Exploited
Page 38

I wanted Mason. Of course I did. My denial wasn’t strong enough.
I enjoyed talking to him. It was simple. Uncomplicated.
I was being tricked by the deception just as easily as he was.
His reply was immediate.
Sounds perfect.
I turned off my phone before I could freak out any more.
“Hannah, there you are. I’ve been calling your desk for the last fifteen minutes.” A man not much older than me, with a hipster beard and trousers too tight for his muffin top, appeared in the doorway to the break room looking slightly harassed.
“Hi, Todd. Uh, is everything okay?” I asked in confusion. I rarely spoke to Todd Perkins outside of emails. Sure, our jobs overlapped at times, but that never required us to have an actual face-to-face conversation. And I was okay with that.
Todd scratched at his beard and I tried not to make a face as a piece of food fell from it onto the floor. Yuck. “There’s been some activity on the local firewall. Evidence that our security is being compromised.” He pulled at the waistband of his pants. He looked incredibly uncomfortable in his clothes. The look of a man trying to be cool and failing miserably.
I frowned. “Okay. Well, I don’t do security. That’s your department.”
Todd gave me a look of complete exasperation. “This is a big deal. Chuck told me to pull you in. Whoever is attacking our firewalls knows what they’re doing. We need all hands on deck.” He gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t need to explain what it means for an IT company to be taken down by hackers, do I? How that could destroy our credibility and result in loss of business?”
He was speaking to me as if I were a child. A really small and stupid child. I wanted to slap him.
Sure, my interest was piqued. I could probably solve their ridiculous security problem in a matter of minutes. But that was well above my pay grade. And not what I had been hired to do.
I couldn’t make it too obvious that I could walk my way through their security systems with my eyes closed.
“Okay” was all I said. Though “Go fuck yourself” was on the tip of my tongue.
Sipping my coffee, I followed Todd into a conference room, where Chuck and five other stereotypical IT guys were tapping away at laptops.
“Helen, glad you could finally make it,” Chuck piped up, barely looking at me as I entered the room. I curled my lip slightly in disdain but otherwise didn’t respond.
Stay unassuming. Quiet. Blend into the background…
“There’s been suspicious activity on the firewall. I’m getting alerts and notifications that there have been some efforts to gain entry to our network….”
Todd droned on and on. I barely listened. I logged on to the network, and with a few taps I could see exactly what Todd the bore was talking about.
I frowned. These weren’t “attacks.” This wasn’t an attempt to tear things down. Cause chaos. Destroy everything. This was subtle. Probing. Looking for vulnerabilities.
While Todd and his IT cronies were running around trying to plug the hole, whoever this was had already slipped in. Poking around. Checking things out.
Reading emails.
Becoming a voyeur. A shadow that didn’t belong.
Whoever it was was already here.
My heart hammered in my chest. I didn’t like being snooped on. Not when I was used to doing the snooping.
This all felt so familiar.
The sneakiness. This was being done with skill.
“Whoever it was didn’t hack the system. My firewalls are too strong,” Todd preened. His chest puffed out with self-importance.
The dumb-ass had no idea.
“We need to monitor the situation. Harriet, perhaps you can help out Todd’s team and set up new notifications.”
I opened my mouth, ready to explain that the system was already compromised. Ready to share my knowledge. To do the right thing.
“Oh, that’s all right, Chuck. We have the best people on it. No sense in muddying the waters.” Todd gave me a patronizing smile. “I’m not sure Hannah knows how to architect an environment. I don’t have the time to teach her, I’m afraid.”
Dick.
I closed my mouth. No way I’d tell him about the obvious hacker presence in the network now. Let the whole place fall apart for all I cared.
“Yep. Don’t want to take up any more of your time,” I muttered, getting to my feet. I turned to my boss. “I’m going to get back to work, since it seems Todd has everything under control.”
Chuck waved a hand in dismissal. “Sure. That’s fine. But we may need you again.” He still hadn’t bothered to look at me.
I walked back to my desk, wondering about the hacker who had compromised Holt’s network. What were they looking for?
Sitting down, I fired up my VPN and started to poke around. Looking for something to identify the culprit. I was better than most at finding the trails, but the average IT lackey would never be able to find where the vulnerabilities lay.
I frowned as I saw what this anonymous individual was looking through.
Emails.
Specifically mine.
What the hell?
Upon closer inspection I realized that my desktop security had been dinged. They hadn’t broken through because my layers were vastly superior to what Holt IT employed, but the evidence was there.
I swallowed thickly.
This hack was personal.
I glanced around the room, suddenly feeling on display. Exposed.
Violated.
This is how your targets feel.
My conscience needed to shut up already.
A flare of fear swept through me.
Was he onto me already?
Were the Feds finally closing in?
For years I hadn’t given much thought to what the authorities were doing. Not that I wasn’t worried about getting busted. There was always the underlying concern that one day I wouldn’t cover my tracks enough to stay invisible. That one day someone just as good as I was would figure me out.
But that was part of the thrill.
The fear kept it exciting. From those first days I had been full of overconfidence about my own skill. I thought I was too smart. Too good. No way would a bunch of technically inferior federal agents ever be able to find me.
So as time went by, I had gone about my work, not giving much thought to whether I was being hunted.
Getting intel on a possible investigation into my hacker alter ego hadn’t been on my radar.
Until Toxicwrath brought me back down to earth with a bone-shattering thud.