Critical Vulnerability (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 1)

by Melissa F. Miller

  Friday morning. Trash day.

  She forced her eyes open and rolled over. Soon clatters, clangs, idling trucks, and shouted instructions from one orange-coveralled worker to another would fill the air as the row of Dumpsters that lined the back walls of the buildings on her block were emptied.

  Whatever that beaver was trying to tell her would have to wait for another night. She pushed off the warm, heavy handmade quilt that she’d burrowed under and stood. Her toes curled in protest as they hit the cold, bare wood floor.

  As she raced across the floor to the bathroom, she told herself she’d stop at World Market and pick up a colorful rug this weekend. Even as she thought it, she knew it was a lie. She’d been making that same empty promise every week for sixteen weeks. But she never bought a rug—or any other home goods, for that matter. She was still holding out hope that one evening she’d come home from work and find Joe on her doorstep, along with the cheerful braided rug that anchored their bed, Rufus on his long, retractable leash, and a box full of lamps, bookends, and the assorted small touches that had made their house home.

  She turned on the water full blast and stepped into the shower, thoughts of Joe filling her mind. As the hot water pelted her head and neck from the fancy rainforest showerhead, she let her tears flow freely.

  It’s not going to happen.

  For reasons he hadn’t shared with her, Joe had decided not to join her in DC, even though he said he would. He just never showed up. His silence fed her fantasies that, any day now, he’d come be with her, but how long could she go on kidding herself?

  You need to move on.

  She reached for her shampoo bottle, and Mitchell’s face swam into her mind.

  She blinked water out of her eyes and shook the image out of her head.

  The last thing she needed was to develop a crush. Let alone a crush on a colleague.

  She had a massive criminal trial to prosecute. Jury selection started in one week. If she didn’t focus, she might as well start boxing up her meager belongings and get ready to crawl back to Central Pennsylvania with her proverbial tail tucked firmly between her legs.

  The thought of admitting defeat to Joe set her teeth on edge and drove thoughts of romance—with anyone—straight from her mind.

  Like hell she would.

  She finished showering quickly and rushed through her morning routine, keeping one eye on the time as she dressed. She reheated a bowl of baked oatmeal and wolfed it down while standing over the sink. Then she gathered her papers, pulled on her coat, and raced out the door.

  She jogged the three long blocks to the Metro station, dodging the commuters who kept a more leisurely pace. She was usually sitting behind her desk, well into her workday and her second mug of cinnamon tea by the time the DC morning rush heated up.

  Not today. She had to jam her way through the turnstile and stand shoulder-to-shoulder on a packed Metro, swaying at one with an overheated sea of humanity.

  By the time she’d pushed her way through the crowd and raced up the steep staircase to the street, she was hot and frazzled. Just how she wanted to start her day.

  At least it’s Friday, she consoled herself as she zigzagged around a tour group and into the perfectly ordinary F Street high-rise office building that housed the Criminal Division.

  She flashed her badge at the security guard stationed in the lobby and trotted to catch the elevator that a trench-coated arm was holding open for her.

  “Thanks,” she said to man as the doors closed.

  “Sure thing.”

  She squeezed herself into a corner of the car, jostling up against suit-jacketed shoulders on both sides.

  When she’d interviewed for the job, she’d met with officials at the Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, which was exactly as she’d imagined it: an imposing, impressive limestone building that took up an entire block of the National Mall, complete with columns and carved sculptures on the facade and a detailed mosaic on the entryway ceiling. Everywhere she’d looked she’d seen polished bronze and aged marble. The awe she’d felt had played a good-sized part in her decision to accept the position.

  Only, as it turned out, Aroostine didn’t work in the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building. She worked a little more than half a mile to the northwest and a world away from the grandeur and the power of the headquarters building. The Criminal Division leased plain vanilla office space in a regular old office building that served to inspire no one.

  The elevator groaned to a stop on her floor, and she eased her way out from the pack of office workers, turning sideways and pulling her elbows in close to her body to prevent knocking a to-go cup of coffee out of a clutching hand and setting off a caffeine-fueled riot.

  As she walked down the long hallway, she fished her identification badge from her pocket by its lanyard. She flashed it at the card reader, waited for the click to signal that the door had unlocked, and then pushed it open.

  She made it all of ten feet inside before she was ambushed.

  “Did you get an extension, after all?” Rosie Montoya called, poking her head out of the kitchenette tucked behind the reception area.

  “How did you even know it was me?”

  The hallway wasn’t visible from the kitchenette.

  Rosie emerged from the space with a mug of muddy coffee in one hand and a container of yogurt in the other.

  “They came in early today and installed these cool digital displays in the common areas—there’s one in the library and one in the big conference room, too. When someone swipes a card, his or her name pops up on the readout. It’s gonna make stalking the boss so much easier,” Rosie said, grinning.

  Not just the boss; the rest of us, too, Aroostine thought.

  She said, “I’m surprised there’s not one in the bathroom. There’s not one in the bathroom, is there?”

  The junior lawyer laughed. “Not yet. Give them time. So?”

  “So?”

  “Did you get an extension or what?”

  “No, I filed last night—with two whole minutes to spare.”

  Rosie wrinkled her forehead. “That’s so weird.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not showing up on the docket.”

  Aroostine felt her own brow furrow. “It has to be.”

  “It’s not.”

  Electronic filing was instantaneous. The opposition appeared on the docket within a minute, maybe less.

  “That’s not right. I got the confirmation from the system last night.” She’d double-checked it before she’d left with Mitchell.

  Rosie looked at her blankly and shook her head. “It’s not there. I’ve refreshed the docket a half-dozen times this morning.”

  “Come with me.” Aroostine headed down the hallway, trailed by the junior attorney. They reached her office door and she snuck a quick peek at Mitchell’s door, but it was closed.

  She wasn’t sure if the feeling that swept over her was relief or disappointment. Either way, she didn’t have time to analyze it.

  She powered on her laptop and waited for Outlook to open. She leaned over the desk and scrolled through the unopened e-mail messages that had hit her in-box since midnight until she found the automated confirmation message.

  “See?”

  She opened the message and clicked on the hyperlink in the body of the e-mail, which would take her directly to the filed version of the opposition.

  Only it didn’t.

  She stared at the 404 error message that filled the screen.

  “That’s impossible.”

  She clicked over to the docket to try to reach the file that way and blinked. The last entry on the docket was the court’s order rescheduling the trial. The entry before that was the defendants’ motion in limine.

  Where was the opposition?

  Her palms grew damp,
and her mouth went dry.

  “I don’t . . . Where’d it go? I filed it. I got the confirmation.”

  Rosie peered over her shoulder at the monitor. “It must be a glitch. I wouldn’t worry about it. You did get the confirmation.”

  Her words were reassuring, but Aroostine could tell the younger lawyer was as baffled as she was.

  “Mierda,” Rosie swore, pointing a manicured nail at the blinking e-mail icon. “The judge just entered another order.”

  Aroostine hurriedly clicked the notification, and her heart dropped into her stomach as she read the text of the short order.

  Defendants’ Motion in Limine to Preclude Recording (Doc. #42) is granted as unopposed.

  “Oh my God. I’m going to puke.”

  Rosie pushed her into her desk chair.

  “Listen, don’t stress about this. I’ll get on the phone with the clerk of court. I’m sure it’s just some kind of weird mistake. We’ll get it cleared up, and Judge Hernandez will issue a new order.”

  Aroostine searched Rosie’s eyes. As always, it struck her that looking at Rosie was like looking in a mirror. Despite their disparate ethnic backgrounds, Rosie’s Hispanic features and her own Native American characteristics were almost identical. They shared the same coloring, the same glossy black hair, the same brown eyes, and the same bone structure. Add to that the fact that they were both within an inch or two of six feet tall, and it was no surprise that people constantly asked if they were sisters.

  Right now, Rosie’s pale, tense face belied her casual confidence and probably mirrored her own expression. Aroostine really did feel like she might vomit.

  “Hernandez hates Sid,” she mumbled. “What if he doesn’t issue a new order?”

  “He will.”

  Aroostine closed her eyes and focused on her breathing until the wave of nausea passed.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am; you’ll see. Let me go get this straightened out.”

  “Thanks, Rosie.”

  “No worries.” She started out of the office and then turned back. “Oh, I totally forgot. I heard an interesting piece of gossip this morning.”

  “Yeah?” Aroostine feigned interest.

  “Rumor has it Sid’s on the short list for a promotion.”

  “Good for him.”

  “It’s good for you, too, you know. If he gets the bump, Tony Henderson is a lock to take over his job. And you know what that means?”

  “We’ll all have to pretend to be Redskins fans?”

  Rosie ignored the jab at Henderson’s football mania. “His job will be open.”

  “And?”

  “And if we can pull off a guilty verdict, you’ll be the logical candidate to replace him as deputy.”

  “In what universe?”

  “The one where you win a big FCPA case and happen to be a coveted double minority. That universe.”

  Aroostine winced.

  She didn’t consider herself any sort of minority. For one thing, roughly half the world was female. And for another, she’d been adopted by a prosperous white family when she was seven. The Higginses had given her everything she needed to build a foundation: stability, love, shelter, clothes, education, and support. She wasn’t disadvantaged, and she hardly needed a leg up. The federal government’s insistence on giving her extra credit for the accident of her birth was a constant irritant. Like dust in her eye.

  “Hey, are we running today at lunch?”

  Rosie blinked at the subject change, and, despite herself, Aroostine swallowed a laugh.

  Her discomfort must have been more extreme than even she realized. She never suggested running. Usually, Rosie had to threaten to drag her bodily from her desk chair or bribe her with cupcakes to get her to lace up her running shoes.

  “Uh . . .”

  “You know, exercise gets the brain moving, too. And if we’re going to win this trial, a little extra brainpower will come in handy.”

  “Okay, sure.” Rosie gave her a look like she’d grown an extra head, but she went along with the idea. She left the room, pulling the door closed gently behind her.

  Aroostine tried to put the docket mishap out of her mind and started working through her endless to-do list.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Franklin chewed on the cuticle around his left thumb without realizing it. The raw skin bled easily, and he looked down in surprise when he tasted blood.

  Disgusting, he thought. On top of everything else, now he had a gross nervous habit, thanks to the man.

  The thought of the nameless man made Franklin’s heart pound with impotent anger. He’d promised that if Franklin tapped into the federal court’s docket system and made a stupid document disappear, he would return Franklin’s mother unharmed. If Franklin didn’t—or if he contacted the authorities—he said he would give Franklin directions as to where he could find her corpse.

  And Franklin had done everything exactly as the man wanted. The man, whoever he was, clearly knew enough about Franklin’s work to realize that deleting a record from the electronic docket would be child’s play for Franklin.

  Although he’d never before done anything more illegal than fail to come to a full stop at a stop sign, he had access to an array of systems and networks that most hackers couldn’t imagine in their most power-hungry dreams.

  He was SystemSource, Inc.’s lead programmer. That meant he was in charge of testing and debugging the company’s flagship off-the-shelf industrial control systems product, RemoteControl. SystemSource sold the RemoteControl system to office buildings, residential apartment buildings, government agencies, hospitals, colleges, private companies—anybody who wanted to control and monitor complex systems remotely. Which was just about everybody. Why pay a guard to sit in your building and watch your surveillance cameras, when you could outsource that task to some guy sitting in his living room monitoring your cameras, controlling the HVAC systems, making sure the elevators stopped on all the floors, and keeping pretty much every essential system running?

  To enable the company to provide real-time support, updates, and monitoring to its customers, Franklin left a door open in the configuration data of each unit. He was the only person at SystemSource who knew how to get into the configuration data, and once he was inside, he could gain access to the administrator’s password and, from there, the username and password of any user. Logged in as an employee, he could control whatever systems that login identification managed.

  So, when the man told him to delete the opposition to the motion in limine, all he had to do was log in to the electronic court filing system as the system administrator and type in the docket number the man had given him. It took him all of eight seconds to wipe away any trace of the filing.

  He’d been surprised to see that the caption named his very own company as a defendant, The United States v. SystemSource, Inc., et al. After he’d removed the opposition papers filed by the Department of Justice, he poked around the docketed documents long enough to learn that his employer had settled with the government months ago, paying a thirty-million-dollar fine but not admitting wrongdoing.

  The only defendants still remaining were two former sales representatives, Craig Womback and Martin Sheely—men he’d never heard of, let alone met. The two had overseen the company’s fledgling Latin American division and were charged with bribing Mexican government officials.

  He thought that would be the end of it, but of course the man had reneged. And now he spent his working hours looking over his shoulder, worried that someone inside the company was involved in his mother’s abduction. Who else would know that he could access the docket?

  This new worry made him even jumpier and more paranoid—a state he didn’t even know was possible.

  As if to prove the point, the cell phone rang, and he leaped, nearly spilling his French roast on his wrinkl
ed khakis.

  “Jeez, buddy, switch to decaf,” one of the interns said as he strolled by Franklin’s cubicle.

  Franklin ignored the guy and hissed into the phone, “Hello?”

  “Your employer was awarded the contract to install a new security system at the Criminal Division’s F Street location. Are you aware of that, Franklin?”

  “Yes,” Franklin said, his stomach sinking. The system had just come on line a few hours earlier, and he’d spend the first part of the morning testing it to ensure it was working properly.

  “Of course you are,” the cold, foreign voice continued. “What you may not know is that your company won that contract over a year ago. The start date and installation were pushed back until SystemSource settled the FCPA lawsuit. It would have been very embarrassing if your American taxpayers learned that the Department of Justice was business partners with one of its criminal defendants, no?”

  Franklin was distracted by the man’s use of your in front of employer and American. Was it a slip of the tongue or did he not care that Franklin knew he wasn’t connected with SystemSource and wasn’t a US citizen? Or had he said it because he was a SystemSource employee and he was trying to throw Franklin off his track? God, the last thing he needed was for this terrible man to think he was on his track.

  “No?” he prompted.

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I thought that was a rhetorical question,” Franklin hurried to explain.

  “Stop thinking. Answer the questions I ask and do what I tell you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. I’m sorry.” He tried hard to convey his contrition to the madman on the phone.

  “Good. Now, before we get to your next assignment, I believe I said you could speak to your mother. You have thirty seconds.”

  There was a crackle in his ear as the man must have activated his device’s speakerphone feature.

  Franklin wet his lips, cupped his hand around the phone, and croaked, “Mom?”

  “Franklin.” His mother’s voice echoed hollowly through the speakerphone.

  “Is he feeding you? Has he hurt you?”