Covered in Darkness

by Heather Sunseri

Declan had surprised me. At least that’s what I told myself when I wondered what I was feeling. I didn’t care what horses Declan purchased, did I? I had nothing to do with his training stable, and I had no right to have opinions about how he spent his money.

  So why was it bothering me that he purchased a colt for more than six million dollars without discussing it with me? And not just any colt—a colt that would mean something to me. This colt was significant to my memories of working with my grandfather.

  Aidan and Marti were waiting outside. “You two coming?”

  The cocktail party was being held in the Kensington Clubhouse overlooking the racetrack—just a short walk away.

  “We’ll meet you in the clubhouse in just a few minutes,” Declan replied. He touched the small of my back. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I looked up at him. When he held out a hand for me, I slipped mine into his. He pulled me down a sidewalk that led away from the pavilion.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I’d like to show you my favorite spot on the Kensington property.”

  We walked through an archway framed with wisteria, into a courtyard that sat between the sales pavilion and the entrance to the racetrack. The courtyard was enclosed by four walls of boxwoods and was crisscrossed with brick pathways. In the middle of the squares created by the brick were… tombstones.

  “This is a cemetery,” I said.

  “Yes. As I’m sure you know, most owners of horses bury only parts of horses when they die.”

  “That’s right. They bury the head, the heart, and the hooves.”

  “Yes. The head represents the mind or the intelligence of the horse. The heart represents their spirit—or their will to win races, in the case of racehorses. And their hooves represent their speed or agility. Before Kensington was a racetrack, it was a farm that owned a number of thoroughbreds—racehorses and stallions. The original owners of Kensington were always very selective about what horses they purchased, and almost all of their horses did great things. And when those horses died, they buried the whole horse. Not just parts of the horse.”

  We walked hand in hand, silently reading the markers for the horses buried there. After several minutes, I had to speak up.

  “Why did you buy that colt?” I asked. “And don’t give me that bullshit about how you didn’t think I would care about what horses you bought. You specifically asked me to be here tonight. And Aidan was acting strange this morning.”

  He stopped and tugged on my hand, urging me to face him. “I bought him for you, Brooke. He’s in your name.”

  “What?” I pulled my hand away. “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Because I think that horse will do great things. Because it has an incredible pedigree.” Declan smiled. “And because I knew it would carry significant meaning to you.”

  “I was fine with a pair of Jimmy Choos. And the earrings. You didn’t need to buy me a horse.” I turned away from him and wrung my hands. I could feel panic forming.

  “I want you to be a part of my life, Brooke. Every part of my life.”

  When I felt his hand touch my shoulder, I spun around. “But buying me a six-million-dollar horse? Have you lost your mind?”

  “No. I expect him to win, so I consider it an investment.”

  “Declan.” I angled my head. Did he realize how crazy he sounded?

  Apparently not, because next he said, “I didn’t care how much he cost. I knew he would mean something to you, and I wanted you to have him. If you don’t want him, Aidan and I will keep him and train him.”

  “You’re over the top. You know that?”

  He stepped closer to me and brushed his lips across mine. “I’m over the top in love with you, Miss Fairfax.”

  “You are very cheesy,” I laughed against his lips.

  He snaked one hand to the small of my back and another to the back of my neck, forcing me to look deep into his eyes. “Tell me you love me.”

  I studied his eyes. I was so close I could count the gold specks in the dark, smoky blue. The way he looked at me made me feel as if he were stripping me bare right there in the middle of that very special cemetery.

  “I love you,” I said.

  Of course I loved him. That was not my problem.

  He crushed his lips to mine. The heat from the kiss was nearly enough to undo me as it mixed with the late summer night air.

  When he released me, I looked into his eyes again. “Thank you for the colt.”

  He laughed, then leaned his forehead against mine. “You’re welcome. How about we celebrate with a cold glass of champagne?”

  I felt a pang of guilt at the thought of sipping cold sparkling wine—in celebration of the extravagant purchase of a racehorse, no less—while hundreds of thousands of Louisville’s residents baked through another night of darkness. But I had to tell myself that the situation was already being handled in the most aggressive manner possible.

  “Lead the way.”

  Marti was enjoying a dry martini and talking to a woman wearing a sleeveless hot pink silk dress and drinking a fruity cocktail of the same color. I could tell the woman was saying her goodbyes to Marti, so I slowed and sipped my glass of champagne until the woman departed.

  “Oh my jeez,” Marti said when the woman was gone. “That was Mrs. Skip Longbottom. I never actually learned her first name. She apparently likes to be known as Mrs. Rich Husband.”

  “Really?” I laughed. “She introduced herself as Mrs. Skip Longbottom?”

  Marti nodded, then laughed so loud a group of people behind her looked our way.

  “I do not belong in this scene,” Marti said.

  “What do you mean? These people have nothing on you.”

  “Oh, I know. That wasn’t me feeling inferior. I could be married to Mr. Declan O’Roark, and still, I would never introduce myself as Mrs. Rich Husband.”

  I laughed again. “Surely not everyone here is like that woman.”

  We turned and began people-watching.

  Marti pointed a long finger across the room. “See Mrs. Lime Green Sparkles over there?”

  I almost spit out my champagne when I spotted the woman wearing bright green sequins. She stood out as much as Mrs. Skip Longbottom in her hot pink. Even Marti’s red dress was tame in comparison.

  “I see her,” I said, smiling.

  “Now look down to the matching bag hanging from her forearm.”

  As my gaze trailed down to the bag, out popped the head of a Chihuahua.

  I jumped at the sight, and Marti laughed.

  “What is wrong with people?” I asked. “Why would she bring her pocket dog to a party?”

  Aidan and Declan approached us with hesitant looks.

  “What are you two up to?” Aidan asked.

  “Just enjoying the view,” Marti said. She waggled her eyes at Aidan.

  I slapped a hand at Marti. “Stop it. You’re totally making me uncomfortable.”

  “Well, how about the four of us get a late dinner?” Aidan suggested. “I think the Black Tulip will serve us this late if I ask nicely.”

  Declan took a drink of water. It was rare for him not to have a single alcoholic beverage at one of these events. He tipped his glass and clinked it against my champagne flute. “I think Aidan here wishes to pitch you on training your new horse.”

  “Your horse?” Marti said, her eyes wide.

  “Apparently.” I sipped my drink again.

  I glanced at Aidan, who was looking at me expectantly. “I think—” I began, but my phone buzzed in the pocket of my dress, cutting me off. I lifted a finger. “Let’s postpone that thought for one minute.”

  I turned away from the room and looked out over the racetrack as I answered. “Hi, Ty.”

  “Louisville’s power is finally coming back. Parts of downtown are already online, as is the area east, including the St. Matthews area. The rest should be up overnight. Sam is already working on getting onto LP’s server.”

  �
�I’ll be there within the hour. Call me if anything happens before then.” I hung up and faced Declan. “Louisville’s electricity is coming back online. I need to call the governor and get to the fusion center.”

  “Let’s go then,” Declan said.

  I turned to Aidan. “Rain check on dinner? And we’ll definitely talk about my new colt. I’m thinking it might be fun to be your boss.”

  As I walked away, I wondered if Aidan knew I was kidding. I kind of hoped not.

  Chapter 13

  When I entered the fusion center, Sam was typing at lightning speed at one of the workstations. Words, numbers, and code rolled past on three computer screens. Ty stood behind her, watching. Jude and Carson were hard at work at neighboring workstations. Alli stood to one side watching the news.

  I sidled up beside him and nodded toward Sam. “What’s she doing?”

  But it wasn’t Ty who answered, it was Sam. “I’m inserting code into Louisville Power’s mainframe. It’ll prevent anyone from deleting files from the server while I search for what we need.”

  “So their computers are back online?”

  “Just,” Ty said. “You look pretty,” he added. “Fun time at Kensington?”

  “Thank you.” I glanced down at my dress. “And yes.”

  “I called Mr. Saltzman,” Sam said.

  Jude glanced over at me. “And guess who was told she wasn’t needed in the office?”

  “They told you not to come in?” I asked Sam.

  “Said it ‘wasn’t necessary.’ That IT had it all under control.” She tapped a final key on the keyboard with a bit of dramatic flair. “Okay, that’s done. See if IT can get past that. Now to search for that email about open enrollment.”

  Across the room on one of the televisions, Blake Saltzman’s face appeared. “Alli,” I said, “can you turn the volume up on the top television, please?”

  “Are you saying that Kentucky Senator Thad Reiner is lying?” a news reporter was asking Blake.

  “Wait. What has Reiner been saying?” I asked Ty. I was already starting to feel I’d made a mistake by escaping for a few hours.

  “Nothing that he didn’t tell us when he came here yesterday. Not that I’ve heard, anyway.”

  “Reiner has been screaming about the weakness of our grid for years,” Carson said. “This blackout has just fed his rhetoric.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Blake told the reporter on screen. “I’m simply saying that the senator is misinformed. As is our state’s director of Homeland Security.”

  “How did I get brought into this?” I asked.

  Ty shrugged.

  Blake squared her shoulders. “A powerful storm took out two major substations, causing all of our customers to lose power. We worked diligently for nearly forty-eight hours in order to restore electricity to more than ninety percent of our customers. The remaining ten percent will have power by morning.”

  “Senator Reiner was quite adamant that the storm had nothing to do with the power outage,” the reporter pressed. “He also claims that the director of Kentucky’s Office for Homeland Security plans to investigate his claim. Have you heard from Director Fairfax on this matter?”

  Blake offered a condescending grin. “I have the utmost respect for Senator Reiner and Director Fairfax. But they’re both politicians.”

  “That sure sounded like an insult tucked neatly into a compliment,” I said.

  “The backhanded compliment is most definitely her specialty,” Sam said.

  Blake continued. “The director and the senator have no idea of the lengths to which Louisville Power has gone to ensure the safety of Kentuckians throughout this unfortunate situation. And if Director Fairfax had questions for me, perhaps she should have taken my phone call this evening instead of enjoying herself at the Kensington yearling sales.”

  I could feel Jude’s and Carson’s eyes drift my way.

  Ty turned to me.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. I never received a call from that woman. How was my personal whereabouts brought into this, anyway?”

  “So,” the reporter said, “Louisville Power maintains that the power outage was due solely to the storms.”

  Blake looked directly into the camera again. “Kentucky’s power outage was nothing more than a highly unlikely sequence of events—the direct result of storm damage—that couldn’t be replicated in a hundred years. We at Louisville Power are thankful we were able to get power restored as quickly as we did. We’re grateful that we have so many dedicated employees looking after the citizens of Kentucky.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Saltzman,” the reporter said. He turned to the camera as they cut Blake from the shot. “In other top news, Kensington Race Track saw record prices at this evening’s session of the September yearling sales, including a colt purchased by Irish billionaire Declan O’Roark for six point one million dollars. He can be seen here with Miss Brooke Fairfax, director of Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security.”

  They flashed a picture of Declan and me on the screen.

  “Jeffrey, it seems Blake Saltzman was right about Kentucky’s director of Homeland Security. Seems she was enjoying another Kentucky event far away from the blackout.”

  “A lot going on in the commonwealth tonight,” said Jeffrey, the anchor at the news desk. “Now let’s turn to tonight’s financial news with—”

  “Turn it off, Alli,” I said.

  “It was a pretty picture of you,” Ty said.

  I eyed him sideways.

  “I think I’ve found something,” Sam announced.

  Jude looked up from his computer screen. Ty and I leaned in.

  Sam pointed to the screen on her left. “This is the email. It was sent to over a hundred people inside Louisville Power.” She scrolled down so that we could see the entire email.

  “It’s got a typical company signature at the bottom,” I noted.

  “Yes. Myra McCreary is, in fact, the company contact for employee benefits, including health insurance.” Sam clicked on the email address. “But if you look closely, instead of the email coming from Myra with a typical Louisville Power email address, Myra’s name has an extra symbol tucked into the address. We don’t use that kind of symbol in any of our email addresses.”

  “You probably wouldn’t notice that if you weren’t looking for it,” Ty said.

  “Exactly. No one looks that closely at a sender’s email address. They see the name and the signature, and assume it’s legit. We’re told over and over again these days not to open links from sources we don’t recognize, but no one ever warns employees about opening links from trusted sources.”

  “Then,” Sam continued, “when employees open the spreadsheet linked in the email—and twenty-three people did exactly that—it opened this.” She pointed at her second screen, where a spreadsheet showed a list of what looked like various healthcare plans, with variations depending on whether the participant was married, single, with or without dependents, et cetera. At the top of the spreadsheet was a pop-up box asking the user to enable macros so he or she could get customized info on plan options.

  “What happened when they enabled the macros?” Carson asked.

  Alli had wandered closer as well.

  “Four users enabled the macros,” Sam said, “and when they did, malicious software was downloaded into Louisville Power’s computer system—opening a backdoor that gave hackers full access to the company’s computers.”

  “What do you mean, full access?” Carson asked.

  “I mean full access.” She pointed to the third monitor, which showed code. “The hackers were able to copy all the keystrokes made by any employee.”

  “And not just the computers of employees who downloaded the malware, I presume,” Carson said.

  “No,” Ty said. “Once malware is downloaded undetected to one computer attached to a network of computers, it can propagate throughout the network within seconds, minutes at most.�
�

  “He’s right,” Sam said. “The hackers would have soon gained possession of login information, passwords, whatever anyone typed in. Which means they gained the ability to take over the entire system, whenever they wanted.”

  “Take over the system?” I asked. “As in…”

  “Yes. The hackers could have turned off the power. It’s a simple matter of manually taking the substations offline.”

  “Can you prove the hackers did this?” Carson asked.

  “I already have.” With a few clicks, the computer screens changed. “This is a log of the computer activity as the storms hit. All major substations run by Louisville Power went down at exactly 10:53 p.m. A storm couldn’t take out that many substations at one time unless lightning struck several critical places at exactly the same time. The odds against that are astronomical.”

  Everyone was silent for several beats, processing the information Sam had uncovered.

  Finally, I said, “What do you consider your job status with Louisville Power to be?”

  “Pretty sure I don’t have one any longer.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m still building my team here—and I would love to make a place for you here. I know you worked critical infrastructure before…” Carson straightened. “Which is Carson’s position,” I added quickly, nodding reassurance to him. “But I’m not as concerned about titles and labels as I am about having intelligent analysts who have a head for cyber security, which happens to be our biggest threat these days. Would you consider working for me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven. “It’s late, and I know you’ve all missed a good bit of sleep the last two nights. Now that the power’s back up, I suggest you all go home and get some. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Who can be here?”

  Everyone raised their hands.

  “I’d like to go to church,” Alli said, “but I can be here by ten thirty.”

  “That would be fine, thank you. I’ll have Marti bring breakfast for everyone.”

  That got some smiles.

  “Jude, I want you and Sam to work on finding out who wrote that malware as soon as you’ve gotten sleep. And Carson, I also want you to touch base with police, fire, hospitals, and the Kentucky National Guard. Keep me updated.”