Exploited (Zero Day #1)

by A. Meredith Walters

  “Hi, Mason. I’m Hannah Whelan. Nice to meet you.”

  The line inched forward. I didn’t need to glance at the time on my phone to know I was going to be late for work.

  “Welcome to Nan’s. Our special this morning is a caramel latte with your choice of pastry,” the girl behind the counter said, not making eye contact with Mason.

  I put my hand on his arm again. I was being forward. It was entirely out of character. “Let me get your order. Coffee, bagel, whatever. It’s on me. It’s the least I can do for helping me reload the Tardis.”

  Mason chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Hannah, are you for real? You like the Dandy Warhols and you make funny Doctor Who references? I may take you home and never let you leave,” he teased.

  He said it roughly. Possessively. We’d only just met and he felt it.

  I did too.

  I dropped my voice to a whisper and leaned close, as if telling him a secret. A very important secret. “Wait until you see my collection of Lord of the Rings figurines. You’ll lose your mind.”

  “Can I take your order, please?” the barista asked again, clearly not appreciating our witty banter.

  “Oh, sorry. I’ll have the special and he’ll have—” I glanced up at my new friend.

  “Coffee. Black,” he told the girl.

  I made a face. “Black coffee? Really? I offer to buy you whatever you want and you get black coffee?”

  Mason shrugged. “I’m a man of simple tastes.”

  We moved off to the side to wait for our orders. It didn’t take long, unfortunately. Before I could say much else, the sour-faced barista handed us our coffees and took my money.

  We walked outside together, our conversation light. Observations about the unnaturally long winter. Random comments regarding the traffic.

  “It looks pretty bad out there this morning. I heard there’s a nasty accident causing gridlock,” Mason stated as we lingered on the sidewalk.

  “Do you have far to go?” I asked him.

  “I work in the city,” he responded vaguely.

  “Oh. In the city,” I repeated.

  Mason cleared his throat and took a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, I just moved here from DC a few weeks ago. I was transferred. Anyway, I should probably get going.”

  I wouldn’t act disappointed. Even though I was. “Oh, me too. I’m already late.” I nodded my head toward his coffee cup. “Enjoy your coffee. If you can enjoy something with no flavor,” I said with a laugh.

  It had been a long time since I’d chitchatted. I thought I was doing a good job. I couldn’t really tell. Mason hadn’t made some ridiculous excuse to leave yet, so things must be going well.

  Mason grinned. “I hope we do this again.”

  I widened my eyes fractionally. “What? Dump my stuff on the floor and act like an idiot?”

  Mason snorted. “No, the talking. And the coffee. But maybe for longer next time.”

  Be cool. He likes indie bands and Doctor Who jokes; he doesn’t want needy and overly enthusiastic.

  “Sure. If I see you around,” I replied offhandedly. But my smile was genuine. I meant it too.

  “I usually stop in on my way to the office. This time every day,” Mason offered.

  I tingled. But I somehow stayed cool. Years and years of not feeling much made it easy to play the game.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Mason ran his thumb along the curve of the to-go cup, licking his lips, which were probably dry. He was a little bit nervous. Just like me. It made me feel less awkward.

  “I’m trying to tell you that I’d like to see you again, Hannah Whelan. And that maybe I can buy you coffee tomorrow morning.” His eyes met mine and we were both smiling.

  “That would be nice, Mason.” I said his name softly. Deliberately.

  I turned on my heel and walked away, not allowing myself to stay any longer.

  I knew when it was time to run.

  Chapter 2

  Hannah

  I was almost thirty minutes late by the time I walked into Holt IT Solutions. Stan, the security guard who spent his days loitering in the lobby, barely looked up when I arrived.

  Like I said, I did well fading into the background.

  I slipped into the elevator and pushed the button for the fifth floor. I was the only one inside. Everyone was already at their respective desks, going about their respective days.

  When the doors finally opened on my floor, I got out and hurried to my desk. I kept my head down, my purse tucked against my side. No one looked up as I passed.

  I sat down in my cubicle and nodded my head in greeting to Carl, the middle-aged man in the cubicle beside me. He didn’t acknowledge me. He never did. I didn’t take it personally. It never bothered me that he didn’t see me. I wasn’t someone he would pay much attention to.

  I doubted he even remembered my name. I had been working there as an IT consultant for almost five years and I had barely shared a handful of words with most of the people around me.

  They knew nothing about me.

  But I knew everything about them.

  I glanced at Carl, his head propped up by his hand, idly clicking his mouse as he stared blankly at his computer screen.

  I knew he wasn’t working but instead looking up gym memberships and weight-loss supplements. This was after he had checked his social media accounts, hoping someone had commented on the picture he took of his dinner last night, just so he could feel as if someone gave a shit.

  Dark circles underneath his eyes indicated he had gotten very little sleep the night before. Poor Carl had just gotten divorced. I also knew that the ex-wife had taken him for everything. The house. The car. Even the dog. He had been exchanging heated emails with his ex-wife for months. They fluctuated between nasty and pleading.

  I felt sorry for the guy. Even if we had never said more than hello to each other.

  I turned on my computer and scanned the room. Everyone was in their own little world. It was easy to disappear in a place like this.

  These people around me never thought to ask about what I had watched on TV last night or whether I had seen the new action flick that had just been released in theaters. I didn’t gossip about my boss’s pectoral implants or Sylvia in marketing’s affair with Gabe Johnston, the head of sales.

  They didn’t talk to me. I didn’t talk to them.

  But I knew their secrets.

  I kept them to myself.

  It felt good to hold on to these tiny pieces that no one wanted anyone else to know. Even if I never did anything with them, I still knew.

  And they had no idea.

  Yeah, that sounded like a power trip. Maybe it was. But honestly, I didn’t care.

  “There you are. You should have been here at nine. What took you so long?” The voice was low and raspy and a little on the excited side. I didn’t have to look up to recognize who it was. I knew only one person who sounded as if they’d smoked three packs of Winstons for the last twenty years when actually they were barely out of college.

  His pushiness should have bugged me, but it didn’t. He wasn’t being rude. Or territorial. Kyle was someone who liked routine, who needed it to function, so I didn’t get pissed at his demand for answers that he should have known I’d never give.

  “I didn’t know you were keeping track of my schedule, Kyle,” I remarked drily, opening my work email.

  New messages popped up. One at the top caught my attention. “Audit” was in the subject line. It was marked urgent and appeared to be from the big boss man. Though the address was wrong. Warning bells started to go off.

  My suspicions were piqued. But so was my curiosity.

  I opened it….

  Suddenly my screen froze. I clicked my mouse a few times but nothing happened.

  I chuckled humorlessly at the amateur malware.

  “Wait for it,” Kyle exclaimed with barely concealed glee.

  I let out a long-su
ffering sigh. “I should have known this low-tech shit was you,” I muttered, annoyed with myself for falling for the phishing game Kyle had so childishly set up.

  Kyle pulled an empty desk chair up beside me and leaned forward. “Don’t be such a killjoy. Just watch.”

  “Kyle, I’ve got a lot to do—”

  “Three more seconds. One. Two. Three.”

  Suddenly my screen filled with over a hundred emoji poos. They popped up in droves, their smiling brown faces laughing at me.

  “Seriously?” I shook my head. “Am I the only lucky one this morning, or did you share this with everyone?” I narrowed my eyes at the scrawny kid beside me.

  As if on cue, at least a dozen voices could be heard around the room.

  “What the hell?” I heard someone exclaim.

  “Why is there poo on my computer?” I heard Carl demand from his cubicle beside me.

  Kyle practically squealed in excitement. I glanced at Carl’s computer and saw that his screen too was taken over by cute-faced excrement.

  “They’re all like that! Or at least anyone stupid enough to open that email. Social engineering, baby!” Kyle laughed and then covered his mouth with his hand. I rolled my eyes and, with a few clicks of my mouse, disabled his low-level hack.

  I leaned over Carl’s desk, hesitating before taking his mouse. “May I?”

  Carl startled at my having addressed him directly. He blinked rapidly, staring at my hand, poised to take his mouse.

  “Uh. Yeah. Um, s-sure,” he stuttered.

  With a few clicks, I cleared his computer, the emojis vanishing as if they were never there. “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, not bothering to answer him.

  “Uh, thanks, uh…” He pushed his glasses up his nose and flushed in embarrassment. I knew he was struggling to remember my name.

  I didn’t help him out, our brief interaction now officially over. I rolled back over to my own desk and opened my email again.

  “Aw, Han, you’re no fun,” Kyle complained as I scrolled through my legitimate messages.

  I flicked Kyle’s arm and pursed my lips. “Really? You couldn’t think of anything better to do with your time than shit-blasting everyone when they opened an email?”

  “Come on, it was pretty funny.” He smirked, though his enthusiasm was dampened by my lack of praise.

  “Yeah, if you’re five.” Kyle’s face dropped and I started to feel bad. Reprimanding him was like kicking a puppy: no fun unless you were an outright sadist.

  “But I guess it was sort of funny,” I conceded, and I couldn’t help but smile. Kyle’s hacker tricks, while obnoxious in a teenage-boy-hanging-out-in-his-mom’s-basement kind of way, still amused me. Mostly because he thought he was so badass about it. I wasn’t sure what was particularly edgy about having googly-eyed graphics bounce around a screen.

  “You’d better watch yourself, though. You could get fired for this shit,” I reminded him and paused. Kyle’s lips started to twitch. I struggled to keep a straight face. Then we both burst out laughing at my unintended pun.

  People looked at us, clearly wondering what we found so funny, so I quickly suppressed my amusement and swatted his arm again.

  “Seriously, though, Kyle. Watch yourself. It would be easy to trace that email to you.”

  Kyle’s smirk faded a bit before he rolled his eyes with forced nonchalance.

  “I used a VPN and an onion router to set up an anonymous email account. I doubt anyone could trace it to me. Even you.” Kyle grinned, obviously feeling a bit more confident.

  I snorted, not wanting to burst his bubble. I knew how to find what I needed. Even on the supposedly anonymous Tor network. But Kyle didn’t need to know how deep I could dig.

  “Besides,” Kyle went on, “it’s not like Chuck could log in to his email without someone helping him. There’s no way he’ll figure out it’s me.”

  On that front he was right. Our boss, Chuck Bennett, couldn’t navigate his way out of a paper bag, let alone a computer, making his position as director of operations at an IT company a big fat joke. But Chuck the ignoramus wasn’t the one Kyle had to worry about.

  “It’s not Chuck who does the looking; remember that. Not everyone is as stupid as you like to think they are,” I said, giving him a sideways glance.

  He didn’t have anything to say to that, because he knew I was right.

  This wasn’t the first trick my geek buddy had pulled in the office. They were minute annoyances that I took little notice of, but they drove Chuck crazy. He had gone on a total witch hunt last month after Kyle had performed a basic DDoS attack on our company website, replacing the Holt IT Solutions logo with a picture of a dog licking its ass.

  Chuck had ordered my department to poke into emails and personal files on all workstations looking for the culprit.

  Kyle was lucky that I had been the one tasked with sweeping his laptop. He hadn’t been particularly smart in covering his tracks, and I had gotten rid of at least a dozen scripts he had cobbled together for his kiddie hacker crimes.

  I hadn’t wanted Kyle to get into trouble. He was a good guy. At only twenty-two he was decent at coding, which was what he was paid to do. We had bonded over our mutual antisocial tendencies. We were an oxymoron. Two people who spent most of our lives avoiding other people had somehow formed a semblance of friendship.

  Kyle Wright was one of the few people I bothered with at all. And that was mostly because he wouldn’t let me ignore him.

  Sometime last year he had decided to go full-on skiddie. Using his adequate tech savvy, he slapped together very basic hacks and attacks, and his unsuspecting coworkers had become his guinea pigs.

  He had latched on to me when, after a particularly annoying email phishing scam, I had phished him back. I had shut down his computer and deleted the code he had accumulated on his hard drive. All from the comfort of my own work space. I had attached a signature. I wanted him to know that I had his number.

  Normally I wouldn’t have bothered to retaliate, and I definitely wouldn’t have revealed myself to my target, but I had wanted to make a point. I had wanted Kyle to know that there were people out there who could do a lot worse and had no problem doing so.

  The thing about Kyle was that he looked like the hacker you see in the movies. With hair that hadn’t seen a comb in weeks and clothes that he probably picked up off his bedroom floor, he spent his evenings playing online RPGs and piecing together open-source code to wreak havoc on the men and women at Holt IT Solutions.

  But he was harmless.

  He didn’t know what it meant to cause real chaos.

  “Maybe if you’d finally teach me some stuff, I could come up with something better,” Kyle said, dropping his voice so we weren’t overheard.

  “Or maybe you could stop playing elementary tricks on your coworkers. It’s lame,” I reprimanded him as I would a younger sibling. Kyle might have been only five years younger than me, but sometimes it felt like more.

  “Eh, I’m not hurting anyone. Though I was chatting with a few people on IRC last night and they were talking about a botnet attack on a porn site. They want to pull a full-scale data breach and then post it. You know, name and shame all those dirty pecker heads.” Kyle ran a hand through his greasy hair, standing it on end.

  I gave him a sharp look. “Don’t be an idiot, Kyle. You start down that road and you’re just setting yourself up for trouble,” I lectured. He had no idea what a slippery slope he was on. How easy it would be to get caught.

  How easy it was to do worse if he didn’t get caught…

  “I’ll be careful—”

  “No you won’t. I still have to scrub your hard drive once a month because you leave so much crap behind. Pull your head out of your ass,” I interrupted. “Now, I’ve got work to do. Real work. And so do you. Use that brain of yours for something productive.” I turned back to my computer, ending our conversation.

  Kyle knew the drill. �
�Yeah. Okay. Sorry about the shit blast. Obviously it wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be.”

  He sounded dejected. I didn’t have a lot of weak spots. Charlotte was one.

  At times Kyle was another.

  Maybe because he reminded me of my sister. Or how she was before.

  Vulnerable. Mostly innocent. Well meaning but with a streak of mischief that was destined to get him into trouble.

  I patted Kyle’s arm. “It was funny, Kyle. Really funny. Who doesn’t laugh at poo?” I gave him a smile and Kyle brightened.

  “Yeah? You think so? Maybe I should use sound effects next time—”

  “Go do actual work, Kyle.” I chuckled and he finally went back to his desk.

  I rubbed at my temple, my focus not on the mindless job in front of me. I could do this stuff in my sleep. I knew my way around the company’s network like the back of my hand. I had helped build it. Maintain it. I also knew how to take it down if I wanted to.

  But that wasn’t the hat I wore during the day.

  Right now I was Hannah Whelan, network administrator.

  But tonight I could be someone else. I tingled.

  It felt a lot like the buzzing in my gut when Mason had smiled at me this morning.

  But better.

  So much better.

  The phone on my desk rang and I startled. I picked it up, cleared my throat, and said, “Hello?”

  “Harriet, I need you to look into the email hack this morning,” Chuck Bennett barked into the phone.

  I didn’t even bother to tell him my real name. He knew it. He just insisted on being a dick and using every name but the right one.

  “Already on it,” I told him.

  Asshole, I mouthed, though I would never have said it aloud.

  “I’m getting really tired of these. Shouldn’t you and your team be on top of this? Can’t you even maintain secure firewalls? I thought I hired someone with some basic network skills. I’m beginning to think either you’re really good at bluffing your skill set or your résumé was an out-and-out lie, Hillary,” Chuck snarled in my ear.

  I didn’t even bother to get angry. Sure, Chuck’s prickishness hit every single one of my buttons, but I had learned to let his nasty comments—and inability to use my proper name—roll right off my back.