Exploited
Page 30

“I’m sorry if I jumped down your throat earlier. This case has me on edge,” I said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
Perry’s face brightened. “Yeah? Okay. Well, I was just wondering whether our hacker friend could be”—Perry’s eyes darted around and he leaned in toward me, dropping his voice to a barely audible whisper—“one of us.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “What?”
Perry opened a file he had in his hands and pointed to the list of names on the piece of paper. I recognized a few as coworkers from Quantico. Another was an agent I had collaborated with on a megabreach last year. What in the hell was Perry getting at?
“I was looking over all the agents tasked to cybercrimes in the last year. Are you aware that the Bureau is full of black hats? Some very questionable individuals, if you ask me. Carlos Hernandez in the Baltimore office was charged with cybercrimes. The charges were dismissed, but still—”
I raised my hand, silencing him. I shook my head. “It’s a well-known fact that the Bureau hires people with a…particular skill set. We need to think like hackers to find a hacker. You know that, right?”
Perry pointed to the names again. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do it. Really, any one of us could.” Perry lowered his voice, even though we were completely alone. “It could be any of them. Think about it.”
“So you’re telling me that you think Freedom Overdrive could be an agent?” I asked slowly, carefully. Perry’s eyes were bright. He nodded a little too enthusiastically.
“What proof do you have, other than a list of names of people who could be a hacker?”
Perry cleared his throat and shuffled through the papers in the file. “I just think we can’t rule anything out.”
I took a deep breath and mustered my limited patience. I was trying. Seriously. But Perry’s conspiracy theories were the last thing I wanted to indulge when I was already feeling my back against the wall.
“I get that. I do. But we need to be sifting through the botnets. Monitoring Internet traffic. Looking for patterns. Code words. It’s time-consuming. But that’s our best bet to find this asshole. Not nosing around our coworkers.” I finished the rest of my coffee and cleaned the mug. “I appreciate you thinking outside of the box, though.”
“What about this guy? He worked as an independent contractor a year and a half ago. He had a high-level clearance. He helped tighten security on the network. He had an incident with another contractor and was subsequently let go. Since then he’s fallen off the grid—”
I took the file from Perry’s hands and closed it with a snap. “Seriously, Perry, enough.” I dropped it in the wastebasket. Perry started to protest, but I cut him off. “Tim sent over some intelligence about a channel on IRC that looked interesting. That’s where we need to be focused. Not on this craziness.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine,” Perry huffed. He pulled the file out of the trash and hurried from the break room.
A headache blossomed and I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Bad day?”
I dropped my arms to my sides and looked warily at Madison as she entered the break room. “It’s all right,” I said cautiously. I had to watch everything I said to her. Every. Single. Thing.
Madison grabbed a doughnut and took a small bite, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I heard you’re stuck wading through ISPs in that botnet. Must be tedious.”
I pushed myself away from the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s your point, Madison? Do you want me to admit that it sucks being saddled with the shit case? With the shit partner?” I retorted.
Madison took another bite of her doughnut. She was a meticulous eater. I had never noticed that before. Though I hadn’t been particularly focused on much about her in our brief time together. My head hadn’t been on the little things.
Hannah ate with gusto. She enjoyed her food. She didn’t care about dropping crumbs on her lap or eating too much. I appreciated that about her.
“I’ve been with the Richmond office for fifteen years,” Madison stated, balling up the napkin and throwing it away.
What was with the personal history lesson? I knew this already.
“Right. Okay,” I said slowly.
“Derek is a good friend. A good boss,” she went on. Not quite looking at me. Examining her nails. Picking at a spot on her sleeve. “We’re a tight group. We look after our own here. I’m sure you understand that.” Her demeanor was placid. Her voice neutral.
Only an observant sort of person would have heard the hint of an edge beneath the surface.
I didn’t say anything. Because I understood what she was implying.
My time at the Richmond field office wasn’t going to be easy.
Madison was going to make sure of that.
She had Derek Sanders, the agent in charge, on her side. I was the outsider.
“Look, Madison, maybe we should work on developing a good working relationship. I think that’s important.”
Madison looked at me, her face hard, her mouth unforgiving. It was obvious she didn’t care about our working relationship. She was angry.
“Good luck with the Freedom Overdrive case,” she said with such insincerity that I couldn’t help but smile. Her mouth set into a grim line. “You’ll need it.”
I had no doubt what she meant. The Freedom Overdrive case was one I wasn’t expected to solve. It would be the nail in my career’s coffin. I would be left pushing papers until I retired. Derek Sanders and his crony were going to make sure of that.
There was no point in apologizing to Madison again. It was obvious she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted something else from me.
My failure.
Well, fuck that.
She wasn’t going to have it.
—
“Hey.” One word. That’s all she said, but the sound of Hannah’s voice uncoiled something inside of me.
I felt my muscles loosen. My shoulders relaxed.
I needed this.
Just conversation.
Someone to listen.
With Hannah I was only Mason. Not Agent Kohler. That separation was important.
“Hey back,” I replied. I let myself into my apartment. It was a little after seven. I had stayed late poring over channel lists on Internet Relay Chat. Tracing ISP addresses only to find them hijacked and unusable.