climb out of the dumpster, but it was a lot harder to climb out of than it was to climb into. The man reached down, and she had no choice but to take his hand and let him help her out. When her feet were firmly back on the ground, he didn’t let go and she pulled her hand from his grasp.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the hinge on this dumpster.”

  “I probably checked the wrong one.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the hinges on any of these dumpsters.”

  Though she hated getting caught, it didn’t make sense to try to talk her way out of it. She’d already convinced him to issue her a badge by pretending to have Mr. Brady’s permission, and the org chart and directories were another infraction Ian could include in his report. The guard was getting way too worked up, and she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. It would be in her best interest to come clean.

  “Listen, I’m actually here because I’m doing a security audit. I have a letter that states my right to be on the premises. It’s signed by your CIO.” She withdrew it from her bag and handed it to him, but he crumpled it up and slipped it into his pocket without reading it. Then he took off her hat, and her hair tumbled out from under it. He eyed her appraisingly, and the expression on his face raised the hair on the back of her neck. She started to walk away, but he took two steps to the right and blocked her path.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Why so quick to leave? Maybe we can work something out.”

  She reached into her bag for her pepper spray, taking a step back and holding it up where he could see it. “Do not even think about it.”

  He chuckled as if she was no threat to him at all. “Bet you’re too scared to use it.”

  Kate flicked off the safety. “Trust me, I’m not.”

  “You think that’s gonna do anything?”

  Her heart galloped in her chest. “I’m sure it will.”

  He advanced and she took another step backward. There were three dumpsters standing behind him and the open area where Rob had parked the car. She was lighter and hopefully faster than the guard, but to escape she would have to get around him. If he cut her off again, she risked being tackled to the ground where her chances of being seen by someone were very low. He looked quickly over each shoulder and rose on his toes slightly as if preparing to pounce. She raised her arm and pointed the pepper spray at him. If he charged her, she would spray him, and as soon as she’d disabled him, she would run.

  “Get away from her right now,” Rob said. The formerly-soft-spoken Rob had undergone a metamorphosis that would have frightened her had he not been coming to her aid. His voice had risen in volume, and the steely edge of it cut through the silence. Gone were the laugh lines at his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He seemed as if he would enjoy tearing the guard limb from limb and was simply waiting for one wrong move so he could do it.

  “I caught her going through the dumpster,” the guard said.

  “I’m not going to say it again. Get away from her right now.”

  The guard held up his hands, smirked, and sauntered away as if he hadn’t done anything wrong, and Rob clenched and unclenched his fists in barely contained anger. Kate lowered the pepper spray, and she and Rob walked silently toward the car.

  The guard who’d waved them through the gate earlier was berating the other guard. “What the hell were you doing back there? Your station was unmanned and there were people roaming around.”

  Kate started shaking once they were back in the car, and Rob reached into the backseat and handed her the hoodie she’d left there a few days ago.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just a little shook up.” What if this had happened before they got hacked and she’d come here alone? “How did you know?”

  “It’s all in the walk. You moved with purpose, as if you didn’t care who saw you. His walk told me he hoped no one would notice him. I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

  It had seemed like forever, but the encounter with the guard had probably only lasted a minute, maybe a minute and a half, tops.

  “I take full responsibility,” Rob said. “I should have known better than to let you out of my sight.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You shouldn’t have to worry about an employee of the company accosting me while I’m on the job.”

  “Even so, I’ll let Mr. Smith know what happened before I leave for the day.”

  He put the car in gear, and when Kate could no longer see the company in the passenger-side mirror, she exhaled as the tension that had been coiled as tight as a snake ready to strike left her body. She pressed her cheek against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.

  No matter how bad Rob felt, Kate knew it was nothing compared to how Ian would take the news.

  “How did it go?” Ian asked when Kate walked into his office.

  She bent down to kiss him and then pulled some papers from her bag and handed them to him.

  He flipped through the pages and looked up. It said a lot about how lax the company’s security was if Kate had been able to score org charts and a company directory. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the dumpster.”

  “You went dumpster diving?”

  “Just in the one that holds paper. When I visited the company during my pretexting, I noticed they had a bunch of them at the back of the property. It made me wonder if they were being as careful about what went into them as they should.” She told Ian how she’d convinced the guard to issue her a badge and then unzipped her hoodie. “I copied the image of the waste removal company logo off their website and used it on one of those online T-shirt design sites. Then I waltzed right in.” She pretended her fingers were legs walking along. “Pretty resourceful, huh?”

  Hell yes it was. He’d never had the patience for that much involvement. “Very impressive, sweetness.”

  She sat down on the couch. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re not going to like it, and it’s going to make you angry.”

  Her tone and the look on her face sent a jolt of anxiety through him. “Kate, just tell me.”

  “The security guard that issued me the badge figured out what I was doing. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me so I gave him my letter, but he crumpled it up. So then I got out my pepper spray, and he didn’t care, and then Rob came around the corner, and nothing happened, and I’m fine.”


  He sat there for a moment, stunned. Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking when he’d agreed to let her do this? Steve would come unglued if he ever found out, and rightly so. What if Rob hadn’t been with her? He held up a finger. “One second, sweetness.”

  He picked up his phone and dialed. “Hi. Will Smith here. One of my employees checked in with your security guard earlier today, and he later refused to acknowledge the letter stating she had the right to be on the premises. That employee also happens to be my wife. We have an agreement when you sign our contract that no harm will come to anyone who is working for me. Either that security guard is gone by the end of the day, or I escalate this.”

  He hung up the phone. Exhaling, he took off his glasses, laid them on the desk, and rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. “What kind of cake would you like?”

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Cake? What are you talking about?”

  “For your retirement party.”

  “I didn’t retire.”

  “I just retired you.”

  “I didn’t think you’d make me quit.”

  “Because you wouldn’t have told me if you did?”

  “I would never keep something like that from you,” she said and burst into tears.

  He was on his feet immediately, coming around from behind the desk to sit down beside her and gather her in his arms. “Kate, I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t.”

  His apology only made her cry harder, and he rubbed her back as she sobbed.

  “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying,” she said.

  It wasn’t like her to get upset like that, but the tears were probably a delayed reaction. She could downplay it all she wanted, but the security guard’s actions had undoubtedly scared her more than she was letting on.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, holding her tightly in his arms until she quieted.

  When her sobs finally tapered off, she lifted her head from his chest and he looked into her eyes.

  “Listen to me. There’s brave and there’s dumb. And you don’t do dumb, sweetness. You never have. So can this not be about bravery or equality or any of the other things you’re thinking it’s about? Can this just be about me not wanting any harm to come to the person I love most in this world?”