Exploited
Page 19

What?
This was all happening too fast.
I didn’t work this way. I needed to put out the feelers. Access the system. Find the information I needed.
I knew nothing about this company but the word of my anonymous friend that it would be good for the cause.
It wasn’t enough.
I needed to put my foot down.
This was my operation.
10:03 <Freed0m0v3rdr1v3> No. Not tonight. Too fast. I will look into Virtuant and see if they meet the criteria. Need some distance before we act on something new.
Someone walked behind me and I quickly minimized the screen. I checked the time. We had been chatting for four minutes. I needed to log off IRC. This was taking too long.
Toxicwrath hadn’t responded. But I knew he was still in the chat room.
What was going on?
Again I started to question what I was doing aligning myself with someone I didn’t know, wasn’t sure I could trust.
I was putting everything in jeopardy.
But then…
10:06 <T0x1cwrath> You’re right. Too soon. V’s been on the radar for a while. Check them out.
The tension that had been coiled in my belly released and let go.
10:06 <Freed0m0v3rdr1v3> Okay. Will let you know.
***T0x1cwrath has quit IRC***
I quickly shut down the client and scrubbed my cache.
The thrill spiked, throbbing mercilessly.
A new target.
My earlier hesitation was still there, tickling the back of my mind. I needed to do recon. Which meant a lot of nights spent digging through Virtuant’s dirt.
I thought of Mason.
Agent Kohler.
It was all so perfect.
He had no idea how much.
Chapter 7

Mason
“Which one, Tig? Blue or green?” I held up each shirt and turned to the perpetually pissed-off cat in the corner of the room.
He lifted his hind leg and started licking his ass.
Fucker.
“Yeah, the blue one. It’ll hide the pit sweat better anyway,” I muttered to myself.
I was running late. Per usual.
I was supposed to pick up Hannah in twenty minutes and I had only just gotten out of the shower.
With my job it was no wonder a social life had never been in the cards. Particularly when I was knee deep in a new assignment. One that I hadn’t wanted in the first place.
The rest of the day had passed like the morning. Full of dead ends and constant frustration.
Perry was by far the worst partner I had ever had. He was a nice enough guy, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be shackled to him.
There were rumblings that his career was built on nepotism. I couldn’t deny that had to be the case. I couldn’t imagine him making it through the academy a week, let alone graduating.
He knew next to nothing about reverse searching IP addresses, DDoS attacks, or megabreaches. If you asked him what a packet monkey was, he’d think it was some rare breed of chimp that lived in Africa. As long as Perry was my partner, I’d be carrying around dead weight. And Derek knew this, which I suspected was why we were working together.
Because Perry did nothing to lessen the burden on my shoulders that grew heavier with every hour.
Freedom Overdrive had scrubbed his trail. Within hours of the attack on Ryan Law the files that had been uploaded to the website had been erased, crashing the site entirely. I tried to locate the IP address of the originating source and it bounced out to over two thousand separate computers throughout the United States and Mexico.
Nothing.
I had absolutely no more information than I had started with.
Except the string of numbers I had never seen before: 06050900.
That wasn’t Freedom Overdrive’s signature. What did it mean?
When I had brought up the idea that perhaps the cracker was no longer working alone, Agent Sanders had scoffed at the suggestion.
“I think you need to stop chasing half-cocked ideas and focus on what you do know. Which is that the source of origin is somewhere in those two thousand computers.”
Perry had glanced at me, looking confused. He clearly didn’t understand what the hell we were talking about. Meaning I’d have to play teacher on top of solving this unsolvable case.
“It would take a long time to go through each and every computer—” I had started to say, but Derek raised his hand, silencing me as if I were a naughty schoolboy calling out in the middle of class.
“Then I suggest you get started, Agent Kohler.” His lip had curled in derision. “I shouldn’t need to tell you that your best lead is in that bot army. You need to systematically eliminate each and every person as a potential suspect.”
There had been no sense in arguing that it was a useless waste of time. That I should be cracking the code left behind that deviated from Freedom Overdrive’s normal mode of attack. The pattern had been disrupted and I needed to know why.
Instead I was being sent on a fool’s errand. I had stared hard at the agent in charge. Derek had stared back, his face stony and unyielding. He wanted me to fail.
I would have to find out why.
Perry had sat throughout the exchange, chewing on his thumbnail, looking like he wanted to run away. He was clearly intimidated by everything and everyone.
“I guess you’d better get started, then,” Chaz had taunted, not bothering to cover his grin. I hadn’t been sure why he was present at all except to bear witness to my dressing-down.
If a pile of shit had a face, it would look like Chaz Edwards.
I hadn’t bothered to lob a biting remark back, knowing it wouldn’t make me feel any better.
I had left the debriefing and gone back to my desk, spending the rest of the afternoon working with two other guys on the cybersecurity team, trying to sift through possible suspects.
And getting nowhere.
Always nowhere.
I felt like punching something. An unfamiliar anger rose up inside of me and it paralyzed me. Left me numb. I wasn’t used to feeling inept. Out of control. The ease with which the rage took root worried me.
I had always been able to do my job and do it well. I was focused. I was typically filled with a self-righteous indignation that propelled me to find the bad guys and put them away.
But this time was different.
Because I couldn’t find the bad guy.
It pissed me off to nuclear levels.
I took a deep breath and tucked in my shirt. Tonight was about letting go of all that and enjoying myself.