Something about fraternization. Because the big, strong, soldier types always went for the quiet nerdy girl, right?
She snorted.
Valerie wanted to kick terrorist butt too, even if her methods didn’t involve guns. She was one of Aggressor’s best white hat hackers. Duncan had no good reason for denying her beyond the fact that she didn’t have the literal balls.
Even the military had gotten over it.
Sexist.
On the desktop, her cell phone buzzed. Kevin Xu’s name lit up the display.
She sat up and swallowed her mouthful of fruity candy. Kev had been head of IT at Aggressor until a few months ago, and they’d kept in touch after he passed the bar and became a technical patent attorney at Bidwell, Muñoz & Christie, a law firm in Crystal City.
“Can I come back?” he asked after they went through the standard greetings, almost sounding serious.
She laughed. “What happened?”
“Our system administrator is a joke. We got hacked last night, and he easily could have prevented it.”
“How’d they get in?”
“SQL injection. We were running an out-of-date version of the mail server that had a known exploit.” He sighed. “Jesus, there’s so much potential for damage. To our clients, our cases, and God knows what else. Bidwell seems extra nervous.”
Kevin was right. The admin should have found the problem on his own, and the timing was even more unlucky considering Valerie had found that exact vulnerability in their systems a few weeks ago, along with several others.
“Why do people bother to hire Aggressor if they aren’t going to do anything with the info we give them?” she asked on a sigh.
There was a long pause. “What do you mean?”
She frowned. “BMC hired us to do a pen test. Duncan sent the results and recommendations last month.”
“Huh. I didn’t hear anything about it,” he said with irritation. “Then again, I’m not a partner, so I’m not privy to everything.”
“I’m also guessing the admin didn’t want to let the entire firm know how incompetent he was. Even more so considering he failed to patch the holes.”
“You want a job?” Kevin asked. “I’m thinking we’ll have an opening soon.”
“Ha, not in a million years.”
They chatted for a few more minutes, and then she got back to work on Westgate. But she couldn’t help wondering how many of the clients she hacked didn’t follow her recommendations to protect themselves. It wasn’t often she got a glimpse beyond sending the report.
The thought popped up again at home that evening when she was hanging out in a chat room where white hat hackers—probably some black hats too, who were sometimes the same people—and network administrators discussed tools, let each other know about vulnerabilities and how to fix them, and talked about the computer security industry.
A post from P1ut0 caught her eye. She shifted on her comfy couch, its worn microfiber catching at her sweatpants, while Santigold played through her headphones.
Her apartment wasn’t huge, or especially new. The kitchen was the size of a hamster cage, and the living room sofa had to double as her office, but for one person it was fine.
“Did you see that Parker + Fuchs got p0wned?” P1ut0 asked, talking about the giant personal products corporation based in Cleveland.
P + F was another Aggressor client from more than a year ago. They’d actually been pretty full of holes. A simple scan had identified several known, easy-to-fix issues within their system.
But even if they’d taken her advice, that didn’t mean new vulnerabilities hadn’t cropped up. Something as simple as a software or hardware update might bring defects that black hats could use to force their way in. Once someone identified the bug, any company using the affected system became an easy target until it was patched.
P1ut0 continued, “Someone there failed to notice that the print routers were set to admin/admin. Check your devices, people! That’s just plain lazy.”
Valerie jolted. The print routers had most definitely been on her report. The company had left the administrative username and password set to the defaults of “admin,” a common mistake, especially with peripheral devices like routers.
“When was the P + F attack?” she typed, using her primary chat room handle SPYDRCH1C4. It was an angry teen’s break from the screen name her papá had bestowed on her as a kid: CrackerJill. He was proud of her for being a girl in a world largely populated by boys and men. And, sadly, proud of their villainy. While hackers attack for the fun and challenge—or to protect their clients—crackers are malicious.
She and Papá had been crackers. And both of her dads had paid the price.
“Last week,” P1ut0 replied.
She sagged back into the soft cushions and stared at the popcorn ceiling, its dark and light gradations reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s most abstract artworks. Would P + F really have ignored her recommendations? Maybe they’d purchased new print routers and set them up in the same, dumb fashion as before, but that would be the height of idiocy.
A little chill went through her. Had any of Aggressor’s other clients been hacked after she ran a pen test—a penetration test—on them?
Three hours later, she’d managed to confirm five more attacks on former clients through various sources. And forgotten to eat dinner.
“Shit.” Heedless of the time, she dialed her boss. “Sorry to bother you at home, Duncan, but we have a problem.”
Chapter Two
Chantilly, VA
Tuesday, 7:15 a.m.
Holy shit, she did it. Scott Kramer was parked across the street from the Janus Aerospace satellite office in Chantilly that Valerie had entered ten minutes earlier with a handful of baby shower balloons and a cake box. He sat in the SUV he’d been using to surveil her for the last few days and tracked her progress as she left the building, now empty-handed.
The poor guard hadn’t stood a chance against her decked out as a full-throttle hottie in that body-hugging red dress and heels. Scott had about swallowed his tongue when she removed her jacket. Through his zoom lens she appeared close enough to touch, and God did he want to get his hands on her smooth skin and glossy brown hair.
Not that he ever would.
Instead he snapped photos. With the wind whipping her dark hair around her face, the self-satisfied smile on her lips, her shapely legs displayed to perfection, she turned more than a few heads on the way to her car. It’d be a shame to waste the chance to capture the moment, even if she’d never have a clue.
Even if she might be a traitor.
Damn. He lowered the camera and sighed.
Palming his cell phone, he dialed his boss at Steele Security.
“How’s it going?” Kurt Steele asked.
“Uh, fine.” Scott was momentarily distracted by the tantalizing reveal of Valerie’s upper thigh as she slid into the driver’s seat of her dusty Prius. “She’s boring as ever.” At least where his assignment was concerned.
She sure as hell wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d taken the job.
“Hollowell wants you to hang in for at least another week. Can you do that?”
“I’m game,” Scott said. “But I think the man’s wasting his money. If she’s not at work, she’s at home or at the indoor rock climbing gym a few miles away. She lives well below her means, doesn’t give off any disgruntled vibes, doesn’t hang out at Internet cafés… I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it.”
Having a drunk dad whose moods changed with every tick of the clock had made reading people a necessary survival skill, and Valerie struck Scott as a straight arrow.
“What about the offshore account?” Kurt asked, referring to the reason her boss had hired Steele to watch Valerie twenty-four/seven.
Investigators performing a routine security audit had tipped off Hollowell that Valerie had a nice chunk of change that hadn’t come from her personal funds sitting in a recently opened account with some Carib
bean bank. He wanted to know what she was doing to earn the money.
“There are other reasons to have secret accounts,” Scott said.
“True. But it is suspicious. And you might not be seeing anything, but all her clandestine communication could be happening online.”
“Jay Suresh is supposedly keeping track of her online activities. So far, nothing.”
“All right,” Kurt said. “Maybe you’re on surveillance for another week for nothing, but stay sharp.”
“No problem.” So far, the gig had been a piece of cake. It was his first undercover assignment since he started at Steele Security in June—a nice change from security consulting and playing bodyguard. His cover story as a trainee for one of Aggressor’s covert, government-funded terrorist-hunting teams was a perfect fit for his background. “This is my thing.”
“Which is why I put you on it,” Kurt said.
“It’s been a good chance to refresh my skills, especially in an urban setting.” As a former Marine scout sniper, tracking a target without being seen was right in Scott’s wheelhouse, but doing it outside of the desert was an interesting challenge. “Can’t wear a ghillie suit in the concrete jungle.”
“You could,” his boss said, “but you wouldn’t exactly blend in.”
Scott chuckled and agreed to check in the next morning. Time to follow Valerie to work.
Early the next morning, Valerie sat forward in her desk chair and rubbed her eyes. The words on her computer monitor didn’t change. Her cursor blinked happily next to the prompt—a line of text on the screen—the virtual doorway to Westgate’s secrets.
It had taken nearly five days, but they’d done it!
She glanced at the digital clock on her desk. Was it really three? In the morning?
If Duncan hadn’t assured her that he’d identified and dealt with the source of the leak weeks ago, she’d be worried about her latest success. But apparently, he’d fixed everything, making some kind of reparations to the affected companies. In typical fashion, he wouldn’t tell her how he’d convinced them to stay quiet about the hacks—Aggressor’s livelihood depended on it—but she was glad she didn’t have to worry about her work making their clients more vulnerable.
She’d been itching to tell Jay about the hacks, but Duncan had threatened her job if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. It chafed not to be able to talk to her partner about what had happened.
At least she had good news for him now. Jay had dozed off in the chair next to her, and unable to hold back a smile, she poked him in the arm and waited for him to rouse.
“Hey.” He sat up and gave her a grumpy look, wiping a trickle of drool from his cheek.
“We’re in.”
“We…” His face transformed from post-nap confusion to a brilliant grin as he hopped up and came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the large flat-screen monitor. “You did it!”
“We did it.” This assignment was their trickiest yet. The two of them had spent weeks using a combination of phishing schemes and well planned social engineering ploys to break in.
This euphoria, this high that came from doing the impossible, was the only thing that had kept her going. That and a jumbo bag of Skittles. She could feel the excitement radiating off Jay behind her. No longer tired, her fingers raced across the keyboard as she entered the commands to take her wherever she wanted to go in the system.
Together, she and Jay had managed to get full administrative privileges to the computer network. She might as well have been sitting inside Westgate Defense’s IT department.
She gave a thumbs up to Harry, the graying, overweight computer operator on the other side of the glass wall in front of her. He grinned and returned the gesture.
Everyone at Aggressor called their office the “Fish Bowl” because it was completely encased in glass so they were always on display. Duncan said the transparency of the room encouraged honesty. He loved his hackers—they brought in lucrative contracts—but their backgrounds were often dubious.
Trust came hard.
She understood. Her papá might have started her down this path as a black hat, but she’d chosen the high road.
And now, she was about to ruin Westgate’s network admin’s day. Poor guy. She didn’t envy being on his end of things. Or John the security guard. Her fake boyfriend Brian must have realized the birthday decorations weren’t just a coworker’s prank, because at some point, he’d removed the device she’d planted. But he hadn’t done it in time to stop her and Jay from getting what they needed to infiltrate the servers.
And it wouldn’t matter even if he reported the breach to security. Ultimately, Westgate was paying Aggressor to find their weaknesses. She had a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Jay signed out of his computer and swiveled toward her. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get this one,” he said, his dark eyes shot through with red.
They’d both been pulling crazy hours for this op, while having to put in time on other contracts—like Janus—as well. “Your code was the key,” she said.
He stood and grabbed his messenger bag, slinging it over his head so it crossed his chest. “But you got us access.”
Yeah, she had. Since she signed on at Aggressor three years ago, her skills had grown exponentially. “We make a good team.” She smiled.
He looked away and gave a jerky nod, focused on wrapping a plaid cashmere scarf around his neck. Unlike most hackers she knew, Jay had a keen sense of style. Whereas she usually wore jeans and a T-shirt—the typical geek uniform—he routinely wore slacks and oxford shirts with shiny leather shoes. He donned a long, wool coat, still not meeting her gaze.
“Hey.” What was behind his sudden change in demeanor? “What’s wrong?” He was acting the way she did around Scott Kramer, Aggressor’s newest field operative. Flustered, awkward…except Jay didn’t think of her that way.
Did he?
They’d worked together for years, but he’d never shown a hint of interest in her. Not that she encouraged it from her coworkers. It was hard enough being a woman in a man’s field without being a walking set of boobs. Unless she was going undercover—like this morning—she dressed to play down her figure, and to be comfortable. Her beauty routine started and ended with lip balm.
She studied Jay. As far as she knew, he was still hung up on Priya, even though the woman had moved on to a tech company exec who actually came home at night.
He finally looked up. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just exhausted.” He gave her a weak smile. “We both could use some rest before the briefing that Hollowell’s sure to call.”
Rest? She was amped up right now. And she had work to do. “You go. I’ll start updating the client report while I’m still coherent.”
He buttoned his jacket and looked at her with a slight frown. “Promise me you’ll go home before the meeting.”
She nodded. No, he wasn’t attracted to her, but he cared.
An hour later, the adrenaline—and her bag of candy—were vapor, and she was dragging ass. Finally admitting defeat, she logged off her computer. Donning a thick parka to ward off the colder-than-normal November chill in northern Virginia, she gathered her purse and long-empty lunch tote, and said goodbye to Harry.
Even the fatigue couldn’t dampen her mood. Maybe after the meeting with Duncan, she’d go buy herself something to celebrate. Like a new pair of rock climbing shoes she’d spied in the latest REI catalog.
She waved to the guard in the lobby, swiped out through the security turnstile, and pushed through heavy doors into the frigid pre-dawn air.
Her blue Prius sat by itself under the streetlamp, one of only five cars in the lot. Someone had scrawled “I’m saving water” in the grime on the back window.
“Ha ha,” she muttered, unable to suppress a smile.
As she approached the curb, a man emerged from a dark Jeep. He hunched against the bitter wind, his jacket collar flipped up. She halted and glanced back at the building. From her position, the
guard wasn’t visible.
Her adrenaline spiked as the man’s pace increased, and he headed straight for her. She held her car key between her thumb and index finger and stepped back.
The man looked up. “Hey, Valerie. Are you just now leaving?” he asked, the words punctuated by puffs of his breath, visible under the overhead lights.
Her heart thundered against her ribs even as recognition dawned. Scott Kramer. She put her hand on her chest and blew out a little laugh. “You scared me.”
His handsome face turned serious, and he stopped right in front of her. “Sorry.” The moonlight brought out pale highlights in his dark blond hair and sharpened the angle of his high cheekbones. He chafed his bare hands together. “What are you doing here so late? Or, early.” He smiled.
Now her pulse stumbled for a different reason. Why was it that she—a perfectly intelligent woman—always turned into an imbecile around this man? He wasn’t tall, broad, and intimidating like most of the field operators at Aggressor—he looked like a California surfer with his casually mussed hair, three-day stubble, and ocean-blue eyes—but she’d seen him in a T-shirt. He was lean and muscled, not an ounce of fat on him. Positively ripped.
She cleared her throat. “I was head down in a hacking run. Lost track of time.”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you getting close?” Scott wasn’t privy to the details of her targets—just like she never knew much about the ops teams’ missions—but he knew the type of work she did.
“No, we’re in.” She couldn’t hold back a grin. It was great to have someone else to share her triumph with, though she probably shouldn’t be so happy that one of America’s biggest defense companies was vulnerable. “I was sure we would crack them eventually—no place is one hundred percent secure—but we got lucky.”
“I doubt it was luck.” He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. And maybe he was. Aggressor was small, so they had already run into each other a few times since Duncan showed him around, but they’d rarely talked. She was surprised he even remembered her name considering how many people he must have met in the three days since he joined the company.
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