Critical Vulnerability (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 1)

by Melissa F. Miller

  He stopped suddenly and stared out into the night, his gaze on the illuminated skating rink, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it. He gnawed on his lower lip but didn’t speak.

  “So, I bet it seemed like a good idea to just go in through the back door you left yourself and tweak the software already in place, huh?” She was careful to keep her tone understanding. She didn’t want to lose him now.

  “It was. I get it, you know, clients don’t want to think their systems are vulnerable. But this is safe. I’m the only one who can get in and modify them.”

  “But you can’t be sure of that.”

  “I’m pretty sure. I hid my program in a security subkernel.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said blankly.

  “It’s complicated, but imagine that there’s a vault buried underground. That’s where my program is. Users aren’t going to stumble across it. And even a relatively sophisticated hacker who’s looking for it isn’t going to be able to find it.” He grinned at his ingenuity.

  “That was smart.” Again, with the neutral tone.

  “Thanks.”

  She hesitated. But she had to know, so she asked the question.

  “Did you tell anyone at the company what you were doing?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, a frustrated gesture. “Not exactly.”

  She waited.

  “They didn’t ask, and I didn’t mention it. But there’s no way my boss didn’t know that something was up. I was being crushed by work and meeting all those deadlines—they didn’t want to know.”

  Willful blindness. Plausible deniability. The hallmarks of corporate cowards the world over.

  She nodded.

  “And if they didn’t know at first, they had to know after the VC infusion.” His tone was fierce.

  “VC infusion?”

  “Right around the time that Womback and Sheely were screwing around trying to bribe Jorge Cruz, SystemSource was looking to spin off some subsidiaries. I’m not a business guy, but from what I understood, the company grew too big, too fast. It was a wild ride. The deal guys suggested selling off some units and maybe doing, uh, a reverse offering or something? Taking the company private again? I don’t know the details.”

  “Okay,” she said, filing the information away. She wasn’t a transactional lawyer. She’d need someone to explain the details to her if they proved important. “And this VC thing . . . ?”

  “Right. A venture capital company approached management.”

  “Venture capital? But SystemSource was already huge, and publicly traded at this point, right?”

  She didn’t know much, but she knew that venture capital companies specialized in helping start-ups grow. SystemSource would have been well past that stage.

  “Right, but these guys came to us anyway. They offered an exorbitant amount of money for a tiny stake in the company.”

  She scrolled through her memory, trying to recall seeing any mention of such a deal in the SEC filings, but drew a blank. She made a mental note to ask Rosie.

  “Do you know the venture capital firm’s name?”

  He shook his head. “No. But it wouldn’t matter. The deal was structured through all these intermediaries to try to keep it sort of hush-hush. All I know is the sales people were probably under the same marching orders the programmers were under.”

  “Which were?”

  “Don’t mess anything up. We needed to show these investors that we were solid. Anybody who blew a deadline, missed a quota, went over budget—you were getting canned. No excuses.”

  “So, you think the sales reps tried to bribe Mexico because they were under pressure to produce?”

  He shrugged. “Probably. Maybe? All I know is I was. I was back to around the clock even with my back door.”

  “Why?”

  “The company set up a meeting between me and some suit who represented the VC guys.”

  “Suit? A lawyer?”

  His eyes drifted to the ceiling as he tried to remember. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I wasn’t sleeping much at that point, and, honestly, it’s all a blur. I don’t remember the guy’s name, and I know I didn’t get a card. Anyway, he wanted assurances that I could continue to customize the software if the sales volume continued to increase. I said, yeah, because I knew that was the right answer. And he pressed me for details: How could I be sure? What level of customer modification could I guarantee? How could I be sure?”

  “What did you say?”

  “He said the conversation was private. So, I told him. Not in detail. I was careful to explain that nobody else could get in through my back door, but that I could.”

  He stared at her, misery seeping from every pore.

  Her throat felt tight and dry. “The venture capital group—or whoever this guy represented—knows that you, and only you, can get into all these systems?”

  He nodded, tears shining in his brown eyes.

  “And now they have my mom.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Aroostine raced down the stairs to the Metro station. Franklin’s words echoed in her mind as she clattered down the metal steps, her scarf trailing behind her like tail feathers.

  She jammed her card up against the reader and ran through the terminal to the platform for the Red Line, dodging an elderly couple and earning a dirty look from a lank-haired college student leaning against the column.

  She didn’t have time to care.

  If Franklin was right—and the lump of lead lodged in her stomach told her he was—then Rosie was right, too: something important was hidden in her trial preparation materials. Something so important that someone was willing to resort to violence—and who knew what else—to keep it secret.

  The Metro train rushed up to the platform and stopped with a disconcerting squeal of brakes. She elbowed her way to the doors of the closest car and waited for the passengers on the car to exit. A young couple struggled with an enormous stroller. One of the back wheels was stuck in the gap between the car and the platform.

  On autopilot, she bent and helped the father raise the wheel, then stepped into the half-empty car with his thanks hanging in the air as the hydraulic doors whooshed shut behind her.

  She flopped into the nearest seat and stared unseeingly at the public service announcement poster in front of her while she ran through what she’d learned from Franklin.

  One, the business person—or lawyer or whoever he was—he’d met with on behalf of the venture capital group was not the same man who contacted him after his mother’s disappearance. He was adamant on this point. He’d said the “suit” had been a typical white guy. No discernable accent or ethnic heritage. The man on the phone had the stilted speaking style and vocabulary of a nonnative speaker and a noticeable, but indeterminate, accent.

  She unearthed a pencil and scrap of paper from her bag and scribbled, Could accent be an act? Then she resumed ticking off points on her mental checklist.

  Two, Franklin’s mother had been abducted after the defendants had filed the motion in limine in the FCPA case. The man knew Franklin could access court records. He grabbed Mrs. Chang to make sure Franklin followed his instructions.

  She steadied the paper against the back of the seat in front of her and wrote furiously, recording the questions that flitted through her mind:

  Why delete the opposition instead of waiting to see if the judge granted motion? Did something in opposition worry him—or was he worried about something in the defendants’ motion? Can’t ask defense counsel why they only objected to one exhibit—they won’t discuss strategy. But why would they do that?

  Overhead, a staticky, garbled voice announced the station. The train rocked to a stop. A thin woman who’d been dozing on the bench across from her jolted to wakefulness.

  “Did he say Fort Totten?” she demanded in an urgent voice as she scrambled to her
feet and edged toward the door.

  Aroostine snapped into focus. “Uh, I really wasn’t listening.” She squinted at the words on the wall. “Yeah, it looks like this is your stop.”

  The woman nodded her thanks and rushed out the door.

  Aroostine glanced at the map. Two more stops until her destination. She needed to pay a little more attention, or she’d end up missing her own station.

  Three, the man was willing to kill. A shiver crept along her spine, and she hugged her coat tight around her body as if it were the cold and not that knowledge that caused her chill. But she couldn’t ignore the evidence. Despite Franklin’s protestations that he was careful, the facts were that someone could have died as a result of the fire; she could have died when he tampered with the equipment during her surgery; and both his mother and her husband’s lives were entirely in the man’s hands. The fact that, as far as they knew, he hadn’t yet killed anyone seemed to give Franklin some measure of comfort. Not her. The unvarnished truth was they were dealing with a sociopath.

  Be careful. He’ll exploit any vulnerability he discovers. Rosie? Rufus? Mom and Dad Higgins? Mitchell?

  She scratched out Mitchell’s name and rolled her eyes at herself.

  She glanced out the window to confirm the train was rolling into the stop before hers.

  Four, to his credit, Franklin was being honest with her. He’d tripped over the words and she’d had to prod him a few times, but he’d copped to spying on her movements, listening to her calls, and telling the man about the message she’d left for Joe and how he’d tracked down Joe’s personal information and shared it with the man, even though he’d known the man would use it against her.

  She bit back her anger. It was hard to fault him. For all his brilliance with computers, he was a weak and naive person. He was trying to save his mother, by whatever means necessary.

  He’d apologized over and over, begging her forgiveness. She’d told him they had to move on. But it was hard to let go of the hot rage in her belly. If anything happened to Joe—

  Stop it!

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, but she must have. The car’s sole other occupant stood up and moved to the other end of the car in the time-honored Metro passenger’s response to sharing space with the mentally imbalanced. He stood there watching her warily.

  The train lurched to a stop.

  She shoved the paper into her coat pocket, stood, and flashed the man, who was still eyeing her, a reassuring smile that she hoped exuded sanity and then exited the train.

  She hurried through the station and out into the cold night.

  Five, the man had no honor. Frankly, her short career as a prosecutor had already convinced her that honor among thieves was a myth. Most criminal conspiracies fell apart fast once one player was nabbed. Oaths of silence, gang loyalty, even the Mafia’s omertà crumbled in the face of hard prison time. Criminals almost always acted in their own self-interest. Brother elbowed brother out of a drug territory, a wife skimmed off the top when she laundered her husband’s books, a thief shot his boyhood friend and accomplice to increase his own cut of the pilfered goods. Whatever the crime, whoever the participants, everyone looked out for themselves. Why should this mystery man be any different, particularly when he had no real bond with Franklin?

  No, it didn’t surprise her in the least that the man had double-crossed Franklin. But Franklin was still outraged and bewildered that the man hadn’t let his mother go as promised. The takeaway there, she mused, as she trotted across the street against the light, was that Franklin had believed the man would keep his word. The man, whoever he was, came across as someone of substance and some measure of integrity, at least according to Franklin.

  She stopped in front of a gorgeous Dupont Circle mansion that had been carved into apartments, tucked the thought away, and took a deep breath before hitting the buzzer for apartment 302.

  Before she could smooth her windblown hair out of her eyes, Mitchell’s voice sounded through the speaker.

  “Hello?”

  She swallowed. “Mitch, it’s Aroostine. I’m sorry to just show up like this. I . . . need your help.”

  There was a pause—not a long one, but not exactly a short one. She had time to regret what she’d done.

  “Now, that wasn’t so hard, asking for help, was it? Come on up.”

  The buzzer sounded and the door unlocked, saving her from formulating an answer.

  As she walked through the vestibule she froze and wondered if Franklin was monitoring this building, too. She shook it off and started moving again. If he was watching, so be it. She had to trust him. Just as she had to involve Mitchell. She had no choice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Franklin was beyond exhausted. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since the night his mom disappeared. His stomach was sour and his brain was coated in fur, but anxiety and adrenaline had prevented him from resting. When he tried to sleep, his whirring mind took over, and his heart began to race.

  Tonight, though, he could just feel that sleep was in his reach. Talking to Aroostine, enlisting her help, had eased his overloaded central nervous system. He’d returned home feeling almost hopeful. He didn’t know what she planned to do, but she projected such a competent air that he believed she could somehow get him out of this mess. She reminded him of his mother—and if there was one word that described his mom, it was capable.

  So when his dry eyes grew heavy, he turned out the lights, climbed into bed, and burrowed under his blankets.

  The covers were warm and heavy. The room was quiet. His mind was still. He closed his eyes.

  He was drifting between sleep and consciousness when the cell phone chirped to let him know he’d received a text. His brain rejected the sound.

  Ignore it. Sleep.

  He kept his eyes shut tight, but his pulse ticked up.

  It’s him. You can’t make him wait. Remember what he did last time.

  The pain in his mother’s voice after the man had broken her fingers echoed in his ears. He opened his eyes and groped around his bedside table until his hand brushed up against the phone.

  He pushed himself up to sitting and braced himself for the text message.

  It was a video this time.

  Please, God. Please let her be okay.

  He was too afraid to hit “Play,” terrified it would be a recording of his mother being tortured. He froze, his finger hovering over the arrow displayed on the screen.

  I can’t do it.

  He reached over and flicked on the lamp, unable or unwilling to watch whatever it was in darkness.

  Do it, already. Don’t waste time, he ordered himself. He exhaled shakily and played the video.

  And he began to tremble with relief. A shape appeared in frame, but it wasn’t his mother. It was Joe Jackman. A ragged, pale Joe Jackman, staring sullenly into the camera.

  For a second, defiance sparked in his eyes, so briefly, Franklin thought he’d imagined it. Jackman’s expression flattened into resignation, and he began to speak tonelessly:

  Aroostine, listen carefully. I am unharmed. You need to dismiss the charges in the case. You know which one. If you do, I will walk out of here alive. If you do not, I will not. The same applies to the woman. Please take this seriously.

  Jackman finished reciting the lines and gave a baleful look to someone off camera. Then he glanced back and spoke directly to Franklin:

  Your mother is fi—

  The screen went black. Franklin sobbed. He could tell that Jackman had been ad-libbing at the end, and he prayed that the man hadn’t made him, or Franklin’s mom, pay for that bit of insubordination. At the same time, he was grateful beyond measure to know that, at least when the video had been made, his mom had been okay.

  The phone sounded in his hand. Another text:

  Forward to the lawyer.


  Franklin began to shake again—this time, from fear. Forwarding this video to Aroostine might break her resolve. And if she decided not to go after the man, where would that leave him?

  He walked out into the kitchen and flicked on the overhead lights. So much for sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Mitchell put a kettle on for tea, while Aroostine marveled at the fact that he owned a teakettle and lived in this sleek, modern apartment. In stark contrast to the historic building that housed it, his place was all blond wood and geometric lines.

  He peered out at her from the kitchen.

  “Earl Grey or chamomile?”

  “Chamomile would be great, thanks.”

  She warmed her hands over the hissing radiator while he rattled around in the cabinets, getting cups and saucers, spoons and sugar. He came into view holding a tray of cookies.

  “Want one while the water heats?”

  She shook her head.

  “Double chocolate chunk,” he wheedled. “And they’re homemade.” He pushed the tray toward her.

  “You made them?”

  “I’m a man of many talents.”

  She reached for a cookie. “Impressive.”

  “So, what’s going on?”

  He rested the tray on an end table and leaned forward with an expectant, serious expression.

  She broke off a corner of the cookie and nibbled at it while she considered how much to tell him. She hadn’t really planned this part. She knew she needed help. She didn’t want to involve Rosie in a scheme that could prove to be career limiting. Mitchell had been around longer; he’d developed a reputation and a network. If this blew up in their faces, his career would survive. She hoped.

  She abandoned the cookie and studied his face.

  “Well, for one, I think you and Rosie are on the right track with the corporate structure stuff.”