Breaking His Code (Away From Keyboard Book 1)

by Patricia D. Eddy

  I should tell him the truth. Should tell him how every night I go home and have to talk myself out of reaching for the bourbon to quiet my demons. How I miss West. How I both dread going to Coana and wish I could spend every minute here because I hate being alone in a condo that still smells vaguely of chocolate.

  Instead, I force a half-smile. Avoidance, on sale now. Fifty percent off with a bonus free gift of cowardice. If I stick my head in the sand, the rest of the world will go away, right? He peers down at me, concern drawing a single line between his brows. Bags bruise the pale skin under his eyes.

  My own issues beat a hasty retreat in the face of a man who might not see next month. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you. Sit down. What did the doctor say?”

  A weary groan escapes as he settles into the chair next to mine. “Which one? I’ve got doctor’s appointments every day. MRIs, CAT scans, therapy—I might as well move in to Harborview Medical Center now. I hear the rent’s somewhere north of outrageous, though.”

  I struggle not to roll my eyes or berate him for his humor. “What do you need for post-op care?”

  “My brother will come up if I make it through the surgery.” He stares at his hands clasped around the coffee cup in his lap. “I told him not to book anything until they know. He’s got two kids, his wife works full time…he doesn’t need to waste his vacation unless there’s a good chance I’m going to be…me at the end of this whole thing.”

  “I’ll be there for the surgery. For as long as you need me.”

  Shock paints his drawn features with a pinkish hue, and he shakes his head. “Don’t.”

  “Why the hell not?” I barely recognize my own voice, indignation, worry, and desperation mixing to thicken my words. “You’re my only family, Rolls. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  His eyes water, and damn if a tear doesn’t race down his stubbled cheek. We both look away, unwilling to own up to our own weaknesses, but I reach out and squeeze his hand, and he holds on for a few seconds before he clears his throat and pulls away.

  Glancing down at his watch, he scowls. “LaCosta’s waiting for me. We’re good to go, right?”

  For the first time in more than a week, my response doesn’t come full of wishful thinking. “Oversight is ready. The network resources are still a little higher than I’d like, but nothing the system can’t handle. I think I’ve finally eliminated the last of the corrupted code. As of ten minutes ago, the entire system’s operational.”

  Relief lightens his expression, and a genuine smile —one I haven’t witnessed in more than ten years—deepens the lines around his eyes. I can still see him as he was in Afghanistan. Thirty-eight and full of fire, he didn’t let anyone or anything stand in his way. Now, the reality of his years and his illness sinks in, and I can’t ignore the gray mixed in with the sandy brown at his temples or the tremble in his arms as he pushes to his feet.

  “Great. Hang out until I’m done meeting with him then have a drink with me?”

  New Royce isn’t doing much for my equilibrium, despite how much I wanted my friend back. I twist my messy curls into a bun so I can secure them away from my face, giving me a moment to process this shift. I’ve been looking forward to my recliner and a couple of episodes of Supernatural all day, but I can’t say no. Not when I might not have many more chances.

  “Sure. Just one, though. I haven’t managed to get to bed before 2:00 a.m. all week, and I’m wiped.”

  “Just one.” He laughs, as if the idea of us stopping at a single drink is the best joke he’s heard all day, and then yanks open the door. As I return my attention to the screens showing the feeds from our cameras, my heart stops.

  The hallway outside the server room is empty, yet I know Royce is only steps away from the door. Five seconds. Seven. Ten. Why the hell don’t I see him on screen? At twelve seconds, Royce emerges.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Pushing to my feet, I groan as my hip screams a sharp protest. Ignoring the throbbing pain, I throw open the door and try for a pathetic run, but the elevator doors shut before I can get more than a few feet down the hall.

  I try to call, and when I’m shuttled off to his voice mail, I send him an emergency text, then head back to the server room. Once there, I dig into my bag of tricks—shallow as it is—to try to trace the traffic from Oversight to the internet. That’s next-level-hacker shit, though, and all I can tell is that a highly compressed data stream is leaving the hotel for parts unknown. “Son of a bitch. What the fuck is going on?”

  Running system diagnostics doesn’t return anything useful. “Dammit. Why won’t you talk to me?” Oversight hums along, oblivious to my pleas, and I’m about to try blatant threats when Royce shoves the door open hard enough to rattle the server racks. “What’s wrong?”

  My heart pounds as I meet his gaze. “Someone’s sending Oversight’s data outside the hotel. They might be watching our every move.”

  What little color he has drains, and he takes my arm to help me up. “We’ve got to tell LaCosta. Now.”

  “Not until I shut the system down.”

  As I go through the controlled shutdown procedure, Royce’s expression mirrors my hopelessness. All the crap that I’ve dealt with the past two weeks comes down to this. The network traffic spikes make perfect sense now. All those extra lines of code, every single corrupted function.

  “How could this happen?” He gives voice to the question on my lips, and I shake my head.

  “I don’t know, but this isn’t just corrupted code, Royce. This is sabotage.”

  “Sit,” Phillip says with a smile. “How soon can you turn on Oversight?”

  With a quick glance at Royce, I fold my hands in my lap to stop fidgeting. “We can’t.” I explain what’s happening—at least what I understand of it—as Phillip’s face pales.

  “C-can you tell who did this? Where the data’s…um…going?”

  If the man thinks much harder, I’ll hear the wheels turning. “No. I tried a quick packet trace, but someone sophisticated enough to hack my code wouldn’t leave their data unencrypted. They’re probably bouncing the signal to hell and back with two dozen different points in between. I’m good at what I do, Phillip, but this is next level shi—err, stuff. You’d need a true hacker or maybe the NSA.

  “What I can do,” I shift slightly to relieve a deep ache in my hip, “is pull every programmer we have off their other assignments and analyze the code line by line. We’ll lock these bastards out for good before we turn Oversight on.”

  When I chance a quick look at Royce, he offers me an almost imperceptible nod of approval as he hands me his iPad. I’m not ready. Not like this. Not…without knowing if he’ll be around to see this job to its conclusion.

  He saves me from my momentary panic. “You’ll have to keep your old system running a little longer. Cam, how long do you need?”

  “Five d-days should do it, but I’d like fourteen to be safe.” Thankful he has my back, yet terrified that Royce is going to be in a hospital bed for a large portion of this time, I try to force some confidence into my voice. “I’ve been chasing these hackers for two weeks now, I just didn’t know it. But that means I have their signature—code is a lot like handwriting in some ways. My team can stop them.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening again,” Phillip mutters, half to himself. He drops his head into his hands and stares down at his desk blotter.

  “Again?” Royce leans forward, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk. “What the hell do you mean ‘again’?”

  Phillip sighs. “Six months ago, the Seattle PD ran a major drug sting across all of the downtown hotels. Apex Hotel—right across the street—yielded the most arrests. They nabbed three young men in business suites carrying suitcases full of heroin and cocaine.”

  “In downtown Seattle?” I can’t help the shock in my voice.

  “Hotels are the perfect places to sell drugs,” Phillip explains. “All the guests in and out? No one’s going to notice a well
-dressed man or woman carrying a suitcase or duffel bag. The police tried to arrest a suspect here, but he got off.” Frustration etches deep lines in Phillip’s face, and I feel for the man. “The kid managed to dump the drugs in a trash can before the police arrested him, and when they scanned the security camera footage, they discovered that our cameras didn’t capture a single image of him past the main lobby. He headed for the back of the hotel, but as soon as he moved into the hall leading to the pool, the system lost him.”

  “You don’t have that many blind spots.” Understanding washes over me, and I try not lose my temper in front of the client. “Someone tampered with the old system too, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know. Or didn’t. Not until just now. The system’s buggy. Always has been. Unexplained outages every few weeks, flickering images, the occasional alarm going off for no reason. My facilities manager installed a relay switch on a timer to cycle the power every day. That helped until last year. Around 6:00 p.m. most days, the cameras blink. Just for a minute or two.”

  “What did your facilities manager say?” If his clipped tone is any indicator, Royce is as angry as I am. “And what about the guys who installed your current system?”

  “Kyle was terminated right after the raid. He disappeared on a bender for two days. Brickyard Security claimed their system was flawless and our camera problem was operator error. That’s when I called you.”

  Puzzle pieces are rotating and snapping into place inside my head. Relays, the non-standard wiring, the hassles installing the card reader module and HVAC controls…I’m so caught up in my own thoughts, I must not hear Royce calling my name, because he touches my arm, then asks if I’m all right.

  “I’ve got to get back to the office—and I need Lucas to come with me. I can’t explain anymore right now, but give me a couple of hours and I’ll have some answers for you.”

  “Go,” Royce says with a terse nod. “I’ll meet you back there in an hour.”

  16

  CAM

  O n the nineteenth floor, I freeze outside the doors to the electrical closet. The seconds tick by, turning a brief pause into an awkward “what the hell are you doing?” interlude. In the end, fate takes over. One of the cabling crew—Zach, I think—bursts out of the room and almost runs me down. “Sorry, ma’am,” he mutters as he hurries down the hall.

  Lucas, stooped on the floor with a cable cutter in his hands, glances up, and his half-grin fades.

  “Can I talk to you?” I can’t force my voice much above a whisper.

  “You’re the boss.” With a shrug and those three words, he cuts me deep, and I try not to let the bleeding show.

  I step into the room and glance around. The old cameras never covered this room, and the new camera is clutched in Lucas’s hand. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “On twenty. This is the last camera on this floor.” He sets the tiny device on a cart and then shoves his hands into his pockets. “What do you want? If I don’t get distracted, I can finish this job today and be done with Seattle.”

  I reach for his arm, but he pulls away. “Please. I’m an ass. I…I’m sorry. I never meant to shut you out. I just…don’t know how to need anyone.”

  “You don’t want to need anyone, honey. Somehow you got the idea that means you’re strong. That’s not what strength is. Strength is asking for help when you’re in over your head. You keep shutting people out, you’re going to end up alone.”

  “I know.” I refuse to let myself look away from his disapproving gaze, even though I feel about an inch tall right now. “Did you know Royce was sick?”

  “Yes.” Lucas’s expression softens. “I swear, the two of you are so alike it’s creepy. Both too proud and stubborn to reach out. I went to him when you started staying up all night debugging and refused my help. We got to talking. He didn’t want to die without knowing you’d be okay, but he was too scared to approach you. If you’d blown him off, I think it would have broken him.”

  Despite the repairs Royce and I have made to our friendship the past few days, Lucas’s words sting, and I blink back tears. “I got so caught up in trying to fix Oversight, I couldn’t see my way clear. Please, Lucas. Give me another chance. I need you with me at Emerald City. I’m not Wonder Woman.”

  “No. But you could pull off the costume.” He tries for a grin and I can’t help my half-laugh/half-sob. As he drapes his arm over my shoulder and pulls me in for a quick hug, his chest heaves. “I can’t stay. I’ll never work anywhere else in this town. TechLock all but confirmed that.”

  “Work with me.” Drawing back, I clutch his forearms. “Please. If I’m going to run Emerald City for a few months, I need the best programmer around handling ZoomWare. I saw some of the subroutines you wrote for the biometrics and card control modules. They were fucking brilliant. The whole HVAC module was pure genius.”

  “I’ll cop to the HVAC and biometrics work, but I didn’t write anything for card control.”

  Fuck. The puzzle in my head coalesces as the missing piece lands right in front of me. “That’s how they got in.”

  “What?” He cocks his head. “Who?”

  “All the problems with Oversight the past few weeks? Someone hacked her, and I think I just figured out how they did it.” Praying harder than I’ve prayed in a long time, I hold out my hand. “Help me fix her.”

  Indecision holds him still as he searches my gaze. “If I do, we’re a team. No more Wonder Woman shit.”

  “The only Wonder Woman shit you’ll see is her logo on my coffee mug.”

  As Lucas shakes my hand, a small piece of my world rights itself once more. My momentary jubilation fades as my thoughts travel unbidden to West. If only righting that ship were this simple.

  Two hours later, Royce carries boxes of pizza into the conference room while I hook my laptop up to the projection screen. Orion and Abby huddle around Lucas as he flags line after line of code we need to strip out of the card control module.

  “How do you see all that, man?” Orion says as Lucas highlights a whole function that needs to go.

  “Easy.” He glances up at me and winks. “Cam’s got a signature. You work with someone long enough, you learn their tells.”

  “Which is why I never play poker with him,” I add as I snag a slice of pepperoni.

  Orion rubs his bald head. “Yeah, but you said you never worked on this module. I don’t see any difference between those two functions.”

  As Lucas throws my code and the hacker’s side-by-side and launches into a detailed comparison, Royce offers me a cold beer. “How are we looking?”

  “Better than I expected. With their help, Oversight’s code could be pristine by tomorrow. Then we just need to figure out how to keep her that way.” The crisp lager soothes my nerves, though despite my outward confidence, I have no idea how the hacker accessed the code in the first place.

  “Hey, Lucas?” Al leans against the conference room door jamb, his Mariner’s ball cap half-crushed in his hands. “What’s the schedule for tomorrow?”

  Lucas pushes back from the table and motions for me and Al to follow him out of the conference room. I give him a subtle nod when he looks to me for approval and let him lead—both physically and professionally.

  “Cam found a glitch in Oversight. Until we fix the code, she needs me here. Can you direct the crew tomorrow on twenty and the rooftop deck?”

  “Yeah.” Al runs his fingers through his short-cropped hair, and a tattoo peeks out from his sleeve.

  “I didn’t know you’d served.” I shrug off my sweater and show him my unit’s tattoo. “What’d you do?”

  “Radar. Not something I like to talk about.” He presses his lips together, tugs his sleeve down, then glances back into the conference room. “That must be some epic glitch.”

  “You have no idea.” I rub the back of my neck. “We’re damn lucky the system didn’t go live like this. Once we’re done, though, no one will ever touch her again.”

  A little pas
t ten, I interrupt everyone. “Go home. We can finish cleaning up the code tomorrow. Show up with any and all ideas to make sure whoever fucked with Oversight can’t touch her again.”

  Abby, Orion, and Royce take off, but Lucas hoofs the pizza boxes and beer bottles out to the dumpster while I copy all of Oversight’s code onto an encrypted flash drive, then secure the drive in the office safe.

  Picking up my laptop bag, I meet his gaze. “Have a drink with me?” I don’t want to go home, and while we’re solid enough for him to help debug Oversight, I don’t yet know if he’ll stay once the project is done. He hasn’t been his usual animated self this evening, and I’m worried about him.

  We end up at ZigZag, one of the quieter—and better—bars in the city. Over glasses of Irish whiskey, we try to figure out how the hacker gained access to Oversight in the first place.

  “LaCosta sent all of the old system’s camera footage from the past week to SPD this afternoon. The hacker had to access Oversight from Coana’s server room. We’ve had our card reader module on that door all week, though, and the only people swiping in and out were you and me, Coana’s head of security, their IT manager, and Royce.”

  Lucas sits back in his chair, the glass of whiskey cupped in his large hands. “What do you know about the guys Al brought in to help with the cabling?”

  The whiskey warms me, and I roll my head from side-to-side. “Nothing. Royce handled all of that. Why?”

  After a sigh, Lucas drains his glass, then motions to the server for another round. “I was pretty messed up when I got kicked out of the army. My mama couldn’t work anymore, and I needed to make some fast cash to pay for her health insurance. When I fell in with the Guild Crew down in Los Angeles, all my money woes disappeared. They used the hotels, too.”